Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

• Microsoft today announced global availability of the Windows Azure platform, including Windows Azure, SQL Azure Database and AppFabric. The Windows Azure platform is available in 21 countries and remains free for all customers and partners through January 31st, 2010.
• Microsoft also announced a community technology preview (CTP) of Microsoft codename “Dallas,” a Windows Azure platform Information Service that provides developers and information workers access to premium third party data sets and content, on any platform.
• With the Windows Azure platform and the new features announced today, developers can take advantage of greater choice and flexibility in how they develop and deploy applications, whether on premise or in the cloud, and using familiar tools and programming languages. This enables customers to increase revenue and productivity, respond faster to customer needs and reach new markets.
• Over 20 customers and partners including NASA, Domino’s Pizza, Coca Cola, Kelly Blue Book and Accenture, among many others, are already running live cloud applications on the Windows Azure platform, demonstrating strong momentum and adoption of Windows Azure, SQL Azure Database and AppFabric
• Developers can visit www.WindowsAzure.com to sign up to start building and deploying cloud services and applications today on the Windows Azure platform and to access the “Dallas” CTP

The Windows Azure platform is an internet-scale cloud computing services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers. The Windows Azure platform, which provides a range of functionality to build applications that span from consumer Web to enterprise scenarios, includes a cloud services operating system and a set of developer services. Windows Azure, Microsoft SQL Azure and AppFabric are the key components of the Windows Azure platform.

Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale and manage Web applications on the Internet through Microsoft data centers.

Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on Microsoft’s SQL Server® Data Platform vision of extending the Data Platform capabilities in cloud as web-based services. SQL Azure enables a rich set of services for relational database, reporting; and analytics and data synchronization with mobile users, remote offices and business partners. As of October CTP, SQL Azure Database is feature complete for PDC and will continue to be offered as a free service until launch. Other services will be available in the future.

Microsoft SQL Azure™ Database is a cloud-based relational database service built on SQL Server technologies. It provides a highly available, scalable, multi-tenant database service hosted by Microsoft in the cloud. SQL Azure Database enables easy provisioning and deployment of multiple databases. Developers do not have to install, setup, patch or manage any software. High Availability and fault tolerance is built-in and no physical administration is required. SQL Azure Database supports Transact-SQL (T-SQL). Customers can leverage existing knowledge in T-SQL development and a familiar relational data model for symmetry with existing on-premises databases. SQL Azure Database provides a strong value proposition through helping to save in the cost of development by working with existing toolset and providing symmetry with on-premises and cloud database.

The Service Bus and Access Control, part of the Windows Azure platform AppFabric are web-based developer services that help make it easier for Windows Azure applications and SQL Azure databases to connect and interoperate with existing or new Windows Server assets. These services are built on Windows Azure, and provide connectivity and access control for customers with the need to integrate cloud services with on-premises systems, or to perform business-to-business collaboration.

The Service Bus enables loosely-coupled connectivity between services and applications across firewall or network boundaries, using a variety of communication patterns. The Access Control Service provides federated, claims-based access control for REST web services. Developers can use these services to build distributed or composite applications and services.

At PDC, Microsoft also announced a community technology preview (CTP) of Microsoft codename “Dallas,” a Windows Azure and SQL Azure powered Information Service that provides developers and information workers access to premium third party data sets and content, on any platform.

The Service Bus and Access Control services that were once collectively known as the .NET Services now run directly within Windows Azure, as of the November 5th CTP. Ever since we released the first CTP of the Windows Azure platform last year, customers have made it clear that connectivity as a service is a key requirement of their modern computing architectures, which include both cloud applications and on-premises systems, and that security in such a service is important. In response to that feedback, the Windows Azure platform now provides connectivity natively via Service Bus and Access Control, in much the same way that it also provides compute and storage as a cloud service. To reflect this, the Service Bus and Access Control capabilities are now branded within the Windows Azure platform as AppFabric. Although the .NET Services brand will no longer be used to describe these services, they remain essential components of the Windows Azure platform. In fact, they are now more closely integrated into the Windows Azure cloud services operating system. We hope that today’s branding update helps to clarify that relationship for customers.

As a result of this change, the Compute, Storage, Service Bus, and Access Control capabilities of Windows Azure have been more closely integrated. In addition to improved performance and service management, customers can expect more unified development and purchasing experiences. However, we have retained the choice and flexibility that customers have come to expect from the Windows Azure platform. This means that customers can still choose to purchase and use the Compute and Storage capabilities with or without the Service Bus and Access Control capabilities. Similarly, Service Bus and Access Control can still be used individually or in concert with their Windows Azure applications.

This branding change is effective immediately. As we transition the Windows Azure platform from a CTP to a business, customers will see this take effect in several places, including web sites, downloadable materials, documentation, and within the services themselves.

Customers and partners who adopt the Windows Azure platform derive the following benefits:

• Agility: Partners and customers can take advantage of development tools, automated service management and global datacenter presence to respond faster to customer needs, focus on their competitive differentiators, and reach new markets.
• Efficiency: The Windows Azure platform improves productivity and increases operational efficiency by lowering upfront capital costs. Customers and partners can realize a reduction in Total Cost of Operations of some workloads by up to 30 – 40% over a 3 year period. The consumption based pricing, packages and discounts for partners lower the barrier to entry for cloud services adoption and ensure predictable IT spend.
• Focus: Partners and customers can focus on delivering services and value to their customers – and not on managing technology infrastructure. The Windows Azure platform enables partners and customers to spend less time on operational hurdles and more time focusing on their competitive differentiators.
• Simplicity: Partners and customers can utilize their existing skills in familiar languages such as .NET and PHP to create and manage web applications and services, whether in the cloud or on premises.
• Trustworthy: Partners and customers will receive enterprise class service backed by reliable service level agreements and deep online services experience.

The Windows Azure platform marketplace needs to address opportunities for both finished as well as building block services. The Microsoft Pinpoint application marketplace addresses the finished services opportunity and is targeted towards Business Decision Makers. At PDC 09, applications can be profiled and listed on Pinpoint directly from the Windows Azure platform Developer portal. Included in the Pinpoint application profile is a ‘Buy’ link to direct the customer to the publisher’s site or purchasing engine. For Windows Azure building block services, we are currently exploring the creation of a Windows Azure developer-to-developer exchange.

The Windows Azure platform is currently available in English

We will start charging for the Windows Azure platform on February 1st 2010.

In Jan 2010, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, India, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and the United States.

In the March 2010 timeframe we expect availability to expand to Australia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Luxemburg, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Customers have access to a support phone number to call at any time to report potential issues with the Windows Azure platform service. Issues with the platform will be escalated to the Windows Azure platform operations team to investigate and correct. You can also call at any time for developer support to assist you with your application. Developer support is charged on a per incident basis. Premier customers, MSDN subscribers and MPN members can leverage support incidents and support hours provided as part of these program benefits. We will also continue to provide moderated forum support at no charge. You can access more information regarding your support options at the following URL: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/support/.

