I have an azure web site i created to test azure and a web site. So far I like azure but i've run into a problem.
I am trying to run RavenDB embedded database in my website, as I'm not yet ready to get a full database.
RavenDB requires that the app pool is set to Disable Overlapped Recycle.
I followed the steps from this stack overflow article to achieve that:
Disable pool recycling on Azure Websites
When I download the applicationHost.config file i can see the line:
<recycling disallowOverlappingRotation="true" />
Which tells me the overlapped recycling should be disabled.
But i am still getting errors with my ravenDB database, which relates to the overlapped recycling.
Is there any other way to confirm that overlapped recycling is disabled or be able to modify my azure app pool. Without having to get a full support plan or something like that?
My application is Microsoft.Owin, so there is no global.asax or app_start folder. There is a startup class.
Related
My web.config contains multiple entries in "appSettings" (e.g.: twilio account key). One of these is for the asp.net chart control. It's the configuration part that states where the images the control generates are to be stored.
All of these settings work on my development machine. That is, i can connect to twilio and the chart control stores image in memory (as it should, according to the settings).
When i publish the site to my azure website (using vs), all of the settings work, apart from the chart control one. The chart control behaves as if the setting isn't even there. (it defaults to c:\TempImageFiles for storage).
I looked into the published version of the web.config and the setting is there. Only, it's beeing ignored.
My next attempt was to add that setting using the portal. (It's possible to add appSettings for a web app using the portal). I copied the exact same setting from web.config into the portal settings. This worked, so there is nothing wrong with what's in the settings.
So my question is: Why are some (at least this one) settings from web.config ignored when the app runs inside an azure web app?
You might have an app setting defined in the Web App's configuration with an identical name that overrides the web.config setting. This is typically done to have production settings stored in Azure instead of Web.config.
You can confirm if this is the case by opening your Web App's blade in the new portal, and checking the Application Settings tab there.
azure websites / azure web app service are typical web applications running on top of azure PaaS infrastructure. So whatever storage allocated to the service is accessible from the app. But it cannot be the typical C: or D: where in a regular server the app may have complete access. Mostly the C: space is allocated for IIS hosting. D:\local is something you can utilize as the app will have complete read and write access.
Please refer azure web app service sandbox details here.
If you are accessing the path via code try using Server.MapPath property to get access to the path. options like Path.GetTempPath() will not work.
One point to note is, any local storage in azure PaaS services is to be treated like a temporary storage. Whenever the site, service or role recycles the storage will be gone a fresh storage will be assigned.
I have a small Orchard website that I'm hosting on Windows Azure. This website is currently configured to use a FREE web site instance. I've noticed that the first time the site is accessed after a 20-30 minute period, it takes a while (>5 seconds) to load. After that initial load, I can revisit the site, and its fast. I suspect that the app pool is recycling fairly often as its a FREE Azure Web Site instance.
I need this site to load as fast as possible. I'm not opposed to using a different Azure option. I'm just not sure what I should be using.
1) Is there a way in my Orchard site's web.config file to set how often the app pool is recycled? I really need this site to be quick.
2) If I use a "SHARED" Web Site instance, will this get me past the recycling issue?
3) Or, do I need a "RESERVED" Web site instance.
My main goal here is to cost-effectively meet my goal of loading my web site quickly after it hasn't been accessed in a while. I'm just not sure what I can/should do.
Thank you!
I use a combination of the following for performance issues:
I enable Keep Alive module
I enable Warmup module and in Performance settings add my most visited pages
I manually set machine key inside web.config so that sessions last regardless of recycling - this could be an issue if there's not enough memory allocated for the web site inside the IIS
These steps are not related specifically to Azure, but rather to any kind of hosting. Especially when using Azure shared web site instances since they're nothing more than a shared hosting (unlike Azure cloud services)..
Azure web role can easily be made to be fast and avoid the appPool recycle issues, so consider that your plan B after trying all options with Azure websites.
