Kubernetes (a.k.a K8s) is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling and management of containerized applications that was originally designed by Google and now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

What Kubernetes can do?
Kubernetes has a number of features in cloud computing world, it can be thought as a :

• A container platform
• A microservices platform
• A portable cloud platform and a lot more

Kubernetes defines a set of building blocks (“primitives”) which collectively provide mechanisms for deploying, maintaining, and scaling applications. The components which make up Kubernetes are designed to be loosely coupled and extensible so that it can meet a wide variety of different workloads. The extensibility is provided in large part by the Kubernetes API, which is used by internal components as well as extensions and containers running on Kubernetes.

If you are interested  to know more, learn more about Kubernates  through Official tutorials:

• Kubernates Basics 

Some useful online training is:

• Scalable Microservices with Kubernetes (Udacity)
• Introduction to Kubernetes (edX)  – From Linux Foundation 

It is a common question today among most of the business stakeholders, infrastructure specialists, and information technology architects.

To answer in simpler words, quoting from this Reddit log :

• Kubernetes manage/orchestrate containers and applications within. 
• ServiceFabric is a framework for microservices based on one of three models; stateful, stateless, actor. Service Fabric provides a framework for creating micro services, runtime for managing distributed instances, and also provides the ‘fabric’ that holds everything together.

A detailed comparison quoting from an MSDN blog  from here:

Azure Container Service: If you are looking to deploy your application in Linux environment and are comfortable with an orchestrator such as Swarm, Kubernetes or DC/OS, use ACS. A typical 3 tier application (such as a web front end, a caching layer, a API layer and a database layer) can be easily container-ized with 1 single dockerfile (or docker-compose file). It can be continuously decomposed into smaller services gradually. This approach provides an immediate benefit of portability of such an application. Containers is Open technology and there is great community support around containers.

Azure Service Fabric: If an application must have its state saved locally, then use Service Fabric. It is also a good choice if you are looking to deploy the application in Windows server ecosystem(Linux support is in the works as well!). Refer to common workloads on Service Fabric for more discussion on applications that can benefit from Service Fabric. Biggest benefit is that Service Fabric applications can run on-premise, on Azure or even in other cloud platforms also.

It helps as a gateway for infrastructure engineers and developers to manage underlying infrastructure such as Virtual Machines, Storage, Network Load Balancing services individually than the application itself.  The application developer doesn’t have to worry about planet-scale of the application, instead, a container orchestrator can manage the scale up and scale down of your application environment based on peaks and downs of your application usage.

It offers an option to select from 3 major container orchestrators available today such as DC/OS, Swarm, Docker, and Kubernates.   ACS along with your choice of container orchestrators works efficiently with different container ecosystems to enable the promise of application virtualization.

To make it simpler, ACS is your Super Glue to gel your Azure infrastructure and your container orchestrator together. Means you will be able to make your fully managed container cluster in a matter of minutes with Azure.

ACS is for making your microservices dream come true, by providing individual services scale according to the demand and automatically reduce the scale, if usage is low. You don’t have to worry, ACS and your container orchestrator will take care of you.

If you are a beginner to container-based infrastructure for your applications, you don’t have to take the pain at all of setting up Kubernates on your own, instead, ACS will simplify your implementation with a couple of easier click thru’s and your container infrastructure is ready to be fully managed by you. As simple as that.

What is Azure Container Kubernates Service (AKS) then?

As I am writing today, Microsoft has a new fully managed PaaS service called as Azure Container Service (AKS) or Managed Kubernates, meaning that Kubernates would be your default fully managed container orchestrator, if you choose Azure Container Service. But you would be able to deploy other open-source container orchestrators if you prefer to choose to have your own unmanaged Kubernates, Docker or DC/OS and then add your specific management and monitoring tools.

This service is currently available in PUBLIC PREVIEW, you can get started from here

Means though it is a fully managed service, you still have the option to manage it your own using your preferred set of tools and orchestrators.

Charging Model

Whether you manage your AKS service with your own set of tools and orchestrator or you use Fully Managed Kubernates, you only need to pay for resources you consume. No need to worry about per-cluster charges like other providers.

Useful References:

• Azure Container Service (AKS) – Official Documentation
• Azure Container Service – Step By Step Tutorial (Official)
• Azure Container Service – 5 Minute Quick Starts (Official)

You may read about it more on Microsoft announcement blog Announcing general availability of Azure database services for MySQL and PostgreSQL  by Tobias Ternstrom Principal Group Program Manager, Azure Data

I just thought of sharing some of my viewpoints on these terminologies.

• Internet of Things(IoT) – refers to the connection of devices (other than the usual examples such as computers and smartphones) to the Internet. Cars, Home and Kitchen appliances, Industrial devices, and even heart monitors can all be connected through the IoT.
• Cloud Computing – often called simply “the cloud,” involves delivering data, applications, photos, videos, and more over the Internet to data centers.