We will continue to use the CTP token process untill Dec 31st:

• A Windows Azure token can complete the CTP application by visiting http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=129453 . Once received, CTP tokens are redeemable at https://windows.azure.com.
• A SQL Azure Database token can complete the CTP application by visiting http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149681&clcid=0x09. Once received, CTP tokens are redeemable at https://sql.azure.com.
• Access to the AppFabric Service Bus and Access Control CTP can be obtained at https://netservices.azure.com.

CTP tokens will no longer be required to access Windows Azure, SQL Azure Database or AppFabric beginning January 2010. New customers seeking access to these technologies can use their Windows Live ID to create user account, and sign up for an offer to gain access to services running on the Windows Azure platform.

Access to the Windows Azure platform will be free for customers and partners between Nov 17th, 2009 and Dec 31st, 2009.

CTP participants from one of our launch countries who have not signed up for an offer by January 31, 2010 will have their service disabled. We will provide a grace period through March 31, 2010, for CTP participants to retrieve their data from disabled Windows Azure storage accounts or SQL Azure databases. During this grace period, CTP participants can convert their disabled CTP accounts to a paid subscription. If a CTP participant has not signed up for paid service by March 31st, all of their data will be deleted. CTP participants from non-launch countries will be allowed to continue using their CTP account without charge until either their country is supported or the CTP is discontinued for their country

No. Service will be free for all CTP participants till the end of January, 2010.

No. You don’t have to sign up for an offer to utilize Windows Azure or SQL Azure Database between Nov 17th, 2009 and Dec 31st, 2009.

No. Windows Azure is not grid computing, packaged software, or a standard hosting service. Windows Azure is an integrated development, service hosting and management environment maintained at Microsoft datacenters. This environment includes a robust and efficient core of compute and simple storage capabilities and support for a rich variety of development tools and protocols.

We launched a CTP of the Windows Azure platform at PDC in October 2008 to collect feedback and input from the community. One of the strongest and most consistent pieces of feedback we’ve received from the community has been around the scope of the Windows Azure platform. Customers and Partners have indicated that they would like clarity around the composition of the platform, and that it should offer operating system, database and connectivity capabilities. We’re acting on this feedback: At this time, the Windows Azure platform comprises Windows Azure, SQL Azure and AppFabric.

Live Services are an integral part of Microsoft’s Software + Services story. While Live Services are not a part of the Windows Azure platform, developers can continue to use Live Services in building rich and compelling solutions on the Windows Azure platform. The same also holds true for SharePoint Services and CRM Services. Customers and partners will continue to have the opportunity to utilize these services, plus the Windows Azure Platform, to meet their business objectives.

Here are some of the key features that were made available today at PDC 09: Service Management API’s, Windows Azure Drive, Inter-role Communication, Variable VM size, Diagnostics, and Certificate Management. We are also announcing some projects that were developed by our partners: Solution Accelerators for Tomcat, MySQL and Memcached.

The Windows Azure Drive allows Windows Azure applications to mount a Page Blob, which is a single volume NTFS VHD. All writes in the application are made durable to the blob, and reads come out of the local VM cache or the page blob if there is a cache miss. This allows applications to upload/download VHDs via blobs, and the VHD is durable and survives the failover of the VM, since it is backed by a paged blob.

The new diagnostics features in Windows Azure enable customers to perform logging using standard .NET APIs. This feature also enables the collection of such logs and other diagnostic data, e.g. performance counters, for monitoring the state of their application.

The Windows Azure Service Management APIs are REST based APIs that enable customers to automate the deployment, management and scaling of their application.

The inter-role communication functionality in Windows Azure provides direct communication between individual role instances in the user’s application. This enables creation of more complex applications, e.g. applications with state.

Yes. Developers now have the ability to choose the size of VMs to run their application based on the applications resource requirements. Windows Azure compute instances come in four unique sizes to enable complex applications and workloads.

Each Windows Azure compute instance represents a virtual server. Although many resources are dedicated to a particular instance, some resources associated to I/O performance, such as network bandwidth and disk subsystem, are shared among the compute instances on the same physical host. During periods when a shared resource is not fully utilized, you are able to utilize a higher share of that resource.

The different instance types will provide different minimum performance from the shared resources depending on their size. Compute instance sizes with a high I/O performance indicator as noted in the table above will have a larger allocation of the shared resources. Having a larger allocation of the shared resource will also result in more consistent I/O performance.

The certificate management feature in Windows Azure enables the automated deployment of service-specific certificates to services hosted on Windows Azure.

As of October CTP, SQL Azure database is feature complete for PDC 2009. The October CTP has been deployed to one of the production clusters. When SQL Azure Database becomes generally available, this environment will automatically roll over into a fully supported production environment and all your databases and data in this environment will be converted into an active subscription to the SQL Azure Database service based on the subscription offer you choose.

With October CTP, SQL Azure Database is feature complete and ready for PDC 2009. Some of the new features in October CTP include (Firewall Support, Bulk Insert, updates to the properties, portals and additional TSQL capabilities. For more details please visit Blog post

Microsoft SQL Azure Data Sync is tooling and runtime to enable data synchronization with SQL Azure. This technology facilitates two key scenarios that are not available with other cloud platforms today, extending current on-premises infrastructure to the cloud, and producing clients with offline/cached-mode support. Extending on-premises data to the cloud allows for information to be easily shared with mobile users, business partners, remote offices and enterprise data sources all while taking advantage of new services in the cloud. This technology provides a bridge, allowing on-premises and off-premises applications to work together. Using cached mode enables developing clients with an improved user experience through lower latency and higher availability. Additionally cached mode provides the benefits of lower network utilization and better server scale through lower load and a better ability to schedule work.

At PDC 09, SQL Azure Data Sync is available as a CTP in a download called Microsoft Sync Framework Power Pack for SQL Azure. For more information about SQL Azure Data Sync in general, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/sqlazure/datasync. The power pack CTP is not included in the SQL Azure CTP and needs to be downloaded separately.

With the move to a T-SQL based relational data model, SQL Azure Database will not support the SOAP and REST based Authority-Container-Entity (ACE) programming model. Based on extensive feedback from our early adopter customers and partners, most customers will greatly benefit from the relational capabilities in SQL Azure and will continue to develop their applications against this. Customers who wish to expose REST access to their SQL Azure data can easily do so by building custom services with ADO.NET Data Services. On the other hand, customers who wish to use a REST based programming model and whose needs are met with non-relational simple structured data storage have the option of using Windows® Azure storage.

