While with the latter Hyper-V is gaining significant market advantage against the VMware vSphere it is even more important that Windows Azure is becoming a true open cloud computing platform, especially by fully supporting Java and Oracle developers (in addition to existing .NET and various web developers), and Oracle cloud offerings are also vastly extended, especially in the crucially important “pay-per-use” space as the cloud offerings of the Oracle software so far have been only:
- Oracle [Public] Cloud (Larry Ellison’s Oracle Cloud Announcement Highlights [Oracle YouTube channel, July 6, 2012] for when it was finally delivered and TechCast Live Introducing Oracle Public Cloud [Oracle YouTube channel, Dec 9, 2011] when it was pre-announced) which has application solutions in the cloud as well
- Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for Oracle available with “pay-per-use” (officially named “license included” by AWS, earlier named “on-demand hourly”) licensing since Q2 2011 (Amazon RDS for Microsoft SQL Server came a year later), as well as Oracle Fusion Middleware (which includes the GlassFish Java application server and the WebLogic web application server), and Oracle Enterprise Manager licensed in the AWS Cloud
The essence according to Java and other Oracle software heads to the Microsoft cloud [Ars Technica, June 24, 2013]
Microsoft and Oracle may compete head to head in many ways within the database realm, but today the two companies performed the most sweeping cross-join ever as executives from the two companies announced a broad partnership around cloud computing. In a conference call this afternoon, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Oracle President Mark Hurd discussed a partnership between the companies that will bring Oracle platforms—including Java middleware—into Microsoft’s Azure cloud.
Oracle has moved to certify and support its products, including Oracle WebLogic, the Oracle database, and Oracle Linux, for Azure and Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor. “At the highest level, this partnership extends Oracle’s support of Windows Server to also include Windows Hyper-V and Windows Azure as supported platforms,” Ballmer said.
Oracle will provide full license mobility, Ballmer added, so that customers can move existing Oracle software licenses from on-premises physical or virtual servers to virtual servers on Hyper-V and in the Azure cloud. “There’s an immediate benefit for our customers,” he said. Support of Oracle’s database and application server products, and of Oracle Linux, is available immediately starting today.
Microsoft also agreed to license Oracle’s enterprise Java run-time and APIs and make Java “a first class runtime in Windows Azure, fully licensed and fully supported by Oracle” according to Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s president of Microsoft Corporation’s Server and Tools Business. Previously, Microsoft offered open Java SDKs, he said. “Now we have the licensed [Oracle] Java stack, plus the [Oracle] middleware stack, available. We think it makes Java more first class within Azure.”
Hurd said that in addition to allowing existing licenses to be moved into the Azure cloud, Microsoft would provide a mechanism to obtain licenses on demand “for those who don’t have licenses for Oracle or Java.” Nadella emphasized that Microsoft would “make it easier to spin up Oracle software in Azure with pay-as-you-go licenses,” including pre-built Oracle Linux images that can be deployed in Azure as server instances.
Oracle has been pursuing its own cloud strategy, but Hurd said he saw “nothing but good” coming from a partnership with Microsoft. “I think it just makes sense for us to continue to improve our capabilities but also form partnerships like this,” he said. “Java is the most popular development platform in the world. The fact that more people will get access to our IP is favorable.”
A general business media opinion:
Rivals Microsoft, Oracle bonding in the cloud [The Seattle Times, June 24, 2013]
The partnership looks to be a good move for both companies, while being bad for mutual competitor VMware, said veteran Microsoft and Oracle analyst Rick Sherlund, of investment bank Nomura.
Back in the day, Microsoft and Oracle were bitter rivals, competing over providing database and server products and trading barbs during the U.S. government’s antitrust suit against Microsoft in the 1990s.
Now they’re holding hands and looking at a future together.
Microsoft and Oracle announced Monday a cloud partnership in which customers will be able to run Oracle software (including Java, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server) on Microsoft’s Windows Server Hyper-V or in Windows Azure. Oracle will provide certification and full support.
