Coding for Azure

Most of the distributed applications we write are deployed onto one or more servers for hosting and delivery out to the user base. This hosted environment might contain multiple web servers, a database server, and other servers as necessary. The environment then needs to be monitored and managed either internally or through a hosting provider. The management of this environment can be costly. Servers require repair and updates; as the demand for your application increases, you often have to add new hardware to scale with the demand.

Cloud computing is meant to help address these issues. In its basic form, cloud computing represents a hosting environment for your entire application (user interface, logic, database, and so on). The environment is meant to automatically scale with your demand and free you from hardware management and monitoring tasks. This is accomplished through massive amounts of distributed, automatically managed computing power.

Visual Studio developers that want to take advantage of cloud computing can do so via Microsoft Azure. You can think of this technology as the server operating system for hosting your application. The difference is that Azure is not a single server operating system you install; rather, it is an operating system that sits atop massive amounts of shared computing power. You can develop, deploy, manage, and scale your application using the Microsoft Azure cloud as the single host for your application. Adding scale to that host is then simply a configuration change.