SQL Azure Database will target the following audiences:

• Traditional ISVs building multi-tenant packaged or custom LOB applications for businesses that require enterprise class scale, reliability, and availability and data protection.
• Consumer SaaS ISVs building new web applications on Windows Azure Platform
• Custom application developers (VARs/VAPs) building corporate departmental applications on Windows Azure

SQL Azure Database will target the following scenarios:

• Scalable Web Applications: Small customers, hobbyists or startups with web applications of all scale that have RDBMS needs ISV Packaged /Custom LOB Applications: Traditional SaaS ISVs and custom developers extending their offerings or packaged/custom software hosted in the cloud
• Departmental Application: Enterprises building departmental/workgroup applications
• Data Hub: Companies using SQL Azure to consolidate multiple data sources in the Cloud and enable secure access from multiple locations, desktop and/or devices.

In its initial release, SQL Azure Database will support relational capabilities suitable for relational apps, including multi-tenant apps requiring large levels of scale. Future releases of SQL Azure will support advanced features like distributed queries across partitions and auto-partition.

SQL Azure Database will continue to be built on the proven SQL Server technology foundation and architecture, which offers reliability, availability and enterprise-level security features. By harnessing these capabilities SQL Azure Database offers a business-ready service level agreement that is designed to provide built-in automatic high-availability and fault tolerance for unlikely event of a failure.

Previously, SQL Azure Database supported a flexible, Entity based data model. After getting valuable customer feedback it was apparent that there was a need for a fully relational data model in the cloud. SQL Azure represents the move from the ACE programming model to a relational data model with many familiar SQL Server-like programming concepts. Developers will be able to utilize existing Transact-SQL code to access their data in the cloud. They will also create and modify applications that utilize existing Transact-SQL code to interact with the fully relational cloud database service. In addition, they can expose REST and SOAP services on top of their data easily using existing data access frameworks, such as ADO.NET Data Services.

SQL Azure Database is built on SQL Server database technologies, used for running mission-critical applications in the enterprise as well as on the Web. Since SQL Server is a broad data platform that can handle all data from birth to archival, there are many capabilities that our data platform provides. SQL Azure Database is exposing a large subset of those relational capabilities and extending them as services in the cloud in ways that make it easy for customers and partners to consume and build upon over the Internet. In addition to this, SQL Azure Database provides built-in high scale, availability, utility, and other such capabilities. Although SQL Azure Database in its first iteration exposes only the core RDBMS capabilities of what is in the full SQL Server data platform, Microsoft expects this to increase over time, with likely future features including Reporting, Analytics, ETL and other premium services etc.

SQL Azure Database provides highly available, scalable, multi-tenant database service hosted by Microsoft in the cloud. SQL Azure Database is self-managing and enables easy provisioning and deployment of multiple databases. Developers do not have to install, setup, patch or manage any software. High Availability and fault tolerance is built-in and no physical administration of hardware, storage or servers is required. SQL Azure Database supports Transact-SQL (T-SQL). Customers can leverage existing knowledge in T-SQL development and a familiar relational data model for symmetry with existing on-premises databases. SQL Azure Database provides a strong value proposition through savings in the cost of development by working with existing toolset and providing symmetry with on-premises and cloud database With hosted database, developers are still responsible for installing, setting up, updating and patching OS & managing database software. Additionally, hosted database solutions have to device high availability and fault tolerance. Manage multiple scale-out databases.

With October CTP, SQL Azure Database is feature complete and ready for PDC 2009. Some of the new features in October CTP include (Firewall Support, Bulk Insert, and additional TSQL capabilities. For more details please visit Blog post

(Business Intelligence) is not part of our cloud offerings in v1 of SQL Azure. However they are our incubation projects and we are considering adding them as a service in the Azure platform. In the short term, we are working to enable SQL Azure as a datasource for your BI solutions which would include Analysis Services and Reporting Services. You can, however, access SQL Azure from within your locally running Reporting Services and Analysis Services projects.

It is not supported in v1 of SQL Azure. We are working to add support for it in our future release.

SQL Azure customers can provision unlimited number of databases based on their application needs. Data can be partitioned across multiple databases without any size limitation.

SQL Azure Database service will offer a scalable distributed relational database service in the Cloud that is used for storing, processing and analyzing structured, semi-structured & unstructured data. Windows Azure Table storage is a non-relational, scalable, simple structured storage (ISAM style) in the cloud. Since SQL Azure Database will offer database service for applications developed on Windows Azure, customers can pool these services based on the needs.

With the TSQL based relational data model support in SQL Azure over TDS protocol, customers can utilize existing tools such as Microsoft Visual Studio® and SQL Server Management Studio so they can work with both on-premises SQL Server and cloud-based SQL Azure Database deployments. This will enable customers to build applications that use combinations of databases on and off premises.

Business partners will continue to build multi-tenant packaged or custom LOB applications and use SQL Azure Database with the similar knowledge and tools as they do with on-premises SQL Server. Partners can also extend their existing LOB applications to use SQL Azure with minimal friction. ISVs and partners can also develop and offer new consumer Saas applications powered by SQL Azure and Windows Azure multi-tenant capabilities.

Yes. SQL Azure Database provides a cloud-based relational database service for Windows Azure Developers who write Windows Azure applications will be able to access SQL Azure based on their database needs.

Developers will be able to use Visual Studio to create new applications or modify existing applications for SQL Azure. Developers can also use existing ASP.NET controls, designers, and tools to develop applications. In the future, developers will also use web based Management tools, , to access and manage their cloud-based data. In the future, SQL Azure will also provide tools and documentation to support additional programming languages.

SQL Azure database is charged based on the number of databases created and consumed by the application per day and billed monthly.

No. Currently you can’t bring your existing on-premises Windows Server, SQL Server to Windows Azure, SQL Azure.

Windows Azure and SQL Azure SLAs are independent of our on-premises Microsoft licensing agreements. Our SLAs for the Windows Azure platform provide you a monthly uptime guarantee for those services you consume in the cloud, with SLA credits against what we have billed you in the event we fail to meet the guarantee.

Microsoft codename ‘Dallas’ is a community technology preview (CTP) of a Windows Azure and SQL Azure-powered Information service that provides developers and information workers access to third party premium data sets and web services. ‘Dallas’ also enables self-service business intelligence and analytics over stored data sets using existing Microsoft technologies.

With the power and scale of the Windows Azure platform (Windows Azure, SQL Azure Database), Dallas provides developers with the ability to build and manage innovative applications across the desktop and mobile devices by bringing together disparate sets of private and public data, both on premises and in the cloud. Via a single marketplace, Dallas enables developers to access complex data sets to build entirely new analytic and reporting scenarios. And content providers are able to expose their data to millions of developers on a global level enabling new growth and revenue opportunities.

Dallas brings data and imagery together from leading commercial data providers and authoritative public data sources together into a single location, under a unified provisioning and billing framework. Additionally, Dallas APIs allow developers and information workers to consume this premium content with any platform, application or business workflow. In addition, Dallas allows Office Excel and SQL Server customers to instantly ‘mash up’ private data with Dallas content to enable new scenarios around analytics and reporting.

