This isn’t really related to Sitecore, but .NET and Windows Azure.
Finally had the time to move my blog to Windows Azure. I’ve been looking a lot at the service for some time, and I must admit that I like what I see. From Work, I got a MSDN Subscription, which includes $100 of free Windows Azure credits every month, so the cost should be zero.. I like that :-)
For this blog, I decided to take the easiest solution, which was to use the website feature of Windows Azure. Setting up a website in Azure has been made easy;
- Log into http://manage.windowsazure.com
- Click Web sites -> New -> Quick Create, insert name, which will act as azure url aswell, in my case "mikkelhm", and voila; the web site has been created.
That was the easy part, and now comes the hard part (not really). Once the website has been create, you should download the publish profile. The publish profile is just a simple XML file, containing connection strings and settings for the website.
Once downloaded, go to Visual Studio Studio where your website and all the code is, and click publish. In this dialogue you can import a publish profile, do this and select the one you downloaded. Follow the wizard and publish the site.
When I said I choose the easy solution, it’s because this is only the website that has been moved into the cloud. If I were to do it correctly, the database should be moved into the cloud as well utilizing Azure table storage. Instead, I just kept using the same SQL server that the site used before.
This is one of my first experiences with Windows Azure, and I must say I like what I see, I would really like to try Sitecore Azure out, to see how it Works, and runs in the cloud. The mayor drawback on using Sitecore Azure is that you cannot tell what the price will be, until your site is actually in production.