Regarding Kentico 9 site deployment on Azure - kentico

I want to deploy Kentico 9 site on Azure and want to use shared file system for my media content, can you please suggest which Azure configuration (Azure Cloud Services or Azure Web Apps) I should referred?

I'd highly recommend going with Web App over Cloud Services. Mainly because Web App is almost like running on a regular server where Cloud Services is quite a bit different and harder to work with in my opinion.
Check this article out regarding some issues with Kentico and Azure Blog storage as well as how to setup your storage provider to only store media files.
http://www.kehrendev.com/blog/brenden-kehren/may-2016/problems-with-azure-and-kentico

Could you describe what do you mean by shared file system for my media content?
From my experience - it`s (a little bit) easier to deploy (and maintain) Kentico to Azure Web Apps but they do not provide so many customizations - in my humble opinion - the biggest one is you are not able to connect via remote desktop (but this is supported by Azure Cloud Services).
Please note - if you are using Cloud Services you must use Azure Blob Storage - source - which could be in conflict with your requirements.
You can find more information about Web Apps vs Cloud Services vs Virtual Machines on the mentioned page.
TL;DR; - if you do not need customizations, remote desktop and startup tasks - go for WebApps. If not, try to specify more requirements.
You can also check comparinson of the technologies from the Microsoft`s point of view here.

It's not clear who you want to share the media with...
If you want to share the assets amongst more Kentico instances or with a 3rd party system, I'd probably use the Azure Blob Storage. Kentico comes with a dedicated file provider for this exact use out of the box. It's called CMS.AzureStorage.
Using the blob storage is not a limiting factor in terms of hosting your app. You can still use all available options: Web Apps, VM or Cloud Service. There are some technical implications, of course. But they're all described in the documentation.
I recommend checking the comparison matrix to find a hosting option that suits your need best. Kentico recommends using App Service (Web Apps) for most projects as it's easiest to maintain. However, you can't use certain features like Kentico Windows services, for instance. Question is, do you really need them?

Related

how to deploy multiple .net core application in single linux based azure app service

I want to deploy multiple .net core API application in single linux based azure app service. I can't find any documentation for that. Can any one give any suggestion or idea how to achieve that.
I have thing one option but don't know is it possible or not? Can I mount azure blob storage space in configuration/ Path mapping in app service and run application from their? is it possible or any other proper way. Please suggest.
Thank you
It doesn't seem possible.
You can refer to the answer in the post below.
Hosting Two Website Under one Web App - Azure Services
IIS can handler mappings and virtual applications and directories, you can't use virtual applications and directories in linux.
If you have more questions about azure web app, you can raise a support ticket on portal. You can also put forward your ideas and suggestions in the feedback, and optimize the product together with Microsoft official.
Hope this can help you.

Web app onboarding to Azure Web Marketplace

We checked this documentation - https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/appserviceteam/2016/08/26/onboarding-to-azure-web-marketplace on how to onboard our web apps in the Azure marketplace and also the GitHub link - https://github.com/SunBuild/web-app-marketplace
We have contacted MSFT on how to host our application which has an API and WCF applications as sub-applications.
MSFT replied that sub applications are not currently supported in through this onboarding model.
So, we are trying to onboard the three applications individually and link them in the Azure marketplace. We are not sure whether this will work or if this is possible.
In the sample applications in the GitHub link - https://github.com/SunBuild/web-app-marketplace, they have a hosting plan JSON file for the web app resource. Can we link the applications using this hosting plan JSON file?
We could not find any information or definition related to this hosting plan file - https://github.com/SunBuild/web-app-marketplace/blob/master/WebApp-SQLDatabase/DeploymentTemplates/Website_NewHostingPlan_SQL_NewDB-Default.json
Does anyone tried this before or know how to do this?
sub applications are not currently supported in through this onboarding model.
From the documentation, we could know if web app need Virtual application setting to be configured for web app, we will not be able to on board the application.
we are trying to onboard the three applications individually and link them in the Azure marketplace. We are not sure whether this will work or if this is possible.
In my view, if you on board these application individually, it may not enable us to bundle multi individual applications to make them link with each other. You could contact with Azure marketplace support team.
We could not find any information or definition related to this hosting plan file - https://github.com/SunBuild/web-app-marketplace/blob/master/WebApp-SQLDatabase/DeploymentTemplates/Website_NewHostingPlan_SQL_NewDB-Default.json
In the link you posted, we could find that it is an Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template that is used to define resources you want to deploy. This article explained about the Azure Resource Manager template, please refer to it.