We can break down cloud computing into six different categories:

1. Software as a service (SaaS): Cloud-based applications run on computers off-site (or “in the cloud”). Other people or companies own and operate these devices, which connect to users’ computers, typically through a web browser.
2. Platform as a service (PaaS): Here, the cloud houses everything necessary to build and deliver cloud-based applications. This removes the need to purchase and maintain hardware, software, hosting, and more.
3. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS): IaaS provides companies with servers, storage, networking, and data centers on a per-use basis.
4. Public Cloud: Companies own and operate these spaces and provide quick access to users over a public network.Example: Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure etc.
5. Private Cloud: Similar to a public cloud, except only one entity (user, organization, company, etc.) has access. Means the access to the cloud is secured and isolated, only organizational entities have access to this type of cloud resources. A private cloud is owned by a single organization. Private clouds enable an organization to use cloud computing technology as a means of centralizing access to IT resources by different parts, locations, or departments of the organization. When a private cloud exists as a controlled environment within Onpremise data centers.
6. Hybrid Cloud: Takes the foundation of a private cloud but provides public cloud access. This combination would be established through a secure high-speed VPN tunnel over MPLS or other dedicated lines or extended connectivity gateways provided by the respective cloud vendor. In this mode, your on-premise applications can connect to cloud infrastructure and vice versa. This provides you the flexibility to host your missing critical information in on-premise itself, but also provides you the flexibility to utilize the cloud power, without compromising your organization’s critical data.

Role of Cloud in IoT

Cloud is simply an enabler for IoT. It provides necessary services and infrastructure for things to be interconnected and operate.

Cloud provides all the essential services to increases efficiency in implementing your IoT solutions, accumulate and operate on IoT data. Internet of things requires Cloud to work, I would better define it as Cloud and IoT are inseparable, but IoT is not all about Cloud.

For example, millions of devices connected in an IoT ecosystem would create millions of bytes of data, and you would need sufficient infrastructure to store and operate on these data to create a meaningful result out of it.

Cloud Service providers started realizing the need of providing IoT specific services to customers to quickly enable to create Fast to market solutions. That’s where Cloud and IoT converges. Microsoft has packages all IoT related components into Azure IoT and hence Amazon AWS IoT, similarly the remaining providers such as SAP Hana, IBM Cloud etc. This helps customers from picking necessary components and build their IoT ecosystem in Cloud, or utilize the predefined(SaaS) solutions for quick enablement.

What is the role of Raspberry Pi, Arduino and Dragon board then?

These are single board computer or hardware boards(CPUs) or Microcontroller boards that have sufficient hardware capacity to run a small/complex IoT program on an operating system of your choice.

These boards are typically equipped with your basic storage and computing needs for establishing an IoT device or edge capability. You can write a program of your choice to blink an LED based on your conditions, as they are equipped with digital/analog I/O ports. You can choose from wide variety of operating systems such as Raspebian, Windows 10IoT etc to install on these devices or deploy microcontroller programs depending on the capacity.

This means they are edge devices which you can program for your IoT use case. When deployed to the field together, they would create an IoT network.

Conclusion:

Enough said, IoT is not all about the cloud, but are inseparable in a modern world and whatever you are doing with RaspeberryPi, Arduino Uno etc may not be an IoT unless there are a specific IoT use cases you are not trying to solve using these devices.

Useful References:

• The roles of cloud computing and fog computing in the Internet of Things revolution by Andrew Meola

Getting Started:

Login to Azure Portal, you will see Function Apps section in the left menu. This is where all your Function Apps will be listed, once you login.

Let us start by creating a new Function app. Type Functions

Select Function App from Web + Mobile category, and Click on Create Button.

Fill In details:

1. App Name,
2. Select Subscription
3. Select Resource Group (new if you want to create new resource group) or select existing
4. Select Hosting Plan
5. Specify Storage
6. Click on Create

You will see deployment in progress message.

Once you explore further selecting the Function App instance you will be able view the URL and left side  menu you will see the options to configure:

1. Functions
2. Proxies (Preview Feature)
3. Slots (Preview Feature)

Getting Started – create first Function App

Now since we have new instance ready. Let us create our first Function.

We have to choose by :

1.)  Choose a scenario:

1. Webhook + API
2. Time
3. Data Processing

2.)  Choose a language:

1. JavaScript
2. CSharp
3. FSharp
4. For PowerShell, Python and Batch processing, you create your own custom function

For the demo sake I am creating a Timer Scenario and selected CSharp as the language.

