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I'm one of the open source engineers spending a fair chunk of time helping YC companies that are making use of this deal. Personally, I don't think that money

I'm one of the open source engineers spending a fair chunk of time helping YC companies that are making use of this deal. Personally, I don't think that money buys love. It gets us attention, but I believe that we'll only win people over by providing an awesome cloud solution. Furthermore, I'm hoping that doing so much of our development out in the open on Github allows devs to see what we're doing, that we care about it being awesome, and that we're not afraid to sit down and quickly put out a repo with code if we run into a company that needs something. If anybody has questions, I'm happy to answer them.

bla2 12y ago
In my corner of the valley it seems to be working. Keep it up!
_random_ 12y ago
I have a question: when will XNA be open-sourced? There are tons of people that want a sequel and MonoGame could use a quality boost. http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/3725445-xna-5 http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studi... Also C# on XBox One had been promised like a year ago but nothing happened: http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/4233646-allow-net-games-on-xbox-one http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studi... What is the point of User Voice then?
rjbwork 12y ago
A huge sticking point for us right now is that Azure has no data warehousing capabilities. You're basically limited to "spin up a huge, expensive VM and install SSAS on it and make sure you have an expert DBA around that knows his way around all the little nuances of MS-SQL and SSAS". It is honestly, in my opinion, Azure's current biggest failing. We use cutting edge features and marketplace offerings when we can and the space seems ripe for disruption with companies like Birst, Spotfire, and others really going on the offensive. Microsoft has one of the most mature Data Warehousing offerings for the traditional environment, and it seems crazy that after 5 years there's nothing built into Azure for it. All that said, do you know of any plans, timelines, or similar services to a fully hosted SSAS-like Data Warehousing solution?
- mark_l_watson 12y ago
  This might be what you are looking for, but I think Azure Marketplace has Cassandra, MongoDB, CouchDB, etc. AWS does offer some very special purpose data stores like DynamoDB and SimpleDB but I have not used them much.
  - rjbwork 12y ago
    I may have to look into the Cassandra one, since there is apparently a Data Warehousing framework called Spark that is built on top of it. The others are not suitable to OLAP processing or data warehousing I believe.
- jd_hicks 12y ago
  Azure has multiple database-as-a-service offerings including SQL (azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/sql-database/), DocumentDB (azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/documentdb/), and Redis Cache (http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cache/ http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cache/).
  - bduerst 12y ago
    Those aren't OLAP replacements though, right? You would still need to manually build an OLAP db from the lower level to report on them. Maybe I'm wrong since I haven't used Azure...
    - rjbwork 12y ago
      You're right, Azure SQL is very limited in terms of being quite different from non-hosted SQL offerings. You can't just throw OLAP on top.
      - bduerst 12y ago
        Azure is a PAAS, right? OLAP should be one of the native offerings from Microsoft. Google has BigQuery and AWS has Redshift.
mark_l_watson 12y ago
For what it's worth, I am in BizSpark and I have found using the Ubuntu VPSs to be totally hassle free. One question: on AWS, I used to use cron jobs to take snapshots of Postgres, etc. data stores and stuff them in S3 as an ad hoc twice a day backup. Is there something similar on Azure?
- tacos 12y ago
  I've never been a huge fan of the "snapshot and pray" school of backups. This tool does it right and supports S3 and Azure storage (equivalent to S3). https://github.com/wal-e/wal-e https://github.com/wal-e/wal-e Also: Azure SQL is $15/month and includes restoration of the database to any point in time in the last 14 days. I LOVE Postgres but finally gave into this value proposition.
  - mark_l_watson 12y ago
    Thanks, I am looking at Azure SQL right now.
nailer 12y ago
Last time I used Azure websites was a year ago - the command line tools were fine, the UI had a lot of random 500s - but the main thing was having to commit all my generated resources because Azure wouldn't run gulp or grunt. Is that sorted out now?
breakingcups 12y ago
Hi Felix, Azure SQL is very, very different from a regular MS SQL Server environment. It is a lot more restrictive and thus many tools (such as your own SQL Management Studio) do not work well with it. Is there any plan to make these two siblings more compatible with eachother? Furthermore, Azure SQL is very unclear about its performance guarantees. Your DTU's have no mapping to anything in the real world which we can compare. Are there any plans of addressing that?
- Someone1234 12y ago
  I couldn't agree more. I tried to get an Azure WebSites with an Azure SQL instance of Wordpress working. Getting PHP to run on Azure WebSites was easy/pleasant, getting Azure SQL to talk to PHP was an absolute nightmare and then even once that is done you have issues with instance naming and paths. To be honest I completely gave up. I spent three days on the above setup, and never did get Wordpress working. Then after I gave up I spent one afternoon setting up the same thing using an Azure VM. I like the concept of Azure Websites, but Azure SQL is just "meh." It isn't compatible with MS SQL which is a big problem frankly. A lot of stuff supports MS SQL out of the box, but it seems like Azure SQL is something else entirely. PS - Azure does have an MySQL compatible offering, but it is by a third party. Nothing by MS themselves. So the pricing model is awkward.

bla2 12y ago

In my corner of the valley it seems to be working. Keep it up!

