Things I learnt at the Windows Azure Camp in Hyderabad

Here are some of the new things I learnt at the Windows Azure Camp that was held yesterday at the Microsoft campus in Hyderabad -

* Windows Azure Service Management API is a REST API for managing your services and deployments programmatically to do many of the things that you can do through the Azure portal. Usage of the API is free

* Can the Service Management API be used to replicate a new portal that's like the Silverlight-based Azure portal?
- Not exactly, some info like Billing cannot be fetched through API

* csmanage.exe is a tool to manage your deployments and services, using the Windows Azure Service Management API

* What you can do with Windows Azure Service Management API -
- Integrate with Tools/Dashboards
- Integrate with Build & Deployment - Nightly builds
- Monitoring systems
- Specialized scenarios - Auto scaling

* Azure cannot (currently) auto scale dynamically. Options to implement auto scaling -
- use publically available command-line tools or cmdlets
- third party commercial tools like AzureWatch
- do it yourself using APIs - related link

* Why do Azure APIs use REST?
- REST APIs make Azure access language independent

* The Windows Azure SDK 1.3 adds the ability to use Remote Desktop Services to access Windows Azure roles and supports Full IIS, allowing your web roles to access the full range of web server features available in an on-premise IIS installation.

* Domino’s Pizza is a public site that uses Azure