I created a simple trigger code  and Click on Save and Run

Job has completed within speculated delay we put through on the Thread.Sleep:

Code Sample:

 
using System;
using System.Threading;

public static void Run(TimerInfo myTimer, TraceWriter log)
{
    log.Info($"C# Timer trigger function executing at: {DateTime.Now}");

    RunTest(log);

    log.Info($"C# Timer trigger function completed at: {DateTime.Now}");
}


public static void RunTest(TraceWriter log)
{
    for(int i=0; i< 100; i++)
    {
       log.Info($"C# Timer trigger function executing at thread: {i}"); 
       
        Thread.Sleep(1000);

        log.Info($"C# Timer trigger function completed at thread: {i}"); 
    }
}

Using the Functions –> Integrate section we can configure Input, Output parameters and Schedule Timers, to make it available as a WebAPI methods. You can call this functional logic from another application to invoke as a web API call by passing necessary inputs, to start another functional process.

One example for this scenario would be to invoke a Database record archival  call after completion of an order. This is will be applicable in case we choose the scenario WebHook + API during the creation of your functional logic.

That’s all for now for this topic.  I will cover more details about WebHook + API in next series.

Please share your comments and rate this article to help me understand areas of improvement.

Additional Refs:

• Create your first function in the Azure portal
• Create a function that runs on a schedule
• Create a function triggered by Storage queue messages

Functions can make development even more productive, and you can use your development language of choice.

Benefits:

• Pay only for the time your code runs and trust Azure to scale as needed.
• Azure Functions lets you develop serveries applications on Microsoft Azure.
• Supports wide variety of development language choices , such as C#, F#, Node.js, Python or PHP.
• Bring your own dependencies – you can bring any of your Nuget/NPM dependencies for your functional logic.

What can we do with Azure Functions?

Azure Functions is a very good  solution for processing data, integrating systems, working with the internet-of-things (IoT), and building simple APIs and micro services.

Functions provides templates to help you  get started with some useful scenarios, including the following:

• BlobTrigger – Process Azure Storage blobs when they are added to containers. You might use this function for image resizing.
• EventHubTrigger – Respond to events delivered to an Azure Event Hub. Particularly useful in application instrumentation, user experience or workflow processing, and Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios.
• Generic Webhook – Process webhook HTTP requests from any service that supports webhooks.
• GitHub Webhook – Respond to events that occur in your GitHub repositories.
• HTTPTrigger – Trigger the execution of your code by using an HTTP request.
• QueueTrigger – Respond to messages as they arrive in an Azure Storage queue.
• ServiceBusQueueTrigger – Connect your code to other Azure services or on-premises services by listening to message queues.
• ServiceBusTopicTrigger – Connect your code to other Azure services or on-premises services by subscribing to topics.
• TimerTrigger – Execute cleanup or other batch tasks on a predefined schedule.

Integration Support with other Azure Services:

Following are the services integration supported by Azure Functions app.

• Azure Cosmos DB
• Azure Event Hubs
• Azure Mobile Apps (tables)
• Azure Notification Hubs
• Azure Service Bus (queues and topics)
• Azure Storage (blob, queues, and tables)
• GitHub (webhooks)
• On-premises (using Service Bus)
• Twilio (SMS messages)

Costing:

Azure functions will be charged based on two pricing plans below:

1. App Service Plan – if you already have an Azure App Service running with Logic, Web, Mobile or Web Job, you can use the same environment for your Azure functions execution without needing to pay for extra resources.  You will be charged based on regular app service rates.
2. Consumption plan  – with this plan you only need to pay for how long and how many times your functions runs and computational needs/resource usage during that execution time. Consumption plan pricing includes a monthly free grant of 1 million requests and 400,000 GB-s of resource consumption per month.

You can find further pricing related info here

Support and SLA:

• Free billing and subscription management support
• Flexible support plans starting at $29/month. Find a plan
• 99.95% guaranteed up time. Read the SLA

Useful Links:

• Azure Functions Overview 
• Create your first Azure Function
• Azure Functions developer reference docs.

I was happy that Microsoft is filling the gap for the need of Fully Managed MYSQL and PostgreSQL . I recollect around in April I was trying to migrate this WordPress blog from Godaddy hosting in to  an Azure App Service to provide and since WordPress requires MySQL as the database. The only option left for me in Azure was to have local MySQL(MySQL in App)  in App Service, which cannot scale well or either use Clear DB service (a Microsoft partner in azure). Some how I wasn’t happy with the performance of local MYSQL and Clear DB, due to my bulky blog. So I thought what if there was a Managed MYSQL service just like Managed SQL Azure services.

What is Azure Database for MySQL and PostgreSQL?

