I have a question about whether cloud vendors have an inter-operable mechanism. For example, I am developing a WCF service and hosting in Azure successfully. After a pro-long time using Azure, can I use the same code for deploying it in AWS? Will it be possible? Does the API of both matches the same for deploying? If not, what are all the extra care needed for hosting the same service when switching over other Cloud Vendors like Salesforce.com, OpenStack, etc.,
In general, you can't just take what you develop for one Cloud platform and put it on another: they have different functionality sets and expose different APIs. However, the more low-level you make your code, the more likely it is that you'll find another vendor with a very similar API, since virtualizing infrastructure is simpler (and closer to standardized) than virtualizing a CMS application.
If you're using just IaaS, you can probably port fairly rapidly but you have to do more work to make your application. If you're using PaaS (or SaaS!) then you're more locked-in but you get more support for developing rapidly: it's that support platform which is both the value-add and the lock-in, and you won't get one without the other.
If you're using an Azure web role for hosting your WCF service then from deployment point of view you will not have many problems with AWS. You'll simply use facilities offered by AWS SDK for .NET (aka Publish to AWS CloudFormation). For sure you'll have to change the logging part if you've used Azure Diagnostic and alla Azure services with related AWS services. We did this multiple times in the last year and it works.
For worker role it's not so simple because in Azure they are easily deployed like web role, but in AWS you haven't direct deployment from Visual Studio so you have to do some manual work using Windows Services or something else
Related
I'm new to web development and just built my first website with .Net Core. It's primarily HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with a little C# for a contact form.
Without recommending any service providers (question will be taken down), how do I go about deploying the website? The more details the better as I have no idea what I'm doing haha.
Edit: I am definitely going to go with a service provider, however the business I am building the website for doesn't have a large budget so I want to find the best provider at the lowest cost.
Daniel,
As you suspect, this is a bit of a loaded question as there are so many approaches. One approach is to use App Services within Microsoft Azure. You can create a free trial Azure account to start that includes a 200.00 credit, which is more than enough to do all of this for free. Then, using the Azure Management Portal, create an App Service (also free) on an App Service Plan in a region that makes sense for you (i.e. US West). Once you do that, you can download what is called a Publish Profile from within the App Service's Management Portal in Azure.
If you're using Visual Studio, for example, you can then right click your project and "Publish" it (deploy to the cloud, or the App Service you just created). One option in that process is to import an Azure Publish Profile, which you can do with the one you just downloaded. This makes it really simple. The Publish Profile is really just connection information to your Azure App Service (open it in Notepad to see). It will chug for a bit and then publish and load the app for you. You can also get to the hosted version of your app by clicking the Url of the app in the App Service management portal on the main page.
This may be oversimplifying what you need to do, but this is a valid direction to take. AWS and others have similar approaches.
Again, tons of ways to do this, but this is a free approach. :-) I don't consider Azure a Service Provider in the sense that you asked us not to. Instead, I wanted to outline one turn-key approach with specific details on how to get there.
You can find specific steps in a lot of places, such as this link:
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/deploying-your-web-app-using-azure-app-service/
DanielG's answer is useful, but you mentioned you don't want use any services from service provider.
Usually, there are only three ways to deploy the program,
first one is the app service provided by the service provider mentioned by DanielG,
**Benefits of using service provider products:**
1. Very friendly to newbies, follow the documentation to deploy the application in a few minutes.
2. It offers a very stable, scalable service that monitors the health of our website.
3. We can get their technical support.
**Shortcoming**
It is a paid service, and although Azure's service has a free quota, it will run out.
**Suggestion**
It is recommended that websites that are officially launched use the services of service providers.
second one is to use fixed IP for access (it seems that fixed iPv4 IP is not provided in network operations),
**Benefits of using fixed IP:**
If there is a fixed IP address, or if the carrier supports iPv6, we can deploy our website, and the public network can access it. And if you have domain, it also can support https.
**Shortcoming**
1. There are cybersecurity risks and are vulnerable to attack.
2. Without perfect website health monitoring, all problems need to be checked by yourself, and it is very troublesome to achieve elastic expansion.