Dallas will be commercially available in CY 2010. Microsoft will announce specific details around commercial availability and business model at a later date.

Yes. We will share additional details Dallas SLAs at a later date.

Ever since we released the first CTP of the Windows Azure platform last year, customers have made it clear that connectivity as a service is a key requirement of their modern computing architectures, which include a mixture of cloud applications and on-premises systems. In response to that feedback, Windows Azure platform AppFabric now provides secure connectivity natively via Service Bus and Access Control, in much the same way that it also provides Compute and Storage as cloud services.

From simple eventing scenarios to service remoting and complex protocol tunneling, the Service Bus gives developers the flexibility to connect applications and to choose how they communicate. This helps them build distributed and composite applications while also helping address the challenges presented by firewalls, NATs, dynamic IP, and disparate domains and identity systems. Access Control enables developers to externalize authorization decisions in a federated, claims-based manner, which helps them develop simple, easier-to-manage access control logic for REST web services and Service Bus communications. All of that means developers can be more efficient when they extend existing software to the cloud, more agile when they collaborate with business partners, and more focused when they need to reach new customers.

Because they are built on Windows Azure, Service Bus and Access Control work in concert with your cloud applications and data, scaling with them as your business grows. What’s more, Service Bus and Access Control naturally bring the benefits of the Windows Azure platform, such as dynamic scaling, automated service management, pay-as-you-go pricing, and SLA-backed reliability – all hosted in Microsoft datacenters so you can focus on developing your business logic and spend less time building and managing infrastructure.

The November CTP focuses on making some key design changes to Service Bus (SB) and Access Control (ACS). With the November CTP, the Service Bus and the Access Control services now include the feature set that will be available when we enter commercial availability early next year. Notably, Service Bus and Access Control are now run on Windows Azure. Updates and changes for the November CTP are:

• Access Control: With the November CTP, we are focusing on addressing the large, unmet need around access control for REST web services and delivering a robust infrastructure for REST web services authorization and support.
• Service Bus: The Service Bus now offers message buffers to support persistent, asynchronous messaging. It also provides for more ‘clients’ and ‘services’ per solution, as well as an increased number of connections per solution.

Based on the fact that REST web services have become increasingly popular with both web and enterprise developers, we received feedback from the community that the lack of controlling access to REST web services is one of the major pain points faced by service developers today. As interoperability remains a goal of ours, this means that we will simplify the approach to ACS so that access control scenarios integrate well with REST. The approach is also designed to continue to appeal to all developers that want an easy way to take advantage of Service Bus and Access Control or use these services from non-Microsoft platforms. Meanwhile, we remain committed to our ongoing goals of enabling SSO and authorization for websites, supporting WS-*, and federating with a greater variety of web and enterprise identity providers, in a future release.

To capitalize on the opportunities presented by cloud computing, customers need the flexibility to run their applications and services on a variety of hardware and software platforms, across a myriad of deployment scenarios. Service Bus and Access Control simplify how businesses connect loosely-coupled on-premises and cloud-based applications, and integrate between businesses.

The November 2009 CTP release contains some reductions in functionality relative to the July 2009 CTP release. These reductions primarily concern Routers and Queues, which the Service Bus team is in the process of improving to facilitate expanded functionality in coming releases.

We have made the decision to remove Routers temporarily, beginning with the November 2009 CTP. While we know that some customers will be negatively impacted, we have determined that the current Router implementation will require some re-work to lay a strong foundation for planned expansions to the feature set. Removing Routers temporarily will allow us to accelerate the re-work and reinstatement of robust Router functionality.

We believe that Routers are a critical feature of the Service Bus for enabling a variety of messaging architectures. Thus, while we are cutting Routers from the November 2009 CTP, we are committed to performing the required rework and expect to reinstate Router functionality in a future release.

For customers who have built applications that rely on Router functionality, we have provided a sample to demonstrate a method for implementing Router-like functionality—including multicast, anycast and push-style message operations—using existing Service Bus features. This sample is part of the November 2009 SDK for Service Bus and Access Control.

In the November 2009 CTP release, Queues will be temporarily replaced with a simpler offering called Message Buffers. The motivation for this change is our desire to lay the groundwork for buffer durability, message delivery guarantees and other enhanced message delivery semantics.

• Maximum amount of data that a Message Buffer can hold will be 1MB
• Dequeue operation will return only one message per request
• Overflow Policy will be limited to Reject
• Message Buffers will support a reduced set of Configuration Elements, to include: Authorization, Discoverability, Transport Protection, Expires After and Maximum Message Count
• Message Buffers will be addressable by REST only (previously we also supported WS-Transfer)

In all other respects, Message Buffers will behave much like the July 2009 CTP implementation of Queues.

With the November 2009 CTP release, we are focusing on addressing the large, unmet need around access control for REST web services. This means that the WS-Trust features that we support in previous CTP releases will be temporarily unavailable while we focus on delivering a robust infrastructure for REST web services authorization. Once the infrastructure is in place, ACS features, such as web single sign on and rich enterprise WS*- support that span REST/SOAP spectrum will be available in a future release.

As REST web services have become increasingly popular with both web and enterprise developers, a gap has emerged in the market place for identity and access control technology. Today, developers of REST web services lack an easy, accessible means to secure their services. They face a lack of consistency and common patterns for managing identity and access control in a way that is compatible with the REST focus on simplicity. As REST developers move towards the enterprise, they will have an increasing need for robust security. They will be required to address the more systematic security concerns of enterprise customers as well as the more complex identity management scenarios that enterprises present. They will need a way to address these requirements that is simple and that integrates well with REST.

Taking this problem as an opportunity to differentiate the Access Control offering and serve an even broader range of developers, we have experimented over the past several months with a simplified approach to the way that Access Control packages and transits security tokens. Although this simplified approach has been designed to meet the needs of REST web service developers, it will appeal to all developers that want an easy way to take advantage of our services or that wish to use Service Bus and Access Control from non-Microsoft platforms.

At MIX09 we exposed some of our thinking about this new approach as a way to gauge customer interest. In addition to talking about our goals for simplicity and broad interoperability, we demonstrated the ability to control access to SaaS web sites using a variety of different consumer identities. Consistent with our theme, we showed that this approach can radically simplify the REST developer experience. Response to the MIX09 presentations was overwhelmingly positive and confirmed our sense that we were on the right track.

From this and other feedback, we have come to the conclusion that the lack of tools for controlling access to REST web services is one of the major pain points faced by service developers today. We believe that Access Control is well-positioned to address this need in a way that complements other MSFT offerings in the security and identity management space. The combination of simplicity and support for key enterprise integration scenarios will ensure that Access Control appeals to our enterprise customers, while simultaneously meeting the needs of an even broader developer audience. In future releases, we will reinstate full support for the WS-* protocols, web Single Sign On, and round out the Access Control offering in a way that spans the REST/SOAP spectrum.

