Azure cloud services vs Dedicated servers

I have been searching for an article about advantages/disadvantages about using cloud services (Azure in this case) or a dedicated server but have not found anything concrete. What I see is that there are dedicated servers with much more capacity (8MB RAM,
2 x 2 TB HD´s, 4-core CPU, for example) than Azure VM´s at a much lower price and at the same time I see that there is an increase in cloud services usage. What other aspects should I consider besides price to decide to move to the cloud (Azure VM´s in this
case) instead of a dedicated server?
Best regards, JORGE MALDONADO

Hi,
In Azure, you can create multiple VMs in a cloud service and the VMs in the same cloud service share the same public IP address. If you want to access
the VM from external, you need to create endpoints and open the related ports in firewall. You can also manage incoming traffic to the public port by configuring rules for the network access control list (ACL) of the endpoint to ensure
safety.
Azure charges an horly price that is based on the VM's size and OS, and the prices include Windows Server licensing fee. If you don't want to use
a VM, you can shut it down to the stopped (deallocated) status and you won't be charged for it.
In addition, you can resizing the VM to a larger/smaller one as your need. (Note: the data on the temporary driver would be lost after resizing)
Furthermore, for Cloud Services, when you deploy two or more role instances in different fault and upgrade domains, your Internet facing roles will
have external connectivity at least 99.95% of the time. For all Internet facing Virtual Machines that have two or more instances deployed in the same Availability Set, you will have external connectivity at least 99.95% of the time.
More information:
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-manage-availability/
https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/azure/dn683781.aspx/
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-set-up-endpoints/
Best regards,
Susie
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"Failed to debug the Windows Azure Cloud Service project. The Output directory .... does not exist" - Looking for Solution Config Name Folder?

Good evening,
I've been working on and with a VS2013 Update 2 / Azure SDK 2.3 Cloud Service project for a while now and never had a problem debugging it (setting the .ccproj Project as Startup Project) but at the moment I cannot Debug it anymore - I always get the following
error message:
Failed to debug the Windows Azure Cloud Service project. The output directory 'D:\Workspace\Development\Sources\AzureBackend\csx\Backend - Debug' does not exist.
Now what's odd here, is the last part - the "Backend - Debug" is the Solution configuration name, ALL projects in that particular solution configuration are set to the Debug Configuration. The .ccproj file also only specifies Debug|Any CPU (and
Release|Any CPU respectively) as its output folder(s). Why is the Solution config appearing up there?
And more importantly.. why is this happening and what can I do?!
Thanks,
-Jörg
Ps: there seems to be a related
connect bug and these sorts of issues do appear around the forums but none contains a solution (neither reinstalling the Azure SDK nor cloaking the workspace/re-retrieving & building everything worked).

Good morning Jambor,
I already tried de-installing everything Azure-Tooling related including the Azure SDK, Restarting my machine and re-installing the SDK.
Same result. I can build the .ccproj perfectly fine and the cspack file IS generated perfectly fine, only debugging does not work and there's NO information in the VS output window (again - all projects succeed to build).
I tried explicitely running VS as Administrator, no change. I removed all IIS Express sites (as the ccproj has one web worker role), remapped my local TFS workspace.. nothing helped.
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I cannot do ANY work.

Can't publish to Azure Cloud Service from Visual Studio 2013

I have a VS project that I upgraded from VS 2012 to VS 2013. I can run it locally, and had no issues publishing to Azure when I was using VS 2012. When I attempt to publish the upgraded app to an Azure Cloud Service that already exists, I am getting this
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PUBLISH ERROR:
Windows Azure could not find the resource LocalStorage1 in the service package. To upgrade the deployment, you must add the resource. Otherwise, perform a new deployment.