**Suggestion**
It is generally not recommended because there is no fixed IP under normal circumstances. Broadband operators used to offer it, but now it doesn't.
If you are interested, you can try ipv6 to test.
the last one is to use tools such as ngrok or frp for intranet penetration.
**Benefits of using intranet penetration:**
Free intranet penetration services such as ngrok, the URL generated by each run is not fixed, and there are some limitations, such as a new URL will be generated after a certain period of time, which is enough for testing.
Of course you can purchase the service of this tool, which provides fixed URLs and supports https.
**Shortcoming (same as the second one)**
**Suggestion**
The functional implementation is the same as the second suggestion, and the physical devices used by the website are all their own. The intranet penetration tool (ngrok, or frp) solves the problem of not having a fixed IP, providing a URL that you can access.
There are few users and the demand for web services is not high, so it is recommended that individual users or small business users use ngrok and frp in this scenario. Generally suitable for OA use in small businesses.
We're planning to develop a web based Healthcare Practice Management System. Due to HIPAA we're requested to deploy the app in our own premises. Our company is relatively small currently we have only software engineers and no devops engineers but still we want to develop the application to support horizontal scaling(adding more servers).
Planned to use:
Python3 (Django)
PostgreSQL
I'm looking for something like AppScale but with the freedom of choosing our own runtime, database and frameworks.
In other words from the software engineer's perspective:
Should provide an easy way to deploy django application
Should have web based dashboard to monitor and control(like AppScale)
Should make load balancing simple (app and database)
AppScale implements the Google App Engine APIs which, IMHO, make it super easy to develop web apps quickly and efficiently.
On top of that, you get auto-scaling, load balancing, and the ability to deploy on-premises and plug in any third-party library you need.
AppScale already comes with a dashboard and will soon be launching a new management service for your AppScale deployment(s).
If you're not particularly hung up on Python3 and PostgreSQL, all of the above seem to cover your requirements.
It's worth noting that opting for the GAE model means you opt for NoSQL and, so, postgres is probably not the best option.
Disclaimer: I'm part of the AppScale team and we're already helping companies develop and deliver their apps in the HIPAA compliance realm.
I chose Kubernetes which is a container orchestration technology specifically designed for Docker and also found that scaling is not just the responsibility of platform that the app is deployed on but also its depends on how the app is designed and coded. For that The Twelve-Factor App methodology is really helpful.
But I can't deploy database on Kubernetes because its not recommended by Kelsey Hightower(author of Kubernetes Up and Running) in his talk. So, for now I chose to deploy my database on a VM.
I realize that we cannot directly access SQL Server database from a UWP app, and have to use a WCF service as a mediator for this. (Which is totally stupid, since even competitors like MySQL provides API for Microsoft's runtime, while Microsoft's own RDBMS does not!)
I don't have any experience with WCF, but after going through some tutorials, I believe I can make a WCF service to communicate with my SQL Server (although I do not like making my simple application use a 3-tier architecture, which shouldn't be imposed on me). Anyways, I do not want to host this WCF service on my website, since I'm making this only for this UWP app. Is there a way I can bundle/pack this WCF service along with UWP app itself, such that service runs on client machine only when thhe start my app, and stops later when app is closed/suspended/minized.
The UWP app I'm developing, also have a WPF version and a web version (in ASP.NET), all of which were connected to MySQL database till now, and it worked flawless. Recently I decided to shift to SQL Server since I'm using Microsoft technologies for all my softwares and thought SQL Server will have better integration and support. But now I find it rather opposite, and thinking to switch back to MySQL database.
You can not bundle a WCF service (or REST api) with your Universal Windows app. UWP apps run in a sandbox environment on a different .NET runtime than your WCF service. You could run the WCF service in IIS, or even better create a self-hosted ASP.NET WebAPI project (so no need for IIS) to access your database. But this service will have to be installed separately from the app.
Note that because UWP apps run in a sandbox, some in-app databases like SQLite are inside this sandbox and can not be accessed by your other apps (WPF, website) by default (there are some hacks to bypass this).