As Service Bus and Access Control are key developer services within the Windows Azure platform, we plan to become available in January 2010 along with the rest of the Windows Azure platform.

At PDC, we are announcing the release of four solution accelerators built by our partners. These four solution accelerators relate to MySQL, memcached, Tomcat and Instance Management. The solution accelerators were all built by Infosys. These solution accelerators enable developers to build solutions using MySQL, memcached and Tomcat on Windows Azure while taking advantage of the Windows Azure automated service management capabilities. The Instance Manager solution accelerator gives developers console access to role instances hosted in Windows Azure.

In March 2009, we enabled .NET full trust and native code applications. This functionality allowed developers to spawn xcopy deployable processes. As a result, you can package and run Java applications. At PDC 09, we are delivering a solution accelerator for Tomcat. Tomcat is an open source software implementation of the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies. The Windows Azure solution accelerator leverages a PDC09 feature that enable arbitrary processes to bind to inbound service endpoints. Also at PDC09, we are launching a Java SDK for Windows Azure Storage (tables, blogs, and queues). We’ve also enabled external endpoints (inbound traffic) to worker roles, which enables applications that receive internet traffic that aren’t running under IIS.

Microsoft has partnered with Soyatec on the creation of Windows Azure tools for Eclipse: A feature-rich open source PHP application development environment in Eclipse. The Windows Azure tools for Eclipse extension builds upon the PHP Development Toolkit (PDT) and integrates Web Tools Platform (WTP) to provide a complete toolkit for Windows Azure web application development.

Users have two basic types of offers to choose from when purchasing a Windows Azure platform subscription. The first type is consumption offers. This type of offer requires no commitment and you pay monthly only for what you use. The second type of offer is a commitment offer that provides a significantly discounted level of service in return for a six month commitment to pay a monthly base fee. Any usage in excess of this amount is charged at our normal consumption rates (somewhat similar to a cell phone plan). Below is a summary description of our different plans:

Consumpton

• Introductory Special - Promotional offer with an amount of Windows Azure Platform services provided each month at no charge. Requires no monthly commitment and is the first plan to choose if you are unsure how much you will use each month.
• Consumption - Flexible “Pay As You Go” plan for all Windows Azure platform services. If you need one or more additional subscriptions that require no monthly commitment, this is the plan for you.
• MSDN Premium - Promotional offer with a monthly amount of Windows Azure Platform services provided as an added benefit to MSDN premium subscribers. Requires you to be a MSDN Premium subscriber.

Commitment

• Development Accelerator Core - Promotional offer provides compute hours, storage, data transfers, and AppFabric message operations at a discounted monthly price for a six month term. This offer is designed to provide developers with the Windows Azure and AppFabric Service Bus and Access Control resources that they need to develop a particular solution or offering. If you think of the developer project lifecycle as being design-develop-deploy-manage, this offer, essentially, fuels the development stage of their project.
• Development Accelerator Extended - Promotional offer includes Core plus SQL Azure at a discounted monthly price for a six month term. This is for those developers that are including SQL Azure in their solutions.

For all of our offers except the MSDN Premium offer, we provide members of the Microsoft Partner Network an additional 5% discount on all charges except storage and data transfers.

The maximum level of usage that you may consume each month is either twice your base commitment (i.e., if you purchase a commitment offer) or the standard quotas outlined below, as calculated on an item by item basis with usage aggregated across all of your subscriptions.

Windows Azure

• Compute
  20 concurrent small compute instances or the equivalent number of other sized compute instances
• Storage
  5 concurrent storage accounts
• Content Delivery Network
  1 TB of total data transfers per month during CTP

SQL Azure

• 150 Web Edition databases
• 15 Business Edition databases

AppFabric Service Bus and Access Control

• 1 billion message operations per month

Data Transfers (exclusive of CDN)

• 10 TB of total data transfers per month, with no more than 3.5 TB associated with the Asia Pacific region

To illustrate how to calculate your quota if you purchase a commitment offer, let’s assume you purchase 20 base units of a commitment offer. Since each base unit includes 750 compute hours which roughly approximates one small compute instance, your quota would be 40 concurrent small compute instances.

You may request an increase in the default quotas at any time by contacting customer support. While we reserve the right to disable a customer’s account that has exceeded its usage quotas in a given month, we will provide e-mail notification and make multiple attempts to contact a customer prior to disabling an account. Customers are still responsible for charges on usage that exceed their quotas.

If you are a participant in one of the Windows Azure platform CTPs, you have the option of migrating your CTP application(s) and corresponding data to a production subscription of the Windows Azure platform. To migrate your CTP account(s), you merely need to purchase an offer using the same Windows Live ID as that associated to your CTP account(s). Your CTP account(s) are automatically associated with the first offer you purchase with that Windows Live ID.

Your usage from your CTP account(s) will start being billed based on the terms of the offer you purchase as of your purchase date. If you do not want to upgrade your CTP account(s) to a paid subscription, either utilize a different Windows Live ID than your CTP account(s) when ordering or remove all of your applications and data associated with your CTP account(s) prior to sign up.

The off-peak time periods are not adjusted for daylight savings time. For example, during daylight savings time, the off-peak times in the North America region will be 11:00 p.m. – 7:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) during weekdays and 11:00 p.m. PDT on Friday through 7:00 a.m. PDT on Monday for weekends.

Windows Azure compute instances come in four unique sizes to enable complex applications and workloads.

Each Windows Azure compute instance represents a virtual server. Although many resources are dedicated to a particular instance, some resources associated to I/O performance, such as network bandwidth and disk subsystem, are shared among the compute instances on the same physical host. During periods when a shared resource is not fully utilized, you are able to utilize a higher share of that resource.

The different instance types will provide different minimum performance from the shared resources depending on their size. Compute instance sizes with a high I/O performance indicator as noted in the table above will have a larger allocation of the shared resources. Having a larger allocation of the shared resource will also result in more consistent I/O performance.

The Windows Azure platform will have Consumption-based pricing when they become commercially available. The details for the US are as follows:

Windows Azure

• $0.12 / hour for the SMALL instance
• $0.24 / hour for the MEDIUM instance
• $0.48 / hour for the LARGE instance
• $0.96 / hour for the EXTRA LARGE instance

Storage

• $0.15 / GB stored/month
• $0.01 / 10K storage transactions

Content Deliver Network

• Service currently available as a Community Technology Preview (CTP) at no charge

SQL Azure

• Web Edition – Up to 1 GB relational database = $9.99
• Business Edition – Up to 10 GB relational database = $99.99

AppFabric

• Access Control: $0.15 per 100k message operations
• Service Bus: $0.15 per 100k message operations

Data Transfers

• $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB for North America and Europe
• $0.30 in / $0.45 out / GB for Asia Pacific
• Inbound data transfers during off-peak times through June 30, 2010 are at no charge. Prices revert to our normal inbound data transfer rates after June 30, 2010

As we start billing, the following currencies will be used for these countries: Austria € EUR , Belgium € EUR , Canada $ CAD, Denmark kr DKK , Finland € EUR , France € EUR , Germany € EUR , Ireland € EUR , India $ USD, Italy € EUR, Japan ¥ JPY, Netherlands € EUR, New Zealand $ NZD, Norway kr NOK, Portugal € EUR, Singapore $ USD, Spain € EUR, Sweden kr SEK, Switzerland Fr CHF, United Kingdom £ GPB, United States $ USD.