That's actually what I meant in my first post. When publishing to a new service, it is fine, because the deployment does not have to compare what is already there (it is a new service, so nothing is there) and what is in your package. But while upgrading
a service, bunch of settings have to match between an existing service and the package you are trying to upload. So the error you got wasn't about you having something extra in your package, but having something extra in your existing service and missing in
the package you were uploading. Hope that helps.
Anyway, please move this question to cloud services forums (this one is for web sites only), as there are experts in that area and they might be able to help you better.
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Can a Worker Role process call Antimalware for Azure Cloud Services programmatically?

I'm trying to find a solution that I can use to perform virus scanning on files that have been uploaded to Azure blob storage. I wanted to know if it is possible to copy the file to local storage on a Worker Role instance, call Antimalware for Azure
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Hi,
I would suggest you have a look at this article:
http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/10/30/microsoft-antimalware-for-azure-cloud-services-and-virtual-machines/, please note the Microsoft Antimalware Client and Service is not installed by default in cloud service, please try to use the PowerShell
cmdlet, Set-AzureServiceAntimalwareExtension to enable antimalware in your cloud service. Here's some more info:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn771718.aspx
Best Regards,
Jambor
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Is it possible to do Continuous deployment for azure cloud services(website,web and worker roles) using VSO Release management?

Hi,
I am trying to do continuous deployment using visual studio online and release management for Azure cloud services. But not able to find the way to do it(with the help of different blogs, those are describing using VM only).
I tried using Release management visual studio extension also. But no Luck.
Please help me if it is possible to do continuous deployment using release management.
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Phani

Hi,
Please refer to the following Forum Thread with similar question which has been answered. Let us know if this helps.
https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/9d8322f6-36e5-4cca-a982-d420d34d2072/realease-management-deployment-to-azure-websites-webworker-roles?forum=tfsbuild
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Nithin Rathnakar

Is there a list of best practices for Azure Cloud Services?

Hi all;
I was talking with a Sql Server expert today and learned that Azure Sql Server can take up to a minute to respond to a query that normally takes a fraction of a second. This is one of those things where it's really valuable to learn it when architecting as
opposed to when we go live.
Cloud Services are not Sql Server (obviously) but that led to the question - Is there a list of best practices for Azure Cloud Services? If so, what are they?
We will be placing the cloud services in multiple datacenters and using traffic manager to point people to the right one. The cloud service will set between an IMAP client & server, pretending to be the mail client to the server, and the server to the client.
Mostly it will pass all requests & responses across from one to the other.
thanks - dave
What we did for the last 6 months -
Made the world's coolest reporting & docgen system even more amazing

hi dave,
>>Cloud Services are not Sql Server (obviously) but that led to the question - Is there a list of best practices for Azure Cloud Services? If so, what are they?
For this issue, I have collected some blogs and document about best practices for azure cloud service, you can view them, but I am not sure they are your need.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/xx130451.aspx
http://gauravmantri.com/2013/01/11/some-best-practices-for-building-windows-azure-cloud-applications/
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CloudPowerHowToScaleAzureWebsitesGloballyWithTrafficManager.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/jj717232.aspxhttp://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/best-practices-performance/
>>The cloud service will set between an IMAP client & server, pretending to be the mail client to the server, and the server to the client. Mostly it will pass all requests & responses across from one to the other.
For your scenarioes, If you'd like to communicate with each instances, I recommend you refer to this document (
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/hh180158.aspx ). And generally, if we want connect the client to server on Azure, the service bus is a good choice (http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/cloud-services-dotnet-multi-tier-app-using-service-bus-queues/
If I misunderstood, please let me know.
Regards,
Will
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How to develop and deploy multiple worker roles in single azure cloud services?

I am Manikandan, From Myeasydocs.com.
We have developed our application as web projects. Now we are going to move to azure cloud services, i have successfully migrated our application in cloud services and it worked fine. I am having difficulties with back ground task. i have nearly 12
schedule tasks in our applications. I need assist on creating multiple worker role creation and deployment.
Is there is any site on explaining the worker role process in details?
Thanks in advance .. !!

