Global Azure Bootcamp 2017 Lyon

In order to attend the Global Azure Bootcamp France and specifically in Lyon, here is the link https://www.meetup.com/fr-FR/MUGLyon/events/238325183

a new city, Bordeaux, is also part of the game : Here is : http://azug.fr/gab.html

Here is the team of experts, including 11 MVP and 1 RD:

Here is the program, that includes 17 sessions.

Training on IoT Cloud Azure for yNov students

Igor Leontiev and I were presenting the IoT and the Cloud Azure to dozens of students for a month ! with Labs and Hands-on. All in French, the best studends did win …. a job offer !!  Here is the program !

INTRODUCTION :Le domaine de l’internet des objets est actuellement en pleine croissance et est déjà un des secteurs technologiques qui subit l’évolution la plus forte. A la fois utilisé dans la domotique, le contrôle d’appareil de productions, la récupération et le traitement d’informations, ce secteur ouvre des portes à des développements multiples.

OBJECTIF: Comprendre les enjeux de l’IoT en 2017 (Internet of Things, ou en français, Internet des Objet connectés). Nous aborderons les concepts généraux et verrons pourquoi l’année 2016 marque une rupture dans l’IoT, notamment avec les Top 3 plateformes d’IoT (Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, IBM IoT). Et verrons en quoi ils se distinguent l’un des autres.

Au-delà de la théorie, nous verrons les architectures IoT et BigData modernes, et verrons comment les implémenter rapidement avec AWS et Azure IoT, et en quoi ils sont révolutionnaires en termes de services proposés (contrairement à avoir de l’infrastructure IoT uniquement).

PLAN DE FORMATION :

Infrastructure

• · Introduction IoT, enjeux
• · Méthodologies de gestion de projet
• · Architectures BigData/IoT/Lambda
• · Système de liaison et échanges (protocoles)
• · Les capteurs, et les Gateway
• · Exemple de réseau (Sigfox, LoRa…)

Développement

• · Du développement sur des machines de faibles puissances et Raspberry PI
• · Récupérer les données des capteurs
• · Traiter les données en local et sur le Cloud IoT

 

PROJET A REALISER

Développer une solution complète basée sur une approche IoT. Ce sujet sera décomposé en deux parties :

• une avec la technologie OpenSource NodeRed en « sujet libre » (sans soutenance orale),
• et autre en « sujet libre » avec un déploiement, par exemple sur la plateforme IoT nommée Microsoft Azure IoT (avec soutenance orale).

MS Cloud Summit 23, 24 and 25 january 2017

 

Five communities are joining their forces to organize a LARGE Microsoft Cloud Summit in France, in Paris.

Agile.Net – aOS – AZUG FR - CMD – GUSS

 

We are expecting over 600 attendees to attend the 70 sessions scattered over 7 tracks in parallel.

 

As part of the AZUG FR co-founder, I am honored to be part of the co-organizers, descoveing the under the hood how such large event are organized, and the massive amount of effort needed to welcoming you for a great experience.

Also, out of the many hundreds sessions proposed, my talk on Azure IoT have been selected, which I will co-present with Philippe Guedez, Senior enterprise architect (IoT, BigData and Datascientisit).

 

To register :

https://www.weezevent.com/ms-cloud-summit-jour-1

https://www.weezevent.com/ms-cloud-summit-jour-2

http://mscloudsummit.fr/en/preconf/ (for the pre-conference, on day 0)

 

Here are the planning :

 

Days 1 Data platform

 

  

 

Day 2 : Keynote by Julia White , Microsoft Corporate Vice President Azure and Security Marketing

Call for Speaker GAB16 Lyon, France. Saturday April 16th

http://goo.gl/forms/5cs1HwAaqc

Deprecated Azure services : SQL Federation and Azure Reporting Services

 

If you are some of the few people who have tested / used Azure SQL Federation, you’ll be surprised, happy … or sad to know that Azure SQL Federation has been discontinued.

Azure SQL Federation always has been a source of architectural debates since its creations about 3 years ago. Now this is official.

“
We understand your concerns around the deprecation of the Federations in SQLDB. The change is necessary because of scaling limits in the current implementation of Federations and incompatibility with the newest features we are introducing in the cloud data platform. We will be investing over time in deeper guidance and capabilities to fill the gap – in the interim we recommend utilizing a “self-sharding” approach that many of our large scale customers (including those that host hundreds or thousands of DBs in Azure use) implement on our platform. Examples of sharding patterns for databases in Azure are covered in the Cloud Service Fundamentals samples and articles from the Azure CAT team -- http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/17987.cloud-service-fundamentals.aspx .
In any case, we would be interested in learning more about how you are using Federations today and what your highest priority requirements are for future capabilities, so I would welcome the opportunity for a phone discussion or separate email thread. Please reach out to me by email to stuarto at Microsoft dot com.
Stuart Ozer
Group Program Manager
Azure SQL Database

Stuart Ozer - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 1:01:39 AM
”

Here is the official documentation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/azure/dn741330.aspx 

===========

 

Also, in case you missed it, Azure SQL Reporting also has been retired the 9th May, 2014: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/azure/dn528853.aspx where IaaS VM with full SQL Server and SSRS is its replacement.

