Steve Spencer's Blog

Blogging on Azure Stuff

Migration to SQL Azure

During my Azure talks in Ireland we were discussing issues with migrating SQL to SQL Azure.

At PDC 2010 in Redmond there was a good talk about migrating TFS to Windows Azure and covers the issues they found. It details well the SQL Server to SQL Azure issues and discusses how they solved them. Here is a link to the presentation:

http://player.microsoftpdc.com/Session/be3ad63f-74dc-4283-b70d-817b27226175

Keeping an IP address in Windows Azure

During one of my Azure presentation I was asked whether we could fix the ip address of an azure role so that we can use the ip address to access some external service that uses the ip address to verify the calling party. I didn’t think that there was a way to do this but after talking with Simon Davies at Microsoft he pointed me to a blog post he made on this topic.

How does IP address allocation work for Compute Services in Windows Azure? – Simon Davies

Creating your own identity provider for Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control

Whilst doing an access control service demo I was asked whether you could wire in your own existing authentication mechanisms as customers did not want to have to redo their authentication/registration mechanisms to use Live ID, Google, Yahoo! etc. The answer to this was yes but I had never done it so this was a good time to investigate how.

I started off with the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit(VS2010) and worked through the “Introduction to the AppFabric Access Control Service V2” lab to setup a web site that allows login via Live ID, Google and Yahoo!. Once this was running I needed to create my own provider and wire it into the lab solution that I just created. There is an additional lab ""Federated Authentication in a Windows Azure Web Role Application" which gives the basics of creating your own identity provider. Unfortunately this does not link to ACS so I needed to work out how to wire the provider in. The following instructions are how I created the site and wired it in:

Taking the ACS lab solution as the basis, create an ASP.Net website that will carry out the login process. For this I added a “ASP.NET Security Token Service Web Site”. Right click on your solution and select new website. Make sure that the URL you enter for the site includes https at the start. (e.g. https://localhost/MyIDProvider).

When the project is created, you need to change some of the code in the template as it does not handle the return address correctly when redirecting from your identity provider after logging in.

The template for an STS web site needs the following code changing in App_Code\CustomSecurityTokenService.cs

Go to GetScope and change the line

scope.ReplyToAddress = scope.AppliesToAddress;

to

scope.ReplyToAddress = String.IsNullOrEmpty(request.ReplyTo) ? scope.AppliesToAddress : request.ReplyTo; 

This takes the replyto address from the query string and uses this to redirect back to ACS once the login process has been completed. There are 2 other changes required to the basic STS template in order for it to work correctly.

Open web.config and search for IssuerName in the application settings section and change it to be the url of your STS website (e.g. https://localhost/MyIDProvider)

Also change the SigningCertificateName to point to a certificate that exists in your local machine certificate store. This website will now provide a simple mechanism for logging in. Without any changes you can enter any username and it will authenticate. At this point you will need to wire in your own authentication mechanism, but for testing purposes the default site will allow you to set it up correctly and test it out.

We now need to wire this into ACS. I am using the labs version of the access control service at https://portal.appfabriclabs.com/.

Navigate to your Access Control Service at appfabriclabs.

Click “Identity Providers”, “Add Identity Provider” and add a new “Microsoft Active Directory Federation Service 2.0” provider. The two bits that are important are “WS-Federation metatdata” and the relying party application. Browse to the FederationMetadata.xml file of your STS project you have just created. (e.g. C:\inetpub\wwwroot\MyIDProvider\FederationMetadata\2007-06\FederationMetadata.xml). Also ensure that the ACS website created as part of the labs is checked and press Save.

The final piece of configuration that is required is to add in the rules for your provider. still in the Access Control Service portal, click “Rule Groups”, select the rule group that you setup for your ACS lab and select “Generate Rules”. Ensure that your new identity provider is in the list and that it has been checked and press the “Generate” button. Two new rules should have been added for your provider (Pass through for name and role). You are now ready to test this.