Azure Database for MYSQL and PostgreSQL(currently in PREVIEW)  are fully managed Platform as a Service(PaaS) offering from Microsoft Azure, which does not want us to worry about infrastructure and managing the server instance.  Below is the outline of how these services has been stacked up against existing SQL Database offerings. As a customer you do not need to worry about the Compute, Storage, Networking, and high-performance/availability/scalability  of these services ensured by Azure Data Service Platform with built in monitoring.

You easily deploy an Azure Web App with Azure Database for MySQL as the database provider, and to provide complete solutions for common Content Management Systems (CMS) such as WordPress and Drupal.

I will cover more details in later series That’s all for now. Thank you for reading my content. Leave your comments.

Pricing Details:

• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/mysql/?v=17.23h
• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/postgresql/?v=17.23h

Useful Links:

• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/mysql/?v=17.23h
• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/postgresql/?v=17.23h
• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-database-for-mysql-public-preview/?v=17.23h

Big Data Track:

This Microsoft program will help you to learn necessary skills from cloud storage and databases to Hadoop, Spark, and managed data services in Azure. Curriculum of this program involves learning how to build big data solutions for batch and real-time stream processing using Azure managed services and open source systems like Hadoop and Spark.

Are you intend to pursue a Data Analytics career, this is the right program for you to gain necessary insights.

Technology you will apply to gain these skills are: Azure Data Lake, Hadoop, HDInsight, Spark, Azure data factory, Azure Stream Analytics

Below is the course outline :

• 10 COURSES  |  12-30  HOURS PER COURSE  |  8  SKILLS
• ENROLL NOW here
• More details here

Front End Development Track:

This track provides you necessary skills to get started with Advanced Front End development using HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, AngularJS and Bootstrap.  At the end of the curriculum you will become master in Front End Development with all predominant modern web technologies.

So if you are a front end UI developer, this is something you can try out to enhance your skills.

Below is the course outline :

• 13 COURSES  |  15-30 HOURS PER COURSE  |  11 SKILLS
• ENROLL NOW here
• More details  here

Track detail

Each course runs for three months and starts at the beginning of a quarter. January—March, April—June, July—September, and October —December. The capstone runs for four weeks at the beginning of each quarter: January, April, July, October. For exact dates for the current course run, please refer to the course detail page on edX.org. 

[Microsoft]

Microsoft has put together a curriculum  to teach key functional and technical skills, combining highly rated online courses with hands-on labs, concluding in a final capstone project. All these trainings will be delivered by Microsoft either online or through recorded sessions.

The program comprises of  10 COURSES, 16-32 HOURS PER COURSE,  8 SKILLS

The technology skills you will gain through are: T-SQL, Microsoft Excel, PowerBI, Python, R, Azure Machine Learning, HDInsight, Spark.

ENROLL NOW: through this link

Course schedule:
For exact dates for the course, please refer to the course detail page on edX.org.

For more details on this program: https://academy.microsoft.com/en-us/professional-program/data-science/ 

** This course would provide necessary insight to write Microsoft’s new Certification – Microsoft Certified Solution Associate(MCSA) – Machine Learning.

Happy Learning!!

Data Science is one of the hottest topics on the Computer and Internet  nowadays. People/Corporations have gathered data from applications and systems/devices until today and now is the time to analyze them. The world wide adoption of Internet of Things has also added more scope analyzing and operating on the huge data being accumulated from these devices near real-time.

As per the standard Wikipedia definition goes “Data science, also known as data-driven science, is an interdisciplinary field about scientific methods, processes and systems to extract knowledge or insights from data in various forms, either structured or unstructured, similar to data mining.”.

Data Science requires the following skillset:

• Hacking Skills
• Mathematics and Statistical Knowledge
• Substantive Scientific Expertise

[Image Source: From this article by Berkeley Science Review.]

Data Science Process:

Data Science process involves collecting row data, processing data, cleaning data, data analysis using models/algorithms and visualizes them for presentational approaches.  This process is explained through a visual diagram from Wikipedia.

[Data science process flowchart, source wikipedia]

Who are Data Scientist?

Data scientists use their data and analytical ability to find and interpret rich data sources; manage large amounts of data despite hardware, software, and bandwidth constraints; merge data sources; ensure consistency of datasets; create visualizations to aid in understanding data; build mathematical models using the data; and present and communicate the data insights/findings.

They are often expected to produce answers in days rather than months, work by exploratory analysis and rapid iteration, and to produce and present results with dashboards (displays of current values) rather than papers/reports, as statisticians normally do.

Importance of Data Science and Data Scientist:

“This hot new field promises to revolutionize industries from business to government, health care to academia.”

— The New York Times

Data Scientist is the sexiest job in the 21st century as per Harward Business Review.

McKinsey & Company projecting a global excess demand of 1.5 million new data scientists.

What are the skills required for a Data Scientist, let me share you a visualization through a Brain dump.