Oracle Linux will also be made available to Windows Azure customers.
…
“I think they need each other,” Sherlund said. “They’re cooperating in areas that are mutually beneficial.”
Microsoft is getting Oracle’s support for Hyper-V, Microsoft’s hypervisor technology, which allows companies to run virtual servers. That’s important because Hyper-V competes against VMware, which is dominant in the server virtualization market. And many of the businesses that would be interested in such technology already use some Oracle software.
“It’s an advantage for Microsoft to be able to say: ‘All this Oracle stuff runs on Hyper-V,’ ” said Sherlund, who added that Oracle does not support VMware’s vSphere.
The move likely also allows Microsoft to say it’s being open with its Azure platform.
“That’s the rap you have against Microsoft: That it’s all the Microsoft platform,” Sherlund said. “If you’re in the cloud, it’s good that you’re supporting other platforms.”
Oracle, meanwhile, has traditionally delivered its software to its customers’ own premises. Now that it’s focusing more on delivering its software as services, it’s “motivated to make sure that [the services are] available on a lot of different cloud platforms,” Sherlund said. “So that’s good for Oracle.”
…
… these days, both companies are battling newer competition from the likes of VMware and Seattle-based Amazon.com.
Ballmer and Oracle President Mark Hurd said during the conference call after Monday’s announcement that their two companies would continue to compete.
But, Ballmer said, “the relationship between the two companies has evolved … in a very positive and constructive manner on a number of fronts.”
Hurd said, “The cloud is the tipping point that made this all happen.”
Hurd said Oracle would continue to offer its own public, private and hybrid platforms. But the fact that Java will be accessible to programmers who work in Windows Azure “is a good thing for us. … The fact that more people get access to our IP is favorable,” he said. “It’s good for our customers and therefore good for Oracle.”
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison had also said last week that the company would be announcing partnerships with Salesforce.com and NetSuite.
And an ICT analyst opinion: ORACLE EMBRACING THE BROADER CLOUD LANDSCAPE [James Staten on Forrester blogs, June 24, 2013]
It’s easy to accuse Oracle of trying to lock up its customers, as nearly all its marketing focuses on how Oracle on Oracle (on Oracle) delivers the best everything, but today Ellison’s company and Microsoft signed a joint partnership that empowers customer choice and ultimately will improve Oracle’s relevance in the cloud world.
The Redwood Shores, California software giant signed a key partnership with Microsoft that endorses Oracle on Hyper-V and Windows Azure, which included not just bring-your-own licenses but pay-per-use pricing options. The deal came as part of a Java licensing agreement by Microsoft for Windows Azure, which should help Redmond increase the appeal of its public cloud to a broader developer audience. Forrester’s Forrsights Developer Survey Q1 2013 shows that Java and .Net are the #2 and #3 languages used by cloud developers (HTML/Javascript is #1). The Java license does not extend to Microsoft’s other products, BTW.
This deal gives Microsoft clear competitive advantages against two of its top rivals as well. It strengthens Hyper-V against VMware vSphere, as Oracle software is only supported on OracleVM and Hyper-V today. It gives Windows Azure near equal position against Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the cloud platform wars, as the fully licensed support covers all Oracle software (customers bring their own licenses), and pay-per-use licenses will be resold by Microsoft for WebLogic Server, Oracle Linux, and the Oracle database. AWS has a similar support relationship with Oracle and resells the middleware, database, and Oracle Enterprise Manager, plus offers RDS for Oracle, a managed database service.
Bring your own license terms aren’t ideal in the per-hour world of cloud platforms, so the pay-per-use licensing arrangements are key to Oracle’s cloud relevance. While this licensing model is limited today, it opens the door to a more holistic move by Oracle down the line. Certainly Oracle would prefer that customers build and deploy their own Fusion applications on the Oracle Public Cloud, but the company is wisely acknowledging the market momentum behind AWS and Windows Azure and ensuring Oracle presence where its customers are going. These moves are also necessary to combat the widespread use of open source alternatives to Oracle’s middleware and database products on these new deployment platforms.
