New Windows Azure Auto scaling & Monitoring
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 process that, based on load, your service can grow or shrink automatically (within specified parameters). If your service is suddenly featured on a heavy traffic site (digg? reddit? slashdot?) or goes viral, your service can take it. The number of instances can organically grow with your demand, and shrink back when it's low again. Previously, auto scaling was only possible through third parties like AzureWatch (even though AWS has it!)
Not only is your service capable of handling that traffic spike (while you're sleeping), but it can also cost you less. Far less actually. Considering that some services require, say, 4 VM instances running for mid-day peaks, it is very usual that 2 VM instances would be enough to take the night load. That will shave off potentially 50% off your bill!
Apparently, this new capability works with cloud services (we saw this one coming) and websites, but also VMs. For virtual machines, VMs on an availability set are turned on or off depending on load. That's quite nifty. Load can be defined as CPU usage, or (more interestingly) Windows Azure storage queues length. The latter can be quite cool (and granular!).
Learn more on Windows Azure scaling at http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/services/cloud-services/how-to-scale-a-cloud-service/
The second preview feature being launched as we speak is the ability to monitor your services within Windows Azure itself. With Azure monitoring, you can add metrics (cpu, network io, memory usage etc) and then attach notifications and tresholds for each. It builds on top endpoint monitoring that had been launched some months ago, but extends it greatly. Strangely, the MSDN blog post related to this has been deleted and I can't find the feature any where on my portal. Weird.
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