I’ve finished working on my node application which provide a series of APIs endpoint for a mobile application. I’ve made it with node and mongodb as db. Now I’ve reached the point where I should pick the right deployment environment.
Initially I’ll make a private beta but I need to choose a service I can scale easily (I’m not a devop) with the right price balance.
My initial choice is amazon aws (elastic beanstalk?). What’s about the db? I’ve not used dynamodb in order to be more service agnostic but now I don’t know how to create a reliable db infrastructure. Any suggestion to deploy both app and dB in order to make easy scaling in case it will become necessary?
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I have managed to get the C# and db setup using ListMappings. However, when I try to deploy the split/merge tool to Azure cloud classic the service it states 'The requested VM tier is currently not available in East US for this subscription. Please try another tier or deploy to a different location.' We tried a few other regions with the same result. Do you know if there is a workaround or updated version? Is the split / merge service even still relevant? Has anyone got this service to run on Azure lately?
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/database/elastic-scale-overview-split-and-merge
The answer to the question on whether it is still relevant, in my opinion is ...no. Split\merge is no longer relevant with the maturation of elastic pools. Elastic pools with one data base per tenant seem the sustainable way to implement multi tenancy with legacy code. The initial plan was to add keys to each of our tables to have multiple tenants per database. Elastic pools give us the same flexibility without having to make breaking changes our existing code.
Late post here, but we are implementing ElasticScale for a client to split ~50 clients into a database-per-tenant model. I don't think the SplitMerge tool will be used over the long term, just for the initial data migration from one db to many shards, but it has been handy for that purpose. We are using the ElasticScale SDK to allow a single API to route queries to the appropriate shard(s) based on sharding key. Happy to compare notes with you if you are still working on this.
I have scheduled tasks (C# Console Apps) that perform a number of operations like User synchronization between our AD and a users table in our application. These live on a SQL Server that is being retired so I want to move them into Azure. It sounds like Logic Apps is the way I want to go. As I'm standing things up I'm reading documentation that says an Integration Service Environment is the right way to go and others that say I can just stand up the logic app and it will do fine communicating with our SQL Server on its own. Can someone answer this question for me or point me in the direction of the documentation that compares the two approaches?
A Logic App can talk to a Azure SQL Database fine. One can even talk to On-premise databases through the use of the On-Premise Data Gateway. An ISE can be nice if the costs are worth it but we find one too expensive for our needs. Simple Logic Apps work fine.
I want to host an Orleans project on Azure, but don't want to use the (classic) Cloud Services model (I want an ARM template project). The web app sample uses the old web / worker model - what is best option? There is a Service Fabric sample - is that the best route? The nearest equivalent to the web/worker model is VM Scale Sets - is that a well tested option?
IMO, app service is closet to web role.
Worker role however, depending on the point of view
From system architecture point of view, I think Scale Set is the closet. You get an identical set of VMs running your application. However you lost all management features. How your cluster handle application configurations, work loads on each node, service interruptions from server failure or deployments are pretty much DIY. Also you need to provision the VM with dependencies for your application.
From operations point of view, I think Service Fabric is the closest. It handles problems above but then you are dealing with design/implementation changes and learning curve from the added fabric layer in the architecture. Could be small, could be big depending on the complexity of your project. Besides, service fabric is still relatively new and nothing is for sure. Best case you follow the sample change a few lines of code and it works like a charm. Worst case you may want to complete refactor orleans solution into service fabric solution.
App service would be the easiest among the three. If it doesn't meet your requirement, I personally would try Service Fabric. Same reason why people are moving to cloud and you would opt for ARM solution.
We have been developing a RESTful web api using node and MongoDB. For hosting options, we decided to use Azure through BizSpark. We used DocumentDB with protocol support for MongoDB.
The problem now is DocumentDB is consuming all the credit causing a downtime and we haven't started making money yet. We are now considering switching from DocumentDB to MongoDB. The question now becomes, what is the cheapest way to host MongoDB on Azure?
So far on our research, we have found two options:
Using a VM (Linux or Windows)
Using a worker role
Please advice if there are other options, and how easy can it be to switch between these options at a later stage.
You can use the Azure calculator to get estimates between DocumentDB and a VM with the settings your company needs to see which one is cheaper.
If you are using Bizspark, remember that you have 5 accounts in which you can distribute all your costs to optimize in a better way.
Personal recommendations(subjective view):
Remember that if you are using the PAAS solution(DocumentDB) you
get full functionality out of the box, you don't have to set it up
and you can escale it very easily and plug in to very powerful tools
like PowerBi out of the box.
In the case of IAAS solution(vms) you have to install, mantain and
create all the connection settings for this to work. If you want to
scale you have to me more dedicated, since you have to scale it
through the use of more vms, traffic managers and more robust
architecture. If this is the path you are taking I would recommend
using containers like Docker inside the VM and their power to
manage this.
Currently our DB works in customer's local network and we have client app on C# to consume data. Due to some business needs, we got order to start moving everything to Azure. DB will be moving to Azure SQL.
We had discussion about accessing DB. There are two points:
One guy said that we have to add one more layer between our app (that will be working outside Azure at end-user PCs) and SQL Azure. In other words he suggested adding API service that will be translated all requests to DB, i.e. app(on-premises) -> API service (on Azure)-> SQL Azure. This approach looks more reliable and secure, since we are hiding SQL Azure behind facade of API service and the app talks to our API service only. It looks more like a reverse proxy. Obviously, behind this API we can build more sophisticated structure of DBs.
Another guy suggested connecting directly to DB, i.e. app(on-premises) -> SQL Azure. So far we don't have any plans to change structure of DB or even increase count of DBs. He claims it more simple and we can secure our connection the same way. Having additional service that just re-translates our queries to DB and back looks like wasting time.In the future, if needed, we would add this API.
What would you select and recommend, and why ?
Few notes:
We are going to use Azure AD to authenticate users.
Our application will be moving to Azure too, but later (in 1-2 years), we have plans to create REST API and move to thin client instead of fat client we have right now.
Good performance is our goal, we don't want to add extra things that can decrease it, but security is our most important goal as well.
Certainly an intermediate layer is one way to go. There isn't enough detail to be sure, but I wonder why you don't try the second option. Usually some redevelopment is normal. But if you can get away without it, and you get sufficient performance then that's even better.
I hope this helps.
Thank you.
Guy
If your application is not just a prototype (it sounds like it is not), then I advise you to build the intermediate API. The primary reasons for this are:
Flexibility
Rolling out a new version of an API is simple: You have either only one deployment or you have something like Octopus Deploy that deploys to a few instances at the same time for you. Deploying client applications is usually much more involved: Creating installers, distributing them, making sure users install them, etc.
If you build the API, you will be able to make changes to the DB and hide these changes from the client applications by just modifying the API implementation, but keeping the API interfaces the same. Moving forward, this will simplify the tasks for your team considerably.
Security
As soon as you have different roles/permissions in your system, you will need to implement them with DB security features if you connect to the DB directly. This may work for simple cases, but even there it is a pain to manage.
With an API, you can implement authorization in the API using C#. Like this, you can build whatever you need and you're not restricted by the security features the DB offers.
Also, if you don't take extra care about this, you may end up exposing the DB credentials to the client app, which will be a major security flaw.
Conclusion
Build the intermediate API. Except you have strong reasons not to. As always with architecture considerations, I'm sure there are cases where the above points don't apply. Just make sure you understand all the implications if you decide to go the direct route.