Hi,
In Worker role, Applications hosted within worker roles can run asynchronous, long-running or perpetual tasks independent of user interaction or input. It is a service component that is useful for generalized development, and may perform background processing
for a web role. A worker role is frequently used for long-running tasks that are non-interactive, but you can host any type of workload.
I suggest you to follow the below article which explains about Creating and Deploying of Web Roles and Worker Roles in Azure Cloud Service using Visual Studio.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/jj618299.aspx
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Managing connection strings Azure Cloud service deployment

I have an azure cloud service project which comprises of one worker role and one web role. I need to have both staging and live deployments but I need them to have different connection strings because the worker role generates lots of data which is reported
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Hi,
Two ways to do it -
1. Keep your connection strings in cscfg so that you can change those on the fly after the deployment using azure management portal.
2. Keep connection string in the web configuration file at the time of deployment and have cscfg settings which can override those i.e. re-write those in the web configuration file when role instances are restarted.
I too experienced something similar to this but not for connection strings, it was for ACS i.e. authentication settings which I needed to have differently on both deployment slots, refer my blog post http://passionatetechie.blogspot.in/2014/02/moving-acs-settings-in-cloud.html you
can do similar for connection strings of your application.
Bhushan | < href='http://www.passionatetechie.blogspot.com'>Blog | <a href="http://in.linkedin.com/pub/bhushan-gawale/29/327/405"> LinkedIn</a> | <a href="http://twitter.com/BhushanGawale">Twitter</a>

Windows Azure Cloud Service Downtime alert

Hi,
One of the Cloud services that we have deployed on Windows Azure Cloud services using Azure Worker role is unexpectedly transitioning to Stopped state. There doesn't appear to be any valid reason behind this and it runs normally after we switch to
running state from portal.
Is it possible to develop some alert service which informs the Administrator or configured alert users that the Cloud service has shut down ? We tried to configure the Windows Azure alert but the metrics & logging doesn't seem to match with Cloud service
downtime. Please let us know what is the diagnositics or logging option which we should make use to come up an optimal design for the Alert system.
Thanks in advance,
Deepesh
Thanks & Regards, Deep

Hi,
From my experience, several operations in the Service Management API permit you to manage your cloud service either by referencing a deployment by its deployment name, or by referencing the deployment environment (staging or production) in
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http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee460812.aspx for more information about Operations on Cloud Services, we can do lots of things via this API, in “Get Cloud Service Properties” section, it has a “RoleInstanceList” property, refer to
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee460806.aspx#bk_roleinstancelist for more information about
RoleInstanceList. In this article it has PersistentVMDowntime property, the detail information as following.
PersistentVMDowntime
Specifies information about when the Virtual Machine has been started and stopped.
The PersistentVMDowntime element is only available using version 2012-03-01 or higher.
Hope this helps, if this didn’t give you help, please feel free to let me know.
Best Regards
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What are the differences between Azure(Cloud) Service Bus and On-Premises Service Bus (Windows Service Bus 1.0)?

Hi,
I want to know the exacts differences between Windows Azure(Cloud) Service Bus and On-Premises Service Bus (Windows Service Bus 1.0)
Thanks
mit

Might ask them over here.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/home?category=biztalkserver
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsazure/en-US/home?forum=windowsazuremanagement%2Cservbus%2Cazuremobile&filter=alltypes&sort=lastpostdesc
Regards, Dave Patrick ....
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights.

Deploying Windows Azure Cloud Service to multiple instances

Hello folks,
Currently, I have Windows Azure Cloud service on one instance, if I move to multiple instances, will Azure deploy it to all instances during the time of deployment? Basically, the fact that there are multiple instances behind the Cloud Service will be transparent
to the whole deployment process, is that a correct understanding?
Thanks

Hi,
From my experience, all the instances in one cloud service were the same, and we just focus on the application and not the infrastructure. Refer to
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/services/cloud-services/ for more information.
Best Regards
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Azure Cloud Services

Hello i think Microsoft Azure Cloud Services is going to help many companies to manage more eficiently their business, but i dont like your PAY-AS-YOU-GO Subscritions i think you should provide certain basic services with commercial ads, and more advanced
with a price.