I thought of sharing an image to take you through the essential skill requirements for a Modern Data Scientist.

So what are you waiting for?, if you are rightly skilled get yourselves an Data Science Course.

Informational  Sources:

• https://github.com/bulutyazilim/awesome-datascience
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_science 
• https://datascience.berkeley.edu/about/what-is-data-science/

Date & Timings:
· DAY1 – Wednesday, June 21, 2017 9:00 AM – 5:30 PM
· DAY2 – Thursday, June 22, 2017 9:00 AM – 5:30 PM (Developer Hackathon)

Venue:
Trident Hyderabad
Survey No.64,
Hitech City Main Road,
HITECH City,
Near Cyber Towers,
Madhapur, Hyderabad,
Telangana 500081

REGISTRATION LINKS: DAY1 SESSIONS | DAY2 DEVELOPER HACKATHON

Developing with Cosmos DB Emulator

Once you have Cosmos DB emulator installed and running on your machine, you can use any supported Cosmos DB SDK or Cosmos DB REST API to interact with emulator. This process is same as you are using a Cosmos DB cloud service.

Cosmos DB Emulator also provides a build-in visual explorer through which you can view,create and edit collections and documents.

Before you integrate Cosmos DB SDK or Cosmos DB REST API you would need to generate master key for authentication. Unlike cloud service, Cosmos DB emulator only support single fixed account and master key.  You would not be able to communicate with Emulator without this master key.

Default Master Key:

Account name: localhost:<port>

Account key: C2y6yDjf5/R+ob0N8A7Cgv30VRDJIWEHLM+4QDU5DE2nQ9nDuVTqobD4b8mGGyPMbIZnqyMsEcaGQy67XIw/Jw==

PS: This key is only to be used in Emulator. You cannot use the same key for Production(Cosmos DB Cloud Service).

Furthermore, if you want to set your own key. You can go to command line references and run DocumentDB.Emulator.exe with sufficient command switch to set your own key. Remember it should meet the key security requirements. See command-line tool reference for more information.

The Azure Cosmos DB Emulator is installed by default to the C:\Program Files\Azure Cosmos DB Emulator  or C:\Program Files\DocumentDB Emulator  directory.

Once you have account name and key, you are good to go with development and debugging using Azure Cosmos DB emulator.

Let us start looking at how to use CosmosDB SDK. Once you add Cosmos DB SDK for .NET from NUGET sources. You would need to import the following namespaces to reference necessary classes.

 using Microsoft.Azure.Documents;
   
 using Microsoft.Azure.Documents.Client;
   
 using Microsoft.Azure.Documents.Linq;

Simple code to establish connection:

// Connect to the Azure Cosmos DB Emulator running locally use DocumentClient class in : 
DocumentClient client = new DocumentClient(
    new Uri("https://localhost:8081"), 
    "C2y6yDjf5/R+ob0N8A7Cgv30VRDJIWEHLM+4QDU5DE2nQ9nDuVTqobD4b8mGGyPMbIZnqyMsEcaGQy67XIw/Jw==");

In the above code block we are directly embedding endpoint, key in the source code.But as a suggested approch keeping in mind to easily point to production service would be maintain the key in Web.config appSettings.

   <add value="https://localhost:8081/" key="endpoint"/>
    <add value="C2y6yDjf5/R+ob0N8A7Cgv30VRDJIWEHLM+4QDU5DE2nQ9nDuVTqobD4b8mGGyPMbIZnqyMsEcaGQy67XIw/Jw==" key="authKey"/>
 

Add NuGet reference to Microsoft.Azure.DocumentDB  (always use the latest version of the library)

For the ease of this article, I am going to use the existing ToDoList sample from DocumentDB Samples provided by Microsoft. You can originally find the same source from C:\Program Files\DocumentDB Emulator\Packages\DataExplorer\quickstart.

Copy and Unzip DocumentDB-Quickstart-DotNet.zip and open todo.sln in Visual Studio 2017 and your solution structure will look like below:

Now run the application in your Visual Studio.

1. You will see an initial screen:

2. Click on Create New:

3. New record will be added to your Azure Cosmos DB Emulator:

4. To verify in Cosmos DB emulator now open Cosmos DB explorer, click on Collections and Select ToDoList

5.Expand Documents and select item with id:da305da3-c1dc-4e34-94d9-fd7f82d26c58

Hope this article was helpful for you with initial development.  Share your feedback through comments and share this to your friends and colleagues.

