Category Archives: AppFabric

Windows Server AppFabric Cookbook has been published.

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Earlier in March I shared with you that the book that I have been working on since last year is available for pre-order.

AppFabric Cookbook

Today, it gives me a great pleasure to share with you that “Windows Server AppFabric Cookbook” has been published and is en-route to the book shelves near you. Of course you can get an e-book  (PDF, epub, packtlib, mobi) version right away for your favourite reader (Kindle, Nook etc.). Once you purchase the book, the source code is available for download as well.

Some highlights from the book :-

Elevator Pitch:

This book has over 60 recipes that cover Caching, Hosting, Monitoring and Security aspects of Windows Server AppFabric. This book also delves deep in to additional capabilities added by Microsoft AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server.

Overview:

  • Gain a solid understanding of the capabilities provided by Windows Server AppFabric with a pragmatic, hands-on, results-oriented approach with this book and eBook
  • Learn how to apply the WCF and WF skills you already have to make the most of what Windows Server AppFabric has to offer
  • Includes step-by-step recipes for developing highly scalable composite services that utilize the capabilities provided by Windows Server AppFabric including caching, hosting, monitoring and persistence

What will you learn from this book? 

  • Download, install, configure and get up and running with Windows Server AppFabric quickly
  • Learn how to take advantage of distributed caching for providing high performance and elastic scale on-premise today
  • Take advantage of the enhanced hosting capabilities that Windows Server AppFabric has to offer including Auto-Start and a greatly simplified configuration experience
  • Enable support for long-running composite applications that are resilient and fault-tolerant while maximizing computing resources
  • Gain insight into the health of your composite applications seamlessly, both proactively and when something goes wrong
  • Learn how to scale Windows Server AppFabric by leveraging farm deployments

 Want to know more?

Heard over to Rick’s blog and read more about the book.

In the end…

I have worked very hard on this book for over a year and I have been fortunate to have Rick Garibay co-author it with me. We sincerely hope that this will be a valuable addition to your libraries and you will learn quickly and effectively on how to utilize Windows Server AppFaric’s capabilities to build scalable, distributed and loosely coupled enterprise scale applications.

Feedback:

I will be really glad to hear your feedback. So please drop me a note at hammad[dot]rajjoub[at]gmail.com or a mention @hammadrajjoub.

 

Have you booked your copy of Windows Server AppFabric Cookbook yet?

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Windows Server AppFabric CookbookBack in August I wrote a blog post about a book that I am writing for Packt Pub on Windows Server AppFabric. This post intends to summarise updates on this front.

 

Co-Authoring with Rick Garbay:

I have been extremely lucky to have my friend, MVP and an industry expert Rick Garibay co-author this book with me.

 

Updated for Windows Server AppFabric V1.1:

This book is up to date with the latest release of Windows Server AppFabric 1.1 which means that readers get to know the latest and greatest features of Windows Server AppFabric. Although v1.1 was released late last year we decided to update our work so that we really offer the best value to our readers.

Current Status of the book:

Last few months have been really busy for us and we have been going through arduous cycle of writing, editing, reviewing and then re-writing with the help of our editors and technical reviewers ( I will write a spearate post on technical reviewers later on). At the moment the book we are “text complete” (anlogous to code-complete terminology) and the book is available for pre-order at Amazon (with free shipping in the UK).

Next Steps:

In next few weeks myself and Rick will be sharing some of the content from the book as blog posts/articles to give you a glimpse of what to expect in the book.

Asks:

If you are invested in WCF and WF technologies and use Windows Server 2008 (or the upcoming Windows Server 8 ) you should definitely consider buying this book. Windows ServerAppFabric cookbook offers 60+ recipes that help and guide readers in utlizing the power of Windows Server AppFabric. We have covered Caching, Hosting and Moniting scenarios in a very detailed and easy to follow recipes.

Windows Server AppFabric v1.1 CTP–Now Available for download

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Windows Server AppFabric V1.1 CTP was recently released for download at MSDN. This is first major upgrade of Windows Server AppFabric, which is a set of integrated technologies that makes it easier to build, scale and manage Web and Composite Applications that run on IIS. This is something which is very close to my heart for obvious reasons.

For more details on Windows Server AppFabric read this.

Please note that it is recommended to have a clean install of this update.

Following are some of the key highlights of what’s changed in v1.1 of Windows Server AppFabric.

Read-Through/Write-Behind

This allows a backend provider to be used on the cache servers to assist with retrieving and storing data to a backend, such as a database. Read-through enables the cache to "read-through" to a backend in the context of a Get request. Write-behind enables updates to cached data to be saved asynchronously to the backend. For more information, see Creating a Read-Through / Write-Behind Provider (Windows Server AppFabric v1.1).

Graceful Shutdown

This is useful for moving data from a single cache hosts to rest of the servers in the cache cluster before shutting down the cache host for maintenance. This helps to prevent unexpected loss of cached data in a running cache cluster. This can be accomplished with the Graceful parameter of the Stop-CacheHost Windows PowerShell command.

Domain Accounts

In addition to running the AppFabric Caching Service with the NETWORK SERVICE account, you can now run the service as a domain account. For more information, see Change the Caching Service Account (Windows Server AppFabric Caching v1.1).