Filinto. Thanks for your feedback here.
I understand what you're asking for. Let me check if you are aware of some of the other ways to pay for or consume Azure Services.
First of there are the 30 day free trials http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/
second MSDN is another way to pay for and consume Azure services.
We don't have any plans to have an advertisement-funded model for Azure SQL Database.
Thanks Guy

Visual Studio cannot remote debug Azure cloud service: There was a failure to launch the remote debugger

I am trying to invoke remote debugger on an Azure worker role cloud service, following the example of
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/ff683670.aspx
But on attaching the remote debugger for the cloud service instance
Microsoft Visual Studio
There was a failure to launch the remote debugger.
OK
According to somebody else's extra coverage on the topic, there are extra ports 4016/4017 that need to be taken care of (but do they have to be exposed externally)?
http://developers.de/blogs/damir_dobric/archive/2014/02/04/behind-windows-azure-remote-debugger.aspx
So servicedefinition.csdef gets
    <Endpoints>
      <InputEndpoint name="Endpoint1" protocol="http" port="80" />
      <InputEndpoint name="RemoteDebugger" protocol="tcp" port="4016" localPort="4016" />
      <InputEndpoint name="RemoteDebugger2" protocol="tcp" port="4017" localPort="4017" />
      <InstanceInputEndpoint name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteDebugger.Connector" protocol="tcp" localPort="30398">
        <AllocatePublicPortFrom>
          <FixedPortRange min="30400" max="30424" />
        </AllocatePublicPortFrom>
      </InstanceInputEndpoint>
      <InstanceInputEndpoint name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteDebugger.Forwarder" protocol="tcp" localPort="31398">
        <AllocatePublicPortFrom>
          <FixedPortRange min="31400" max="31424" />
        </AllocatePublicPortFrom>
      </InstanceInputEndpoint>
    </Endpoints>
Serviceconfiguration.cscfg gets
      <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteDebugger.Connector.Enabled" value="true" />
      <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteDebugger.Connector.Version" value="2.3" />
      <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteDebugger.ClientThumbprint" value="THUMBNAIL" />
      <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteDebugger.ServerThumbprint" value="THUMBNAIL" />
    </ConfigurationSettings>
    <Certificates>
      <Certificate name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteDebugger.TransportValidation" thumbprint="THUMBNAIL" thumbprintAlgorithm="sha1"
/>
    </Certificates>
But all these are to no avail; the same error still pops for Visual Studio 2013 Update 4; Azure SDK 2.3
Anybody regularly perform remote debugging for Azure cloud services?
The melody of logic will always play out the truth. ~ Narumi Ayumu, Spiral