Useful Links:

• DocumentDB REST API – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/documentdb/documentdb-resources 
• .NET Samples – https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/documentdb/documentdb-dotnet-samples
• Node.js Samples – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/documentdb/documentdb-nodejs-samples
• SQL Syntax – https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/azure/dn782250.aspx
• Python Samples – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/documentdb/documentdb-python-samples

The Azure Cosmos DB Emulator provides a local development/test environment for Azure Cosmos DB development purposes. Using Azure Cosmos DB Emulator, you can develop and test your application locally, without needing an azure subscription or without subscription costs.

With this article I am going to take you through necessary steps and requirements to set up your local environment.

1. Pre-Requisites:

Azure Cosmos DB emulator has the following software and hardware requirements:

• Software requirements
  • Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, or Windows 10
• Minimum Hardware requirements
  • 2 GB RAM
  • 10 GB available hard disk space

2. Installation:

• Download Azure Cosmos DB Emulator   (DocumentDb.Install.msi)   ** do not get confused by the name. Azure Cosmos DB is a super set of Document DB, and the DocumentDb emulator they tweaked a bit to support Cosmos Db.
• Install DocumentDb.Install.msi

Additionally Azure CosmosDB emulator can be run on Docker for Windows. After installing Docker for Windows, you can pull the Emulator image from Docker Hub.

docker pull microsoft/azure-documentdb-emulator

3. Start/Launch Azure Cosmos DB Emulator:

After some time you can see the emulator started. When the Azure Cosmos DB emulator launches it will automatically open the Azure Cosmos DB Data Explorer in your browser.

The address will appear as https://localhost:8081/_explorer/index.html

Incase you have closed browser and later would like to open the explorer again, you can open the Data Explorer by right clicking on the taskbar menu.

Now you can write some sample app to try it, or download already created sample applications from Microsoft depending on the preferred platform of your choice.

4. Limitation of Azure Cosmos DB Emulator: (or Differences between Azure Cosmos DB Emulator vs Real Cosmos DB Cloud Service)

Since the Azure Cosmos DB Emulator provides an emulated environment running on a local developer workstation, there are some fundamental differences between the emulator and an Azure Cosmos DB account in the cloud:

The following table is also helpful in determining when to use Cosmos DB Emulator and when direct cloud service. Depending on the choice of requirement, you would need to use associated services efficiently.

Hope this article was helpful for your initial start. If you would need to understand further on Azure Cosmos DB development follow the links. I will be writing further insights in later sessions.

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/documentdb/documentdb-nosql-local-emulator
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/introduction
• Get started with Azure Cosmos DB’s DocumentDB API
• Get started with Azure Cosmos DB’s MongoDB API
• Get started with Azure Cosmos DB’s Graph API
• Get started with Azure Cosmos DB’s Table API

What is Azure Germany?

Just like regional regulatory requirements in China, Germany also wanted a completely locally owned/managed Azure Data Center for EU/EFTA/UK requirements. This is also to ensure stricter access control and data access policy measurements. This  approach is to enable organizations doing business in EU/EFTA and UK can better harness the power of cloud computing.

• All customer data and related applications and hardware reside in Germany
• Geo-replication between datacenters in Germany to support  business continuity
• Highly secured datacenters provide 24×7 monitoring
• It meets all Public sector or restricted industry requirements
• Follows all Compliance requirements for EU/EFTA and UK.
• Lower cost, locally accessible  within your business locations in Germany/EU.

“ Azure Germany is an isolated Azure instance in Germany, independent from other public clouds.”

Who controls it?

An independent data trustee controls access to all customer data in the Azure Germany datacenters. T-Systems International GmbH, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom and an experienced, well-respected IT provider incorporated in Germany, serves as trustee, protecting disclosure of data to third parties except as the customer directs or as required by German law.

** Even Microsoft does not have access to customer data or the datacenters without approval from and supervision by the German data trustee.

What Compliance?

Azure Germany has an ongoing commitment to maintaining the strictest data protection measures, so organizations can store and manage customer data in compliance with applicable German laws and regulations, as well as key international standards. Additional compliance standards and controls that address the unique role of the German data trustee will be audited over time. Refer to: Microsoft Trust Center compliance.

[Source : Microsoft Azure]

Useful Links:

• https://www.microsoft.com/de-de/cloud/deutschland/
• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/clouds/germany/ 

Recently I had an interaction with a Microsoft Certified Trainer, who carelessly said Azure only uses Chinese partner based environment is only for serving CDN (Content Delivery Network) needs, partial knowledge is difficult to convince. Being a Certified Trainer, he should have known these. As I recollect my earlier experience with azure, I was aware that Microsoft has partnered with 21Vianet , to setup a Chinese instance of Azure with most possible IaaS, PaaS and SaaS offerings are available to Chinese customers. At the same time data would reside within Chinese governments data privacy and storage regulations.

Similarly other competitor cloud providers such as IBM also partnered with 21Vianet to setup their BlueMix instances in China.

