Does anyone know if its feasible to convert PCM/FLAC files to some compressed format (mp3/wma/ogg, not picky), with the conversion process running on Azure?
An Amazon EC2 based solution would be trivial, as 3rd party libraries could be installed; but what about Azure?
Unless you need admin privileges (like to install a codec or something), this shouldn't be a problem in Windows Azure. I bet you can find a standalone command-line tool for this that you can just run in Windows Azure.
That being said, I haven't specifically seen this done yet, so there might be difficulties I'm not anticipating. :)
With Azure 1.3 one can now install basic software to web and worker roles by RDPing and installing. For automated tasks a VM role can also be created. Between the two, this could be solved.
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We created and tested several Azure Function Apps hosted at Windows. While creating new Azure Function App in what scenario do I select OS other than Windows? Meaning Linux or Docker.
I created test instances for all three OS selection options and basic settings of each of them appear to be very close.
Linux or Docker is useful if your functions have dependencies that only work on Linux/Docker. For example, some node.js native libraries only work on Linux, and will never work on Windows.
If you don't need Linux for anything specific, then I suggest sticking to Windows since that is currently (at the time of writing) the best and most supported environment for running Azure Functions.
Azure Functions 2.0 runtime is based on .NET Core, so it is cross-platform. If you choose Linux/Docker, Functions runtime will be deployed on Linux.
2.0 is still in preview, so Linux/Docker are not supported in production yet. For now, Consumption Plan (pay per call) is not supported.
See The Azure Functions on Linux Preview. Quote:
Functions on Linux can be hosted in a dedicated App Service tier in 2 different modes:
You bring the Function App code and we provide and manage the container, no specific Docker related knowledge required.
You bring your own Docker container including the Azure Functions runtime 2.0, specific dependencies, and Function App code.
For consumptions mode, the cold start varies a little bit among the OS.
It looks like, although the average time is very close between Windows and Linux, the best and worst cases are much better for Linux... which kind of makes sense.
Check this as a good reference: https://mikhail.io/serverless/coldstarts/azure/
Now, if you are deploying to a dedicated Apps Service Plan, it plays a bigger role. Linux Plans are cheaper than Windows Plans due to the OS licensing cost.
I need to be able to generate some type of Scheduling service within Windows Azure, but which is the best and most resilient?
Currently I have a Windows Service running Quartz, which works okay, but on a Windows Server. I need this to run in the cloud.
The tasks, read/write to a database and some will send emails.
I've looked over all the possible solutions in Stack Overflow, but they appear to be old and not updated to the latests Azure Platform.
Any suggestions or pointers?
The most adapted solution might be a worker role, MS has a tutorial specifically for what you're looking for: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/tutorials/multi-tier-web-site/4-worker-role-a/
This would definitely a less expensive solution than instantiating a virtual machine, but might require some work.
I ended up using the Azure Mobile service and the Scheduler that come with it, which works a treat
I run a Worker Role using Quartz .NET to schedule stuff. Works great!
https://github.com/quartznet/quartznet
Obviously, that would be difficult to do on the cloud since you won't be able to install services or anything that could run in the background. A less than perfect solution would be to have a workstation under your control handle the scheduling and send updates to the web server which would then write them to the DB server. Otherwise, you should self host the website and application, etc.
I am developing a website that I intend to run within Windows Azure using a single Web Role. The site will make use of the Sphinx Search engine which will need to run as a Windows Service. So, my question is this...is it possible to install the Sphinx Search Windows Service inside of a Web Role.
From my initial research into Azure I am thinking "yes" for the reason that the Web Role is a VM running IIS. Therefore I should be able to remote in, install the service, and it should work. :)
Does this sound right?
Installing software via RDP is not a viable solution with Web/Worker role instances, as these changes won't persist. You need to install it either from a startup script or from OnStart(). Since you want to install as a service, that would imply startup script, since it would need elevated permissions. Note: The installer must support unattended mode, where all parameters are specified via command line with no human interaction.
What about scalability? If you have more than one instance of your web role running, can sphinx run across two instances? From what I read, it supports ODBC-compliant databases, and you might be able to use it against Windows Azure SQL Database. If that's the case, can two sphinx engines run on two different machines accessing the same data store? If so, this sounds like a viable solution.
If installation cannot be automated, or you need something additional like MySQL, you may want to consider placing the sphinx search engine inside a Virtual Machine (new in June 2012). Now you can spin up a Windows 2008 Server, RDP into it, configure it exactly how you want it.
Strictly speaking yes, you could do that. However this makes the assumption that you would be running on one VM instance and also that the instance would never need restarting.
You should consider looking at Azure worker roles for any functionality that would normally exist as a windows service.
