Windows Azure
 | “If possible, could I have some more?” This article could be expanded on and use more details, and needs them as much as XP-tan needs more RAM! |
Windows Azure is a Microsoft cloud computing platform used to build, deploy and manage applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. Windows Azure allows for applications to be built using many different programming languages, tools or frameworks and makes it possible for developers to integrate their public cloud applications in their existing IT environment. Windows Azure provides both Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) services and is classified as the “Public Cloud” in Microsoft's cloud computing strategy, along with its Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, Microsoft Online Services.
| Azure-tan | |
| |
| Character information | |
|---|---|
| Common name | Windows Azure-tan |
| Human name(s) | Claudia Madobe |
| First appearance | 2011-xx-xx |
| Hair color | Blonde |
| Eye color | Blue-green |
| Faction | Windows Family |
| Lineage | Windows NT |
| Rival(s) | rivals of this character |
| Technical information | |
| Software personified | Windows Azure |
| Purpose | Cloud computing platform |
| Developer(s) | Microsoft |
| Last release | Continuously |
Implementation
Windows Azure uses a specialized operating system, called Windows Azure, to run its "fabric layer" — a cluster hosted at Microsoft's datacenters that manages computing and storage resources of the computers and provisions the resources (or a subset of them) to applications running on top of Windows Azure. Windows Azure has been described as a "cloud layer" on top of a number of Windows Server systems, which use Windows Server 2008 and a customized version of Hyper-V, known as the Windows Azure Hypervisor to provide virtualization of services. Scaling and reliability are controlled by the Windows Azure Fabric Controller so the services and environment do not crash if one of the servers crashes within the Microsoft datacenter and provides the management of the user's web application like memory resources and load balancing.
About
Claudia Madobe is the official OS-tan for Windows Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing service and operating system. She is one of the few 'tans to be created by Microsoft themselves, following the Silverlight-tans and predating the 8-tans. She currently is the mascot for Windows Azure in Japan.
Media
Claudia appears in an ongoing webcomic by Microsoft. She also appeared in a video[1] for the Microsoft Developer Days confrence opening. There is also a video[2] demonstrating her and Nanami's pmd models (the same ones used in aforementioned music video) for Miku Miku Dance, to which the models came with a special version of Kinect for Windows sold at Comiket, and a video[3] of Claudia Madobe demonstrating a program called Live2D for creating interactive 2D images. She also appeared in a series of "Cloud Girl" shorts based around the aforementioned webcomic, which can be found re-uploaded by various users on YouTube.
Networking and More