In the March 2010 timeframe, the following currencies will be used for these countries: Australia $ AUD, Brazil $ USD, Chile $ USD, Colombia $ USD, Costa Rica $ USD, Cypress € EUR Czech Republic € EUR, Greece € EUR, Hong Kong $ USD, Hungary € EUR, Israel $USD, Luxemburg € EUR, Malaysia $ USD, Mexico $ USD, Peru $ USD, Philippines $ USD, Poland € EUR, Puerto Rico $ USD, Romania € EUR AND Trinidad & Tobago $ USD.

Pricing will be reviewed quarterly to evaluate material changes in costs of hosting the service, competitive analysis, local costs of operations, as well as spot FX rates. It is understood that maintaining consistent pricing is important to our customers, and changes will only be made when necessary.

Windows Azure compute hours are charged only when your application is deployed. When developing and testing your application, developers will want to remove the compute instances that are not being used to minimize compute hour billing

All compute hours are converted into small instance hours when presented on your bill. For example, one elapsed hour of a medium compute instance would be presented as two small compute instance hours at the small instance rate of $0.12 per hour on your bill. This table describes how each of the compute instance sizes correlates to the number of small compute instance hours:

Partial compute instance hours (prior to conversion) are billed as full hours.

Storage is metered in units of average hourly amount of data stored (in GB) over a monthly period. E.g. if a user uploaded 730GB of data and stored it on Windows Azure for one hour, her monthly billed storage would be 1 GB, since there are 730 hours in the average month. If the same user uploaded 730GB of data and stored it on Windows Azure for an entire billing period, her monthly billed storage would be 730GB. Storage is also metered in terms of storage transactions used to add, update, read and delete storage data. These are billed at a rate of $0.01 for 10,000 (10k) transaction requests

Data transfer is charged based on the total amount of data going in and out of the Windows Azure platform services via the internet in a given 30-day period. All data transfers within a sub-region are free.

When developing our pricing model for data transfers, we first took into account the underlying data transfer costs. There are two reasons for inbound traffic being priced lower: First, data transfer costs are significantly driven by outbound traffic; second, lower inbound traffic pricing helps overcome initial barriers to adoption. We are lowering this barrier even further from commercial launch through June 30, 2010 by providing free off-peak inbound data transfer

SQL Azure Web Edition DB includes

• Up to 1 GB of T-SQL based relational database
• Self-managed DB, auto high availability and fault toleranc
• Auto load-balancing
• Elastic Scale with pay-as-you grow
• Best suited for Web apps, Departmental custom apps, Saas apps

The SQL Azure Business Edition DB includes

• Up to 10 GB of T-SQL based relational database
• Self-managed DB, auto high availability and fault tolerance
• Auto load-balancing
• Elastic Scale, Pay-as- you grow
• Additional features in the future like auto-partition, CLR, distributed queries etc.
• Best suited for ISVs LOB apps, Department custom apps and SaaS apps.

We are not announcing pricing for the proposed Windows Azure VM functionality right now. However, this pricing will be consistent with our current Windows Azure pricing model.

Yes, we will send alert emails to all Azure customers, regardless of offer. Anyone with a commitment offer is being emailed at 75/100/125% of their prepaid monthly service level, and once a consumption offer has been in play for 3 months, we will alert them in the same manner but instead of referring to a prepaid monthly service level, we will utilize a 3 month rolling average.

SQL Azure customers can provision unlimited number of databases based on their application needs. Data can be partitioned across multiple databases without any size limitation.

SQL Azure database is charged based on the portion of database consumed by the application.

Access Control and Service Bus, part of the Windows Azure platform AppFabric, allow developers to easily connect their cloud applications and databases with existing software assets and users. This connection between cloud and on-premises assets is facilitated by the exchange of messages. The consumption-based pricing model means that customers will pay only for the number of message operations that their applications use. The definition of a “message operation” includes Service Bus messages, Access Control transactions and management operations.

• A customer who consumed 95,000 message operations would be billed for 0.95x100k messages (plus the data transfers used to send messages in or out).
• A customer who uses 150,000 message operations in a billing period would be charged for 1.5x100k messages (plus the data transfers used to send messages in or out).
• A customer who uses 20 million message operations in a billing period would be charged for 200x100k messages (plus the data transfers used to send messages in or out).

The customer/partner needs to have a valid billing address and be physically located in one of the supported countries to use the Windows Azure platform. The one exception is we will allow our existing CTP participants from non-supported to maintain their CTP accounts until their country is supported or we decide to end the CTP for their country.

At PDC, we will be releasing a cost calculator that makes it easier to predict costs based on your usage. Because predicting usage can often be problematic, we are also providing examples of common application types, including with the cost of running them on the Windows Azure platform. From now through January 31st, the Windows Azure platform services are free, making this the perfect time to develop and deploy an application to better understand its usage characteristics before we begin charging.

The Windows Azure platform Partner model has ‘Embedded Windows Azure Platform’ and ‘Built for Windows Azure Platform‘ elements. In the ‘Embedded Windows Azure Platform’ Channel model, a partner can build a service or set of offerings on the Windows Azure platform and sell these to their customers without requiring the customer to have a relationship with Microsoft. In this case, Microsoft will give partners a discount for consuming platform resources. In the ‘Built for Windows Azure Platform’ Channel model, a partner builds and sells services or offerings which are accessible via the Windows Azure platform. Customers are responsible for any Windows Azure platform usage associated from the partner’s service and pays Microsoft for that.

Hosters can offer tools and solutions for Windows Azure platform development and aggregate customer offerings. Examples are:

• Provide tools, management, and aggregation of applications that run on the Windows Azure platform;
• Support developers in deploying and managing applications deployed on Windows Azure;
• Integrate your tools and control panel so you can market to developers looking for an elastic cloud solution.

The business opportunities for Hosters are:

• Expand geographically by offering hosting solutions via the Windows Azure platform in markets where you don’t have infrastructure;
• Serve common needs that developers and ISVs need to complete their applications;
• Provide customer assurance by using the Windows Azure platform for redundancy and increased capacity;
• Quickly add new services for your customers without having to consider data center expansion as a result of the efficiency you can gain from the Windows Azure platform.

