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Deploying a Windows Azure Web Site

This is a hands-on lab for deploying a Windows Azure Web Site for Global Windows Azure Bootcamp Perth 2014. We are going to be deploying the AllInOne example code to a Windows Azure Web Site that we create. This demonstrates how easy and quick it is to get up and running with a Web Site in Azure that can run (out-of-the-box):

  • ASP.NET (e.g. MVC, WebAPI, Web Forms, Web Pages)
  • Classic ASP
  • nodeJS
  • PHP

Prerequisites

Ensure you have Visual Studio 2012 or Visual Studio 2013 (Express is fine) and Windows Azure SDK 2.2.

Instructions

  1. Log into the Windows Azure Management Portal
  2. Click on New on the bottom left and select Compute > Web Site > Quick Create
    • Enter a unique name for your site in the URL field
    • Select a Region to deploy to in the Region field Creating a site in the portal
  3. Download the AllInOne zip file and unzip it on your computer
  4. Open Visual Studio and from the File menu choose Open a New Website and navigate to and select the AllInOne folder that you unzipped Open new website in Visual Studio
  5. Right cick the site and Select Publish Web Site Publish Web Site in Visual Studio
  6. Select the Import Profile button Import Profile in Visual Studio
  7. If you haven't already then Sign In with your Windows Azure Microsoft account
    • If you don't have this option then make sure you have version 2.2 of the Azure SDK Sign In to Windows Azure with Visual Studio
  8. Once signed in select the site to deploy to as the one you created in step 2 and click OK Select site to deploy to with Visual Studio
  9. The Connection tab should show with pre-populated credentials; click Next and then click Publish (leave the defaults on the next screen) Pre-populated publishing credentials in Visual Studio
  10. Visual Studio should publish the site for you and open it on your defaullt web browser Deployed website
  11. Click around in the different links and check out the code that generated them to see all the different platforms that are working out-of-the-box

If you are a superstar and you finished the hands-on lab early or you are revisiting this lab after the fact there are some more labs we've included for you below that cover some of the other concepts/options around creating and deploying Windows Azure Web Sites. Feel free to pick any of them that interest you below.

Further reading:

Advanced: Create a continuous integration and deployment pipeline using Visual Studio Online

There are a bunch of options when it comes to using Windows Azure Web Sites with continuous integration and as part of automated deployment pipelines. There is an out-of-the-box experience with the recently launched Visual Studio Online (previously called Team Foundation Service) where in a few clicks you can create a continuous integration build that compiles your code and runs your tests and then if the tests pass triggers a deployment to Azure. The out-of-the-box experience will only work if you have a fairly basic project and we would expect a different setup for serious production websites, but it's a great example of the power of the Windows Azure platform so we've included it as a lab for you.

  1. This tutorial is pretty good (barring a few spelling mistakes here and there: http://irisclasson.com/2014/01/11/visual-studio-online-setup-speed-test-and-guide-continuous-integration-and-deployment-pipeline/

Advanced: Create a site using the command-line tools

The documentation for the command-line tools is at http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/documentation/articles/xplat-cli/ - feel free to read it to get more detailed explanations of any of the steps below. See also this awesome post by Scott Hanselman.

  1. Download and install the Windows Azure command-line tools for Windows (found via the Windows Azure downloads page).
  2. Open a new command window and execute azure to see an overview of the commands you can run
    • If it complains that it can't find azure then your PATH variable wasn't updated and you need to open Windows Explorer right-click on Computer and select Properties and then click on the Environment Variables button and click OK and OK again.
  3. Download your .publishsettings file that contains the credentials for your Windows Azure account to perform API requests by executing azure account download in the command line, which will open a browser window and require you to log into your Azure account
  4. Find the location of the downloaded .publishsettings file
  5. Import the .publishsettings file into the Azure commandline by using azure account import {path to .publishsettings file}
    • Delete the downloaded .publishsettings file
    • If you have production instances on your subscription then read the documentation to find out where it stores the settings and how to encrypt the directory it's in
  6. Find out all the locations that you can deploy to with azure site location list
  7. Create a new website using azure site create "<your_unique_site_name>" --location "A Valid Location"
    • You can also leave out the --location option and it will prompt you for the location to deploy to
  8. View the site status using azure site list or by looking in the portal at your Web Sites
  9. The command-line tools are very discoverable - you can navigate the possible list of commands by executing azure and seeing the list of command categories and then azure [category] to see the list of commands for a given category then to see the options for a particular command execute azure [category] [command] -h
    • Feel free to play around and see all of the options that are available to you

Advanced: Use git for publishing

This requires you to have Git set up on your machine and to have done steps 1-5 of the "Create a site using the command-line tools" lab above.

  1. Go to the Dashboard of a Web Site in the Windows Azure portal
  2. Click on the Reset your deployment credentials link and create some credentials
    • These credentials are used for FTP and Git
    • Make sure you remember the password as you will need it later
  3. Pull up the command-line and in a new directory somewhere execute azure site create "<your_unique_site_name>" --location "A Valid Location" --git
    • This will create a site and set up a git checkout in the current directory with a remote called azure that allows you to push from the current checkout to your azure site
    • If you are feeling particularly adventurous then type in azure site create -h and use the GitHub options instead to link the site to a GitHub repository
      • Leave out the password option to make it prompt you so you don't have to type it in clear text
  4. Put some files in the repository that has been created and commit them then do an git push azure to deploy the changes to Azure
    • It will prompt you for the deployment credential password you set up in step 2
    • If you connected GitHub then you will need to push the changes to your GitHub repository and it will automatically deploy
  5. To navigate to your site execute azure site browser "<your_site_name>"