I haven't tried with Azure websites, so it may or may not be possible there. Info is vague as to whether or not you can configure the idle timeout setting for a reserved instance. One thing you can try is to use the warm-up feature (dashboard -> performance). This should periodically load some pages, which would prevent idle timeout of the appPool. You might also try external services like pingdom.com or something similar that would periodically ping your site to prevent it from recycling.
If you end up switching to web roles, you will definitely be able to do this. The latest Orchard builds (v1.6+) set the appPool idle timeout to 0 (never timeout) by default. You will in general get a lot more control over performance and other configuration if you use web role rather than azure websites. The main drawback with this choice is you lose some of the deployment options, and deployments take a lot longer (they are still easy, they just take a while).
Posts seem to conflict in their description of how best to get web.config settings into an Azure worker role. Some posts say you need to create WaIISHost.exe.config, set output to always then copy relevant web.config info to that file. Other posts describe creation of app.config instead of WaIISHost.exe. Which is correct?
The answer to this depends a bit on the version of the SDK you are using. First and foremost, the WaIISHost.exe.config is only applicable to Web Roles (not worker roles). Worker Roles use and continue to use app.config for their configuration settings. I am going to assume here that you are trying to configure a Web Role's RoleEntryPoint in config settings.
Now, for Web Roles: If you are using the latest SDK (1.8 at time of writing), you will find that creating a WaIISHost.exe.config file (and copy local, etc.) no longer works. Something has changed in the latest SDK and it will no longer pull those values. For earlier versions of the SDK, this is still how you do it. For the latest version (and likely next versions) 1.8, you can create an app.config. When you do that, it will actually create a file in your bin directory like "WebRoleProjectName.dll.config". You DO NOT have to create this file manually yourself and "Copy Local". Simply create the app.config like you normally would and you will find that your RoleEntryPoint in the Web Role can be configured just fine like that.
In your previous SO post, I suggested that you would need to spend some time to understand both Windows Azure websites and Windows Azure Cloud services as you are mixing together.
Like above you are mixing web and worker role together. WaIISHost.exe is the Windows Azure Web Role Host process which is responsible for loading and running your Web Role DLL. This process has nothing to do with Worker role because it is not even existing in a Windows Azure Worker Role. This process will be only available to Web Roles. And because of that your question above "WaIISHost.exe.config vs. app.config for worker role config" is irrelevant.
App.config configuration is used with both Web Role and Worker Role, however web.config is only used with your web application. So if you want to configure Roles only you can use app.config (both with web and worker role) however for web site configuration you can use web.config.
IF you just write what your final objective is in simple word, you sure will get exact assistance and suggestion on how to do it.
I would like to deploy my MVC3 app to Azure using multiple physical sites of the same app.
It's great that I can use the sites element in ServiceDefinition.csdef to do this.
But I want each of the sites to connect to a different database. The connection string is in the web.config. Is there an easy way to do this, besides logging into the vm and changing it by hand?
You could register a startup task to go and modify/move the web.config files when the VM starts up. It's a bit messy, but cleaner than doing it by hand!
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg456327.aspx
[Answer to your comment] - With Windows Azure (actually with any PaaS solution) The first rule of thumb is that when the role starts all the configuration should be ready and the second rule of thumbs is that nothing should be done in VM through RDP access, because changes will not persist. Due to this required configuration either deployed in Azure Package or modified directly from start up task.
[Answer to your question]
In Windows Azure you can run multiple sites within one Web Role however they all should share the same main web.config because multiple sites are running within one Web Role. Here is how you can do it:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg433110.aspx
Now as your requirement is to have multiple databases, so in your web.config you can add multiple database connection string as below:
$
<ConnectionString>
<Add name="DB1" connectionString="Data Source=DS1.........."/>
<Add name="DB2" connectionString="Data Source=DS2.........."/>
</ConnectionString>
once you have above, in your ASP.NET code you can enumerate these connection strings and use with specific sites as described in the given example:
http://www.dotnetspark.com/kb/780-how-to-use-multiple-database-connection.aspx
Finally, you can add multiple sites with your web role during development and can also have specific DB connection specified in web.config so I dont think there is any need to use startup task at all or do something in VM, unless i am missing something here.
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