The Windows Azure Platform is a development platform for cloud-based services. Microsoft is offering a cloud services platform that could be used to build and run many types of web applications, from simple web sites to complex ERP systems. Microsoft expects many partners, including hosters, to develop finished market-ready services on top of the Windows Azure Platform. By providing and managing the underlying infrastructure, Microsoft frees the partner to develop value-added cloud services without having to wrestle with the complexities and costs of scale-out compute and storage. In providing the Windows Azure Platform and its accompanying partner pricing models, Microsoft is providing all types of Microsoft partners the means to innovate and use the platform as a springboard to success in their market.

ISVs can quickly and easily build, deploy, scale, and manage web applications and services using the Windows Azure platform. The business opportunities for ISV’s are:

• Avoid large capital expenditure in infrastructure when delivering SaaS offerings to customers;
• Be more agile by quickly scaling up and down as business needs dictate;
• Augment your existing on-premises applications using cloud services to generate recurring revenue.
• Enable reach in global markets, cost effectively

Systems Integrator can leverage the efficiency of the Windows Azure platform to connect and manage infrastructure required for your projects. The business opportunities for Systems Integrator are:

• Augment existing applications based on a comprehensive, interoperable, business class platform that works with the on-premises infrastructure your customers have today;
• Offer your customers services that leverage the agility of the Windows Azure platform to reduce the barriers associated with larger and slower deployments;
• Investigate new ways to increase your sales cycle by providing solutions with little to no IT dependency.

Custom Software Developers (CSD) can build solutions for customers that use the Windows Azure platform to simplify the infrastructure requirements for their projects. The business opportunities for CSD’s are:

• Increase your agility by quickly building, hosting and managing solutions built on the Windows Azure platform;
• Expand the reach of your software solutions to customers unable or unwilling to incur the cost of in-house deployment or investment in hardware;
• Deliver your applications in a software-as-a-service model without having to maintain your own data centers;
• Extend value to your customers by augmenting current applications with services based on the Windows Azure platform.

A host of partners have developed solutions on Windows Azure and SQL Azure. For additional information, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/evidence

Free for all partners

• Forums, solution accelerators
• Online Technical Communities (OTC) in development

Gold / Certified / MAPS / Empower

• Business Critical Phone Support

Exclusive to Certified/Gold

• 5-Pack technical phone support,
• Technical Advisory Services (TAS)

Additional Technical Support Paid

• Fixed or flexible plans in development

The Windows Azure Platform Partner Resource Guide outlines all available programs, readiness resources, and partner offers. The Guide can be accessed from either www.windowsazure.com/partners or www.azurequickstart.com.

Programs include:

• Front Runner: Created for U.S.-based Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Front Runner is a program that helps get your applications compatible with the latest Microsoft technologies. Front Runner offers direct access to technical experts from Microsoft who know the technology inside and out. From online training resources course to troubleshooting via e-mail and phone, you’ll have the support to help your application succeed.
• Green Light: Created for non-U.S.-based Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Green Light provides you with a comprehensive set of training, development, marketing, and support resources to quickly build, deploy, and promote your Azure application to customers.
• BizSpark: BizSpark is perfect for venture-funded and Web 2.0 start-ups. It will enable startups to run a cloud business for up to 3 years. Visit microsoft.com/bizspark.
• Pinpoint: Microsoft Pinpoint is a dynamic technology marketplace that helps you successfully connect with customers who need the software and professional services you offer. Showcase and sell your innovations, attract and engage customers, and get customer insights and lead notifications. Visit www.pinpoint.com/windowsazure
• METRO: Metro is a global evangelism program designed to support Azure adoption for ISVs, startups, enterprises, SIs, and agencies. Benefits include technical training and support, early access to bits, and PR/marketing opportunities. Please ask your Microsoft representative to nominate you.
• TAP: The Windows Azure Technology Adoption Program addresses the pre-release testing and validation of Windows Azure for a select handful of customers and partners. Program participants receive access to pre-release bits as well as technical training and support from the Windows Azure engineering team. Please ask your Microsoft representative to nominate you.

Resources:

• Azure Partner QuickStart site as a central hub for product, program and readiness resources, along with links to blogs and communities.
• Microsoft Learning Center which provides webcasts and other resources for MPN partners, including Drive Times, Partner Academy Lives, and on-line training courses.
• Channel 9 for direct access to technical resources and labs.
• US Virtual Lab for a self-paced hands-on experience.

Demand Generation/Marketing:

Solution Directory

• Pinpoint, Solution Finder

Thru Partner Marketing Resources

• Co-marketing for depth/managed accounts in development

Partner Sales:

Ecosystem/Community

• 200,000+ VARs and SIs to sell ISV Apps

Partner Field Resources (Depth)

• PAM, Windows Azure Incubation Heads, TPAM, PTS, SSP, LOM, PMM

Partner Field Resources (Breadth)

• PTM, CDM, PMM

Microsoft Pinpoint is a dynamic technology marketplace that helps you successfully connect with business customers who need the software and professional services you offer. Use Pinpoint’s powerful tools and resources to:

• Showcase and sell your innovations
• Attract and engage customers
• Get customer insights and lead notifications

Online Services (BPOS & CRM) are finished services where we offer partners a fee for selling the services to customers. The Windows Azure platform comprises of a cloud services operating system and developer services that partners can leverage to create either a Finished Service or a Building Block service that can be used by other partners to create a finished service. We are currently investigating other options that would support partners in a variety of business models.

It is up to the partner to ensure the legality of their finished services offering in the jurisdiction where they offer the finished service.

A content delivery network (CDN) enhances end user performance and reliability by placing copies of data, at various points in a network, so that they are distributed closer to the user. A client accesses a copy of the data near to the client, as opposed to all clients accessing the same set of central servers (called Origins), thereby causing a bottleneck near these Origin servers. Content types include web objects (e.g. JPG, CSS, JS, …), downloadable objects (media files, software, documents) and other components for Internet delivery. Windows Azure CDN supports HTTP delivery of public content stored in Windows Azure storage. The Windows Azure CDN is being released as a CTP at PDC 09.

Content owners should consider performance benefits and trade-offs of using the Content Delivery Network. Benefits include 1) Better performance and user experience for end users who are farther from the source of the content, and are using applications where many ‘internet trips’ are required to complete the loading of a WEB page, and 2) Large distributed scale to better handle instantaneous high load, say at the start an event such as a product launch. Trade-offs include higher cost for delivery, and limited ability to quickly remove content, and potential performance reduction of delivery performance for content rarely retrieved.

The Windows Azure CDN works in conjunction with Windows Azure storage to enable in-region delivery of the content. The content is stored in Windows Azure storage and can be delivered either directly from the Windows Azure store or from the Windows Azure store through the CDN.

Any public content of 10GB or less in size stored in Windows Azure storage can be retrieved through the CDN through HTTP requests. Performance improvements from the use of the CDN is optimum for popular content (requested frequently, resulting in high cache hit ratio). Secure content not supported at this time.

