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Screencast: Using MySQL Workbench with Windows Azure Web Sites

2013-01-02T19:39:00Z

One of the great things about Windows Azure Web Sites is being able to create a web site in seconds that uses MySQL for your data. With your Azure subscription, you are entitled to a free MySQL database. You can’t manage this database within the Azure portal, but you can connect to it using MySQL Workbench.

In this screencast, I demonstrate how you can connect to your MySQL database using MySQL Workbench. I also show you how to find out the size of your MySQL database.

Download MySQL Workbench free from the Internet.

Here is the SQL query that I used in the screencast to determine the size of my database. You will need to change the query so that it uses your database name.

SELECT table_schema "your_database_name",
sum( data_length + index_length ) / 1024 / 1024 "Database Size in MB"
FROM information_schema.TABLES GROUP BY table_schema ;

Screencast: Troubleshooting Slow Requests in Windows Azure Web Sites

2012-12-27T23:53:00Z

This is the first in a series of Microsoft CTS Screencasts on using Windows Azure Web Sites.

Troubleshooting performance issues in the cloud can be tough. If you are dealing with slowness for a particular page in your Windows Azure Web Sites site, you can use the Failed Request Tracing feature to find out the cause for the slow response times. If you are using an ASP.NET site, you can use additional tracing features to instrument your code and find exactly where in your code you are experiencing a performance problem.

Click below to watch the screencast. For best results, use 720p HD quality and fullscreen mode.

In this screencast, I used the following XML snippet in my configuration file to configure Failed Request Tracing.

<tracing>
        <traceFailedRequests>
          <remove path="*" />
          <add path="*.aspx">
            <traceAreas>
              <add provider="ASP" verbosity="Verbose" />
              <add provider="ASPNET" areas="Infrastructure,Module,Page,AppServices" verbosity="Verbose" />
              <add provider="ISAPI Extension" verbosity="Verbose" />
              <add provider="WWW Server" areas="Authentication,Security,Filter,StaticFile,CGI,Compression,Cache,
                                                                             RequestNotifications,Module,FastCGI" verbosity="Verbose" />
            </traceAreas>
            <failureDefinitions statusCodes="200-999" />
          </add>
        </traceFailedRequests>
      </tracing>

Note:
Once you have used this method to troubleshoot a problem, you should turn off Failed Request Tracing in the Azure portal.

We have a FAQ thread on the Windows Azure Web Sites forum that describes how to use Failed Request Tracing to capture a trace when a request takes longer than a specified time. However, I opted to use the 200 status code in this post because it allows us to see the entire request lifecycle.

I hope you enjoy this screencast. There are more to come!

Hosting WordPress in a Subfolder of Your Windows Azure Web Site

2012-12-06T14:27:56Z

This post applies to Windows Azure Web Sites. These steps do not apply if you are using a Web Role.

Windows Azure Web Sites makes it quick and easy to create a WordPress blog hosted in Azure. However, if you create a WordPress blog using the Gallery in Windows Azure Web Sites, the blog becomes the root of your website. Many of our customers have asked about creating a WordPress blog in a sub-folder of a site so that it can be accessed with a URL such as www.mysite.com/blog. In this post, I’ll show you how you can host a WordPress blog in a subfolder of your site.

Here are the steps that we’ll use to add WordPress to a subfolder of an existing site. (I’ve used Roman numerals for these steps so that I can easily refer to them elsewhere in the post without your confusing them with one of the sub-steps.)

I. Create a temporary WordPress site.

II. Download the WordPress site using FTP.

III. Add the WordPress content to an existing site.

IV. Delete the temporary WordPress site.

V. Link the MySQL database to the existing site now hosting the WordPress blog.

I. Create a Temporary WordPress Site

The first step in the process is to create a temporary WordPress site in Windows Azure Web Sites that you can then move to your existing site.

1. In the Azure Portal, click the New button to create a new website.

2. Choose to create a new website from the Gallery.

3. Select WordPress from the list of apps in the Gallery.

4. Proceed through the wizard to create the WordPress site.

II. Download the WordPress Site Using FTP

The next step is to download all of the files for the WordPress site to your local machine so that you can transfer them to the existing site. I use FileZilla, a free FTP client, to do this.

To open the site using FTP, you’ll use the information contained in the publish profile for the site. The publish profile is an XML file that defines the different methods that can be used to publish to the website using Visual Studio, Web Matrix, or Web Deploy. Each publish method is defined in the publish profile using a <publishProfile> section. One of these sections defines the URL, username, and password that you can use to access the site with an FTP client.

From the WordPress site’s dashboard in the Azure Portal, click the Download Publish Profile link in the Quick Glance section.
Save the publish profile to your local machine.
Open the publish profile in Notepad or in another text editor.
Locate the FTP publish profile for your site and use the URL, username, and password to log into the site with your FTP client. (See Bertrand’s blog post for details on FTP credentials and where they are located in the publish profile.)
Log into the WordPress site you created in step I and copy the entire contents of the site/wwwroot folder to your local machine. (You can copy these files to any folder you choose.)

Bonus Information on Credentials

The credentials that you obtained from the publish profile are site-level credentials. They are specific to the website and if you share them with a co-administrator of your website, he or she can use them to access the site as well. In addition to the site-level credentials, you can also access the site using user-level credentials.

User-level credentials are tied to your Microsoft account (the account you use to sign into Azure.) Windows Azure Web Sites calls user-level credentials deployment credentials, and you can set them using the Reset Deployment Credentials link in the Quick Glance section.

Since deployment credentials are user-level credentials, you can use them with any of your websites. However, you will need to precede your username with the site name and a backslash. In other words, if my deployment credentials username is Jim, to use it to open a site named WordPressTest, I would use the username WordPressTest\Jim.

You can read more about user-level and site-level credentials in David Ebbo’s entry in GitHub.

III. Add the WordPress Content to an Existing Site

The third step involves adding a new folder to your existing site and then copying the WordPress files into that folder.

1. Open your existing site in your FTP client. (You’ll need to use the proper FTP credentials for the site. You can obtain those using the same steps you used in step II.)

2. Create a new directory to hold the WordPress blog. In this example, I’ve named that directory blog.

3. Copy the WordPress files you downloaded in step II into the new folder you created in your existing website.

IV. Delete the Temporary WordPress Site

You no longer need the temporary WordPress site you created in step I, so the next step is to delete that site. Be careful not to delete the linked MySQL database when you do this or you will break the new WordPress blog!

1. Select the temporary WordPress site in the Azure Portal.

2. Click the Delete button to delete the website.

3. Make sure that the checkbox for your linked MySQL database instance is unchecked. You do NOT want to delete the linked MySQL database because the WordPress blog you copied in the previous step is still using the database.

4. Click the Yes button in the lower-right corner of the Delete Confirmation dialog show above to delete the site and keep the MySQL database.

V. Link the MySQL Database to the Existing Website

The final step is to link the MySQL database to the existing website that now hosts your WordPress blog.

1. From the Azure Portal, select the existing website that is hosting your WordPress blog.

2. Click the Linked Resources tab.

3. Click the Link a Resource link.

4. Click the Link an Existing Resource link.

5. Click the MySQL Database link.

6. Check the checkbox to agree to ClearDB’s legal terms and then click the Yes button to link the MySQL database to your website.

You can now browse to your WordPress blog by browsing to the URL for the folder you created in step III. For example, I can browse to my WordPress site by browsing to http://MyMvcSite.AzureWebSites.net/blog.