Dec 10, 2013

Windows Azure brings an additional option to the old question of where you will host your web application or your services. Traditionally, you would pick the in-house IIS server available on premises for most of the internal applications. You can also opt for your internet service provider for those applications or services that would be used by your customers, for example, the company website. With Windows Azure, the third option is to choose a cloud solution for the deployment of web and service applications. Following on, I'll discuss some of the advantages of choosing a cloud solution and tips for deploying your apps. One of the main advantages of using a cloud solution is the fact that you simply delegate all the trouble of providing scalability and high availability to the cloud vendor, which would be Microsoft in this case if you were to use Windows Azure. You will always have at least 3 redundant copies of your applications and services providing you very high availability. Hosting applications and services on the cloud also improves utilisation of resources. You can easily scale out to meet the growing demand when needed, and scale down when the demand is down again. This improves flexibility and reduces operational costs. Let's say you have finished developing your web application using ASP.NET web forms or MVC and you have decided to host the application with Windows Azure. There are different ways to deploy a web application to Azure. The easiest way is by using the Web Deployment Framework, also known as Web Deploy, through Visual Studio 2012 IDE. You can also use Web Deploy directly with your local IIS and generate a Deployment Package that can then be later uploaded directly to Azure using the Windows Azure Portal. With Visual Studio 2012, using Web Deploy is a breeze. Follow the simple steps below.

1. Right-click your project in Solution Explorer and select ‘Properties.’
2. Provide some details in the ‘Package/Publish Web’ tab.
3. Once the publishing settings are configured, right-click the project again and this time select ‘Publish’.

This displays the ‘Publish Web’ dialog box where, beyond a few other tasks, you will provide information about the destination. Now when you make changes to the project, republish your project. This time, most of the configuration details are already completed, and you will only need to upload the files that have changed. The fact that you have Azure in the back-end becomes almost transparent for the developer. You will spend most of your time concentrating on developing all the features of your application. Windows Azure offers much more than just a good host provider for your web applications. For an in depth coverage of Windows Azure Development, take a look into New Horizons’ training program 20487 – Developing Windows Azure and Web Services. You will be amazed by the capabilities of Windows Azure as well as by the easy and intuitive ways to work with the Azure Application Portal.