Windows Server AppFabric Eases App Hosting, Management

Windows Server AppFabric, now generally available, is a free set of extensions to Windows Server that includes AppFabric Hosting Services, which provides infrastructure and tools to simplify deploying and managing applications based on the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) messaging and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) workflow platforms. AppFabric Hosting Services could reduce development and management overhead for applications running on Windows Server. However, the extensions require Windows Server 2008 or later, and some require the .NET Framework 4.

(A second component of Windows Server AppFabric, called AppFabric Caching Services and formerly code-named Velocity, provides a cross-server, in-memory Web application caching system; it will be covered in a future article.)

Web Service and Workflow Hosting, Management Simplified

AppFabric Hosting Services (formerly code-named Dublin) provides infrastructure and administrative tools to deploy, configure, and monitor WCF Web services and WF workflows that run within IIS worker processes. This will simplify the work of developers and administrators in organizations that use WCF and WF on a large scale.