5 ms·

My book 'Programming Windows Azure' from O'Reilly is available

55 points by sriramk 16y ago

My night and weekends project for over a year - 'Programming Windows Azure' published by O'Reilly is finally out. When I started off, I've tried to write a book I'd like to read myself. That means a sense of humor (hopefully), lots of code (especially code that doesn't involve the Microsoft stack) and in general, being very deep technical. The code samples are mostly in C# but they are easily translatable to any language/platform you like. I've snuck in a chapter based purely on Python too. I've tried to make this book not as dry as a lot of other technical books. You'll find , among other things, hidden references to Star Trek (TNG and TOS), BSG and atleast one Office-based code sample. I feel a bit bad about plugging my own work on HN but since this essentially took over my life for over a year, I thought it was justified :).

sriramk 16y ago
I felt bad about a plug for my book but felt that it was justified given that it has taken every night/weekend for over a year :) I've tried to write a book that I would like to read. This means humor (find all the hidden Trek, BSG references), deep technical under-the-hood stuff and lots of code. And in specific, code written in a non-Microsoft stack. All the C# code samples are easily translatable and there's an entire chapter on crypto stuff written purely in Python. Do let me know what you guys think.
- andywood 16y ago
  Congratulations on finishing your book. I'm curious, how does support for non-.NET/non-Microsoft stack on Azure work? Do you get to install whatever you want in your Azure VM? Is it easy/hard? I've done a couple of small projects in Azure, and didn't realize this was possible.
  - sriramk 16y ago
    It works just like on Windows. The rule of thumb is if something can run on Windows (well, in specific Windows Server but that doesn't really matter), it'll run on Windows Azure. The book has a chapter on how to do this with PHP examples. I recently did a talk on how to do RoR on Azure http://www.sriramkrishnan.com/books_talks.html http://www.sriramkrishnan.com/books_talks.html. Folks have run Python, Erlang, Clojure, etc on Azure without any issues. The thing to watch out for is that Azure doesn't come installed with these runtimes so you need to package them with your app or install them on the fly inside your VM.
- hello_moto 16y ago
  Azure and its companion products look compelling. Unfortunately, I'm a cheap dude who doesn't want to spend a penny to try new shiny toys. That, and the marketing stuff in Azure website is a little bit confusing to me at first. If Azure is free in the future, and if your book is still relevant in terms of code/API and stuff, I'll buy it first. I wish you the best sir.
  - ryanelkins 16y ago
    If you have a business you can sign up for Microsoft's Bizspark program (bizspark.com) and you can get access to Azure for free (not to mention all of MS's other development tools for free as well).
    - hello_moto 16y ago
      I have heard about BizSpark program offering by Microsoft, that would only be available for a maximum of 3 years if I'm not mistaken? And you have to be a startup (e.g. have a business or whatnot) right? Not just a regular person/user registering to a website and have instant access to all these goodies.
      - ryanelkins 16y ago
        Yes it's available until your business has been around for 3 years or has >$1mm in revenue. You are supposed to be a business although verifying that is done more or less in good faith. You are required to have a URL and an email at that URL. You don't have to be using the MS stack though. If I remember correctly, there are program directors, you contact one and ask them to sponsor you. They do whatever they feel they need to to verify that you're a business (our sponsor just looked at our website which had some simple info on what we were working on) and then they give you a key that you use to sign up. More info, including the sponsor we used, can be found here : http://www.47hats.com/2008/11/47hats-is-now-a-microsoft-bizspark-partner/ http://www.47hats.com/2008/11/47hats-is-now-a-microsoft-bizs...
        jf 16y ago
- joubert 16y ago
  Can you run a Linux on Azure?
  - sriramk 16y ago
    Nope. Windows VMs only currently. Of course, you could run Cygwin or the like on top if you want to
- jschuur 16y ago
  Don't feel the need to apologize. You wrote a book! A whole book! How many people can claim that? Most people can't even read a whole book, much less write one.
vyrotek 16y ago
Congrats! We're actually using Azure quite a bit with our Startup. We might have to grab a copy :)
- sriramk 16y ago
  Thanks! Do let me know if you need any help. I do work on the Windows Azure team and we're always interested in what people are doing with our stuff.
kenjackson 16y ago
Congrats! I plan on doing some WP7 stuff and I'm thinking that Azure seems like the right place to host the cloud infrastructure. I'll take a look at this book.
hop 16y ago
The cover looks like a manual designed in the MS-DOS era. Something more modern may do better justice to your content. Lose the italic times new roman, try Helvetica. Dog/wolf is giant, this isn't a Jack London novel. I'll design you one if you would like. Edit: as absconditus pointed out below, it does look like a lot of other O'Rielly books. Suppose the highly analytical people that read these don't mind.
- sriramk 16y ago
  Well, I don't have too much control over the cover design - O'Reilly does that. I did pick the animal. The animal is a 'dhole' which is popularly called a 'red dog'. 'Red Dog' happens to the original secret code name for the Windows Azure project. How that code name came to be is an interesting story in itself and I open Chapter 1 with that.
- absconditus 16y ago
  It looks just like every other O'Reilly book.
borisk 16y ago
Do you cover Microsoft PinPoint in the book? From what I understand it's supposed to be an AppStore for Azure. My company has a .NET app, which customers deploy on their own servers. It would be great if we could offer an easy way to buy the app and get it automatically deployed on Azure. On customer's Azure account, of course.
dragonquest 16y ago
Serious question, any specific reason you went with O'Reilly and not Microsoft Press? Seeing as you do work on the Azure team and this would be a perfect match for MS Press.
- sriramk 16y ago
  I contacted a lot of publishers including MS Press and O'Reilly was the first to respond. Besides, I really like O'Reilly books and thought it would be great to be a published O'Reilly writer. They've been amazing to work with.
eduardoflores 16y ago
Great, just bought it with the $9.99 discount. The platform is great (as everything there are some caveats you have to deal with), but it's very reliable. We are using Azure since July for a custom MapReduce implementation, using up to 200 instances daily for several hours, http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000005802 http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?...