Microsoft Azure in China

General availability of Azure in China through 21vianet partnership has been announced in March 26th 2014. These Azure Services in Chinese region will be operated and sold by 21vianet.

Quoting to Doug Hauger GM- National Cloud Programs, Microsoft

Windows Azure, operated by 21Vianet, is based on the same technology as Microsoft’s global Windows Azure service and offers a reliable, flexible and value-based service to bring Microsoft’s latest cloud technologies and benefits to Chinese customers and propel forward technological development in China as a whole.

Why Partnership?

As per Chinese Government(PRC) Cyber Security Law and Governance policies there is a clear restriction for a foreign entrant to obtain license and provide services to Chinese customers.  All the data relating to Chinese customers should reside within Chinese Data Centres, and foreign companies would have to pass on the operational ownership to a Chinese company in order to operate within PRC(Peoples Republic of China).

In Additional to that on November’2016 new amendments attached to new PRC Cyber Security Law (effective 1st June 2017).

As per DLA PIPER

The new law will come into force on 1 June 2017 and has significant implications for the data privacy and cybersecurity practices of both Chinese companies and international organisations doing business in China.

The new PRC Cybersecurity Law intends to combat online fraud and protect China against Internet security risks. In short, it imposes new security and data protection obligations on “network operators”; puts restrictions on transfers of data outside China by “key information infrastructure operators”; and introduces new restrictions on critical network and cybersecurity products.  [Read more from Source]

Where is Azure in China?

You can access Azure in China instance through a separate portal https://www.azure.cn. Azure Portal is available at https://portal.azure.cn/. Pricing information is available on http://www.azure.cn/pricing/pia/  (click on English to get an English version).

Below are two data centre regions Azure is available in China.

Services Offered in Azure China Instances:

Not all all services of Azure including Mobile Services, Analytics and IoT Suite are available for Chinese regions. I will try to cover a specific list of services that are available for China region.Azure China is a few versions behind regular Azure and not all services are supported. Some of the services supported are:

• Compute – Virtual Machines (For IaaS Services)
• Compute – Cloud Service (For PaaS Services)
• Compute – Web Site
• Data Services – Storage (For Blobs, tables and Queues)
• Data Services – SQL Database
• Data Service – HDInsight
• SQL Database – SQL Import/ExportNetworks – Virtual Network (To communicate between cloud services via Local networks)
• Service Bus
• Active Directory
• Access Control Service – which has its own UI and namespace
• Caching – only dedicated cache is supported
• Mobile Service
• Media Service
• CDN
• Traffic Manager
• Azure IoT Suite
• Notification Center
• Event Center
• Service Fabric
• Batch Service
• Flow Analytics, Power BI
• Document DB, SQL Database, SQL Data Warehouse, MySQL
• and many more

A list of supported and not supported services can be found at (This is in Chinese, and it is a working document, use google translate to take you through all steps necessary for you to understand services offered in Azure China) http://www.windowsazure.cn/documentation/articles/developerdifferences/#readyonwacn

This also includes all the endpoints that are required for developers to integrate/develop applications targeting China region.

Hope this information was helpful to you. I would assume it would be helpful for some who are specifically looking forward for providing technology solutions for Chinese customers through Azure Cloud.

Sources:

• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/windows-azure-services-now-generally-available-in-china/
• https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/microsoft_blog/2014/03/26/microsoft-becomes-the-first-global-public-cloud-provider-in-china-with-the-general-availability-of-microsoft-azure-in-the-region/
• https://assets.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/cn/pdf/en/2017/02/overview-of-cybersecurity-law.pdf
• https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn578439.aspx
• Windows Azure case studies in China

With this Microsoft now makes it easier for developers to move some of their computing needs to these devices.  Edge devices are mostly having small foot print based to high end machines within your company network.

The essential capabilities to be supported by Azure IoT edge  include:

• Perform Edge Analytics (a cut down version of Azure Stream Analytics)- Instead of doing analytics in cloud developer/implementer can move the basic cloud data processing and analytical capabilities to Edge Device. Run your machine learning algorithms in Edge device and take predictive analytics steps.
• Perform Artificial Intelligence processing at edge device itself. Availability of Microsoft Cognitive Service on edge device would bring in whole lot of automation capabilities. Imagine Alexa/Siri working without internet connection, it should be able to provide you reminders etc.
• Perform RealTime Decision making locally based on predefined rules.
• Reduce bandwidth costs
• Connect to other Edge devices and legacy devices within the constrained/corporate network.
• Deploy IoT solutions to Edge Device from Cloud and provide updates as needed.
• Operate offline without the need of real-time internet connectivity or intermittent connectivity. Doesn’t have to rely on Cloud to provide commands for processing, can do offline data capture and processing of information from other devices connected and take decisions without the need to rely on a connected cloud service.