While we can all argue about Oracle’s statements made in last week’s quarterly earnings call about being the biggest cloud company or having $1B in cloud revenue, it is clearly no longer up for debate as to whether Oracle is embracing the move to cloud. The company is clearly making key moves to cloud-enable its portfolio. Combine today’s moves with its SaaS acquisitions, investments in cloud companies and its own platform as a service, and the picture clearly emerges of a company moving aggressively into cloud.
I guess CEO Ellison no longer feels cloud is yesterday’s business as usual.
Microsoft and Oracle announce enterprise partnership [joint press release, June 24, 2013]
Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. today announced a partnership that will enable customers to run Oracle software on Windows Server Hyper-V and in Windows Azure. Customers will be able to deploy Oracle software — including Java, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server — on Windows Server Hyper-V or in Windows Azure and receive full support from Oracle. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
As part of this partnership, Oracle will certify and support Oracle software — including Java, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server — on Windows Server Hyper-V and in Windows Azure. Microsoft will also offer Java, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server to Windows Azure customers, and Oracle will make Oracle Linux available to Windows Azure customers.
Java developers, IT professionals and businesses will benefit from the flexibility to deploy fully supported Oracle software to Windows Server Hyper-V and Windows Azure.
“Microsoft is deeply committed to giving businesses what they need, and clearly that is the ability to run enterprise workloads in private clouds, public clouds and, increasingly, across both,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “Now our customers will be able to take advantage of the flexibility our unique hybrid cloud solutions offer for their Oracle applications, middleware and databases, just like they have been able to do on Windows Server for years.”
“Our customers’ IT environments are changing rapidly to meet the dynamic nature of the world today,” said Oracle President Mark Hurd. “At Oracle, we are committed to providing greater choice and flexibility to customers by providing multiple deployment options for our software, including on-premises, as well as public, private, and hybrid clouds. This collaboration with Microsoft extends our partnership and is important for the benefit of our customers.”
Additional information about support and the licensing mobility changes that went into effect today is available on Oracle’s blog at https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud/entry/oracle_and_microsoft_join_forces.
Oracle and Microsoft Expand Choice and Flexibility in Deploying Oracle Software in the Cloud [Oracle Cloud Solutions blog, June 24, 2013]
Oracle and Microsoft have entered into a new partnership that will help customers embrace cloud computing by providing greater choice and flexibility in how to deploy Oracle software.
Here are the key elements of the partnership:
Effective today, our customers can run supported Oracle software on Windows Server Hyper-V and in Windows Azure
Effective today, Oracle provides license mobility for customers who want to run Oracle software on Windows Azure
Microsoft will add Infrastructure Services instances with popular configurations of Oracle software including Java, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server to the Windows Azure image gallery
Microsoft will offer fully licensed and supported Java in Windows Azure
Oracle will offer Oracle Linux, with a variety of Oracle software, as preconfigured instances on Windows Azure
Oracle’s strategy and commitment is to support multiple platforms, and Microsoft Windows has long been an important supported platform. Oracle is now extending that support to Windows Server Hyper-V and Window Azure by providing certification and support for Oracle applications, middleware, database, Java and Oracle Linux on Windows Server Hyper-V and Windows Azure. As of today, customers can deploy Oracle software on Microsoft private clouds and Windows Azure, as well as Oracle private and public clouds and other supported cloud environments.
For information related to software licensing in Windows Azure, see Licensing Oracle Software in the Cloud Computing Environment.
