Malta is on the map once again for the Global Azure Bootcamp, a one-day deep-dive training into the Microsoft Azure cloud.

From my last count, there will be 184 locations in total participating in this event around the world, from Hawaii to Japan! (Malta is bang in the middle!) And as usual, I'm again at it!

The bootcamp will be on April 25th 2015 (hey that's tomorrow! I suck with keeping my blog updated!) and will be held at the Microsoft Innovation Centre at Skyparks, Luqa (just …

Are you using Azure Websites to host your sites? Great! Then you know that whenever you deploy a website on Azure websites, you get the mysite.azurewebsites.net URL.

The sub domain is great for you to test your application, but most probably you have your own domain that is mapped to the site. However, the azurewebsites.net domain is still there and still works! Do you know that this can be a problem?

One of the rules in the SEO bible says that each page should only have one URL. Your …

A great book on the fundamentals of Azure. If you're new to Azure, this is a great start. Get it now!

The topics explored in this book include:

Getting started with Azure: Understand what cloud computing is, visit the management portals, and learn about billing.

Websites and Cloud Services: Learn about Azure Websites, from deployment to monitoring, and gain an understanding of the web and worker roles used in Azure Cloud Services.

Virtual Machines: Explore the basic …

... the world shook in terror on the 19th November 2014. 

That means two things: firstly, the importance of a public cloud platform such as Azure.

When such a huge thing gets a hiccup, a lot of people stress out. And they should. A lot of businesses nowadays depend on public cloud services (be it AWS or Azure), and each business trusts the availability of their service to these skilled engineers. It's true, Microsoft (or Amazon) do not own your availability promises. (You can check …

Maybe you've heard about HEARTBLEED or SHELLSHOCK. POODLE is the next one.

Anyone using Windows Server and IIS was lucky enough to avoid both HEARTBLEED (openssl library vulnerability - CVE-2014-0160) and SHELLSHOCK (unix bash shell vulnerability - CVE-2014-6271). However, POODLE hits everyone.

What is POODLE?

POODLE, spelled in caps to distinguish from our furry canine friends, stands for "Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption". It is a type of man-in-the-middle exploit …

You've published your latest masterpiece to Azure Web Sites. Great! How was it? Not bad!

Now, does your application output its own error messages (HTTP 500, 404 etc?) IIS will by default hide your errors with the message:

The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

If you want to output your own custom output for non-200 statuses, you need to put this in your web.config:

  <system.webServer>

    < …

Building any cloud apps lately? Great!

Documenting them? Not so...

Firstly, make sure you're using the best tools of the trade: Microsoft Visio. It's by far the easiest and most powerful tool for diagrams.

Wanna add Azure-specific icons? Yeah, I know it's difficult to find them... But here's a secret: Visio supports SVG.

What does that mean, you ask? Well, it seems that the current azure site uses SVG for the majority of icons. If you want to use a particular Azure icon, just find the …

How to migrate legacy apps to Windows Azure

I see a lot of interest by startups to start using Windows Azure to power their products. It's the perfect platform to start small and have room to scale quickly and easily. But the most important advantage that startups have, is not having to worry about legacy issues. 

A lot of companies would like to start using the cloud. By now, we know what the advantages are: scalability, resiliency, low management overhead, low service costs, etc. …

Google or Bing is indexing your public blobs on Windows Azure Blob Storage? Here is how to stop it...

The idea is to put a robots.txt file at the root of the Azure Blob Storage domain. ie: http(s)://myaccount.blob.core.windows.net/robots.txt

Follow these steps:

1. Create a new container in your storage account in question. Name it $root and allow public access to blobs. This is a special container that serves as a default container for the storage account. Any blobs in this container may …

After last year's amazing success, the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp is back in Malta, and Tech-Spark is hosting!

Those who made it last year know how this works: A full day of free in-depth training on Windows Azure, organised by local experts! This event is both for pros and newbies, starting from the basics of Windows Azure to mid-to-expert level material. You will get up-to-speed to start developing and deploying apps on Microsoft's killer cloud platform!

Browse GWAB …

"Aaah, how I miss my bed." That's the phrase that's currently coming to mind after a three-day hackaton for charity. Tech-Spark's Christmas hackaton was really fun. We met new people, made new friends, learnt stuff and team-bonded for over 42 hours. And the place (the Microsoft Innovation Center) was great too! I swear they painted the walls and ceiling with awesomesauce! Best of all, all proceeds go to charity!

What we did:

- Brainstormed ideas

- Had strong coffee

- Discussed features …

Interested in experimenting with Windows Azure for a project? I'm interested in helping!

Don't get me wrong. Tackling the cloud alone is definitely dooable. You should go for it. Like, now! Did you know that Windows Azure charges €0.09 per GB of bandwidth to EU or US? That's like a bazillion times cheaper than anywhere else on the island. Storage? Put 100GB on the cloud and you'll pay somewhere around €5.22 per month (including triple-replicate backups). Is your current data center …

Big decision!

Well, it turns out that there's a tool to give you an indication.

http://azurespeedtest.azurewebsites.net/

Here is the result from my local Maltese connection!

Here are the results in tabular format.

Remember, if you're serving media (images/video) from blob storage, this is the latency you'd expect for them to load. Pretty good in my opinion!

I'm quite an avid online shopper. This can be easily seen from the number of cardboard boxes in the trash (poor environment!). However, I get surprised when I receive a package when I did not have anything ordered. Wouldn't you?

Well, that's what happened. Although I was fearing for a box-sized mega bill of some sort (my steam purchases finally caught up with me?), I was very much pleasantly surprised to find a gift from Microsoft!

'Thank you for your participation in the Windows Azure …

It's been a while since my last post, but not because there wasn't anything new, but rather because I'm working on a prototype for something cool that just got delayed by a couple of weeks. I will definitely post info on it here once it's ready for your eyes. (Hint: I'm going to share some code with you).

In the meantime, the folks at Windows Azure have launched two new preview services that I specifically was looking for. The first is the reason the cloud exists: Auto scaling. This is the …

So, you've got your own domain. Let's say azure123.com. Wouldn't you like to have a URL shortening service just for you? How would that work? What's the cheapest way to do it?

I always forget my work webmail address. I always forget my blog URL (not true). I always forget my friend's site url. I'd like to have a URL that I always remember, and I'd like to have total control over it. I also am poor, so I'd like to avoid having to pay for a website or for a web role. 

Here is one way to do …

Just a short update on Malta's bootcamp as part of the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp that's happening at the Microsoft Innovation Center, SkyParks, on the 27th April: It's full!

Registrations have skyrocketed in the first three (3!) days of ticket availability, and now they're all fully booked! I'm very glad we received such interest on such a new product as Windows Azure. Perhaps the next one would be even bigger!

For those who registered, I'm currently compiling the content for the …

April seems to have been a busy month for the Azure team. Loads of new functionality and changes have been announced; all of them exciting (some more than others).

Let's start with the obvious. Remember when you were trying to convince your boss to 'try out' Azure. Well, prices have gone down (20-30%) for the most important service: compute. Compute prices are usually 75% of the bill for all hosting subscriptions. Hosting a VM, or web/worker roles is now cheaper. Hosting a small cloud service …