To make it easier to see what is happening I added the following to the Default.aspx of my ACS lab

In default.aspx add the following:

    <asp:LoginView ID="LoginView1" runat="server">
        <AnonymousTemplate>
            <asp:Panel Visible="true" CssClass="secretContent" runat="server" ID="unauthorisedContent">
            You are unauthorised to view this page
            </asp:Panel>
        </AnonymousTemplate>
    
        <LoggedInTemplate>
                You are logged in
        </LoggedInTemplate>
        <RoleGroups>
            <asp:RoleGroup Roles="Administrator">
                <ContentTemplate>
                    <asp:Panel ID="SecretContent" runat="server" CssClass="secretContent" 
                        Visible="true">
                        Secret Content (Only administrators can access this section)
                    </asp:Panel>
                </ContentTemplate>
            </asp:RoleGroup>
        </RoleGroups>
    </asp:LoginView>

This will display the login status so you can see whether the login works or not.

Also add the following style to the site.css file in the ACS lab site:

.secretContent
{
  border-style: solid; 
  background-color: Red; 
  padding: 5px;
  color: White;
}

Run the ACS lab application and check to see if your provider appears in the list of providers and also that when you click on the button it redirects to you page. Login and you should be redirected to the Default.aspx page of the ACS lab site with the text “you are logged in”.

You may want to change the claims that are allowed for specific users. This is done in App_Data\CustomSecurityTokenService.cs in your identity provider web site.

Modify GetOutputClaimsIdentity to change depending upon who is logged in.

Change the code that adds a Manager Role to the following code to allow a user called Steve to be an administrator and everyone else as a user.

if (principal.Identity.Name.Equals("Steve") == true)
{
    outputIdentity.Claims.Add(new Claim(ClaimTypes.Role, "Administrator"));
}
else
{
    outputIdentity.Claims.Add(new Claim(ClaimTypes.Role, "User"));
}

Run your ACS website again and login with “Steve” and you should now see the secret content that only administrator should see. Login as anyone else and you will not see the secret content.

All that you need to do now is to wire in your own authentication mechanism and deal with the claims for each user.

“SetConfigurationSettingPublisher needs to be called before FromConfigurationSetting can be used” Error on Azure SDK 1.3

Last week I was trying to demonstrate accessing Azure Table Storage after I upgraded to the Azure SDK 1.3. During the demo I kept getting the exception “SetConfigurationSettingPublisher needs to be called before FromConfigurationSetting can be used” even though I had written this code and my demos all worked fine previously. After some digging and some help from a delegate who had seen this problem before I removed the sites configuration from my ServiceDefinition.csdef file.

<Sites>
   <Site name="Web">
     <Bindings>
       <Binding name="HttpIn" endpointName="HttpIn" />
     </Bindings>
   </Site>
</Sites>

My demo’s suddenly started working. The sites configuration is part of a feature to allow you to host multiple websites within a single web role. (This also explained why all my projects wanted to be upgraded when they were opened). Steve Marx has written a blog post which details the fixes and reasons why this issue arises. I have now moved my code for SetConfigurationSettingPublisher from my web role OnStart to my Global.asax.cs Application_Start. My demo’s now work correctly :)

Azure Jumpstart and Accelerator links

Thanks for attending the Azure Jumpstart and Accelerator events in Dublin and Belfast (also the Galway Live Meeting).