Also, Oracle Support policies as they apply to Oracle software running in Windows Azure or on Windows Server Hyper-V are covered in two My Oracle Support (MOS) notes which are shown below:
MOS Note 1563794.1 Certified Software on Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V – NEW
…
MOS Note 417770.1 Oracle Linux Support Policies for Virtualization and Emulation – UPDATED
…
Explanation for that is in Partners in the enterprise cloud [Satya Nadella on the The Official Microsoft Blog, June 24, 2013]
As longtime competitors, partners and industry leaders, Microsoft and Oracle have worked with enterprise customers to address business and technology needs for over 20 years. Many customers rely on Microsoft infrastructure to run mission-critical Oracle software and have for over a decade. Today, we are together extending our work to cover private cloud and public cloud through a new strategic partnership between Microsoft and Oracle. This partnership will help customers embrace cloud computing by improving flexibility and choice while also preserving the first-class support that these workloads demand.
As part of this partnership Oracle will certify and support Oracle software on Windows Server Hyper-V and Windows Azure. That means customers who have long enjoyed the ability to run Oracle software on Windows Server can run that same software on Windows Server Hyper-V or in Windows Azure and take advantage of our enterprise grade virtualization platform and public cloud. Oracle customers also benefit from the ability to run their Oracle software licenses in Windows Azure with new license mobility. Customers can enjoy the support and license mobility benefits, starting today.
In the near future, we will add Infrastructure Services instances with preconfigured versions of Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server for customers who do not have Oracle licenses. Also, Oracle will enable customers to obtain and launch Oracle Linux images on Windows Azure.
We’ll also work together to add properly licensed, and fully supported Java into Windows Azure – improving flexibility and choice for millions of Java developers and their applications. Windows Azure is, and will continue to be, committed to supporting open source development languages and frameworks, and after today’s news, I hope the strength of our commitment in this area is clear.
The cloud computing era – or, as I like to call it, the enterprise cloud era – calls for bold, new thinking. It requires companies to rethink what they build, to rethink how they operate and to rethink whom they partner with. We are doing that by being “cloud first” in everything we do. From our vision of a Cloud OS – a consistent platform spanning our customer’s private clouds, service provider clouds and Windows Azure – to the way we partner to ensure that the applications our customers use run, fully supported, in those clouds.
We look forward to working with Oracle to help our customers realize this partnership’s immediate, and future, benefits. And we look forward to providing our customers with the increased flexibility and choice that comes from providing thousands of Oracle customers, and millions of Oracle developers, access to Microsoft’s enterprise grade public and private clouds. It’s a bold partnership for a bold new enterprise era.
IMPORTANT: for Java developers this strategic partnership will be really important when the latest versions will be covered on Windows Azure, see:
- Java EE 7 / GlassFish 4.0 Launch Coverage [Oracle’s The Aquarium blog, Jan 12, 2013]
Java EE 7, the standard in community-driven enterprise software, is now available. Back in April, Java EE 7 completed the JCP final approval ballot. Today, developers can learn all about Java EE 7 during the Java EE 7 Live Web Event, and get some hands-on experience with the arrival of the Java EE 7 SDK and GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4.0. Of course, others have quite a bit to say about Java EE 7 as well, and this is just for starters:
Oracle Announces Availability of Java Platform Enterprise Edition 7 (Press release)
Oracle Officially Launching Java EE 7 and GlassFish 4 Today (InfoQ)
Talking Java EE 7 with Anil Gaur, Vice President of software development at Oracle(JaxEnter)
GlassFish 4 brings Java EE 7 (DZone / Markus Eisele)
Java EE 7 Recipes and Introducing Java EE 7 (Josh Juneau)
