Category: .NET Bits

Devops Invades with PaaS & CloudFoundry

I have jumped head first into CloudFoundry over the last few weeks. In doing so I’ve started working with AppFog, IronFoundry, VMware and other devops tools.  There are several avenues I’m taking to get more familiar with CloudFoundry based PaaS technology. Here’s a short review:

Writing

I started writing a series which is being published by New Relic around “Removing the Operating System Barrier with Platform as a Service“.  Part 1 is live NOW – so go give it a read!  🙂

Working

Currently I’ve been working up some Enterprise Prototypes using the IronFoundry Technology. The idea is to provide a seamless deployment option for Enterprises that may have a very mixed environment of public and private computing options, virtual and non-virtualized environments, and any array of other capabilities. I’ve also been toying around with Windows 2008 Server Core, which I’ll have more about shortly.

Public Cloud AppFog

AppFog provides a public facing PaaS supporting PHP, Ruby on Rails, Java, MongoDB and a lot of other packages. They’re currently in beta right now, which I was fortunate enough to snag access to, but I’m sure the covers will come off soon enough! The underlying technology is built on CloudFoundry, providing a robust, scalable, and capable infrastructure connection to provide PaaS on.

In addition to AppFog there is the CloudFoundry.com offering, which I’ve tested out a little bit, but mostly focused on AppFog and on building out…

Private Cloud Capabilities w/ Public Cloud Style Infrastructure

I’ve built out some images to test out how CloudFoundry and IronFoundry works. I did pull down the provided virtual machines but I’m also building out my own to understand it better. The Ruby + C# that I’ve seen from the VMware crew & Tier 3 team has been great so far (I always dig reading some solid code).

That’s it for this short review, more to come, and let me know what you think of my entry “Removing the Operating System Barrier with Platform as a Service” over on New Relic’s Blog.

South Sound .NET Users Group + AWS, Visual Studio, Toolkits, and Explosions!

If you live in or around the south sound region near Olympia, would like to hear about the AWS Toolkit and SDK for Visual Studio, come and check out the South Sound .NET Users Group on at Olympia Center, 222 Columbia NW, Olympia, Washington.  The meeting will be on January 12th at 7:00pm.

Slides & Links to Code are already available!

Overview:  During this presentation I will provide an overview of what is needed to get started using Visual Studio 2010 with the AWS Toolkit & SDK. We’ll also cover the basic design ideas behind the do’s and don’ts of cloud architecture and development. There will be some hands on coding (if you’d like to bring a laptop to follow along) and we will deploy code (pending a wireless/cat5 connection) into AWS Cloud Services & get EC2 instances up and running live!

Why Clean Code Seriously Matters!

The first example is some working code, that determines if a date value is a weekend day and returns true or false based on that.

[sourcecode language=”csharp”]
bool firstSecondNulls = false;
var dayOfWeek = (DateTime) zeros.ElementAtOrDefault(i).BalanceDate;
if (dayOfWeek.DayOfWeek == DayOfWeek.Sunday || dayOfWeek.DayOfWeek == DayOfWeek.Saturday)
firstSecondNulls = true;
return firstSecondNulls;
[/sourcecode]

This second example also provides the same result, except in a more readable, cleaner, and more efficient way. Matter of fact, I’d say in some circumstances it is exponentially more efficient! Do you see why?

[sourcecode language=”csharp”]
var dayOfWeek = (DateTime) zeros.ElementAtOrDefault(i).BalanceDate;
return dayOfWeek.DayOfWeek == DayOfWeek.Sunday || dayOfWeek.DayOfWeek == DayOfWeek.Saturday;
[/sourcecode]

This is an insanely simple example. But just imagine some of the nightmarish methods and functions, with hundreds of lines of code. Keep in mind, that those nightmares are minimal compared to the Enterprise Scale 1000+ plus line methods! Yes, those exist and they are beyond nightmares but holocausts of thought and design!

So the next time you think “meh, I’ll refactor it later.” just take that extra minute or two and do it now! The pay off, you know full well when you think about it, is massive in the end. Cheers!

First Looks @ AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio 2010

I’ll be presenting on the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio 2010 in the very near future (Check out the SAWSUG Meetup on October 12th, that’s this Wednesday). I’ll be covering a number of things about the new AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio. My slides are available below (with links to the Google Docs and Slideshare Versions).

Direct link to Google Docs Presentation or the SlideShare Presentation.

The code for the presentation is available on Github under AWS-Toolkit-Samples. Beware, this code will be changing over time, the core will stay the same though.

ALT.NET Portland

There is an upcoming ALT.NET Portland Meetup happening at e-Discovery in downtown Portland. The meetup is happening on the 13th of October. There are several ideas behind this meetup, but I’m going to lay out my personal reasons here.

I’m working diligently to distribute my skills in multiple development stacks. I use Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, node.js, EngineYard, Heroku, and other platforms aside from my current “getting paid” technology stack of ASP.NET MVC & associated tech. The reason is simple; .NET slowly but steadily appears to be dying a slow death everywhere except the Enterprise. Rails, Ruby, node.js, and JavaScript are the primary skills of more than 95% of startups. I’m determined to not get stuck holding the “Delphi” card. I like the bleeding edge of tech, the excitement behind the efforts to keep things moving forward. ALT.NET, has always represented that. In Seattle and Portland that effort seems to be faltering, even losing steam in some regards. I want to help change that. No matter how much I dive into Ruby on Rails and the other tech stacks, I doubt I’ll ever not be working with .NET in some way, form, or manner. So I’d like to work on keeping that enthusiasm going in addition to my other platforms that I work with.

…and thus, ALT.NET Portland Meetup on the 13th. Come have a conversation, a discussion, and maybe even a beer or three afterwards.

…and if you’re in Seattle, don’t forget we meetup every month on Saturday, which for some is a problem. If it is, check out Beer && Code or one of the other great meetups where technologies mix and coexist.

Cheers, and hope to see you at one of these great meetups sometime in the future.