Windows Azure Developer Tools Team

Enabling Web Deploy for Windows Azure Web Roles with Visual Studio

2011-04-18T23:50:00Z

Last week the Windows Azure SDK team released the Windows Azure SDK 1.4.1 refresh. This refresh adds support for Web Deploy to the Visual Studio tools for Windows Azure. This is huge. Web Deploy lets developers deploy iterative code changes to a web role in Windows Azure in seconds. If you’ve ever had to wait more than five minutes for a code change to be updated so you could test it, this is for you. You can see the feature in action in this Channel 9 video.

Web Deploy enables developers to quickly push incremental changes to a web role running in Windows Azure during development and testing. Changes are made directly on the target role without creating and deploying a new package (.cspack). This is a great way to tweak your code and configuration in the cloud before creating the final package that you deploy to your production environment.

There are a number of constraints regarding the use of Web Deploy:

Your web role must only have a single running instance.
The changes that you make with Web Deploy are temporary. When the role instance is restarted, your changes will be gone.
Can only be used for development and testing. Not intended for updating applications in production.

You can download the SDK refresh using the Web Platform Installer:

The Visual Studio Tools for Windows Azure have built in support for enabling Web Deploy. The tools also automatically create a publish profile so you can make incremental updates using the web application publish wizard.

When you install the Web Deploy plug-in a new option will appear in the Cloud Tools publish dialog with the title “Enable Web Deploy for all Web Roles (requires Remote Desktop)”:

In order to enable the feature you must first setup remote desktop. Follow the instructions here to set up remote desktop. Once remote desktop is enabled, you can set the check mark to enable Web Deploy.

Notice: Web Deploy is set up to use a self-signed certificate for SSL encryption by default. You can change the certificate in the IIS Manager on the web role.

Now publish your Windows Azure project as usual. That is all you have to do to enable Web Deploy from Visual Studio. Under the covers Visual Studio will include the Web Deploy plug-in and define an input endpoint in the ServiceDefinition. These changes are made as a part of the publish process and do not affect your design time files.

Once deployment is complete, right click on the Web Application Project and choose “Publish”:

The Cloud Tools automatically created a publish profile with the right settings for you:

Web Deploy uses the same credentials as Remote Desktop. Type your password and click “Publish”. Web Deploy will now update your Web Role instance in a fraction of the time it normally takes to re-deploy to Windows Azure.

Happy Web Deploying...

Changing Web Deploy port number

By default Web Deploy uses the Web Management port number 8172. In most cases this is fine. However, in some IT environments it is not possible to make SSL connections using this port. In such cases you will have to customize Web Deploy to use a different port. The Visual Studio Cloud Tools can be configured to setup the input endpoint for Web Deploy to a custom port number. Ask your IT department if they can recommend a port number. Otherwise you can configure Web Deploy to use port 443 which is the standard SSL port and therefore open in most environments. To manually configure the port number, you have to edit the cloud project file (.ccproj) by hand.

1) Unload the project:

2) Edit the project file:

3) Add this setting to the project properties (replace 'WebRole1' with the name of your web role): <WebDeployPorts>WebRole1:443</WebDeployPorts>

You can add multiple Web Roles by separating them with '|' in the project setting: <WebDeployPorts>WebRole1:443|WebRole2:444</WebDeployPorts>

4) Reload the project and deploy the cloud project to Windows Azure

Troubleshooting Web Deploy for Windows Azure

Here are some of the most common problems with Web Deploy on Windows Azure:

Symptom: I get this error message when I try to update my Web Role instance using Web Deploy:

"Error : Web deployment task failed. (...) The response header 'MSDeploy.Response' was '' but 'v1' was expected."

Problem 1: In some IT Environments it is not possible to make SSL connections on port 8172, which is the default port for Web Deploy and the Web Management Service.

Solution 1: Change the Web Deploy port number. (see above)

Problem 2: The Web Deploy service isn’t running correctly on the Web Role instance.

Solution 2: Log into the Web Role instance with Remote Desktop and make sure that the Web Management Service and Web Deploy Service are both running. Try to restart both services.

Symptom: I checked the Web Deploy checkbox when I published my Cloud Project but there is no publish profile in my Web Application project.

Problem: In some cases the publish profile gets deleted in Visual Studio 2010 RTM.

Solution: This problem is solved in Visual Studio 2010 SP1.

Announce the November 2010 Release of the Windows Azure Tools + SDK

2010-11-23T20:31:00Z

Today, coinciding with the general availability of the new Windows Azure Management Portal, we have released version 1.3 of the Windows Azure Tools and SDK.

The Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extends Visual Studio 2010 to enable the creation, configuration, building, debugging, running, packaging and deployment of scalable web applications and services on Windows Azure.

New in this release:

IIS Support: Full IIS is supported for building and deploying web roles, both in the development environment and in Windows Azure.
Remote Desktop: Support to enable and configure Remote Desktop connections for all your roles in the Windows Azure project;
Virtual Machine (VM) Role: Allow you to add a VM role to your Windows Azure project, select the VHD for your VM role, configure and deploy the VM role;
Virtual Network: Support to activate Windows Azure Connect for your roles, to provide connection between Azure and on-premise resources;
Diagnostics: Updated support for diagnostics to use the new plug-In;
EndPoints Support Enhancements: Refreshed support for Endpoints according to platform update.