And, how do I control that in Visual Studio?
All I get is the Attach Debugger... context menu option in the Azure cloud service nodes in Server Explorer. That is where it is failing. There are no customisable options.
Because of that, the Attach to Process dialog box is unable to retrieve the list of processes (to debug) in the remote worker role instance server.
I tested a blank-template worker role project and published to a new cloud project, and this simplistic copy had no problems with the Remote debugger.
Now the question is, what is it about this real-world project/cloud service that is different from blank sample? From what I compare between what I think are the relevant settings, there are none.
ServiceDefinition.csdef
<Imports>
<Import moduleName="Diagnostics" />
<Import moduleName="RemoteAccess" />
<Import moduleName="RemoteForwarder" />
<Import moduleName="RemoteDebuggerConnector" />
</Imports>
<Contents>
<Content destination=".\">
<SourceDirectory path="D:\Projects\experiments\workerrole1\workerrole1\rcf\Debug\RemoteDebuggerContent\" />
</Content>
</Contents>
<Endpoints>
<InstanceInputEndpoint name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteDebugger.Connector" protocol="tcp" localPort="30398">
<AllocatePublicPortFrom>
<FixedPortRange min="30400" max="30424" />
</AllocatePublicPortFrom>
</InstanceInputEndpoint>
<InstanceInputEndpoint name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteDebugger.Forwarder" protocol="tcp" localPort="31398">
<AllocatePublicPortFrom>
<FixedPortRange min="31400" max="31424" />
</AllocatePublicPortFrom>
</InstanceInputEndpoint>
</Endpoints>
ServiceConfiguration.cscfg
<ConfigurationSettings>
<Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=storage;AccountKey=" />
<Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.Enabled" value="true" />
<Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountUsername" value="" />
<Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountEncryptedPassword" value="" />
<Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountExpiration" value="2015-12-31T23:59:59.0000000+08:00" />
<Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteForwarder.Enabled" value="true" />
<Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteDebugger.Connector.Enabled" value="true" />
<Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteDebugger.Connector.Version" value="2.4" />
<Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteDebugger.ClientThumbprint" value="" />
<Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteDebugger.ServerThumbprint" value="" />
</ConfigurationSettings>
<Certificates>
<Certificate name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.PasswordEncryption" thumbprint="" thumbprintAlgorithm="sha1" />
<Certificate name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteDebugger.TransportValidation" thumbprint="" thumbprintAlgorithm="sha1" />
</Certificates>
The melody of logic will always play out the truth. ~ Narumi Ayumu, Spiral

Windows Azure Cloud Service with MVC4WebRole template giving "Not running in a hosted service or the Development Fabric." Error.

Azure SDK used - 1.7 & 2.0
When we create new project for Windows Azure Cloud Service with MVC4WebRole template & try to run it locally its giving error as "Not running in a hosted service or the Development Fabric."
We are aware that making Azure project as start up project will resolve this error but we want to run the application locally before testing it with cloud.
It’s not working with Cassini so we have tried with IIS but still it’s giving the same error.
In another project when we added ASP.Net MVC4 Application & then for that project we have generated the Azure cloud service project using "Add Windows Azure Cloud Service Project". By this way debugging it locally works fine.
Is there something additional settings present in Windows Azure Cloud Service with MVC4WebRole template which is causing this issue?

hello,
According your description, I try to reproduce it in my PC.
>1. I create a could project and add a MVC4 web role into project.
>2. I set the azure project as a start project and run, it works fine.
>3. I change the MVC4 web role as a startup project and run, it works fine too. Of course before this, I exited the Azure Simulator.
But this project was a empty project. It didn't included azure DLL file, such as Diagnostics file. So I think you could comment out the "system.diagnostics" node and try again. Also, you could refer to this same thread:http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13879443/not-running-in-a-hosted-service-or-the-development-fabric-production-not-debug
Regards,
Will
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Is there a way for converting WCF service into Azure Cloud Service without dealing with project files.

Here is my situation.
We provide Platform and SDK to other people where they can build WCF services and deploy that on site. We have a many ISVs who has built wcf services, packaged them and ship them.
Packaging consist of couple of manifest file and .dll file that make up wcf service. Now we want to go on cloud with our platform.
Long story short - I have all the dlls for my wcf service but no project file.
Is there a way to generate cloud service package from this dll files?

Hi,
You can't simply package your dlls and deploy it as a azure cloud service deployment package - you will need to have your project as well as service definition file which will define your role and instances.
You can read more about packaging an Application by Using the CSPack Command-Line Tool here -http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/gg433133.aspx
another way to go to cloud platform is by making use of azure web sites, however you will still need your service files do deploy.
If you have the dlls and the service files with you - then you can simply use the web site publish wizard and deploy to azure web site.
Read more about it here - http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/web-sites-deploy/
Bhushan | Blog |
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Azure cloud services vs Dedicated servers

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