My son has developed a new addiction to Minecraft. It is a single or multiplayer game with a client-server architecture, millions of users, and a vibrant community. The game's primitive graphics initially put me off. It was a cube-constructed world with overlaid textures. But I soon got over it when I saw how much it was fun to play and how it stimulates creativity. I'm also impressed by the huge and vibrant community of people playing and extending the game with plug-ins (mods), custom maps, and public server worlds (sites you can go to play, such as http://planetminecraft.net).
Minecraft allows you to play single-player or connect to remote servers. If you are a power user or someone with some IT chops, you can easily set up a server of your own for which dozens of simple tutorials are available. You will need to download the server software, run it, disable any firewalls and enter a server IP on the client.
Of course what comes next is "Dad, can my friends connect to my Minecraft server?"
So I followed that path and set up our router to forward port traffic, which allowed us to open the Minecraft-active port on the home network. That wasn't too tough, and again dozens of tutorials are out there to help walk you through the process.
The scary part is: Exploiting holes in the firewall. This allows unknown (and sometimes malicious!) it's uooka time parties to access your home network and onto any machine that may have personal information. There is also the issue of bandwidth. This is an essential aspect of smooth gaming when a host server is involved. If you don’t have a fast internet connection or bandwidth limitations, you could be setting up an inexplicable server.
Enter Windows Azure Virtual Machines
As a Microsoft Windows Azure Insider it was obvious to me that Windows Azure is an ideal infrastructure for this kind of shared accessibility. Windows Azure offers many features, including shared host roles as well as storage and access control. It is also known as PaaS – Platform as a Service. IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service – a relatively recent offering from Windows Azure includes virtual machine host.
AHH! Finally, a good reason for you to get started with Azure VMs.
[Wait... This sounds kind of snarky... It's not meant to be. I was trying be funny... I guess I should keep my day job...
The more I think about this, though, the more I like the idea. It can be rearranged when you're done, and it doesn't need to affect your home firewalls. Yada, yada...