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Windows Azure SDK 1.4 Refresh Now Available

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We are pleased to announce the availability of the Windows Azure SDK 1.4 Refresh.  This refresh enables web developers to increase their development productivity by simplifying the iterative development process of web based hosted services.

Overview:

Today, the iterative development process for hosted services requires you to re-package the application and upload it to Windows Azure using either the Management portal or the Service Management API. The Windows Azure SDK 1.4 refresh solves this problem by integrating with the Web Deployment Tool (Web Deploy).

Web Deploy is an extension for IIS that simplifies the migration, management and deployment of IIS Web servers, Web applications and Web sites. The tool integrates with Visual Studio 2010 to streamline the deployment of Web applications to the Web server. The tool also integrates with the Web Platform Installer to simplify the installation of community web applications.

Please note the following when using Web Deploy for interactive development of Windows Azure hosted services:

  • Web Deploy only works with single role instance.
  • The tool is intended only for Iterative development and testing scenarios
  • Web Deploy bypasses the package creation. Changes to the web pages are not durable. To preserve changes, you must package and deploy the service.

Getting started with Web Deploy for the Windows Azure SDK

  • Install the Windows Azure SDK 1.4 refresh from the Windows Azure web site. This will install the WebDeploy plug-in for Windows Azure SDK 1.4

You can verify that the Web Deploy has been installed correctly by navigating to the “c:\Program Files\Windows Azure SDK\v1.4\bin\plugins\WebDeploy” folder

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  • To use web deploy to deploy a hosted service.

1. Open your Windows Azure project in Visual studio.

2. In the solution explorer, right click the project and choose Publish…

3. In the Deploy Windows Azure project dialog, select the Remote Desktop and Web Deploy Options.

4. Click OK.

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  • Make changes to your web application in the  “WebRole” for the project.

1. Deploy the “Webrole” project by right clicking the web role and choosing Publish…

2. You should now see Webdeploy as an available publish method in the Publish Profile dropdown.

3. You can use the existing credentials that are configured for Remote Desktop.

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