Free ebook: Building Cloud Apps with Microsoft Azure

Greetings! We’re happy to release a free ebook today: Building Cloud Apps with Microsoft Azure: Best practices for DevOps, data storage, high availability, and more, by Scott Guthrie, Mark Simms, Tom Dykstra, Rick Anderson, and Mike Wasson.

You can download all formats (PDF, Mobi and ePub) at the Microsoft Virtual Academy.

This ebook walks you through a patterns-based approach to building real-world cloud solutions. The patterns apply to the development process as well as to architecture and coding practices.

The content is based on a presentation developed by Scott Guthrie and delivered by him at the Norwegian Developers Conference (NDC) in June of 2013 (part 1, part 2), and at Microsoft Tech Ed Australia in September 2013 (part 1, part 2). Many others updated and augmented the content while transitioning it from video to written form.

Who should read this book

Developers who are curious about developing for the cloud, are considering a move to the cloud, or are new to cloud development will find here a concise overview of the most important concepts and practices they need to know. The concepts are illustrated with concrete examples, and each chapter includes links to other resources that provide more in-depth information. The examples and the links to additional resources are for Microsoft frameworks and services, but the principles illustrated apply to other web development frameworks and cloud environments as well.

Developers who are already developing for the cloud may find ideas here that will help make them more successful. Each chapter in the series can be read independently, so you can pick and choose topics that you're interested in.

Anyone who watched Scott Guthrie's "Building Real World Cloud Apps with Windows Azure" presentation and wants more details and updated information will find that here.

Assumptions

This ebook expects that you have experience developing web applications by using Visual Studio and ASP.NET. Familiarity with C# would be helpful in places.

UPDATE (on August 20, 2014)

We’ve been notified of two errors and an out-of-date statement in the ebook:

On page 87 in the PDF, the following bullet:

• Azure table storage     A column-oriented NoSQL database.

should instead be:

• Azure table storage     A key/value NoSQL database.

On page 186 in the PDF, the following statement applies to Visual Studio 2013 as originally released:

When Visual Studio creates a new web project, bundling and minification of JavaScript files is not enabled by default.

If you install the latest update for Visual Studio 2013, bundling and minification is enabled by default.

On page 189 in the PDF, step 5 reads like so:

5. If you have multiple subscriptions, use the Set-AzureSubscription cmdlet to specify the subscription you want to create the test environment in.

It should read like so:

5. If you have multiple subscriptions, use the Select-AzureSubscription cmdlet to specify the subscription you want to create the test environment in.

Thanks.

Comments

• Anonymous
  July 24, 2014
  Excellent! Thanks for your sharing! :)

• Anonymous
  July 25, 2014
  Sure! We hope it's very helpful, Will.

• Anonymous
  July 25, 2014
  Nice book, hard to believe it's free. Thanks for sharing.

• Anonymous
  July 26, 2014
  Thanks for sharing...

• Anonymous
  July 27, 2014
  Awesome book, Thanks a lot for sharing :)

• Anonymous
  July 28, 2014
  Excelent read!!! Recommended.

• Anonymous
  July 28, 2014
  It could be very nice if this book had a section on how to reduce the cost of database storage, since having a simple database at Windows Azure is very expensive.

• Anonymous
  July 28, 2014
  Thank you for this book

• Anonymous
  July 28, 2014
  Thanks for the free but valuable download.

• Anonymous
  July 28, 2014
  Thanks a lot guys! Should free spare time to read it... ;)

• Anonymous
  July 28, 2014
  Thanks Look forward to reading further.

• Anonymous
  July 28, 2014
  merci!

• Anonymous
  July 28, 2014
  Gr8! Thanks!

• Anonymous
  July 28, 2014
  Thanks for this free E-Book...

• Anonymous
  July 29, 2014
  I was waiting for a book like that

• Anonymous
  July 29, 2014
  Gracias!

• Anonymous
  July 29, 2014
  Thanks for provide free this e-book

• Anonymous
  July 29, 2014
  Went to the Gu's sessions at TechEd Australia - was excellent!

• Anonymous
  July 29, 2014
  Thanks, much needed!

• Anonymous
  July 29, 2014
  Thanks,  I  hope it gives me a small nudge to start being more serious about cloud programming. Thanks  again

• Anonymous
  July 29, 2014
  great E-book, great topic best of all great price

• Anonymous
  July 29, 2014
  great E-book, just the book for cloud developers. great price! thanks Microsoft keep them coming..

• Anonymous
  July 30, 2014
  Gracias

• Anonymous
  July 31, 2014
  The ebook says to use Set-AzureSubscription after Add-AzureAccount to select which subscription to use (if you have more than one). However, Set-AzureSubscription is for changing the properties of a subscription. To select the one to use, use Select-AzureSubscription.

• Anonymous
  July 31, 2014
  Selecting the Azure subscription, Thanks for that catch! I've updated the post to share the fix.

• Anonymous
  August 03, 2014
  Thanks for sharing!. Can't wait to see new books about cloud development.

• Anonymous
  August 17, 2014
  Precise information without unnecessary details. This book may as well be renamed "Cloud Development Demystified". Thanks for sharing.

• Anonymous
  October 03, 2014
  Thanks for the free

• Anonymous
  December 17, 2014
  can you sent this book to  my email id(ajmeerm92@gmail.com) anybody sir,..

  • Anonymous
    May 21, 2016
    Why not just hit the link to download it directly from the Virtual Academy?

• Anonymous
  February 24, 2015
  Excellent! Thanks for your sharing!

• Anonymous
  January 17, 2016
  The MVA link for ebook given above has a redirect loop.

• Anonymous
  March 03, 2016
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  May 10, 2016
  great book

• Anonymous
  June 06, 2016
  Have a nice try

• Anonymous
  June 16, 2016
  Great book, excactly the information was seeking!

• Anonymous
  June 16, 2016
  Just great! Excactly the information i was seeking!

• Anonymous
  August 25, 2016
  Will this ever get updated?

• Anonymous
  October 12, 2016
  Its really hard to believe that this eBook is free.

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2017
  oky