The new Windows Azure Storage Browser in Visual Studio

2010-06-10T16:04:21Z

Jim talks about the new Windows Azure Storage browser in the Server Explorer that was released with the June 2010 release of the Windows Azure Tools. He talks about what it does as well as some of our thinking when we were building it.

Debug your Windows Azure Cloud Services using IntelliTrace

2010-06-07T13:43:22Z

A cool new feature in the June 2010 release of the Windows Azure Tools + SDK is the ability to use IntelliTrace in the Cloud. Check out this post for more information.

Announcing the June 2010 Release of the Windows Azure Tools + SDK

2010-06-07T13:40:00Z

We're pleased to announce the release of the June 2010 Windows Azure Tools + SDK.

The Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 2008 to enable the creation, configuration, building, debugging, running, packaging and deployment of scalable web applications and services on Windows Azure.

New for this release:

Visual Studio 2010 RTM Support: Full support for Visual Studio 2010 RTM.
.NET 4 support: Choose to build services targeting either the .NET 3.5 or .NET 4 framework.
Cloud storage explorer: Displays a read-only view of Windows Azure tables and blob containers through Server Explorer.
Integrated deployment: Deploy services directly from Visual Studio by selecting ‘Publish’ from Solution Explorer.
Service monitoring: Keep track of the state of your services through the ‘compute’ node in Server Explorer.
IntelliTrace support for services running in the cloud: Adds support for debugging services in the cloud by using the Visual Studio 2010 IntelliTrace feature. This is enabled by using the deployment feature, and logs are retrieved through Server Explorer. Note: Requires Visual Studio Ultimate and .NET 4 roles.

QFE to enable IntelliTrace on 32-Bit OS.

WCF on Windows Azure

2010-05-27T20:48:56Z

Jim just posted about updates to our wcfazure code gallery page and walks through one of the more common issues with using WCF on Windows Azure - generating proxies.

RoleEntryPoint Method Call Order

2010-02-11T18:48:00Z

Learn more about the RoleEntryPoint methods and call order in Windows Azure.

Walkthrough: Migrating an ASP.NET Web App to Windows Azure

2010-02-08T19:51:00Z

Using NerdDinner as an example, Jim walks through migrating an ASP.NET Web App to Windows Azure taking it from a single instance IIS hosted app to a scalable cloud application that runs on Windows Azure and uses SQL Azure for the data and ASP.NET providers.

http://blogs.msdn.com/jnak/archive/2010/02/08/migrating-an-existing-asp-net-app-to-run-on-windows-azure.aspx

Windows Azure Tools and SDK v1.1 February 2010 Release

2010-02-02T00:00:00Z

Today, coinciding with the general availability of Windows Azure, we have released version 1.1 of the Windows Azure Tools and SDK.

This release supports VS 2008 and the upcoming VS 2010 RC. For VS 2010 Beta 2 please use the November 2009 release.

New for version 1.1:

Windows Azure Drive: Enable a Windows Azure application to use existing NTFS APIs to access a durable drive. This allows the Windows Azure application to mount a page blob as a drive letter, such as X:, and enables easy migration of existing NTFS applications to the cloud.
OS Version Support: Allows a Windows Azure application to choose the appropriate Guest OS to run on in the cloud.
Bug Fixes
- StorageClient: Expose account key from storage credentials, expose continuation tokens for pagination, and reduce maximum buffer size for parallel uploads.
- Windows Azure Diagnostics: Fix path corruption for crash dumps, OnDemandTransfer now respects LogLevelFilter.
- VS 2010: Improved packaging performance.
- VS 2010: Support for linked files in Web projects.
- VS 2010: Support for ASP.NET web project web.config transformations.
- Certificate selection lists certificates from LocalMachine\My instead of CurrentUser\My.
- Right click on Role under Roles folder to select whether to launch the browser against HTTP, HTTPS or not at all.

Updated and additional samples are available at: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsazuresamples

Windows Azure Role Instance Process IDs

2010-01-29T20:33:00Z

Jim talks about how to correlate the Windows Azure Role instances you see in the Development Fabric to process IDs which in turn is useful for correlating that instances to an instance being debugged.

Installing Certificates into Windows Azure VMs

2010-01-29T20:27:00Z

Interested in uploading certificates in the OS of the VMs that run in the Windows Azure cloud? Jim has written a walkthrough that will explain and guide you through the process.

Windows Azure Blob Storage Walkthrough

2010-01-11T18:05:00Z

Want to learn how to get build a Windows Azure cloud service that uses blob storage? Have a look at Jim's blob storage walkthrough.

How to use: Windows Azure Table Storage

2010-01-06T18:31:00Z

Jim posted an intro walkthrough on using Windows Azure Table Storage. If you are looking to get your head around using Windows Azure Tables, definitely check this out.