Umbraco 6.05 on Windows Azure

I am deploying Umbraco 6.05 to Windows Azure. I am currently using "Azure Web Sites" to do this, but from what I can glean, it appears that this may cause future problems with the storage of media being on the local file system (both due to space limitations and also due to scaling considerations). The site was created and uploaded using WebMatrix.
I have found various articles about using Blob Storage for this, but they all refer to "Cloud Services" and "Web Roles" - none of which seem to match with the current terminology used on Azure, and to be totally honest I am not that familiar with Azure yet anyway. I have also found various "accelerators" for previous versions but nothing for this version.
Can anybody provide any links to a definitive guide to the installation of this version of Umbraco as an Azure Web Site, utilising Azure Blob Storage where appropriate? If this is not feasible, perhaps further advice can be provided as to the recommended way of hosting Umbraco in Azure.
There are no different in term of how they store the file whether you use Web Sites or Cloud Services as long as you didn't modify the Umbraco.
Both Web Sites and Cloud Services keep the file, in this case, the Media folder in their local storage unless you modify Umbraco to save into Blob Storage to have a better scaling.
You can write and modify your own custom Media location or try to look at this URL http://our.umbraco.org/projects/backoffice-extensions/universal-media-picker

Is azure for big applications only?

I've recently been asked to redevelop an .Net 2.0 WinForms application with a back end SQL Server Express DB.
One of the requirements is to allow remote users access to the application, so I've been considering hosted options to avoid VPN setup. The data is not sensitive and does not fall under data protection act, so a basic security approach for the web will cover me.
I like the idea of using Azure for a few reasons, but I'm not sure if a good fit for a users base of 5 or 6 with no real scope to grow. I've never used Azure and I plan to develop using MVC and a SQL backend as this is my main skillset.
A few points in favour of Azure in my mind are:
Tight integration with the TFS preview that I'm using for this project
Easy to setup a sandpit and a live version
Easy maintenance as I expect other hosted options will require more knowledge of underlying OS
Sticking to a full Microsoft stack should hopefully make things simpler
From what I find on the Azure site the message is all about scalability, which is great if you need it.
My question is simply, do you need a large user base, or plans to grow quickly, to use azure or is it how we should be hosting apps now?
What you're asking here is the perfect case for Windows Azure Web Sites:
You get 10 web sites for free (no custom DNS, but this is perfect for your 'sandpit'/test version). The shared mode supports custom DNS and is very cheap.
Tight integration with TFS preview and GitHub
You don't need to worry about the underlying OS, you simply publish from Visual Studio or with TFS Preview.
Sticking to the Microsoft stack is the easiest solution, but other technologies work great aswell. Since you're talking about MVC I'm assuming you are considering ASP.NET MVC, which is a perfect match with Windows Azure. Take a look at the training kit for some good examples.
The day you'll need a solution which more scalable (meaning you'll have more users and more income) you can easily upgrade to a reserved instance or to a Cloud Service (Web/Worker Role).
About your question: "My question is simply, do you need a large user base, or plans to grow quickly, to use azure or is it how we should be hosting apps now?"
Windows Azure is a cloud service platform (includes PaaS as Cloud Services, IaaS as Windows Azure Virtual Machines and also Websites suggest by Sandrino above), and with cloud services you have ability to start very small and grow as much and as quickly as your user requirement is, so you can use Azure with both cases. On the other hand there are some advantages using certain offering depend on your which service you are going to use to run your application.
I think article (Section: "What Should I Use? Making a Choice") will explain the strategy about how you make a selection among various services.
This SO discussion does talks about the difference between cloud Services and Azure WebSites as well.

Accessing Azure Storage Services from Azure Websites?

I'm curious to know if this is possible, and if so, is it a good or bad idea?
We are developing an Azure application that is largely centered around worker roles that receive their work on a CloudQueue, and put the results in a CloudBlob, that the client then downloads. The web interface itself is a dead-simple ASP.NET MVC site that throws jobs in the CloudQueue, and builds URLs to download CloudBlobs.
Currently we accomplish this by having a Azure Cloud Project in our solution, which has a Web Role with the UI, and Worker Roles with the actual work.
Could we use Azure Websites to publish and host the UI, which calls back to our Worker Roles? The Azure DLLs are just regular old .NET libraries, I'm assuming Azure Websites won't have a problem with them. So, when we want to update the UI, we just publish with Visual Studio. And when we want to update the Worker Role - which is 300MB+ and has a bunch of nasty dependencies like Crystal Reports - we can build the cloud bundle and update the Cloud Service through the Azure management portal.
This seems to me like doing this would make it easier to update the UI. I think it would also be cheaper to host it, as we won't have to buy a bunch of instances for the Web Role.
If your question is "Could we use Windows Azure Websites*", based on your application architecture, you sure can use Azure Website to deploy your front end and configure all the networking connection properly so you can continue access other Azure Storage services. As you are using mostly Blob and Queue, you can continue use HTTP/HTTPS settings in the Azure websites. You can keep worker role by as it is however if it is very complex to deploy, using Windows Azure VM may be another direction to go.
I could say website deployment could be easier if your web app does not have something complex to configure in web server as websites may not be able to match web server level configuration compare to webrole and Azure VM. Answering "Easier and cheap" could be very subjective as this is all depend on load and distribution so you would have to try and evaluate it.

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