I HATE that Microsoft changes the names of parts of their software from one edition to the next. Example. SQL Server 2000 has Data Transformation Services. SQL Server 2005 has SQL Server Integration Services which IS THE SAME THING, but because they changed the name (and because some of my colleagues involved are morons) we got SQL Server WITHOUT SSIS which means that our stuff that used DTS NO LONGER WORKS.
AAARRGH!
Fulfilment Consideration Access Presentations has encountered an error and will terminate (translation: Bill Gates must die!)
All About Microsoft
Mary-Jo FoleyMicrosoft delivers beta of 'Xdrive' tool for moving Windows apps to the Azure cloud
Summary
Microsoft is making available to testers a beta of Windows Azure Drive (formerly known as XDrive), which will allow them to create automatic backups of Windows applications that they may want to move to the Azure cloud.
Topics
Blogger Info
Mary-Jo Foley
Biography
Mary-Jo Foley
Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 20 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for the past 10 years. In the late 1990s, she penned the award-winning "At The Evil Empire" column for ZDNet, and more recently the Microsoft Watch blog for Ziff Davis.
Got a tip? Send her an email with your rants, rumors, tips and tattles. Confidentiality guaranteed.
Microsoft is making available to testers a beta of Windows Azure Drive (formerly known as XDrive), which will allow them to create automatic backups of Windows applications that they may want to move to the Azure cloud.
Microsoft officials said in November 2009 at the Professional Developers Conference PDC) that they expected to turn on XDrive in January 2010. That beta went live this week.
In a February 2 blog post to the Windows Azure Team Blog, Director/Architect of Windows Azure Storage Brad Calder explained how the new Windows Azure Drive capability will work. From his overview:
“Customers have told us that they want to take their already running Windows applications and run them in the cloud using the standard Windows NTFS APIs (application programming interfaces), and make sure that the data is durable. With Windows Azure Drive, your Windows Azure applications running in the cloud can use existing NTFS APIs to access a durable drive. This can significantly ease the migration of existing Windows applications to the cloud, enabling customers a more seamless migration experience while simultaneously reducing the amount of time it takes to move their applications from your own Windows environment to a Windows Azure environment.”
The subsequently created Windows Azure application can read from or write to a drive letter representing a durable NTFS volume for storing and accessing data. That drive is a Windows Azure Page Blob containing an NTFS-formatted Virtual Hard Drive (VHD), he said.
To test the new capability, developers need the just-released February 2010 of the Windows Azure software development kit, which includes the Windows Azure Drive APIs. They’ll also need Windows Azure Guest OS 1.1. Microsoft is going to charge testers during the beta, according to Calder’s post. He said customers will be billed “only for the storage space used by the Page Blob and the read/write transactions to the Page Blob.” They’ll be charged at “the standard Windows Azure usage rates,” and there won’t be a separate line item on their bills, he said.
There’s a Microsoft white paper that provides a broader overview of Windows Azure Drive and Microsoft’s overall storage strategy for Windows Azure.
There’s no word in Calder’s post as to when Microsoft expects to release the final version of Windows Azure Drive. I’ve asked to see whether Microsoft officials will say. Update: They are saying they “don’t have any specific details to share” as to when Windows Azure Drive will go final, a spokesperson said.
Here are some of the other “coming soon” Azure deliverables that Microsoft officials touted at the November 2009 PDC:
Microsoft announced general availability of Azure on February 1, as is charging customers, as of February 2, for using its cloud infrastructure/service.
Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 25 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).
Disclosure
Mary-Jo Foley
Freelance journalist/blogger Mary Jo Foley has nothing to disclose. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). I do not own Microsoft stock or stock in any of its partners or competitors. I have no business ventures that are sponsored by/funded by Microsoft or any of its partners or competitors. I have not accepted any consulting funds from Microsoft, any of its partners or its competitors for any studies/projects.
Biography
Mary-Jo Foley
Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 20 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for the past 10 years. In the late 1990s, she penned the award-winning "At The Evil Empire" column for ZDNet, and more recently the Microsoft Watch blog for Ziff Davis.
Got a tip? Send her an email with your rants, rumors, tips and tattles. Confidentiality guaranteed.
More from “All About Microsoft”
Related Discussions on TechRepublic
Did you know you can take part in these discussions with your ZDNet membership?Talkback Most Recent of 27 Talkback(s)
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Robert Carnegie 200902/02/2010 06:52 AM -
To keep MJ employed?
By the by, it isn't Gates anymore.
ericesque02/02/2010 07:18 AM -
That's what marketing executives are paid to do.
Vista service pack #?; Oh no no let's call it...
Windows 7!? Yeh. Yeh. That's right.
D.T.Schmitz02/02/2010 07:19 AM -
go away
You know if you go away - no one will miss you!
Djblois02/02/2010 07:47 AM -
I agree
to begin with windoze vista was windoze XP Service pack #....where the service pack made it worse than the original.
Linux Geek02/02/2010 08:29 AM -
Djblois02/02/2010 08:52 AM
-
They're classmates actually of Troll University...
with top honors for stupidity...
transposeIT02/02/2010 07:18 PM -
Ctrl-S, you two
Worse than spam. You contribute zero bits of information and make Linux enthusiasts look bad.
Earthling202/02/2010 10:05 AM -
transposeIT02/02/2010 07:13 PM
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this is just a lame GDrive atempt
Google was first to deliver the real GDrive.
M$ just made a bloated knock off that does nothing extra and costs arm and leg.Linux Geek02/02/2010 08:32 AM -
Sorry but you are wrong
First off the Gdrive is just an ftp server that is it - many companies have had ftp servers for years now, including Microsoft. So in this case Google is late to the party. Second Azure allows application deployment not just file sharing - something the late to the game G-drive cannot do.Djblois02/02/2010 08:51 AM -
SkyDrive?
SkyDrive ring a bell to you? Yeah much better then Gdrive by far. 25GB all mine for the cloud and free.
OhTheHumanity02/02/2010 11:03 AM -
it is inferior to Gdrive
because the file size is capped and the disk size is capped too.
GDrive is unlimited and it was the first game in town.Linux Geek02/02/2010 11:41 AM -
Huh?
Azure is a cloud services platform for the creating of online applications.
Gdrive is remote storage.
It's like comparing a SAMBA share to .NET - it doesn't even make sense.
For someone who thinks they're a geek, you don't seem to know a whole lot about technology.
crazydanr@...(Edited: 02/02/2010 11:53 AM) -
transposeIT02/02/2010 07:11 PM
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