Adding an HTTPS Endpoint to a Windows Azure Web Role Walkthrough

2009-12-01T20:55:00Z

Jim posted a "how to" / Walkthrough on adding an HTTPS endpoint and setting up the certificate on Windows Azure. The way to do this changed with the November 2009 release.

Windows Azure Tools and SDK v1.0 November 2009 Release

2009-11-12T23:00:00Z

Today we released several new features for Windows Azure through the Windows Azure Tools and SDK. (Use the direct link while the release propagates)

We look forward to discussing these new Windows Azure features, in detail, at PDC '09.

This release add support for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and VWD Express 2010 Beta 2.

What's new for the November release:

Service Model UI: A redesigned and significantly more complete interface for manipulating Role configuration information. To access, double-click on a role node in the Solution Explorer.
Additional role templates: Support for ASP.NET MVC 2 (2010 only), F# worker roles (2010 only), and WCF Service Application web roles.
Support for dynamically creating tables: The Create Tables functionality is now performed automatically; there is no longer a need to right-click and select Create Tables… on the project after your table definitions have changed.
Full support for and installation of the November Windows Azure SDK release:

The sample storage client has been replaced by a new production quality library.
New Diagnostics library enables logging using .NET APIs and enables the collection of diagnostic information from the service.
Service Runtime library updated to support inter-role communication and notification of configuration changes .
Support for input endpoints on Worker Roles.
Higher fidelity simulation of Development Storage: supports all current cloud storage features, including dynamically creating tables.
Ability to choose the size of the VM for a role instance.
Ability to persist data in local storage even after the role is recycled.
Ability to manage certificates to install to the role VMs.

Updated and additional code samples are available online at: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsazuresamples

Tips and Tricks for using Visual Studio 2010 to develop applications for Windows Azure

2009-11-11T01:56:00Z

If you're going to PDC next week, one of the sessions you don't want to miss is Jim's session on tips and tricks for Windows Azure development.

It's a tools focussed session that should have plenty of interesting content no matter what level of experience you have with Windows Azure.

New walkthroughs for the July CTP of Windows Azure Tools

2009-07-20T23:59:00Z

Jim's put together some new walkthroughs for some of the new features in the July CTP of the Windows Azure Tools + SDK:

Working with Multiple Web and Worker Roles

Associating an ASP.NET Web Application (including MVC) as a Web Role

Have a look, some cool new stuff.

July CTP of Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio

2009-07-20T23:30:00Z

We've just released a July CTP of the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio! (try the direct link to the download while it propogates)

What’s New for the July 2009 CTP?

Support for developing and deploying services containing multiple web and worker roles. A service may contain zero or more web roles and zero or more worker roles with a minimum of one role of either type.
New project creation dialog that supports creating Cloud Services with multiple web and worker roles.
Ability to associate any ASP.NET Web Application project in a Cloud Service solution as a Web Role
Support for building Cloud Services from TFS Build
Enhanced robustness and stability

Please see this post for more information.

Windows Azure FastCGI Project Template

2009-07-12T02:27:00Z

Jim demystifies the CG Web Role project template that is shipped with the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio.

Now Available: May 2009 CTP of the Windows Azure Tools and SDK

2009-05-28T20:30:00Z

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio (includes SDK). If the release is still propagating, try the Direct Link.

New for the May 2009 CTP:

Support for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1
Update for Visual Studio 2008
Improved integration with the Development Fabric and Storage services to improve the reliability of debug and run of Cloud Services from Visual Studio
Enhanced robustness and stability

Release notes/Known issues are available here

Visual Studio 2010 compatible samples are available here

Please see this post for more information.

Adding an https endpoint to a Windows Azure Web Role

2009-05-12T23:09:00Z

Here's a helpful walkthrough on how to add an https endpoint to a Windows Azure Cloud Service.

[Fixed link]

Using the Web Platform Installer to install Pre-reqs for the Windows Azure Tools/SDK

2009-04-21T04:01:00Z

Jim walks you through using the Web Platform Installer to get your pre-reqs (like installing IIS7) for the Windows Azure Tools and SDK using the Web Platform Installer.

Windows Azure Service Packages Revealed

2009-04-17T00:49:00Z

Jim's just posted about Service Packages including how to crack open the single file version of them (diagnostic and debugging purposes only).

Azure Mix '09 Videos

2009-03-22T23:22:00Z

Jim's posted a set of links to the Mix '09 keynotes, Windows Azure and Azure Services Plaform sessions.

http://blogs.msdn.com/jnak/archive/2009/03/22/windows-azure-mix-videos.aspx

Just released - Windows Azure Tools and SDK March 2009 CTP

2009-03-19T00:44:00Z

Just in time for Mix '09 - new Windows Azure Tools and SDK.

New Features:

Combined installer that installs both the Windows Azure Tools and the SDK
Get notified of updates when they become available
Ability to write and debug .Net Full Trust Web and Worker Roles. Here's a walkthrough.of using that functionality to PInvoke to native code.
Support for FastCGI applications running on Windows Azure.
Support for the URL rewrite module
Support for specifying the SQL Server instance to use for Development Storage