_random_ 12y ago

I have a question: when will XNA be open-sourced? There are tons of people that want a sequel and MonoGame could use a quality boost. http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/3725445-xna-5 http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studi... Also C# on XBox One had been promised like a year ago but nothing happened: http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/4233646-allow-net-games-on-xbox-one http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studi... What is the point of User Voice then?

rjbwork 12y ago

A huge sticking point for us right now is that Azure has no data warehousing capabilities. You're basically limited to "spin up a huge, expensive VM and install SSAS on it and make sure you have an expert DBA around that knows his way around all the little nuances of MS-SQL and SSAS". It is honestly, in my opinion, Azure's current biggest failing. We use cutting edge features and marketplace offerings when we can and the space seems ripe for disruption with companies like Birst, Spotfire, and others really going on the offensive. Microsoft has one of the most mature Data Warehousing offerings for the traditional environment, and it seems crazy that after 5 years there's nothing built into Azure for it. All that said, do you know of any plans, timelines, or similar services to a fully hosted SSAS-like Data Warehousing solution?

mark_l_watson 12y ago
This might be what you are looking for, but I think Azure Marketplace has Cassandra, MongoDB, CouchDB, etc. AWS does offer some very special purpose data stores like DynamoDB and SimpleDB but I have not used them much.
- rjbwork 12y ago
  I may have to look into the Cassandra one, since there is apparently a Data Warehousing framework called Spark that is built on top of it. The others are not suitable to OLAP processing or data warehousing I believe.
jd_hicks 12y ago
Azure has multiple database-as-a-service offerings including SQL (azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/sql-database/), DocumentDB (azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/documentdb/), and Redis Cache (http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cache/ http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cache/).
- bduerst 12y ago
  Those aren't OLAP replacements though, right? You would still need to manually build an OLAP db from the lower level to report on them. Maybe I'm wrong since I haven't used Azure...
  - rjbwork 12y ago
    You're right, Azure SQL is very limited in terms of being quite different from non-hosted SQL offerings. You can't just throw OLAP on top.
    - bduerst 12y ago
      Azure is a PAAS, right? OLAP should be one of the native offerings from Microsoft. Google has BigQuery and AWS has Redshift.

mark_l_watson 12y ago

For what it's worth, I am in BizSpark and I have found using the Ubuntu VPSs to be totally hassle free. One question: on AWS, I used to use cron jobs to take snapshots of Postgres, etc. data stores and stuff them in S3 as an ad hoc twice a day backup. Is there something similar on Azure?

tacos 12y ago
I've never been a huge fan of the "snapshot and pray" school of backups. This tool does it right and supports S3 and Azure storage (equivalent to S3). https://github.com/wal-e/wal-e https://github.com/wal-e/wal-e Also: Azure SQL is $15/month and includes restoration of the database to any point in time in the last 14 days. I LOVE Postgres but finally gave into this value proposition.
- mark_l_watson 12y ago
  Thanks, I am looking at Azure SQL right now.

nailer 12y ago

Last time I used Azure websites was a year ago - the command line tools were fine, the UI had a lot of random 500s - but the main thing was having to commit all my generated resources because Azure wouldn't run gulp or grunt. Is that sorted out now?

breakingcups 12y ago

Hi Felix, Azure SQL is very, very different from a regular MS SQL Server environment. It is a lot more restrictive and thus many tools (such as your own SQL Management Studio) do not work well with it. Is there any plan to make these two siblings more compatible with eachother? Furthermore, Azure SQL is very unclear about its performance guarantees. Your DTU's have no mapping to anything in the real world which we can compare. Are there any plans of addressing that?

Someone1234 12y ago
I couldn't agree more. I tried to get an Azure WebSites with an Azure SQL instance of Wordpress working. Getting PHP to run on Azure WebSites was easy/pleasant, getting Azure SQL to talk to PHP was an absolute nightmare and then even once that is done you have issues with instance naming and paths. To be honest I completely gave up. I spent three days on the above setup, and never did get Wordpress working. Then after I gave up I spent one afternoon setting up the same thing using an Azure VM. I like the concept of Azure Websites, but Azure SQL is just "meh." It isn't compatible with MS SQL which is a big problem frankly. A lot of stuff supports MS SQL out of the box, but it seems like Azure SQL is something else entirely. PS - Azure does have an MySQL compatible offering, but it is by a third party. Nothing by MS themselves. So the pricing model is awkward.