New ASP.NET Session State and Output Caching Provider

New ASP.NET session state and output caching providers are available. The new session state provider has support for the lazy-loading of individual session state items using Windows Server AppFabric v1.1 CTP Caching as a backing store. This makes sites that have a mix of small and large session state data more efficient, because pages that don’t need large session state items won’t incur the cost of sending this data over the network. For more information, see Using the ASP.NET 4 Caching Providers for Windows Server AppFabric v1.1 CTP.

Compression

You can now enable compression for cache clients. For more information, see Application Configuration Settings (Windows Server AppFabric Caching v1.1).

Multiple Cache Client Application Configuration Sections

A new dataCacheClients section is available that allows you to specify multiple named dataCacheClient sections in an application configuration file. You can then programmatically specify which group of cache client settings to use at runtime. For more information, see Application Configuration Settings (Windows Server AppFabric Caching v1.1).

Speaking at The Cloud Computing Asia 2011

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I will be speaking at the The Cloud Computing Asia 2011 – An Executive Breakfast Briefing on 18th of August. For more details on the event please visit the event page here.

I will be presenting on "Architecting for the Public and the Private Cloud". In this talk I will cover some of the common architectural practices for building scalable services that can run on the public/private cloud. I hope its going to be an interesting discussion.

I will also be participating in a panel discussion on “Beyond Hype : Applications in the cloud”.

A book on “Windows Server AppFabric”

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In my previous post I mentioned that I will be sharing with you another news. From the title of the post you would have guessed that it has to do with a book on Windows Server AppFabric. So (drum rolls!) I have taken on a book on Windows Server AppFabric. This is something that has been keeping me busy for last few months.  The good news is that I have already completed first 3 chapters. The bad news is that I am yet to write 6 more chapters. I am expected to complete the 4th chapter in next few days (which is looking pretty tight, but lets see).

If you are wondering what content am I covering in the book then all that I can say right now is that this book is all about using Windows Server AppFabric as an Application Server platform. I am mostly discussing Caching, Hosting and Monitoring capabilities of Windows Server platform using Windows Server AppFabric. Everything is laid out in a simple and easy to understand format. I am going to make sure that code and configuration samples are easy to setup and play with. The plan is to cover a mix of basic, intermediate and advanced topics that one can come across while developing application for Windows Server AppFabric.

Last but not the least, I intend to start sharing some of the interesting stuff that I have come across so far on Windows Server AppFabric. Most likely that would turn out be a bunch of blog posts but lets see.

PS: If you are interested in some topics on Windows Server AppFabric that you would like me to cover (in my book or blog posts) then please drop me a note here on the blog. Or message me on my twitter account.

Service Composition: Connecting On-Premise and Cloud Services

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I am invited to speak at IASA (International Association of Software Architecture) Singapore’s chapter evening on 10th of Feb 2011.
I will be talking about Service Composition using Windows Azure and Windows Server AppFabric, covering composition scenarios and capabilities on Microsoft platform using Windows Server AppFabric on-premise and Windows Azure AppFabric in the cloud.

I will be sharing the slides with you after the session.

For more details and back ground information on Windows Azure AppFabric and Windows Server AppFabric please visit:-

App fabric hybrid computing

Another presentation on Windows Server AppFabric

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I was invited to present Windows Server AppFabric at .Net Center Of Excellence (in Bank Of America) yesterday. The event was attended by 120+ developers and architects. I presented on Windows Server AppFabric where we talked about the architecture of Windows Server AppFabric and took a peek under the hood. Talked about how the hosting, management and caching works. Followed it with demoes on AppFabric Caching for Windows Server 2008.

PDC Launch Party in Singapore

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<DotNetBulls/>  successfully hosted PDC 2010 viewing party at Bank of America Merrill Lynch HarbourFront Center office in Singapore on 8th of November, 2010. This was a super awesome event that had a keynote delivered  by Ziriad Saibi (DPE, Director of Microsoft Singapore) that covered some of the key technologies (Mobile, Cloud, IE9, Silverlight etc.) highlighted during PDC 2010. This was followed by two break-out sessions. First one was on Windows Azure AppFabric hosted by Minfei Yan (Developer Evangelist at Microsoft Singapore. Hammad Rajjoub (Microsoft MVP and UG Lead) hosted the next session on Windows Server AppFabric. Highlights of PDC 2010, including Steve Ballmer’s key note were played after the breakouts. After this floor was opened up for questions and audience engaged with speakers and asked technical questions. Veerasivanantham Paramasivam of Bank Of America Merrill Lynch was the lucky draw winner for the ‘Xbox 360 – Guitar Hero Bundle!’. After the event dinner was served which everyone thoroughly enjoyed!

Windows server app fabric pdc 2010
Here is a slide from Mingfei on Windows Azure AppFabric:
Windows Azure

And here;s the one from Ziriad..

PDC 2010 update

PDC Launch Event in Singapore

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Just a quick note that I will be presenting Windows Server AppFabric at a Microsoft PDC Local Launch Event (https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032464044&Culture=en-SG).  In fact I will be co-hosting this talk with Ming Fei (@mingfeiy) of Microsoft Singapore’s DPE team.

If you are interested in attending this pls feel free to give me a shout @hammadrajjoub on twitter.

I will post the slide deck some times next week.