In order to create such VM, I spent quite a lot of time configuring it particularly the security access despite detailed documentation. You will find a way of doing so a bit quicker based on a LARGE Powershell : http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/azure/dn449661.aspx

Where to start with Microsoft Azure Enterprise Agreement and billing / cost ? (EA)

UPDATE Sept 2016 : Here is the documentation released by Microsoft: https://eaportalonboardingvideos.blob.core.windows.net/onboardingvideos/AzureDirectEACustomerOnboardingGuide_En.pdf
(download the file here)

Hint Billing: http://blog.thavo.com/2016/10/cost-on-azure-where-to-start.html





Ever wonder what are the advantages of an Enterprise Agreement (EA), as opposed to “Pay-as-you-go” and 6/12-Month Plan ? apart from a costing standpoint with discounted prices, since you are buying more.
This post presents some of the advantages, and how to configure the account.

http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/ 

Firstly, you will be able to create as many subscriptions as you want, so that it matches both Cost Center and enforces true separation between Development accounts and Production one (for instance).
This done by the flexible following model based on 3 roles (Enterprise Administrator, Account Owner and Service Administrator). An easy to understand tutorial in few steps is made available (less steps if you are “only” Account Owner) in your EA portal (https://ea.windowsazure.com).

When you first login, you might receive this scary message. Check that the Microsoft Account you are using does not depend on other Azure Subscriptions (such as MSDN, etc...).

TUTORIAL PAGE 1/3:


TUTORIAL PAGE 2/3

TUTORIAL PAGE 3/3 (with sample and static dummy data)

Now you are ready to create subscriptions, by clicking the “Add Subscription” in green below:

Now, let’s walk through the registration of a new subscription.
Login and type in the information of the Account Owner:
 
DONE. Here is your new subscription. WARNING, a best practice consists in renaming the default “Enterprise” subscription name into a meaningful name that suits your business. Else, you will end-up having many subscription without know which one does what.
To rename, click on “Enterprise”, i.e. the default subscription name.

https://account.windowsazure.com/Subscriptions

In this page that relates to billing you will also be able to rename by click “Edit subscription details”

Suggestion of names’ format:

• myCompany-myBusinessUnitA-EA-ProjectNameAA-Dev
• myCompany-myBusinessUnitB-EA-ProjectNameBB-PreSales
• myCompany-myBusinessUnitB-EA-ProjectNameBB-Prod

In parallel, you will receive a confirmation email:

For companies using Microsoft Azure, when applicable under conditions of being a very closed partner with Microsoft, you could activate benefits when you declare your “DPOR” Microsoft partner, Digital Partner of Reference.

Illustration :

Let us assume that the DPOR is VISEO of ID=3398971 and that you are using the old Azure portal https://manage.windowsazure.com/ (easier to illustrate):

https://portal.azure.com/#blade/Microsoft_Azure_Billing/managementpartnerblade?ID=3398971

CAUTION : * You must be the owner of the subscription, i.e. the Enterprise Account Role “Account Owner”
* Microsoft is performing a rework to better improve the Billing on the Enterprise Agreement portal. These steps might not work in the near future

1. Log in to the portal

2. Click on your name/email

3. Click “View my bill”

4. It will redirect to another portal called “Azure Account Center" (sometimes it takes a few minutes, for secured login using Single Sign On) : https://account.windowsazure.com/Subscriptions

5. Choose your subscription

6. Select “Partner information”, then fill in the number 3398971. When you click “Check ID” Azure finds the corresponding DPOR.

https://portal.azure.com/#blade/Microsoft_Azure_Billing/managementpartnerblade?ID=3398971

It will send an email to your DPOR (provided you have a subscription that has an explicit naming convention).

_
(Vincent THAVONEKHAM, Microsoft Practice Manager @VISEO Technologies)

Lesson learned: ALM with SQL Azure and new tools (SQL Server Data Tools and latest DACPAC Data-Tier Application project)

The number of tools, either in CodePlex, in CTP, or MS released, or Third-party to manage the Windows Azure are numerous. To add some more complexity, the very same tool (e.g. SQL Management Studio), allows you to perform the same action but using many possible ways. Thus the degree of freedom is huge. However, not ALL combination works or sometimes not documented at the moment, or you have to find a KB to understand why it does not work the way it should.
This post provides an easy way of migrating your on-premise database into SQL Azure, and use the latest Microsoft tools to have a better SQL ALM than ever before.
After having migrated your on-premise database, by completing the first 4 steps from my previous post (the other steps just provide a ways to check the integrity of your migration), you’ll need to create a DACPAC project. However, this time you’ll be using the following latest Microsoft tools:
* SQL Server Data Tools [free], that extend your Visual Studio 2010 capabilities  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/gg427686 (check all pre-requisites, which could take up to 1 hour of install). You could consider using Visual Studio 11 Beta… but only for SQL Azure / DACPAC projects (Indeed, Windows Azure bit is another story with VS11 Beta).
This extension allows to work with *.sql file in a better way, as we will see later.

