Azure Web Jobs

Announcement made today in Build 2014.

Now we can run Web Jobs as part of Windows Azure Websites and run as background jobs (calling queues, etc...)

Need not spin up a new VM or new cloud services to run the background jobs, instead create Web Jobs as apart of Windows Azure Websites.

Windows Azure HDInsight How to check Hadoop available components and its versions

Windows Azure HDInsight is the Hadoop distribution based on the Hortonworks Data Platform 1.1.0

One of the way to check the available components and their versions is to login to a cluster using RDP connection and go to "C:\apps\dist\" directory.

Windows Azure HDInsight provides Hadoop services through following components:

Apache Hadoop 1.0.3
Apache Hive 0.9.0
Apache Pig 0.9.3
Apache Sqoop 1.4.2
SQL Server JDBC Driver 3.0
Apache Oozie 3.2.0
Apache HCatalog 0.4.1
Apache Templeton 0.1.4

Preview Apache™ Hadoop™-based Services for Windows Azure

In this blog post i will document the preview I did on "Apache™ Hadoop™-based Services for Windows Azure"

After my first look - I feel the following are some of best things for Admins/Developers Microsoft had made for this Hadoop offerings on Windows Azure.
1. Metro Style user experience to Create a Hadoop cluster on Windows Azure.
2. Very easy to configure and manager Hadoop cluster and nodes.
3. Job history management and Viewing the job execution history is so seamless.
4. Deploying Map/Reduce job is so simple(might be for basic job routines?)
5. Development of Map/Reduce code in your favorite JAVASCRIPT language
6. Webconsole to execute and manage the Map/Reduce jobs.
7. View Map/Reduce Job results in web console, view in GRAPH output, etc...

So much to document and explore in this new BigData approach from Microsoft....

Ok Let's get started...

You can start from https://www.hadooponazure.com/

Once you logged in using Windows Live credentials, you see the "Request a new Hadoop Cluster" screen in Home page.

Provide all required information and finally click on "Request Cluster" button link at right navigation.

Hadoop Cluster allocation in progress...

Hadoop Cluster - Allocation in progress

Hadoop Cluster - Allocation in progress

Hadoop Cluster - Allocation in progress

Hadoop Cluster - Allocation in progress

Hadoop Cluster Nodes - Allocation in progress....

Hadoop - Manage Cluster screen

Login using MSTSC Remote access to view the created Node in Hadoop cluster....

Hadoop Cluster - Map/Reduce job administration

Summary screen of particular Hadoop Cluster created just now...

Hadoop Cluster - Configure Ports 
- FTP
- ODBC Server

Default these ports are in Closed status

Hadoop Cluster - Job execution History

You can download Client Utilities for Microsoft Apache Hadoop based services that will help in querying data in Hive using ODBC driver or Excel.

Hadoop Cluster - Summary Screen (Metro-Style web interface)

Hadoop - Release Cluster

Hadoop Cluster - Release in progress...

Test Hadoop cluster created is now released...

Thanks to Microsoft again for enabling developer communities to preview the Hadoop on Windows Azure.

If you are also interested in this and need more information refer to this link 
- How-To and FAQ Guide for ApacheTM HadoopTM-based Services for Windows Azure