Exploring Windows Azure Storage

Version: 2.0.1

Description

In this lab, examine each of the foundation storage capabilities of Windows Azure, Blobs, Tables and Queues. Discover how to create storage accounts; upload and retrieve blobs and blob metadata; create, update and query tables; and create a simple service that uses a message queue for communication. Explore the use of Windows Azure Drives.

Overview

Storage services provide persistent, durable storage in the Windows Azure compute emulator, and include blob and table service and the queue service. In addition, using Windows Azure Drives, your Windows Azure applications running in the cloud can use existing NTFS APIs to access a durable drive backed by blob storage.

In this lab, you will examine the basic process of working with Windows Azure storage on the local compute emulator, and explore some of the features that are available to developers.

Objectives

In this hands-on lab, you will learn how to:

Use the Table service
Use the Blob service
Use the Queue service
Create and read metadata
Use Windows Azure Drives

Prerequisites

The following is required to complete this hands-on lab:

IIS 7 (with ASP.NET, WCF HTTP Activation, Tracing)
Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (or later)
Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 1.6

Setup

In order to execute the exercises in this hands-on lab you need to set up your environment.

Open a Windows Explorer window and browse to the lab’s Source folder.
Double-click the Setup.cmd file in this folder to launch the setup process that will configure your environment and install the Visual Studio code snippets for this lab.
If the User Account Control dialog is shown, confirm the action to proceed.

Note:

Make sure you have checked all the dependencies for this lab before running the setup.

Using the Code Snippets

Throughout 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.

Exercises

This hands-on lab includes the following exercises:

Working with Tables
Working with Blobs
Working with Queues
Working with Drives

Estimated time to complete this lab: 90 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.

next >

Downloads

Download The Offline Training Kit
Download Hands-on Lab Document (DOCX)
Download Hands-on Lab Source Files

Advertise Here