Microsoft AppFabric
Dennis van der Stelt
Tellus

Introducing
• Tellus
– Lead generation
– 10k websites
– Looking for developers .NET Geeks
• Dennis van der Stelt
– http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/dennis/
– http://twitter.com/dvdstelt
– dennis@bloggingabout.net

Session objectives
Windows AppFabric
Azure AppFabric
Architectural choices

AppFabric
• Services to build and manage composite
applications
• Formerly known as
– BizTalk Services
– .NET Services
– Velocity
– Dublin

•Workflows
•Monitoring
•Troubleshooting
•Scaling out
•Scripting
•Distributed
•Enterprise scale
•Load balancing
•ASP.NET
Integration
Windows Server
AppFabric
•Connect
•Pass through
•Discoverable
•REST based
•Claim based
•Transformation
•Security Token
•REST based
Azure AppFabric

Windows Server AppFabric
SERVICE & WORKFLOW
MANAGEMENT

Brought my own whiteboard

Hosting services
Host
Client
WCF
Service
Databa
se
What are the current hosting capabilities of services?

Hosting services
Host
Client
WCF
Service
MyApp.exe
#1 – Your own application (Self hosted)
Easiest to deploy
No quality of service
Databa
se

Hosting services
Host
Client
WCF
Service
MyService.ex
e
#2 – Windows Service
Run in background, some monitoring
Hardly any quality of service
Databa
se

Hosting services
IIS
Client
WCF
Service
MyService.svc
#3 – Internet Information Services
Excellent quality of service
Supports only HTTP protocol
Databa
se

Hosting services
WAS
Client
WCF
Service
Databa
se
MyService.svc
#4 – Windows Process Activation Services
Excellent quality of service, multiple protocols
No support for hosting Workflows & true scalability

Enter Dublin…

Hosting services
AppFabric
Workflow
Client
WCF
Service
Databa
se
MyService.svc
#4 – Service & Workflow Management
Quality of Service from IIS/WAS
Hosting scalable workflow & WCF Services

Management Tools
IIS Manager Modules
PowerShell
Services
Persistence
Workflows
Hosting
Monitoring
Caching
Windows Server AppFabric
.NET Framework
Persistence
Runtime Databases
IIS/WAS
Windows Server
Monitoring

Scalable
Share workflow state across machines

AppFabric Hosting
Management
Service
Windows
Service +
AppFabric
Management
Service
Windows
Service +
AppFabric
Persistence
Database
Management
Service
Windows
Service +
AppFabric

Scalable
Retry mechanism for race conditions

AppFabric Hosting
Client
3F2504E0-4F89-11D3-1337-…
Management
Service
x
Management
Service
Windows
Service +
AppFabric
Windows
Service +
AppFabric
Persistence
Database

Windows Server AppFabric
CACHING

Let’s look at a problem
you might experience yourself…

AppFabric Caching
WebServer
Load Balancer
WebServer
WebServer
Databa
se

AppFabric Caching
WebServer
Load Balancer
WebServer
WebServer
x
Databa
se

AppFabric Caching
WebServer
Load Balancer
WebServer
WebServer
Solution is sticky sessions…
Databa
se

We’ll have uneven load balancing,
we might loose sessions,
etc…

AppFabric Caching
WebServer
Load Balancer
WebServer
Databa
se
WebServer
Another solution is using DBMS to store sessions

Doesn’t scale well,
we’ll have a performance bottleneck.
And clustering is costly and
fault sensitive!

What is AppFabric Caching?
• An explicit, distributed, in-memory application cache for
all kinds of data (CLR objects, XML, Binary data, etc.)
– Flows "memory" across machines into a unified cache
Clients can be spread
across machines or
processes
Unified Cache View
Clients Access the
Cache as if it was a
large single cache
Cache Layer
distributes data
across the various
cache nodes

AppFabric Caching
WebServer
Load Balancer
WebServer
WebServer
Databa
se

Why Velocity?
* Share data across applications
No more sticky routing
* Peformance
Operation
Read 2k
MSDN Forums
Throughput
Latency
30,000 / sec
3 – 4 ms
Write 2k
18,000 / sec
5 Velocity Servers, 40GB Cache
98% of all calls to database come from cache
Result is from 60% load on SQL Server, down to 2%
* Scale out
3 ms
Operation
Throughput
Read 2k
1
30,000 / sec
Read 2k
2
58, 600 / sec
Read 2k
Velocity
Servers
3
85, 500 / sec

Basic terminology in Velocity
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Cache host
Cache cluster
Cluster configuration storage
Machine 1
Machine
Machine
Named cache
2Cache
2Cache
Cache
Cache
host A
host B
host C
host D
Region
Named cache : Product catalog
Named cache : ShoppingCart
Cache item
Tags
Region A

Working with Velocity
// Create instance of CacheFactory, which reads app.config
DataCacheFactory factory = new DataCacheFactory();
// Get a named cache from the factory
DataCache cache = factory.GetCache("default");
// Cache.Put(string key, object value)
cache.Add("SDN", new SDNSession());
// Cache.Get(string key);
var meeting = (SDNSession)cache.Get("SDN");
// Via indexers is also an option
cache["what"] = new Object();
Object o = cache["what"];