55 points by sriramk 16y ago

sriramk 16y ago

I felt bad about a plug for my book but felt that it was justified given that it has taken every night/weekend for over a year :) I've tried to write a book that I would like to read. This means humor (find all the hidden Trek, BSG references), deep technical under-the-hood stuff and lots of code. And in specific, code written in a non-Microsoft stack. All the C# code samples are easily translatable and there's an entire chapter on crypto stuff written purely in Python. Do let me know what you guys think.

andywood 16y ago
Congratulations on finishing your book. I'm curious, how does support for non-.NET/non-Microsoft stack on Azure work? Do you get to install whatever you want in your Azure VM? Is it easy/hard? I've done a couple of small projects in Azure, and didn't realize this was possible.
- sriramk 16y ago
  It works just like on Windows. The rule of thumb is if something can run on Windows (well, in specific Windows Server but that doesn't really matter), it'll run on Windows Azure. The book has a chapter on how to do this with PHP examples. I recently did a talk on how to do RoR on Azure http://www.sriramkrishnan.com/books_talks.html http://www.sriramkrishnan.com/books_talks.html. Folks have run Python, Erlang, Clojure, etc on Azure without any issues. The thing to watch out for is that Azure doesn't come installed with these runtimes so you need to package them with your app or install them on the fly inside your VM.
hello_moto 16y ago
Azure and its companion products look compelling. Unfortunately, I'm a cheap dude who doesn't want to spend a penny to try new shiny toys. That, and the marketing stuff in Azure website is a little bit confusing to me at first. If Azure is free in the future, and if your book is still relevant in terms of code/API and stuff, I'll buy it first. I wish you the best sir.
- ryanelkins 16y ago
  If you have a business you can sign up for Microsoft's Bizspark program (bizspark.com) and you can get access to Azure for free (not to mention all of MS's other development tools for free as well).
  - hello_moto 16y ago
    I have heard about BizSpark program offering by Microsoft, that would only be available for a maximum of 3 years if I'm not mistaken? And you have to be a startup (e.g. have a business or whatnot) right? Not just a regular person/user registering to a website and have instant access to all these goodies.
    - ryanelkins 16y ago
      Yes it's available until your business has been around for 3 years or has >$1mm in revenue. You are supposed to be a business although verifying that is done more or less in good faith. You are required to have a URL and an email at that URL. You don't have to be using the MS stack though. If I remember correctly, there are program directors, you contact one and ask them to sponsor you. They do whatever they feel they need to to verify that you're a business (our sponsor just looked at our website which had some simple info on what we were working on) and then they give you a key that you use to sign up. More info, including the sponsor we used, can be found here : http://www.47hats.com/2008/11/47hats-is-now-a-microsoft-bizspark-partner/ http://www.47hats.com/2008/11/47hats-is-now-a-microsoft-bizs...
      - jf 16y ago
joubert 16y ago
Can you run a Linux on Azure?
- sriramk 16y ago
  Nope. Windows VMs only currently. Of course, you could run Cygwin or the like on top if you want to
jschuur 16y ago
Don't feel the need to apologize. You wrote a book! A whole book! How many people can claim that? Most people can't even read a whole book, much less write one.

vyrotek 16y ago

Congrats! We're actually using Azure quite a bit with our Startup. We might have to grab a copy :)

sriramk 16y ago
Thanks! Do let me know if you need any help. I do work on the Windows Azure team and we're always interested in what people are doing with our stuff.

kenjackson 16y ago

Congrats! I plan on doing some WP7 stuff and I'm thinking that Azure seems like the right place to host the cloud infrastructure. I'll take a look at this book.

hop 16y ago

The cover looks like a manual designed in the MS-DOS era. Something more modern may do better justice to your content. Lose the italic times new roman, try Helvetica. Dog/wolf is giant, this isn't a Jack London novel. I'll design you one if you would like. Edit: as absconditus pointed out below, it does look like a lot of other O'Rielly books. Suppose the highly analytical people that read these don't mind.

sriramk 16y ago
Well, I don't have too much control over the cover design - O'Reilly does that. I did pick the animal. The animal is a 'dhole' which is popularly called a 'red dog'. 'Red Dog' happens to the original secret code name for the Windows Azure project. How that code name came to be is an interesting story in itself and I open Chapter 1 with that.
absconditus 16y ago
It looks just like every other O'Reilly book.

borisk 16y ago

Do you cover Microsoft PinPoint in the book? From what I understand it's supposed to be an AppStore for Azure. My company has a .NET app, which customers deploy on their own servers. It would be great if we could offer an easy way to buy the app and get it automatically deployed on Azure. On customer's Azure account, of course.

dragonquest 16y ago

Serious question, any specific reason you went with O'Reilly and not Microsoft Press? Seeing as you do work on the Azure team and this would be a perfect match for MS Press.

sriramk 16y ago
I contacted a lot of publishers including MS Press and O'Reilly was the first to respond. Besides, I really like O'Reilly books and thought it would be great to be a published O'Reilly writer. They've been amazing to work with.

eduardoflores 16y ago

Great, just bought it with the $9.99 discount. The platform is great (as everything there are some caveats you have to deal with), but it's very reliable. We are using Azure since July for a custom MapReduce implementation, using up to 200 instances daily for several hours, http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000005802 http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?...