Chapter 7. Delivering PaaS – WebSites Cloud and Service Bus

In this chapter, we will be focusing on delivering the PaaS (Platform as a Service) cloud offerings of Windows Azure Pack. PaaS enables tenants and organizations to develop, run, and manage their applications on the cloud provider's platform without worrying about the infrastructure layer, such as hardware or the operating system.

In this chapter, we will be talking about two major PaaS offerings available in Windows Azure Pack, which includes WebSites and Service Bus. The WAP WebSite cloud can be used by organizations and cloud providers to deliver website hosting services to internal business lines and tenants. The WAP website cloud supports multiple programming languages, such as ASP.NET, PHP, and Node.js.

WAP websites work in a consistent manner with Azure WebSites. Tenants are responsible for their website's development and management, whereas platform responsibility lies with the cloud service provider.

Though it looks more of...

Overview and capabilities of the WebSites cloud

The WebSites cloud in Windows Azure Pack enables organizations and service providers to offer high-density web hosting services to their internal or external tenants. The WAP Websites cloud provides a platform to tenants to develop and run their websites.

WAP websites are designed to provide services at a web scale, hosting thousands of websites with flexibilities and capabilities in terms of scalability, granular control, and metering. The WebSites cloud platform is made up by combining capabilities and features of Windows server, IIS, SQL database, and many third-party and open source technologies.

WAP websites capabilities from the service provider's point of view

Windows Azure Pack websites provide a similar experience to that of Microsoft Azure's website, which is one of the largest website hosting service providers. The Websites service works on a distributed architecture that offers scalability and eliminates any single point of failure...

WAP WebSites – architecture

The WebSites cloud solution consists of multiple roles and runs on multiple servers. All servers are based on Windows Server 2012 R2 (2012 is also supported). The overall solution makes use of Windows server capabilities, such as the dynamic Windows Process Activation Service, resource throttling, IIS, and more along with SQL database and website roles. Let's dive deeper into the architectural components of WebSites cloud solution.

WebSites cloud service roles

Windows Azure Pack-based websites cloud service consist of a minimum of six server roles:

• WebSites controller: This role deploys and manages other roles. This is the first role to install, and it contains all media, setup, and configurations used for deploying and configuring other roles.

• WebSites management server: This role communicates with Windows Azure Pack management portals and APIs. It exposes a Representational State Transfer (REST) endpoint that is used by WAP to connect and communicate with Website...

Planning the WebSites cloud platform

In this topic, we will discuss about planning factors and best practices for the website's cloud platform in terms of capacity, resiliency, and more.

Planning for resiliency

Windows Azure Pack Websites cloud solution can be protected against failures by adding redundant servers at each role or layer. Adding additional server for redundancy is quite an easy and simple process.

Following are the resiliency recommendations for each role:

• WebSites roles: This role can be protected against failure by deploying additional servers for redundancy:

  • Controller servers: A maximum of two controller servers can be provisioned in a WAP website's deployment. This provides high availability at the controller layer.

  • Management and publisher: For the management and publisher role, it is recommended to have a minimum of two servers hosting this to provide resiliency. Additional servers can also be added as per scalability requirements.

  • Front end: Two front end servers can be deployed...

Preparing the installation of Windows Azure Pack WebSites cloud

Before starting the installation and configuration of WAP websites cloud, there are multiple prerequisites that need to be fulfilled. Let's have a look at them.

Preparing Windows servers

All servers designated to host websites cloud components must be running Windows Server 2012 or 2012 R2 operating system. It is recommended to patch the server with latest updates. It is advised to use a clean installation of the operating system.

Enable Windows Remote Management on all servers. Create inbound an access firewall rule for the following services for publisher and front end servers:

• File and printer sharing (SMB-In)

• Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI-In)

On all the server's user account control must be disabled for remote operations. This can be performed by adding the following registry key. Server must be restarted post adding the following registry key:

reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\system /v...

Installing and configuring the WebSite cloud

Microsoft Web Platform Installer is used to download and install websites cloud components. See Chapter 3, Installing and Configuring Windows Azure Pack to know more on the Web Platform Installer.

Before starting installation, verify that all the design decisions and planning is made and prerequisites are completed.

First, the controller server is installed, and later, it is used to install and configure other roles. The installation of the controller server also installs one management console for Windows Azure Pack websites, which can be used to install and configure other server roles in conjunction with the WAP service management portal.