Tags
var starWarsTag = new DataCacheTag("StarWars");
var tags = new List<DataCacheTag>();
tags.Add(starWarsTag);
tags.Add(new DataCacheTag("Force"));
tags.Add(new DataCacheTag("Sith"));
cache.Add("MyKey", "A New Hope", tags, "StarWarsRegion");
var result =
cache.GetObjectsByTag(starWarsTag, "StarWarsRegion");
foreach (var item in result)
{
Console.WriteLine("{0} has value of {1}",
item.Key, item.Value);
}

Optimistic locking
DataCacheItemVersion versionWillChange;
DataCacheItemVersion versionWithError;
// First get the current version 2 times
cache.Get("MyKey", out versionWillChange);
cache.Get("MyKey", out versionWithError);
// We change the key, version hasn't changed in Velocity yet.
cache.Put("MyKey", "MyNewValue", versionWillChange);
// Version has changed with previous update, this will #fail
cache.Put("MyKey", "MyErrorValue", versionWithError);

Pessimistic locking
DataCacheLockHandle lockHandle = null;
DataCacheLockHandle secondLockHandle = null;
// Lock our object
cache.GetAndLock("MyKey", new TimeSpan(0, 0, 10), out
lockHandle);
// This will still work
string result = (string)cache.Get("MyKey");
// Try to lock for 2nd time -> #fail
cache.GetAndLock("MyKey", new TimeSpan(0, 0, 10), out
secondLockHandle);
// This will break the lock!!!
cache.Put("MyKey", "MyNewValue");

Notification callback
DataCacheOperation filter = DataCacheOperation.AddItem;
cache.AddItemLevelCallback("MyKey", filter, callback);
cache.AddRegionLevelCallback("Region", filter, callback);
cache.AddFailureNotificationCallback(failCallback);
cache.Add("MyKey", "MyInitialValue");
public static void callback (string myCacheName,
string myRegion, string myKey,
DataCacheItemVersion itemVersion,
DataCacheOperation OperationId,
DataCacheNotificationDescriptor nd)
{
//display some of the delegate parameters
Console.WriteLine("Region : " + myRegion);
Console.WriteLine("Key
: " + myKey);
}

ASP.NET Session integration
• SessionStoreProvider class
– Plugs into ASP.NET Session store
– Stores session state in Velocity
• Scale
– Session information available at all ASP.NET
Nodes
• High availability
– Session data is backed up on addditional
machines
– Resilient to machine or process failures

Azure AppFabric
• Webbased services
• Yes, in the cloud!
• Allow you to easily connect applications

Azure AppFabric
SERVICE BUS

Azure Service Bus

Azure Service Bus
Let’s open a port
and do some
forwarding

Azure Service Bus
Oh, what about
NAT, Proxies, etc?

Azure Service Bus
Service Bus

Azure Service Bus
App
Service Bus

Features
• Services discoverable through SB url
• Full duplex channels supporting
bi-directional communiction
• Full-duplex p2p sessions
– with network-boundary traversal create direct
end-to-end connectivity through NAT
• Multiple publishers & subscribers
• REST based (non .NET platform support)

Azure AppFabric LABS
http://portal.appfabriclabs.com/

Azure AppFabric
ACCESS CONTROL

Azure Access Control
Service Bus
Federated Identity

Azure Access Control
Service Bus
Access
Control
ID

Azure Access Control
Service Bus
Access
Control
App
ID

Access Control
• Two new protocols
– Created by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, etc
– Oauth WRAP & SWT
– Authentication in HTTP Headers
– Usable even via JavaScript
– Ready for Geneva/WIF

Access Control
•
•
•
•
The future
No WS* available yet… or no longer?
CardSpace
Support for other web identity providers
– Windows Live
– Google
– Yahoo
– OpenId

Azure Pricing
• Access Control
– $1.99 / 100K transactions
• Service Bus Connections
– $3.99 per connection
– $9.99 for a pack of 5 connections
– $199 for a pack of 100 connections
• Data Transfers
– $0.10 in / $0.15 out per Gigabyte

Example (real world) architecture

Example architecture
SQL
Website

Example architecture
SQL
Website
“Server Busy”

Example architecture
Website
SQL
Website
Website
N
L
B

Example architecture
Website
SQL
Website
“Timeout”
Website
N
L
B

An important change was made…

Example architecture
Isolated servers
One way!
SQL
Sync
Framework
Website
Website
Website
Prepublished Databases using SQL Express
N
L
B

How to submit state changes to backend?

Example architecture
Website
Website
Sync
Framework
Website
AppFabric Hosting
Backend
WCF
Service
MSMQ
Cache
SQL
N
L
B

Example architecture
SB
AC
The near future?
REST Based Service Layer
Website
Website
Sync
Framework
Website
AppFabric Hosting
Backen
d
Servic
e
MSMQ
Cache
SQL
N
L
B

Summary
•
•
•
•
Different AppFabric components
Difference Azure & Windows AppFabric
New architectural choices
Do you see benefits or opportunities?

questions
Resources:
• .NET Magazine maart 2010 & SDN Magazine
• http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/
• http://bit.ly/1P6f5D
• http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/dennis/