Windows Azure CDNVersion: 1.1 DescriptionIn this lab, you will learn how to scale your static blob content out to the Content Distribution Network (CDN) available in Windows Azure. OverviewWindows Azure provides the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) to deliver Windows Azure Blob content. Windows Azure CDN offers developers a global solution for delivering high-bandwidth content. Windows Azure CDN has several locations globally (United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and South America) and continues to expand. Windows Azure CDN caches your Windows Azure blobs at strategically placed locations to provide maximum bandwidth for delivering your content to users. You can enable CDN delivery for any storage account via the Windows Azure Management Portal. The CDN provides edge delivery only to blobs that are in public blob containers, which are available for anonymous access. The benefit of using a CDN is better performance and user experience for users who are farther from the source of the content stored in the Windows Azure blob storage. When you enable CDN access for a storage account, the Management Portal provides you with a domain name of the following format: http:/ /<identifier>.vo.msecnd.net/. This domain name can then be used to access blobs in a public container. For example, given a public container “images” and a storage account “youraccount”, once the storage account is enabled for CDN access, users can access the blobs in that container using either of the following two URLs:
When a request is made using the Windows Azure Blob service URL, the blob is read directly from the Windows Azure Blob service. When a request is made using the Windows Azure CDN URL, the request is redirected to the CDN endpoint closest to the location from which the request was made to provide access to the blob. If the blob is not found at that endpoint, then it is retrieved from blob storage and cached at the endpoint, where a time-to-live (TTL) setting is maintained for the cached blob. The TTL specifies that the blob should be cached for that amount of time in the CDN until it is refreshed by the Blob service. The CDN attempts to refresh the blob from Windows Azure blob storage only once the TTL has elapsed. As described in this msdn article, the default TTL is calculated as 20% of the interval between the present time and the last-modified time, up to a maximum interval of 72 hours. For example, a blob whose last-modified time was 30 minutes ago will be considered fresh for six minutes in the CDN cache. If this value is specified for a blob, then the TTL period will be set to the value specified in Cache-Control HTTP header. The value of caching blobs in the Windows Azure CDN is realized only when the content is delivered from the CDN edge cache, so content requested only once during the blob’s TTL period will not get performance improvements from edge caching. The blob content that benefits the most from caching are blobs accessed frequently during their cached TTL period. Blobs already cached in the CDN will remain cached until the TTL for each blob expires. When the TTL expires, the Windows Azure CDN will check to see whether the CDN endpoint is still valid and the Windows Azure blob is still anonymously accessible. If it is not, then the blob will no longer be cached. This means that if you want to change the content of the blob and the blob is currently cached in the CDN, the new content will not be available via the CDN until the CDN refreshes its content when the cached content TTL expires. When you enable the CDN the configuration created for this endpoint is not immediately available; it can take up to 60 minutes for the registration to propagate through the CDN network worldwide. Users who try immediately to use the CDN domain name will get a 400 error until the configuration is updated worldwide. ObjectivesIn this hands-on lab, you will learn how to:
PrerequisitesThe following is required to complete this hands-on lab:
SetupIn order to execute the exercises in this hands-on lab you need to set up your environment.
Using the Code SnippetsThroughout the lab document, you will be instructed to insert code blocks. For your convenience, most of that code is provided as Visual Studio Code Snippets, which you can use from within Visual Studio 2010 to avoid having to add it manually. If you are not familiar with the Visual Studio Code Snippets, and want to learn how to use them, you can refer to the Setup.docx document in the Assets folder of the training kit, which contains a section describing how to use them. ExercisesThis hands-on lab includes the following exercises:
Estimated time to complete this lab: 60 minutes. Note: When you first start Visual Studio, you must select one of the predefined settings collections. Every predefined collection is designed to match a particular development style and determines window layouts, editor behavior, IntelliSense code snippets, and dialog box options. The procedures in this lab describe the actions necessary to accomplish a given task in Visual Studio when using the General Development Settings collection. If you choose a different settings collection for your development environment, there may be differences in these procedures that you need to take into account. |
