I am having an issue with my Azure Update Management not pushing the updates to the Windows VM.
This was working before I domain joined to Azure Active Directory Domain Services.
From what I have read on the Microsoft Site, it looks like this is a known issue, wanted to shoot it off here to see if anyone has found a work around. It looks like that it is not selecting the updates. I do have the selection in the schedule setup to do all updates.
Things I have tried.
Recreated the Services Account.
Deleted and redid the automation account
Delete and setup the Updates Management Configuration
Verified they do work manually.
I am relatively new to Azure, so I apologies for the lack of knowledge.
I have since found the answer. The Worker process from Azure has to be reinstalled if it was installed prior to the domain join.
Related
My company developed an Azure Resource Manager-based solution that deploys a set of resources (essentially a Storage, SQL DB and Web App), and it is already implemented as our provisioning process for new customers.
However, we are now studying the best way to perform updates, and one of the hypotheses we are considering is having a specific template that updates the binaries of this application.
The idea is to have a separate template, that only has the web app, an app host and a MSDeploy resource that gets the latest version of our package and reuploads it to that web app.
The only problem I'm seeing with this solution is the ability to handle any changes in configuration that are necessary with newer version of the binaries - we do not want users to have to re-input any parameters they placed for the original deploy (done via a Deploy To Azure button), so, any configurations will have to be performed within the application - the plan is for it to use the Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Management.WebSites library.
The major limitation with using Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Management.WebSites is that you are restricted to authenticating with either a certificate or a service principal. Ideally we would like to find a way for the updates to not need any authentication other than the one you provide when you are deploying the update.
Is there any recommendation of best practices to follow for this kind of scenario?
Thank you.
Link to the equivalent discussion on TechNet
It is possible to update only via ARM templates.
For example connection strings can be added automatically to the application settings even when creating the dependent resources themselves.
Ex. Account storage connection string.
Only first time creation of your web sites will take a bit more time, something like 30 sec.
ARM will not destroy your WebApps if they exist already. it will update only.
If there are no changes, then the deployment is very fast.
If your changes require a new Appsettings parameter, you can enter it in ARM , check in to your repository.
and next deployment will pick up and update the WebApp.
So no need for anyone to log-in and update.
Our final decision was to give up on using ARM exclusively. The Service Principal solution, through the SDK, would allow us to use a Web Job or a Site Extension to perform (automatic or prompted) updates that included configuration changes. However, it would require "too many" privileges - why would a customer trust an application that can, at will, create new resources or update existing ones to increase his Azure bill?
The decision was made to utilize Powershell only for updates - if the customer can see the scripts and authenticate himself, this is not a concern. Sadly, this increases update complexity, but we found it to be a necessary evil.
I maintain a family web site on Azure on my spare time. For a small fee, we have purchased a custom domain name to make it more "professional".
Unfortunately, the credit card associated with the susbscription has expired and since I was not actively monitoring the dedicated mail account I had created for this purpose, the susbscription has now been deleted (the susbscription is actually disabled in the portal, but the mail from Azure says that I need to create a new subscription if I want to change my mind).
In a matter of minutes, I registered a new subscription and thanks to continuous deployment, I could deploy the Web App from sources that I had kept on a GitHub account. However, an attempt to bring an external domain to the Web App fails with the reason being that the said domain is already in use by another Azure web site (presumably, the old Web App from the, now deleted, subscription)
A quick chat with the #AzureSupport team on Twitter, they suggested I file a support request from the Azure portal. However, since this is not a professionnal susbscription, I do not have a support plan. I see that support costs 25 $/month for at least 6 months in my situation.
This seems a bit too costly, like an order of magnitude higher than buying a new domain name for several years. At the same time, I don't understand why the deleted account is still locking the custom domain name. And it seems unfair that I need to pay to recover a domain name that I own but am unable to benefit from because it is associated with a Web App in a disabled Azure subscription!
Please, what are my options?
PS: Even though this is not a programmatic question, I post here because that's where Microsoft recommends to obtain community support. I have also posted a similar question on an appropriate MSDN Forum but the answers there are not satisfying.
Unfortunately on a technical level this will be something that can only be rectified by Azure support. Since you no longer have access to the account they will need to delete that domain association.
It is excessive that you are required to pay for a six month support contract to resolve an issue that is clearly an issue with the way Azure decommissions subscriptions.