Java EE 7 and GlassFish Day at CloudBees (CloudBees)
NetBeans 7.3.1 with Java EE 7 Support (NetBeans)
What’s new in GlassFish 4 (C2B2)
Java Magazine – Java EE 7 (Oracle)
Oracle releases Java EE 7 with eye on HTML5 development (InfoWorld/Computerworld)
Fifteen Java EE APIs Featured in the Java Spotlight Podcast (Oracle)
Oracle releases Java Platform Enterprise Edition 7 (ZDNet)
Oracle Announces Availability of Java Platform Enterprise Edition 7 (MarketWatch)
Oracle Announces Availability of Java Platform Enterprise Edition 7 (MCPro)
Oracle Announces Availability of Java Platform Enterprise Edition 7 (Data Manager Online)
Java EE 7 officially launches, bringing HTML5 and WebSocket support (jaxenter)
New Java EE 7 and GlassFish Support in OEPE 12.1.1.2.2 (Oracle)
Working with Eclipse and GlassFish (Gerry Tan)
Java EE 7 melds HTML5 with enterprise apps (The Register)
Oracle Delivers Java EE 7 with HTML5 Support (eWeek)
Java grows up in the enterprise (Holger)
Java EE 7 tutorial released (Java Tutorials)
No Clouds, Only Sunshine (Markus Eisele)
Reference implementation for Java EE: GlassFish 4.0 Released (Markus Eisele)
Newly released NetBeans IDE 7.3.1 Introduces Java EE 7 Support (Geertjan Wielenga)
- Java EE 7 SDK and GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4.0 Now Available [Arun Gupta, Miles to go … weblog among Oracle technical blogs, June 12, 2013]
Java EE 7 (JSR 342) is now final!
I’ve delivered numerous talks on Java EE 7 and related technologies all around the world for past several months. I’m loaded with excitement to share that the Java EE 7 platform specification and implementation is now in the records.
The platform has three major themes:
Deliver HTML5 Dynamic Scalable Applications
Reduce response time with low latency data exchange using WebSocket
Simplify data parsing for portable applications with standard JSON support
Deliver asynchronous, scalable, high performance RESTful Service
Increase Developer Productivity
Simplify application architecture with a cohesive integrated platform
Increase efficiency with reduced boiler-plate code and broader use of annotations
Enhance application portability with standard RESTful web service client support
Meet the most demanding enterprise requirements
Break down batch jobs into manageable chunks for uninterrupted OLTP performance
Easily define multithreaded concurrent tasks for improved scalability
Deliver transactional applications with choice and flexibility
This “pancake” diagram of the major components helps understand how the components work with each other to provide a complete, comprehensive, and integrated stack for building your enterprise and web applications. The newly added components are highlighted in the orange color:
In this highly transparent and participatory effort, there were 14 active JSRs:
342: Java EE 7 Platform
338: Java API for RESTful Web Services 2.0
339: Java Persistence API 2.1
340: Servlet 3.1
341: Expression Language 3.0
343: Java Message Service 2.0
344: JavaServer Faces 2.2
345: Enteprise JavaBeans 3.2
346: Contexts and Dependency Injection 1.1
349: Bean Validation 1.1
352: Batch Applications for the Java Platform 1.0
353: Java API for JSON Processing 1.0
356: Java API for WebSocket 1.0
236: Concurrency Utilities for Java EE 1.0
The newly added components are highlighted in bold.
And 9 Maintenance Release JSRs:
250: Common Annotations 1.2
322: Connector Architecture 1.7
907: Java Transaction API 1.2
196: Java Authentication Services for Provider Interface for Containers
115: Java Authorization for Contract for Containers
919: JavaMail 1.5
318: Interceptors 1.2
109: Web Services 1.4
245: JavaServer Pages 2.3
Ready to get rolling ?
Binaries
Java EE 7 SDK
GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4.0
Tools
NetBeans 7.3.1
GlassFish Tools for Kepler(Technology Preview)
Maven Coordinates
Docs
Java EE 7 Whitepaper
Java EE 7 Tutorial (html pdf)
First Cup Sample Application
Java EE 7 Hands-on Lab
Javadocs (online download)
Specifications
All-in-one GlassFish Documentation Bundle
A few articles have already been published on OTN:
What’s new in JMS 2.0: Part 2 (Jun 2013)
What’s new in JMS 2.0: Part 1 (May 2013)
Java EE 7 and JAX-RS 2.0 (Apr 2013)
JSR 356, Java API for WebSocket (Apr 2013)
Ten ways in which JMS 2.0 means writing less code (Apr 2013)
Higher Productivity and Embracing HTML5 with Java EE 7 (Feb 2013)
And more are coming!
