Emmanuel's Screencasts

Windows Azure CloudDrive - Creating a VHD and Uploading it to Azure Storage (Part 1 of 2, 30 minutes)

Here’s what is covered in the video:

• 00:00 - Introduction / Overview (see notes here).
  • Development Tip: access files that are normally in CloudDrive - when ASP.NET web site is running in IIS (not in the cloud)

Creating the VHD Manually

Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2

• 09:25 - Windows 7 > Control Panel > Disk Management
• 10:05 - Disk Management > Create VHD
  • Folder: C:\Data\Personal\projects\MyVHDDrive\MyVHDDrive\data
    • File: myvhddrive.vhd
    • Size: 16 MB (fixed size)
  • You can also create a VHD through the CloudDrive APIs.

• 11:38 - Initialize Disk > Format > NTFS > Assign drive letter of "V"
  • NTFS has large overhead for small drives: 16 MB drive only has 3.9 MB of free space.

• 13:19 - creating a folder and files in the VHD
  • Folder: "datafolder"
    • Files "textfile1.txt" and "textfile2.txt"
    • Add some content to the text files using Notepad.

• 14:00 - Disk Management > Detach VHD

Uploading the VHD to a Page Blob in Azure Storage
Console Application created using Visual Studio 2010 RC

• 15:09 - Visual Studio 2010 RC test project - console application called "MyVHDDrive".
• 15:40 - No reference to "C:\Program Files\Windows Azure SDK\v1.1\ref\Microsoft.WindowsAzure.CloudDrive.dll"
  • This console app does not run in the Azure fabric.
• 16:00 - Azure Storage parameters in app.config

<add key="AzureStorageAccount" value="YOURstorage"/> 
<add key="AzureStorageKey" value="YOURKEY"/> 
<add key="BlobStorageEndpoint" value="http://YOURstorage.blob.core.windows.net/"/> 
<add key="QueueStorageEndpoint" value="http://YOURstorage.queue.core.windows.net/"/> 
<add key="TableStorageEndpoint" value="http://YOURstorage.table.core.windows.net/"/> 
<add key="BlobContainer" value="vhddrives"/>

• 17:08 - Folder and File name of VHD

<!-- The location where the VHD file is located --> 
<add key="VHDDriveName" value="myvhddrive.vhd"/> 
<!-- The name of the VHD drive to deploy to Azure Storage -->
<add key="VHDDriveNamePageBlob" value="myvhddrive.vhd"/> 

• 18:23 - Imports

Imports System.Xml 
Imports System.Xml.Linq 
Imports System.Configuration 
Imports System.IO 
Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions 
Imports System.Collections.Generic 
Imports Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO 
Imports Microsoft.WindowsAzure 
Imports Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics 
Imports Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics.Management 
Imports Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient 
Imports Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime

• 18:50 - VB.Net Module: Static Shared classes - much simpler code.
• 19:23 - Running and testing that settings are loaded properly.
• 20:26 - Running and doing some data validation on the input settings
• 21:31 - Checking the code that uploads the VHD to the Page Blob in Azure Storage

oStorageCredentialsAccountAndKey = New StorageCredentialsAccountAndKey(sAzureStorageAccount, sAzureStorageKey)
oCloudStorageAccount = New CloudStorageAccount(oStorageCredentialsAccountAndKey, _ 
                           uriBlobStorageEndpoint, uriQueueStorageEndpoint, uriTableStorageEndpoint)

oCloudBlobClient = oCloudStorageAccount.CreateCloudBlobClient()
oCloudBlobContainer = oCloudBlobClient.GetContainerReference(sBlobContainer)
oCloudBlobContainer.CreateIfNotExist()

oCloudPageBlob = oCloudBlobContainer.GetPageBlobReference(sVHDDriveNamePageBlob)
sVHDUri = oCloudPageBlob.Uri.ToString

oFileStream = IO.File.OpenRead(sVHDDriveNameFull)
[…]

• 24:15 - Running and debugging the code - placing breakpoints and checking variable values
  • Showing the URI of the Page Blob that hosts the VHD file.
  • Using Cloud Storage Studio to download a VHD from an Azure Storage Page Blob and then mounting it.

• 27:06 - Windows Azure Local Development Fabric - simulation of Page Blob - where to copy your files to simulate the VHD in local storage
  • The directory is normally: C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\dftmp\wadd\devstoreaccount1\[CONTAINER]\[DRIVE.VHD]\[FOLDER]
  • If you ran into the path max length issue, look at _CSRUN_STATE_DIRECTORY: C:\t\wadd\devstoreaccount1\[CONTAINER]\[DRIVE.VHD]\[FOLDER]

• 29:30 - Conclusion