Worker Role Store Values In Memory

Question

I am attempting to port a Windows Service to an Azure Cloud Service and a Work Role.
Everything worked, except the difference is in the Windows Service I could start a class that holds two timers that run forever.
From what I saw my Cloud Service created the instance of the class, but it looked like after it was finished executing a new Worker Role instance was created.
Is there anyway to start something and just keep it running?
My Windows Service I kept a property of Running and RunNumber and both of these values are not storing the value in the next run.
I can look up the values between runs in SQL if I need to, just seems like there ought to be a way to process and keep alive.
Thanks if you can shed some life on lifetime of Worker Roles and how to persist items in memory.

Answer 1

Hi Data Juggler,
I suggest that you can define the code in your timer to the method  Run() in your Worker Role.
 You can override the Run method to implement a long-running thread for your role instance. If you do override the Run method, your code should block indefinitely.
Since your worker role is always running, so the value in it will be persisted in memory.
If the Run method returns, the role is automatically gracefully recycled; in other words, Windows Azure raises the Stopping event and calls the OnStop method so that your shutdown sequences may be executed before the role is taken offline.
For the lifecycle of the role in Cloud Service ,I suggest that you can refer to the link below:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/hh180152.aspx
Best Regards,
Kevin Shen.