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. …