Book Image

Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook

By : Neil Mackenzie
Book Image

Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook

By: Neil Mackenzie

Overview of this book

The Windows Azure platform is Microsoft's Platform-as-a-Service environment for hosting services and data in the cloud. It provides developers with on-demand computing, storage, and service connectivity capabilities that facilitate the hosting of highly scalable services in Windows Azure datacenters across the globe. This practical cookbook will show you advanced development techniques for building highly scalable cloud-based services using the Windows Azure platform. It contains over 80 practical, task-based, and immediately usable recipes covering a wide range of advanced development techniques for building highly scalable services to solve particular problems/scenarios when developing these services on the Windows Azure platform. Packed with reusable, real-world recipes, the book starts by explaining the various access control mechanisms used in the Windows Azure platform. Next you will see the advanced features of Windows Azure Blob storage, Windows Azure Table storage, and Windows Azure Queues. The book then dives deep into topics such as developing Windows Azure hosted services, using Windows Azure Diagnostics, managing hosted services with the Service Management API, using SQL Azure and the Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus. You will see how to use several of the latest features such as VM roles, Windows Azure Connect, startup tasks, and the Windows Azure AppFabric Caching Service.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using Web Deploy with Windows Azure


A Windows Azure application is deployed into a hosted service by publishing the application package and its associated service configuration file, ServiceConfiguration.cscfg. The package is a compressed, encrypted file containing the assemblies comprising the application. The Windows Azure Fabric Controller allocates the components of the package to the instances of each role in the hosted service. A similar process is used when the hosted service is upgraded.

This process can take 10 minutes or more, depending on the size and complexity of the hosted service. There has been much demand that the deployment process be speeded up. This is particularly true for web roles where developers have become used to seeing their changes deployed almost as soon as they are made.

The IIS Web Deployment Tool (Web Deploy) provides tooling for Visual Studio that supports the rapid deployment of changes to an IIS website. The introduction of Remote Access for Windows Azure...