* SQL Server 2012 Management Studio [currently, get it SQL Server 2012 and uncheck everything, except Management Studio].
I would recommend not using SQL Management 2008 (unless you want to have some frustrations). indeed, with the latest version of Data-Tier Application projects it presents some minor limitations/ (bugs ? It’s a feature ? ) and its working principles has been ‘improved’ in “SQL Server 2012 Management Studio”.
To create a new type of Data-tier Application project, called “SQL Server Database project” within Visual Studio 2010, follow step 5 to 7 of my previous post mentioned above (as a reminder, you need to install SQL Server Data Tools).
You could also let “VS2010 with SQL Server Data Tools” migrate an existing VS2008 DB project:

In the new type of DB project’s property, you should target the “SQL Azure” platform, and set the Data-tier Application properties to a suitable version number (this number is used by the “intelligence” of DACPAC that is now handed by SQL Server 2008 R2 or 2012. We don’t deploy any longer “stupid” *.sql files).

It could be noted that by using this new type of DB project, you could decrease your amount of *.sql files considerably. For instance, going from 800 files to 100 files, depending on the complexity of your database. This is due to the fact that the new one is organized differently:
* No more huge amount of crazy sub-sub-sub-sub-folder and numerous files for every single index, constraints, etc… . Here is an example of a old VS2008 DB project applied to a very basic and small project (ASP.Net membership provider):

* Now, everything is nicely grouped into a more “SQL-server-like” fashion way. On the top panel below (1), you’ll find a visual SQL designer of a Table with its associated constraints and properties, and on the bottom pan (2), you’ll find the plain-text version like the old fashion way… except that your constraints, indexes, … are now part of the same *.sql file.
The gain in the number of files also means less files to get/check-in and track in terms of source control.

You could notice also few variations in the “Build” options on the *.sql file’s properties (3). However, unless setting additional deployment files to Build=”None” or “Build Extension Configuration” I did not manage to make it work properly (as in VS2008) when using related *.sql files called from a master *.sql file using the “:r” option.
With this type of project, by targeting “SQL Azure”, which represents the most constraining scenario (because your T-SQL has to be cleaned-up), you can publish either On-Premise or on SQL Azure using the very same T-SQL (you might add some IFs if you really need specific SQL instructions on SQL Azure).
As far as Publishing is concerned, you could define a configuration file per environment (e.g. click (1) to load various profiles, such as on-premise staging,on-premise validation, localhost, SQL Azure staging,  SQL Azure  PROD, …). To get the new publish window (notice it is not called “deploy” anymore), right click on your VS DB project > “Publish…”, somehow wait for 2 to 10 seconds before the modal pop-up appears:

Ensure you have checked the 2 options (2) to benefits from the latest DACPAC type of deployment, and simply click (3) [which also means you could deploy the old fashion way by configuring the numerous options on Advanced…].

During the publishing, you’ll see a new output window that keeps it nice and tidy as opposed to the previous plain text version. It reminds me the Publish for Windows Azure, … but in a more usable way ! (i.e. no tiny reports with a tiny scrollbar and when a bugs occur, you don’t know what happens). I like this new “Data Tools Operations” output window :
          - it has many “view details” links to open a full-size window when needed
          - it could be collapsed (such as Win Azure deployment)
          -…
. It also seams to deploy/publish and generate data a lot faster that its previous version (may be due to better caching).

Now if you want to deploys into SQL Azure, simply load the corresponding config file, then here you go, it’s on SQL Azure in 1 click ! Now you could use a command line to perform that so that a TFS-Build could automatically publish that for you (I would not recommend, since it will start to impact considerably you Windows Azure bill if you publish continuously 10 or 20 times a day for instance).
Example of deployment time a database with less that 100 MB data to be populated
- on local DB : 5 sec
- on SQL Azure (broadband): 4 min
- on SQL Azure (USB Dungle Internet, and no broadband): 15 min
The last new feature that I am going to present to really ease your ALM is the “Snapshots” possibilities. Before any Staging or Prod deployment, keep track of the exact deployment package that you delivered and stores it as a Snapshot. It will store you project as a DACPAC file within seconds (recall: a DACPAC file is a Zip file of you DB schema stored as XML files), which should then be stored into you favorite code repository. In TFS, for example, it could be a TFS-Release-Branch.

The new possibilities allows a huge gain in productivity !!!
Although I have been using those tools on large projects, I would be really interested in anyone having further practical feedbacks, or may be different usage.

How to bootstrap an ISV startup from scratch

If this is your case, find some readings here :

* http://www.agavemountain.com/2008/08/do-you-need-dun-and-bradstreet.html

* Get into the cloud with :
    . Microsoft Office 365 : http://office365.microsoft.com/en-US/online-services.aspx

    . Clouding with your ALM by Brian Harry : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2010/10/28/tfs-on-windows-azure-at-the-pdc.aspx,

or in French here : http://blogs.codes-sources.com/vlabz/archive/2010/10/29/team-foundation-server-dans-azure-de-nouvelles-perspectives.aspx