After reading your answers, and thinking about it a bit more, I think dropping the idea of installing a service would be the best course of action. I've been looking at the API for Lucene.NET (this may be the same for Sphinx) and it's possible to encapsulate the writing/managing of indexes, etc, within in code and therefore no need for a service.
For the Azure, there is a library for managing index files using both local and Azure storage which could be of use. Scenarios I've read about show that it's then possible to have a Web Role that will process HTTP requests and perform the searches and a Worker Role to accept DB changes via a queue and have it write them to the indexes.
I have a Windows application that does some calculations and is called from command line. On my Windows machine, I have a PHP script running under Apache that executes the application and shows the output.
Is there any hosting solution that I can use to do the same? I can't figure out if EC2 or Azure are the right solutions. Basically, I need a web server + ability to execute my application.
Suggestions? Thanks.
You can host your application on AppHarbor, the .NET Platform-as-a-Service. You can either port your web frontend to .NET or try to get your PHP stuff working with Phalanger. AppHarbor is working on Background Tasks, which might be a good match for your workload.
I would just run the PHP script you already have under IIS in a Windows Azure web role.
If it is a Windows Application and you have the source code I would go with an Azure Worker Role. The advantage of using a PaaS (as Azure) instead of an IaaS (as Amazon) is that you wont have to bother of keeping the server up to date.
The real investment in time will be when you rewrite your application to make it work as a Worker Role. The time needed to do this work depends on how your application works right now. If is uses a lot of disc access it might be difficult and perhaps an Amazon server would be better. But if it only crunches numbers in memory an Azure Worker Role is a very good candidate.
The real advantage of using an Amazon server is that you probably wont need to do any work at all. Except maintaining the server.
As described in the question both Azure and EC2 will do the job very well. This is the kind of task both systems are designed for.
So the question becomes really: which is best? That depends on two things: what the application needs to do and your own experience and preference.
As it's a Windows application there should probably be a leaning towards Azure. While EC2 supports Windows, the tooling and support resources for Azure are probably deeper at this point.
If cost is a factor then a (somewhat outdated) resource is here: http://blog.mccrory.me/2010/10/30/public-cloud-hourly-cost-comparison/ -- the conclusion is that, by and large, Azure and Amazon are roughly similar for compute charges.
Steve Marx has a blog post that describes how to run another web server (i.e not IIS) on Azure
This potentially has everything you need - you can deploy Apache and your executable and run it in exactly the same way.
Alternatively - you can deploy your executable along side a bit of code in a worker role that would run that application periodically, all depending on your exact requirements
For the first time, I am writing a web service that will call upon external programs to process requests in batch. The front-end will accept file uploads and then place them in a queue. The workers on the backend will take that file, run it through ffmpeg and the rest of my pipeline, and send an email when the process is complete.
I have my backend process working on my computer (Ubuntu 10.04). The question is: should I try to re-create that pipeline using binaries that I've compiled from scratch? Or is it okay to use apt when configuring in The Real World?
Not all hosting services uses Ubuntu, and not all give me root access. (I haven't chosen a host yet.) However, they will let me upload binaries to execute, and many give me shell access with gcc.
Usually this would be a no-brainier and I'd compile it all from scratch. But doing so - not to mention trying to figure out how to create a platform-independent .tar.gz binary - will be quite a task which ultimately doesn't really help me ship my product.
Do you have any thoughts on the best way to set up my stack so that I'm not tied to a specific hosting provider? Should I try creating my own .deb, which contains Ubuntu's version of ffmpeg (and other tools) with the configurations I need?
Short of a setup where I manage my own servers/VMs (which may very well be what I have to do), how might I accomplish this?
The question is: should I try to re-create that pipeline using binaries that I've compiled from scratch? Or is it okay to use apt when configuring in The Real World?
It is in reverse: it is not okay to deploy unpackaged in The Real World IMHO
and not all give me root access
How would you be deploying a .deb without root access. Chroot jails?
But doing so - not to mention trying to figure out how to create a platform-independent .tar.gz binary - will be quite a task which ultimately doesn't really help me ship my product.
+1 You answer you own question. Don't meddle unless you have to.
Do you have any thoughts on the best way to set up my stack so that I'm not tied to a specific hosting provider?
Only depend on wellpackaged standard libs (such as ffmpeg). Otherwise include them in your own deployment. This problem isn't too hard too solve for 10s of thousand Linux applications over decades now, so it would probably be feasible for you too.
Out of the box:
Look at rightscale and other cloud providers/agents that have specialized images/tool chains especially for video encoding.
A 'regular' VPS provider (with Xen or Virtuozzo) will not normally be happy with these kinds of workload, but EC2, Rackspace and their lot will be absolutely fine with that.
In general, I wouldn't believe that a cloud infrastructure provider that doesn't grant root access will allow for computationally intensive workloads. $0.02