How is a Worker Role hosted?

Question

Hi
How is a worker role hosted in Azure. What process is it in?
I'm thinking of how to test locally or an on premise version. Is the Azure host process simply a windows service?
I'm writing a solution that uses the Service Bus for Window Server 1.1 as my customers all use on-premise servers (at the moment). It would be handy if I could create a worker role for on premise solutions :)
Thanks
Graham

Answer 1

Hi Graham,
Thanks for your posting!
Base on my understanding, Azure worker role is used for some services would run in the background to collect, transform, and prepare data.  In other words, Azure work role could
executive function to a background processor .
In worker role project, we could see  the file named "WorkerRole.cs". The class inherited the "RoleEntryPoint".
public class WorkerRole : RoleEntryPoint
public override void Run()
// This is a sample worker implementation. Replace with your logic.
Trace.TraceInformation("WorkerRole1 entry point called");
while (true)
Thread.Sleep(10000);
Trace.TraceInformation("Working");
public override bool OnStart()
// Set the maximum number of concurrent connections
ServicePointManager.DefaultConnectionLimit = 12;
// For information on handling configuration changes
// see the MSDN topic at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=166357.
return base.OnStart();
When one worker role instance was starting, it could be executed "OnStart()" method firstly. Then in a worker role’s lifecycle is the "Run" method, typically implemented as an infinite loop, such as "While(true) ".
In fact, if the Run method terminated, the instance would be restarted or recycled again. Please see this video (http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Windows-Azure-Cloud-Services-Tutorials/Introduction-to-Windows-Azure-Worker-Roles-Part-1).
For your question----" Is the Azure host process simply a windows service?", the answer is that one worker role can be one or more than one instance (VM).
And in your scenarios, Worker role could meet your requirement. In VS, Azure SDK support one project template named "Worker role with service bus queue". Please see this documents:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/jj149831.aspx
Regards,
Will
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