This blog has also published several TOTD on Java EE 7:
TOTD #212: WebSocket Client and Server Endpoint
TOTD# 211: Chunked Step using Batch Applications
TOTD #210: Consuming and Producing JSON using JAX-RS Entity Providers
TOTD #203: Concurrency Managed Objects
TOTD #202: Resource Library Contracts in JSF 2.2
TOTD #199: Java EE 7 and NetBeans IDE
TOTD #198: JSF 2.2 Faces Flow
TOTD #196: Default DataSource in Java EE 7
TOTD #194: JAX-RS Client API and GlassFish 4
TOTD #192: Batch Applications in Java EE 7
TOTD #191: Simple JMS 2.0 Sample
TOTD #189: Collaborative Whiteboard using WebSocket in GlassFish 4
TOTD #188: Non-blocking I/O using Servlet 3.1
All the JSRs have been covered in the Java Spotlight podcast:
#136: Paul Parkinson on JSR 907/JTA 1.2
#135: Marina Vatkina on JSR 318/Interceptors 1.2
#134: Kin-man Chung on JSR 341/Expresion Language 3.0
#133: Sivakumar Thyagarajan on JSR 322/Connectors 1.7
#132: Shing-Wai Chan on JSR 340/Servlet 3.1
#131: Nigel Deaking on JSR 343/JMS 2.0
#130: Santiago Pericas-Geertsen on JSR 339/JAX-RS 2.0
#129: Anthony Lai on JSR 236/Concurrency Utilities for Java EE 1.0
#126: Jitendra Kotamraju on JSR 353/JSON 1.0
#124: Chris Vignola from JSR 352/Batch 1.0
#119: Emmanuel Bernard on JSR 349/Bean Validation 1.1
#117: Danny Coward on JSR 356/WebSocket 1.0
#115: Ed Burns on JSF 344/JSF 2.2
#109: Pete Muir on JSR 346/CDI 1.1
#90: Marina Vatkina on JSR 345/EJB 3.2
#84: Anil Gaur on JSR 342/Java EE 7
The latest issue of Java Magazine is also loaded with tons of Java EE 7 content:
Media coverage has started showing as well …
Official Oracle PR
JaxEnter.com
InfoQ
And you can track lot more here.
You can hear the latest and greatest on Java EE 7 by watching replays from the launch webinar:
This webinar consists of:
Strategy Keynote
Technical Keynote
16 Technical Breakouts with JSR Specification Leads
Customer, partner, and community testimonials
And much more
Do you feel enabled and empowered to start building Java EE 7 applications ?
Just download Java EE 7 SDK that contains GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4.0, tutorial, samples, documentation and much more.
Enjoy!
Previous situation:
From Oracle Database Cloud Service [Oracle presentation, Feb 15, 2013]
as well as: New Java Resources for Windows Azure! [Windows Azure blog, July 31, 2012]
… Make the Windows Azure Java Developer Center your first stop for details about developing and deploying Java applications on Windows Azure. We continue to add content to that site, and we’ll describe some of the recent additions in this blog.
Using Virtual Machines for your Java Solutions
We rolled out Windows Azure Virtual Machines as a preview service last month; if you’d like to see how to use Virtual Machines for your Java solutions, check out these new Java tutorials. …
New in Access Control
Included in the June 2012 Windows Azure release is an update to the Windows Azure Plugin for Eclipse with Java (by Microsoft Open Technologies). …
The Java part of this partnership is dating back to GlassFish and Java EE 6 everywhere, even in the Azure cloud! [Oracle’s The Aquarium blog, Jan 18, 2011]
Microsoft’s technical architect David Chou has a detailed blog entry on how to run a recent GlassFish 3.1 build on the Microsoft Azure Platform (wikipedia). The article builds on this other recent blog entry on running Java applications in Azure and adds GlassFish-specific instructions.