Through the Windows Azure Portal the content owner can register with the CDN a different domain name to be used to retrieve the content from the CDN. That different domain name must be CNAME’d to the Windows Azure CDN domain name for requests to be routed to the CDN, and that domain name must be registered with the CDN in order for the CDN to recognize and service requests routed through this domain name.

Windows Identity Foundation (formerly called code name Geneva framework) is a new extension to the Microsoft .NET Framework that helps developers build claims-aware applications that externalize user authentication from the application, improving developer productivity, enhancing application security, and enabling interoperability. Based on interoperable, standard protocols, WIF and the claims-based identity model can be used to enable single sign on, personalization, federation, strong authentication, identity delegation, and other identity capabilities in ASP.Net and WCF applications running both on-premises and in the cloud.

With Windows Identity Foundation, developers have a single programming model for handling identity in an application, regardless if that application is hosted on-premises or in Windows Azure. Productivity is enhanced since you only need to learn one model and one set of tools, and those skills translate quickly if you change hosting environment. Since the model is the same regardless of where the application is hosted, using Windows Identity Foundation will make it easier to move an application (from an identity perspective) from on-premises to Windows Azure, and vice versa.

Yes. Windows Identity Foundation can be used to build on-premises software as well as cloud services, including those running in Windows Azure.

We are announcing that the Release to Web (RTW) version of the Windows Identity Foundation is now available for download.

Active Directory Federation Services 2.0 is an extension to Active Directory that enables Active Directory to become an infrastructure service for claims-aware applications. Called a Security Token Service (STS), AD FS 2.0 enables users in Active Directory to authenticate to claims-aware applications, and acts as the authoritative source of claims (attributes) about those users – whether the information about the users is stored in Active Directory, a SQL database, or other store. Used as a federation service, AD FS 2.0 provides a single point of management for federation relationships, and using industry standard protocols like SAML 2.0 can enable single sign on for Active Directory users to applications at partner organizations or in the cloud.

ACS, WIF, and AD FS v2 can be used together to develop web services that combine the security and capability of Active Directory with the flexibility and control of custom access control rules, within a simple, closely integrated developer experience.

Access Control allows developers to manage access to RESTful web services using a cloud-based service instead of writing complex authorization code into their application. This means developers can more easily build REST services that require federation with multiple AD FS instances and/or need fine-grained authorization rules. Active Directory Federation Services 2.0 can federate with ACS, which accepts tokens from AD FS 2.0 and repackages them with new claims.

At v1, there will be community samples that demonstrate how to use WIF and Active ADFS 2.0 with Access Control. WIF will be used to acquire a SAML token from ADFS 2.0and to extract the claims from an ACS-issued token. Note that extracting claims from an Access Control-issued token will require custom extensions to WIF. The WIF and ADFS teams are currently investigating native support for this type of token in the future versions of both WIF and ADFS.

At v1, there will also be a community sample that demonstrates how to use WLID with Access Control.

The Windows Azure platform SLA’s will go into effect on February 1st, 2010.

Windows Azure has separate SLA’s for compute and storage. For compute, we guarantee that when you deploy two or more role instances in different fault and upgrade domains your Internet facing roles will have external connectivity at least 99.95% of the time. Additionally, we will monitor all of your individual role instances and guarantee that 99.9% of the time we will detect within two minutes when a role instance’s process is not running and initiate corrective. For storage, we guarantee that at least 99.9% of the time we will successfully process correctly formatted requests that we receive to add, update, read and delete data. We also guarantee that your storage accounts will have connectivity to our Internet gateway.

Windows Azure SLA Credits are calculated as a percentage of the bill for that service in the month the SLA was missed and then applied to the next month’s bill. Details are as below:

• Compute connectivity: 10% credit if we fall below 99.9%, 25% credit if we fall below 99%.
• Compute Role Instance Monitoring: 10% credit if we fall below 99.9%, 25% credit if we fall below 99%.
• Storage: 10% credit if we fall below 99.9%, 25% credit if we fall below 99%.

Uptime percentage commitments and SLA credits for Service Bus and Access Control are equivalent to those specified above in the Windows Azure SLA. Due to inherent differences between the technologies, underlying SLA definitions and terms differ for the Service Bus and Access Control services. Using the Service Bus, customers will have connectivity between a customer’s service endpoint and our Internet gateway; when our service fails to establish a connection from the gateway to a customer's service endpoint, then the service is assumed to be unavailable. Using Access Control, customers will have connectivity between the Access Control endpoints and our Internet gateway. In addition, for both Service Bus and Access Control, the service will process correctly formatted request for the handling of messages and tokens; when our service fails to process a request properly, then the service is assumed to be unavailable. SLA calculations will be based on an average over a 30-day monthly cycle, with 5-minute time intervals. Failures seen by a customer in the form of service unavailability will be counted for the purpose of availability calculations for that customer.

The Windows Azure platform offers uniform credit levels to make it easier for customers to understand their SLAs. For the Service Bus and Access Control services, SLA credits are equivalent to the Windows Azure compute and storage SLAs. Specifically:

• Service Bus: 10% credit if we fall below 99.9%, 25% credit if we fall below 99%.
• Access Control: 10% credit if we fall below 99.9%, 25% credit if we fall below 99%.

SQL Azure customers will have connectivity between the database and our Internet gateway. SQL Azure will maintain a “Monthly Availability” of 99.9% during a calendar month. “Monthly Availability Percentage” for a specific customer database is the ratio of the time the database was available to customer to the total time in a month. Time is measured in 5-minute intervals in a 30-day monthly cycle. Availability is always calculated for a full month. An interval is marked as unavailable if the customer’s attempts to connect to a database are rejected by the SQL Azure gateway.

SQL Azure Database SLA Credits are calculated as a % of the bill for that service in the month the SLA was missed and then applied to the next month’s bill. Details are as below:

• 10% credits if we fall below 99.9% monthly uptime, 25% credit if we fall below 99% monthly uptime.

Except for Compute Role Instance monitoring, where the SLA requires that the customer have at least two running role instances in order to qualify for the SLA, we do not exclude maintenance windows

Windows Azure, SQL Azure, and AppFabric are independent of our on-premises Microsoft licensing agreements. Our SLAs for the Windows Azure platform provide you a monthly uptime guarantee for those services you consume in the cloud, with SLA credits against what we have billed you in the event we fail to meet the guarantee.

No. Currently you can’t bring your existing on-premises Windows Server, SQL Server or .NET licenses to Windows Azure, SQL Azure or AppFabric.

There are currently no plans to offer Windows Azure through SPLA.

There are currently no plans to offer SQL Azure through SPLA.

Customers can build scalable and available web applications to run on Windows Azure only in Microsoft’s datacenters. Windows Server is designed and licensed for customers’ datacenters and for Microsoft’s hosting partners. Windows Azure and Windows Server are separate platforms designed to work together easily so that customers have choice about the platform that most directly addresses their business needs. Windows Azure and Windows Server share some technologies and will share some innovations bilaterally.