Here are the list of links from my presentations:

Azure HOL (August labs = VS2008, November Labs = VS2010)

http://bit.ly/d16e3M (Update: 7 Jan 2011 : Looks like this link does not give the 2008 option any more)

Also include the December update for Azure SDK 1.3 for VS2010 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=413E88F8-5966-4A83-B309-53B7B77EDF78&displaylang=en#RelatedResources)

Shared Access signatures

http://blog.smarx.com/posts/shared-access-signatures-are-easy-these-days

CNAME mappings to CDN URLs

http://blog.smarx.com/posts/using-the-new-windows-azure-cdn-with-a-custom-domain

Adaptive Streaming can be made to work with the CDN too

http://blog.smarx.com/posts/smooth-streaming-with-windows-azure-blobs-and-cdn

Ticket Direct Case study

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000005890

MSDN offers

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/default.aspx

Patterns Azure Guidance

http://wag.codeplex.com/

Windows Azure AppFabric Labs (to see the latest changes to App Fabric)

https://portal.appfabriclabs.com/

PDC Review

Having just returned from PDC in LA, here are my highlights from the week.

Windows Azure - this is the OS for the cloud. Microsoft have learnt from their experiences and created a secure, scalable platform for developing and deploying your web applications.

.Net Services - Are a set of services hosted in the cloud to help you to develop cloud based or cloud aware applications. .Net services consists of 3 main components: Access Control, Service Bus and Workflow. Access control uses standards based identity systems including LiveId to help to secure your cloud applications. Whether the service is hosted behind your fire wall or in the cloud, the service bus allows you to connect your applications and services together across the internet. Workflow services is a cloud based host for your WF workflows and includes a set of management tools and api

OSLO - A platform for model driven development and consists of a modelling language called M; A tool for interacting with models called Quadrant; and a Repository which is a SQL server based database for storing and sharing models. M is used to define the domain specific data model, create a grammar for entering data and create a way of visualising the data.

Dublin - this is the codename for Microsoft's Application server. Dublin is a robust and scalable host for WF and WCF applications and will be used to support the OSLO modelling technologies.

Visual Studio 10 - There are some nice cool features in VS10 including impact analysis, historical debugging and better test management. Impact analysis looks at the code that has been changed and identifies the unit tests that are affected by the changes , allowing them to be run easily. Historical debugging allows debugging to be carried out after a fault has occurred and rewind backwards and see the state of the system rather than stepping forward through the system. Some issues are difficult to reproduce or step through without affecting the system. Having the ability to replay the sequence after the fault has occurred and interrogate the data will help the developers to fix problems more efficiently. Historical debugging can be tied into better test management by allowing the testers to run through their test scenarios and when a fault occurs, mark the test as a failure and then send the whole test information including a video (if selected) and the historical debug information through to the developer to fix. This will also help to eliminate the faults that can not be reproduced in the development environment.

Windows 7 - Another version of the windows operating system that should use less memory and be faster than Vista. In addition there will be multi desktop support in Remote desktop and on the fly virtual hard drive support which can then become bootable if required and better home networking.

BlackMarble SOA/BizTalk Event

Thanks to everyone who sat and listened to my presentations on BizTalk RFID, ESB and ISB. I hope that you found them useful.

As promised here are the links:

Biztalk RFID : http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/rfid.aspx

Blue C Sushi : http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=201405

ESB Guidance : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc487894.aspx

Robert's Blog on installing ESB: ESB Guidance Setup Walk through (DRAFT)

Biztalk Services/ISB: http://biztalk.net/

Oslo in a nutshell

What is Oslo all about? According to Microsoft's Burley Kawasaki at Architect Insight, Oslo is a new way to build connected applications where services are extended from client to cloud and models become the mainstream part of development. Oslo is not a product but a way of working. http://www.microsoft.com/soa/products/oslo.aspx.

Other things of interest from Architect Insight include the ConfigWeb sample (from Stock Trader) for configuring enterprise web applications (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/bb499684.aspx). The Internet Service bus and biztalk services (http://biztalk.net/Default.aspx).

Scrum Overview

Scrum is a process to help with the day to day running of projects. From my experience of running projects using scrum I have written an overview document. This is probably not pure scrum but it works and has practical advise. The overview is written from the team leaders perspective and may be useful to new team leaders or existing team leaders who are new to scrum.

overview - Scrum overview (pdf).