The following diagram shows an brief overview of an Azure Cloud Service architecture:
As you can see, an Azure Cloud Service consists of the following two elements:
- Cloud Services Package: The service package (ServicePackage.cspkg) is a ZIP file which includes the Service Definition File (ServiceDefinition.csdef) and the Code Assets for the service and the required binary-based dependencies
- Service Configuration File: The service configuration file is ServiceConfig.cscfg
As you can also see, the service configuration file is outside of the cloud service package. This is because changes in the configuration can be made without interruption at run time (by uploading a new service configuration file). However, changes to the service itself require a redeployment of the cloud service package.