Bender's Blog

A few weeks ago I was able to get an advance copy of the book Azure in Action by Brian Prince and Chris Hay.

The book takes a standard, logical path through the subject, explaining cloud computing in general, understanding and working in Azure’s implementation of the cloud paradigm, how Web Roles work and sections dedicated to each type of Azure storage (Table, Blob and Queue). The flow is logical, and if you follow along you’ll be building Azure based applications in no time. The books also works well as an ad hoc reference if you already have some knowledge of how Azure works. The book covers a wealth of material, from standing up your first Web Role to an in-depth discussions of deployment, including an explanation of how patches and upgrades should be applied to your Azure application.

Azure as a platform is going to be a bit of moving target for some time. It’s always a challenge to write books/blogs/documentation for these types of technologies. As a result, the book tends to stay kinda broad on some elements that are likely to change, and avoids some that are in a heavy state of flux altogether. There are sections on SQL Azure and Windows Azure Platform, but they are not deep dives; frankly both of those parts of Azure are big enough to warrant their own books.

So in summary, if you’re new to Azure and want to quickly learn how to properly build, deploy and manage applications for the cloud, this book is for you!