Microsoft provides many ways to run SQL Server in Azure, but which do you choose? In this article, Robert Sheldon explains the Azure SQL options.… Read more
While architecting cloud native applications, you need to ensure that your system is highly available, performant, scalable, fault tolerant, and has the capability to recover from a disaster scenario. In this article, Samir Behara discusses the options available when designing the database architecture to achieve scalability.… Read more
With Amazon RDS, it’s easy to have a SQL Server running in minutes. There are some limitations, though. Seth Delconte explains a workaround to overcome one of the limitations: the inability to restore a second copy of a database to recover missing data.… Read more
Azure Event Grid (in preview) is a new event routing service that works with Azure Logic Apps and Azure Functions. It’s one more solution that enables developers to focus on business value, not on infrastructure. Christos Matskas explains how this new feature works and walks you through a simple example. … Read more
Azure App Service has got more versatile because it can now run Linux. Not only can you run Web App for Containers, and publish Docker containers to Azure, but there is built-in support for ASP.NET Core, Node.js, PHP and Ruby on Linux. This allows you to host microservicess on a fully-managed platform. Christos Matskas explains.… Read more
Azure provides an ideal platform for hosting microservices because it offers a number of managed services that allow developers to create microservices that can run reliably and at scale. The problem is in understanding how these managed services can help and which is most suitable for the task. Christos Matskas provides a useful summary for anyone developing cloud-based applications.… Read more
Windows Server 2016 features support for containers. These are not Linux-based, but containers that run on Windows and run Windows on the inside.
These conform to the Open Container Initiative (OCI). They allow you to run applications insulated from the rest of the system, within portable containers that include everything an application needs to be fully functional. As they did with Linux, containers will change the nature of the software supply chain for Windows users.… Read more
Containers promise to make applications more portable and efficient. The technology, originally based on Linux's cgroups, provides a way of running several applications as modular, platform-agnostic packages in isolation on the same server. Docker's open-source approach to containers has dominated the market, and Microsoft is producing its own equivalent Windows system. What next? Will Containers replace VMS? Robert Sheldon investigates.… Read more
There was a time that data seemed part of the application that maintained and used it. Now, there is increasing demand to deliver data through platform-agnostic open-standard APIs so it can be consumed in a variety of ways, whether refined, aggregated, or combined with additional information. Are we heading towards a shared understanding of applications as data-providers, feeding other services such as BI, or even in the right circumstances, publishing it?… Read more
The 'Community Cloud' sounds, on first impression, like marketing-speak for some untried novelty, but in fact it is already around, and working well for governments and healthcare in particular. Bob Sheldon investigates, and is encouraged to find groups of organisations who have cooperated to create secure and resilient cloud-based services.… Read more
Simple-Talk's Melanie Townsend sits down with Red Gate's Matt Lee to talk about their newest adventure in cloud-based monitoring for SQL Server: migrating their popular SQL Monitor tool to run as a hosted service on Amazon's cloud platform, AWS… Read more
Because cloud services are so easy to deploy and scale-up, it is easy to start racking up unexpectedly high bills. There are plenty of ways of keeping costs down, but don't assume that Cloud services are necessarily a cheap option. It depends on how well you control costs… Read more
Jeff Foster, a Software Engineer on Red Gate's SQL Source Control product, has recently begun investigating the use of Amazon's EC2 to run engine tests We asked him why and how.
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In the Cloud, services come in the form of Software (SaaS), Infrastructure (IaaS) and platform (PaaS). when moving a service to the cloud, IaaS and PaaS provide two different service models and provisioning steps of solutions. A PaaS providers has more responsibility for your solution than an IAAS provider. wherase an IaaS solutionmay offer more flexibility at lower level. Wely Lau explains.… Read more
Cloud platforms such as Heroku, AppEngine, PHPFog and Pagoda Box are ideal for companies who just want to focus on providing applications without the distractions of infrastructure management. Both Pagoda and PHPFog are particularly suited to PHP-based applications using the LAMP stack… Read more