Azure IoT Edge enables seamless deployment of cloud services such as:

• Azure Machine Learning
• Azure Stream Analytics
• Azure Functions
• Artificial Intelligence, including Cognitive Services
• Azure IoT Hub communication and device management features

Along with sharing the image represents Azure’s Enterprise Digital Vision, we will discuss about the same in later sessions:

Getting Started & More information:

• https://github.com/azure/iot-edge
• https://blogs.microsoft.com/iot/2017/05/10/microsoft-azure-iot-edge-extending-cloud-intelligence-to-edge-devices/
• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/campaigns/iot-edge/
• https://blogs.microsoft.com/iot/2014/11/11/processing-data-from-the-edge-a-platform-for-the-internet-of-your-things/

• Azure Cosmos DB guarantees single-digit-millisecond latencies at the 99% availability across the world with Enterprise Level SLAs.
• Offers a set of well-defined consistency models to enable high availability.
• Multi-Model – offers ability to support key-value, graph and document data in one service
• Multi-API – Azure Cosmos DB automatically indexes all data, and allows you to use your favorite API including SQL, JavaScript, Gremlin, MongoDB and Azure Table Storage to access your data.
• Elastically scalable and higher throughput.

** Azure Cosmos DB is a superset of the existing DocumentDB service, and Microsoft  will be transitioning all existing DocumentDB customers to Azure Cosmos DB, free of charge without data loss.

Read more from:

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/introduction
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-in/azure/cosmos-db/
• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/services/cosmos-db/
• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/a-technical-overview-of-azure-cosmos-db/ 

• Get started with Azure Cosmos DB with following quickstarts from Microsoft Docs:

  • Get started with Azure Cosmos DB’s DocumentDB API
  • Get started with Azure Cosmos DB’s MongoDB API
  • Get started with Azure Cosmos DB’s Graph API
  • Get started with Azure Cosmos DB’s Table API

With Visual Studio for Mac, you should be able to develop .NET/C#/ASP.NET based apps and XAMARIN Native and Forms based apps in Mac OS environment.

Visual Studio for Mac comes with different editions like as in Visual Studio 2017/Xamarin Studio such as Community, Professional and Enterprise.

• Visual Studio Community for Mac – Free, fully-featured IDE for students, open-source and individual developers.
• Visual Studio Professional for Mac – Professional developer tools, services, and subscription benefits for small teams.
• Visual Studio Enterprise for Mac – End-to-end solution to meet demanding quality and scale needs of teams of all sizes.

Go through Release Notes here for more details.

Download: 

• Visual Studio Community for Mac 
• Visual Studio Professional for Mac 
• Visual Studio Enterprise for Mac

Download the: .NET Framework 4.7  – Web installer  |  Offline Installer

.NET Framework 4.7 Developer Pack  In order to add support for .NET Framework 4.7 in Visual Studio 2012 or later we need to install Developer Pack.

Windows Versions and Support:

The .NET Framework 4.7 is supported on the following Windows versions:

• Windows 10 Creators Update (included in-box)
• Windows 10 Anniversary Update
• Windows 8.1
• Windows 7 SP1

The .NET Framework 4.7 is supported on the following Windows Server versions:

• Windows Server 2016
• Windows Server 2012 R2
• Windows Server 2012
• Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

New Features in .NET Framework 4.7:

On a high-level below are the set of new features introduced in following areas:

Core

• Improves serialization by the DataContractJsonSerializer:
• Enhanced Cryptography

Networking  Default operating system support for TLS protocols*

ASP.NET

• Object Cache Extensibility  (plug in new implementations of an object cache for an ASP.NET application by using the new ICacheStoreProvider interface. )
• Memory monitoring (Developers can now write their own memory monitors to replace the default by using the ApplicationMonitors.MemoryMonitor property.)
• Memory Limit Reactions. (Developers can now replace or supplement the default behavior by subscribing IObserver implementations to the application’s memory monitor.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) 

• Ability to configure the default message security settings to TLS 1.1 or TLS 1.2
• Improved reliability of WCF applications and WCF serialization

Windows Forms – High DPI support

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

• Support for a touch/stylus stack based on Windows WM_POINTER messages
• New implementation for WPF printing APIs

Also improvements in :

• High DPI support for Windows Forms applications on Windows 10
• Touch support for WPF applications on Windows 10
• Enhanced cryptography support
• Support for C# 7 and VB 15, including ValueTuple
• Support for .NET Standard 1.6
• Performance and reliability improvements

Additional References:

• Announcing the .NET Framework 4.7 blog post to learn more about each of these improvements.
• .NET Framework 4.7 release notes.
• .NET API Browser
• What’s new in the .NET Framework 4.7