Installing and configuring controller and management servers

The following steps outline the installation and configuration process for the controller and management servers:

1. Log into the server designated for the WebSites controller.

2. Run the Microsoft Web PI.

3. Search for Windows Azure Pack WebSites.

4. Select Windows...

Customizing the WebSite cloud source control and the web gallery feed settings

The source control and the WebApp gallery feed settings are global to the WAP site cloud. All websites and websites cloud farms can take advantage of source control mechanisms configured at the WAP level. The same goes for the Web App gallery feed as well.

Configuring source control

Windows Azure Pack supports multiple repositories for the source control of websites. These can be utilized for tenants to affect the content management and publishing of their websites.

This setting is configured on the WebSite cloud globally.

Service providers need to register on a respective source control website first to allow tenants to use these. The following source control repositories are supported:

• Bitbucket

• GitHub

• CodePlex

• Dropbox

To configure source control settings, we need to follow these steps:

1. Log into the Windows Azure Pack Management portal for administrators.

2. Browse the web sites clouds workspace.

3. Click on SOURCE CONTROL.

4. Enter...

WebSites cloud – management operations

The Windows Azure Pack management portal offers a self-service experience not only for tenant users but also for cloud administrators. The WAP management portal can be used to perform monitoring and management operations on a websites cloud farm such as the following:

• Monitoring the utilization and availability status of the cloud farm and the tenants' websites

• Provisioning, monitoring, and starting or stopping websites roles

• Customizing WebSites settings such as SSL and DNS records

• Configuring and managing block lists, IP SSL, and platform credentials

The utilization dashboard

The DASHBOARD page of the WebSites cloud provides graphs for the CPU and memory utilization of a complete website cloud farm. Along with utilization, event logs for website cloud can also be viewed using the DASHBOARD page.

Roles – configuration and management

The ROLES page enables administrators to perform the following operations:

• Provision and remove any websites server roles

• Reboot...

Authoring WebSite cloud plans

Windows Azure Pack plans for websites allows administrators to offer websites cloud services to tenants with granular control on services and resources, such as CPU or memory. Multiple plans can be created from a single cloud farm with different limits and capabilities. See Chapter 5, Assigning Cloud Services – Plans, Add-Ons, Tenant Accounts, and Subscriptions to know more about Windows Azure Pack plans.

Websites cloud plans overview and service models

WAP plans for websites are configured to provide three service models:

• Intro

• Basic

• Reserved

For each plan, 17 quota settings can be configured, which include QOS such as subscription CPU time, maximum memory working set, and more.

• The Intro mode: This is also known as the free mode. It provides a shared platform for hosting a tenant's websites. This is an entry level offering and should be used for test and development purposes. A tenant website in the Intro mode can be upgraded to basic and reserved as per requirement...

WebSites cloud – a tenant's experience

Using the tenant portal, tenants can provision and manage their websites on the Windows Azure pack Websites cloud in a self-service and automated manner. In this topic, we will walk through the tenant's experience for WAP websites provisioning and management operations.

Creating Websites – Quick Create and the Web App Gallery

The following steps outline the process followed by tenants to provision websites:

1. Log into the Windows Azure Pack tenant portal.

2. Subscribe to the websites plans using the configured invite code.

3. The WEB SITES workspace will not be visible in the management portal.

   

4. Click on CREATE A WEB SITE to start; select QUICK CREATE or FROM GALLERY as per choices and requirements. Note that the preconfigured DNS suffix by cloud provider is already added to the URL.

   

5. Websites will be created in a moment and will be available for access and further development.

   

6. Clicking on FROM GALLERY will display the Web App Gallery to choose preconfigured website...

Windows Azure Pack Service Bus

Windows Azure Pack Service Bus provides a reliable messaging service, which can be used by a tenant's applications to pass information or messages. This service is consistent to Microsoft's public cloud offering Azure Service Bus. Applications can be hosted anywhere; that is, they can be hosted on the provider's cloud, inside the tenant's datacenter, or anywhere else.

Windows Azure Pack Service Bus can be leveraged by the organization's internal developers for passing messages between applications in an efficient manner. This can be offered as a service by service providers to external tenants enabling cloud-driven applications' messaging.

Service Bus in Windows Azure Pack provides two solutions:

• Service Bus queues

• Service Bus topics

Understanding Service Bus queues

Service Bus queues offer load leveling by adding a Service Bus namespace in between both applications, which allows message receivers to receive messages as per their own pace and resource availabilities...

Summary

In this chapter, we covered two major PaaS cloud offerings that are WebSites and Service Bus. You learned about planning, deployment, and tenant experience for these services.

In the next chapter, we move ahead and learn about the planning and deployment of another cloud offering of Windows Azure Pack that is DBaaS.