So I think your best bet is to stick with MySQL and use the MySQL connector.
i'm about to decide on technology choices for an agent based application used in the transportaion systems domain.
basically there will be a central system hosting the backend, and multiple agents located across town (installed on desktops) that communicate with devices/kiosks collecting data and then transmitting them back to the central server. the central server could also be hosted on the cloud.
following are important
securing the data and communications between the device and the agent
and the agent and central server.
agents should be easily installable with little or no configuration.
near 100% uptime and availability
Does WCF fit the bill here?
if so what binding types should i go for? netTCP or wsHttp with SSL/HTTPS?
WCF is definitely a fit choice for this kind of scenario. For your bindings, the actual question is what technology you are going to use. Do you want to make the agents run in a non .NET environment like Java, then you should chose for wsHttpBinding. This binding communicates through SOAP and is very interoperable.
If you chose to use .NET agents, you might as well use netTcpBinding because they use the same WCF frameworks. It also supports binary encoding. If you really need to make a choice, take a look at the MSDN Documentation.
For your agents you could use a simple console application that runs in the background as a Windows service. WIX can help you with that (install an application as windows service), but thats all I know. WIX can also help you with basic installing and configure everything for you but it has a high learning curve so you might need to invest time in it.
I am in the process of integrating our custom web app with QuickBooks Enterprise 9. My thought is that I could use QuickBooks as my "database" of sorts. When a person creates an invoice, the invoice is actually stored only in QuickBooks. When a person views a list of invoices, they are actually viewing a list of QuickBooks invoices. I want to make sure the data is stored in only one location.
I realize that I could use the QB Web Connector, but the problem with that is I wouldn't have control over when the requests to QB actually get processed (That job is up to the Web Connector).
So I have my web UI to act as the QuickBooks "face," but I don't have any good way to get to and from the QuickBooks file located on an internal server. What I was thinking was that I could create a WCF web service and install it on the QuickBooks server. The web service could then be my integration point. My custom web app could then consume the web service and, viola, I have access to my QuickBooks files.
My question is this: Can a WCF app connect and run QuickBooks? If not, could i create a Windows service to act as my point of integration? If so, can my custom web app "consume" a windows service?
I'll start by warning you that QuickBooks probably isn't your best choice for a reliable back-end database accessible from a remote website. In fact... it's probably a really, really bad choice.
You should have your own application database, and then if you need to also exchange data with QuickBooks, do that outside of the normal lifecycle of your app, as a separate sync process.
QuickBooks generally isn't reliable enough for always-online type of applications due to a number of reasons:
Flaky SDK connections
Updates and single-user mode will
lock you out of accessing QuickBooks
Difficulty in establishing SDK connections from non-GUI processes (Windows Services and IIS processes)
With that said...
Yes, you could create a WCF web service, host it on the QuickBooks machine, and make your WCF web service relay messages to/from QuickBooks.
Yes, you could also create a Windows Service that does the same sort of thing.
Do NOT implement it as a Windows service, and do NOT implement it within IIS - instead implement it as a GUI app that runs alongside QuickBooks.
If you try to implement things as a Windows service or within IIS, the QuickBooks SDK requires you have a GUI available (it users a GUI COM message pump for events dispatching or something like that...) to process requests, so you'll probably need to use something like QBXMLRP2e.exe to straddle the process boundary between QuickBooks and your non-GUI Windows service/IIS. My experience has been that it's a gigantic pain in the butt, and requires mucking with DCOM permissions as well.
I have an example and some documentation on my QuickBooks integration wiki.
The IDN Forums are a good place to ask questions.
My recommendation to you would be to either:
Use the Web Connector and QuickBooks
and give up hope of keeping all of your data in one place. Cache the data in a real database, and update it by querying QuickBooks periodically. I'm almost done building a solution to do exactly this right now, and it works fantastic.
OR
Use a different account system. NetSuite is pretty nice. I'm not sure what else is out there, but if I were you I'd look for something SQL-based or with a strong SOAP/REST API.