In Azure terminology, the article discusses setting up a Worker Role using Visual Studio, reserving Ports, setting up a Startup Task (for the JVM), and configuring the Service, GlassFish in this case. This uses Windows Server 2008 (a GlassFish supported platform) and a zip install of GlassFish.
It’s early days (need best practices on working around some of the cloud-inherent limitations) but with this support of GlassFish, the Azure platform now has full support for Java EE 6!
which then was followed with a Java wishlist for Windows Azure [Arun Gupta, Miles to go … weblog among Oracle technical blogs, Feb 11, 2011]
TOTD #155 explains how to run GlassFish in Windows Azure. It works but as evident from the blog, its not easy and intuitive. It uses Worker Role to install JDK and GlassFish but the concepts used are nothing specific to Java. Microsoft has released Azure SDK for Java and AppFabric SDK for Java which is a good start but there are a few key elements missing IMHO. These may be known issues but I thought of listing them here while my memory is fresh
Here is my wish list to make Java a better on Windows Azure:
Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse has “PHP Development Toolkit” and “Azure SDK for Java” but no tooling from the Java perspective. I cannot build a Java/Java EE project and say “Go Deploy it to Azure” and then Eclipse + Azure do the magic and provide me with a URL of the deployed project.
Why do I need to configure IIS on my local Visual Studio development for deploying a Java project ?
Why do I have to explicitly upload my JDK to Azure Storage ? I’d love to specify an element in the “ServiceConfiguration” or where ever appropriate which should take care of installing JDK for me in the provisioned instance. And also set JAVA_HOME for me.
Allow to leverage clustering capabilities of application servers such as GlassFish. This will also provide session-failover capabilities on Azure
Sticky session load balancing.
If Windows VM crashes for some reason then App Fabric restarts it which is good. But I’d like my Java processes to be monitored and restarted if they go kaput. And accordingly Load Balancer switches to the next available process in the cluster.
Visual Studio tooling is nice but allow me to automate/script the deployment of project to Azure.
Just like Web, Worker, and VM role – how about a Java role ?
And since this is a wishlist, NetBeans is the best IDE for Java EE 6 development. Why not have a NetBeans plugin for Azure ?
A better integration with Java EE APIs and there are several of them – JPA, Servlets, EJB, JAX-RS, JMS, etc.
The “happy scenario” where every thing works as expected is fine is good but that rarely happens in software development. The availabilty of debugging information is pretty minimal during the “not so happy scenario”. Visual Studio should show more information if the processes started during “Launch.ps1″ cannot start correctly for some reason.
And I’m not even talking about management, monitoring, adminstration, logging etc.
Thank you Microsoft for a good start with Java on Azure but its pretty basic right now and needs work. I’ll continue my exploration!
Christmas is coming later this year … and I’ll be waiting
See also:
Running your Java EE 6 Applications in the Cloud (presentation by Arun Gupta, Java EE & GlassFish Guy, May 11, 2011) with agenda as seen on the right:
Using Java™ Technology in the Windows Azure Cloud via the Metro Web Services Stack [joint Sun Microsystems and Microsoft presentation, June 6, 2009]
Filed under: Cloud Computing strategy, Enterprise computing Tagged: Amazon RDS for Oracle, AWS Cloud, cloud, computing cloud, GlassFish, GlassFish Java application server, Hyper-V, Java EE 6, Java EE 7, Microsoft, Oracle, Oracle Cloud, Oracle database, Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Java, Oracle Public Cloud, Oracle WebLogic, pay-per-use licensing, VMware vSphere, WebLogic, WebLogic web application server, Windows Azure