We had a weird problem when moving a WordPress website for a customer: after DUMPing it out of MySQL, we noted that the wp_options table had a problem, namely the table had no primary key and no index on the option_name field. We noted that because the WordPress website, once moved, looked akward and wrong, missing some key pieces and it also seemed to use settings that were old. The reason was that, with primary key missing, lots of duplicate records were stored inside the table and I’m pretty sure it was not what the website was meant to do. Field option_id was set to 0 in most cases when it should have been an auto-incremented integer plus it seemed [...]

Windows Azure Pack is a great technology but sometimes Microsoft seems to be missing the complexity of providing services to hundreds if not thousands of customers, each of them with different needs. Standardization is good but it should provide enough flexibility to manage things in a reasonable way. So here’s the scenario: you deployed WAP and your customer starts to buzz into your server because how good WAP actually is. Rock solid, able to run most demanding websites. Great technology, I said.

However, one of your customers runs over his allotted quota of one of the seventeen metrics you can monitor for your websites. Since your customer didn’t opt for a [...]