Windows Azure uses a specialized operating system, called Windows Azure, to run its "fabric layer" — a cluster hosted at Microsoft's datacenters that manages computing and storage resources of the computers and provisions the resources (or a subset of them) to applications running on top of Windows Azure. Windows Azure has been described as a "cloud layer" on top of a number of Windows Server systems, which use Windows Server 2008 and a customized version of Hyper-V, known as the Windows Azure Hypervisor to provide virtualization of services. Scaling and reliability are controlled by the Windows Azure Fabric Controller so the services and environment do not crash if one of the servers crashes within the Microsoft datacenter and provides the management of the user's web application like memory resources and load balancing.
October 2008 (PDC LA)
Announced the Windows Azure Platform
First CTP of Windows Azure
March 2009
Announced SQL Azure Relational Database
November 2009
Updated Windows Azure CTP
Enabled full trust, PHP, Java, CDN CTP and more
Announced VM Role, Project Sidney, Pricing and SLAs
Project “Dallas” CTP
February 2010
Windows Azure Platform commercially available
June 2010
Windows Azure Update
.NET Framework 4
OS Versioning
CDN
SQL Azure Update (Service Update 3)
50GB databases
Spatial data support
DAC support
October 2010 (PDC)
Platform Enhancements
Windows Azure Virtual Machine Role
Role enhancements
Admin mode, Startup tasks
Full-IIS support
Extra Small Instances
Windows Azure Connect
Access to on-premise resource for cross-premise apps
Support for Domain-joining VMs
Direct role-instance connectivity for easier development
Use your existing remote administration tools
Improved Dev / IT Pro Experience
New Windows Azure Platform Management Portal
Multiple users & roles for management
Remote Desktop
Enhanced Dev Tools
PHP Development
Marketplace
December 2011
Traffic manager
SQL Azure reporting
HPC scheduler
June 2012
Web sites
Virtual Machines for Windows and Linux (backed by persistent storage)
Python SDK
New portal
Locally redundant storage
Datacenters
Some datacenters have servers grouped inside containers - each containing 1800-2500 servers.
The locations of the data centers are:
North America
North-central US - Chicago, IL
South-central US - San Antonio, TX
West US - California
East US - Virginia
Asia
East Asia - Hong Kong, China
South East Asia - Singapore
Europe
North Europe - Dublin, Ireland
West Europe - Amsterdam, Netherlands
Oceania (announced, coming soon)[10]
Sydney, New South Wales (announced, coming soon)
Melbourne, Victoria (announced, coming soon)
The CDN nodes are located in 24 countries.
Deployment in Ireland
As of July 2010, Microsoft had completed 6,000 installations of Azure in Ireland.Executives at Microsoft hoped that this figure would rise to 100,000 installations by 2011.Construction of the $500 million facility required 1 million man-hours of work with a peak workforce of around 2,100 workers.The facility, which began operating on July 1, 2009, currently covers 303,000 square feet (2.815 hectares), with 5.4 megawatts of critical power available. Over time, the data center can expand to a total of 22.2 mega watts of critical power to support future growth.
Privacy
Microsoft has stated that, per the USA Patriot Act, the US government can have access to the data even if the hosted company is not American and the data resides outside the USA. However, Windows Azure is compliant with the E.U. Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC). To manage Privacy and Security related concerns, Microsoft has created a Windows Azure Trust Center, and Windows Azure has several of its services compliant with several compliance programs including ISO 27001:2005 and HIPAA. A full and current listing can be found on the Windows Azure Trust Center Compliance page.
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