The problem you now have is that you can't use Azure to host this domain until that association is removed. Your only options are to either have the complexity of using a VM or to move your site to AWS etc.
If you make those points to #AzureSupport team, maybe they will process it for you. Point them to this question and ask them to help you to keep using Azure.
I have created a website in Lemoon and deployed it to Azure. This leads to the following:
Mindroute.Core.BootStrapper|Startup failed.
System.Reflection.ReflectionTypeLoadException: Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information.
Searching the internet says this is related to not being able to reach the license server of Lemoon. How can this be fixed. It should be possible because Lemoon is available as cms in Azure.
I tried something that in my opinion should have worked to no avail. I created a Lemoon site in Azure via the gallery. Published the site from development keeping the publicKey in de web.config already created (not really necessary because its the same). Linked the site to my existing database and copying the value from the settings table. Still the same error.
Creating a lemoonsite in an existing SQL server is also not working and i refuse to use a free version of SQL server in Azure. I'm afraid if it's not going to work today I'll leave Lemoon. Too much hassle for little benefit.
I am looking at migrating a dotnetnuke website to Azure. I need both staging and production versions of the site to be running.
I have looked at using Azure Websites, but at the moment there is no support for SSL on custom domains so this can't be used for the production website. I have migrated the staging site to an Azure Website and now have numerous options for publishing updates (ftp, git, using web matrix).
Due to the constraints of Azure Websites, I used the DNN Accelerator to create a cloud service for the production environment. This set up will allow me to have control over IIS and therefore manage SSL certificates (I think).
The problem I have with this is there does not seem to be any publishing options. The only way I can publish is by connecting to the Azure instance via RDP and then copying the website files onto the files system.
Are there any other ways of publishing? I have looked at converting the website to a WAP, but I believe this has implications when it comes to updating to new DNN versions.
You should never publish your application through RDP since these changes are non-persistent (meaning what you published might disappear after a hardware failure / ...). Adding new instances would also mean that these instances don't have the files you published before.
I suggest you start by looking at the DotNetNuke Azure Accelerator first. If this doesn't fit your needs you might always try to build something yourself, but if you want to say with a regular website and not a web application I wouldn't count on Visual Studio support. In that case you might want to look at creating a package from the command line and using startup scripts to add your website in IIS.
Sounds like you need to use a Start-up task to install the files in the correct place for a Web Role (Cloud Service) Smarx has a nice overview here, MSDN has a wealth of info too http://blog.smarx.com/posts/introduction-to-windows-azure-startup-tasks
Another option is IAAS for Azure with a persisted VM, more work mind you, Cloud Service would be the most efficient and correct solution...
I have created my first app for azure. It's has an MVC3 web role which writes some data to table storage.
It also has a worker role that does some work behind the scenes to the same data.
It all works fine in the emulator.
I've uploaded it all to Azure as a staging deployment, the hosted service it is reports all roles as "ready". The health for all roles is "healthy", though the worker role appears to crash and goes to "degraded" and then resets itself (I assume this is what is happening).
So what now? I have found a "DNS Name" on my Web Role in the form "http://{guid}.cloudapp.net/"
Clicking on that link just gives me a network access error, http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ can't find it either.
What am I missing? Where can I see diagnostics similar to the emulator? I've set "Enable Diagnostics" to use my Azure storage account in each role. How do I get into the storage to see if it has traced anything? Can this be done through the Management Portal?
I've tried searching through MSDN, but I can't find a page that says "and then you click the DNS name link and your website will launch. I'm sure there is a lovely page like that but I can't find it.
thanks in advance!
In August 2011, the Windows Azure role templates were updated to work with the ASP.NET Universal Providers. As such, when you create a new project, the session state provider is backed by SQL Express by default. If you don't change this to SQL Azure or Cache (or disable session state), you'll run into issues.
I'm not sure this is exactly the issue you're running into, but it's a common one. See Nate Totten's blog post for more information about this (Nate calls out this issue a few pages down, under IMPORTANT NOTE).
You can access diagnostics data directly from Visual Studio Server Explorer.
Here you have all necessary information: Browsing Storage Resources with Server Explorer http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ff683677.aspx
Personally I use Azure Diagnostics Manager from Cerebrata http://www.cerebrata.com/products/AzureDiagnosticsManager/ that is easy and has a good dashboard