I've got 6 web sites, 2 databases and 1 cloud environment setup on my account
I used the cloud to run some tasks via Windows Task Manager, everything was installed on my D drive but between last week and today the 8 of March my folder containing the "exe" to run as been removed.
Also I've installed SVN tortoise to get the files deployed and it not installed anymore
I wonder if somebody has a clue about my problem
Best Regards
Franck merlin
If you're using Cloud Services (web/worker roles), these are stateless virtual machines. That is: Windows Azure provides the operating system, then brings your deployment package into the environment after bootup. Every single virtual machine instance booted this way starts from a clean OS image, along with the exact same set of code bits from you.
Should you RDP into the box and manually install anything, anything you install is going to be temporary at best. Your stuff will likely survive reboots. However, if the OS needs updating (especially the underlying host OS), your changes will be lost as a fresh OS is brought up.
This is why, with Cloud Services, all customizations should be done via startup tasks or the OnStart() event. You should never manually install anything via RDP since:
Your changes will be temporary
Your changes won't propagate to additional instances; you'll be required to RDP into every single box to perform the same changes.
You may want to download the Azure Training Kit and look through some of the Cloud Service labs to get a better feel for startup tasks.
In addition to what David said, check out http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kwill/archive/2012/10/05/windows-azure-disk-partition-preservation.aspx for the scenarios where the different drives will be destroyed.
Also take a look at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kwill/archive/2012/09/19/role-instance-restarts-due-to-os-upgrades.aspx which points you to the RSS feed and MSDN article where you can see that a new OS is currently being deployed.
Related
Our development environment has a bunch of virtual machines running different versions of our software. I want to be able to replace the Managed Image that is running on a VM, without having to destroy and recreate it.
The images are created using packer, which provisions them with the correct software and dependencies.
Example of Current Workflow:
Machine A is running on Managed Image v2.5, which runs software with a dependency on Tomcat 10.
To fix a bug in v2.2, which depends on Tomcat 9 and thus cannot run on the same VM without changing the dependencies, I have to:
Destroy the VM
Recreate it using the same arguments (name, size, etc) but based on Managed Image v2.2
Attach the network interface and disks
Restart it
If feel like there should be an easier solution to this, where it is possible to hot-swap the images, without recreating the full virtual machines. I've looked into swapping the OS disk, but I couldn't figure out a solution that would work with Managed Images instead of VHD's.
As per official article, its not Supported.
Microsoft does not support an upgrade of the operating system of a
Microsoft Azure virtual machine. Instead, you should create a new
Azure virtual machine that is running the supported version of the
operating system that is required and then migrate the workload.
Official article : https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2721672/microsoft-server-software-support-for-microsoft-azure-virtual-machines
Instead you can use windows server migration tool that would assist you in roles and feature's migration
Install, use, and remove Windows Server migration tools
Similar issue discussed at Can you do in-place updating/upgrading of Azure VM Operating System?
I've update production deployment yesterday morning then I've made changes to service files using remote connection
add and update files and everything was OK.
today morning all the changes I've done after deployment was undone and customers use the old version and this cost us hundreds of thousand of pounds
i need to know what's happen nothing appeared in operations log
Probably what has happened is that Microsoft has updated your servers at the Cloud Centre and re-deployed your application from the original deployment. This is in their terms and conditions, you should not make any important manual changes to the deployment after it is deployed unless they are stored in the portal (environment settings etc.), otherwise they might be lost during updates or reboots.
I learned this the hard way too. I had a cache role with only one instance (I thought it only made sense with one instance) and while updates happened, my whole site went down several times over several days!
PaaS services are stateless, which means the VMs running your service can be destroyed and recreated at any time, at which point the VM will be recreated with the content from your original .cspkg.
For more information see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kwill/archive/2012/09/19/role-instance-restarts-due-to-os-upgrades.aspx and http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kwill/archive/2012/10/05/windows-azure-disk-partition-preservation.aspx.
As others have said, PaaS Web Roles are stateless. If you're making manual configuration changes to your deployed solution package after it has been auto-deployed then any re-deployment by the Azure fabric will simply deploy the package minus your manual changes. To solve this issue you could use startup tasks to apply your manual changes using a PowerShell script or similar (depending on what you're changing). See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj129544.aspx.
Note that startup tasks don't just run when a machine gets re-imaged or rebooted.
I have a Windows Server running as a Virtual Machine on Azure that I have installed SQL Enterprise on. I installed SQL Server onto a new drive (E:) so that the C: drive would remain for the OS.
I followed the instructions on how to use sysprep and basically capture the image to use going forward for new instances. After following these steps and deploying a new vm with this image, nothing worked. It thought SQL was installed (it wasn't). It also didn't know anything about the additional drives or VHDs.
I came across this Blog post from the Azure team and it references a powershell command Save-AzureVMImage that may be what I'm looking for with the new "Virtual Machine Image".
Ultimately what I want is to have an image that I can use to deploy a new fully functional Windows Server instance with SQL Enterprise installed and the additional VHDs being used... Can someone point me in the right hemisphere on this please...
Save-AzureVMImage until the build 2014 only captures OS disk and not the data disk, since your SQL is installed on a separate mapped drive a data disk. That will not be part of the snapshot\sysprep process.
There is something called VMImages recently launched which captures data disks along side OS disks.You will have to update Azure Commandlets to find more options while capturing Image of a running VM, Refer to the blogs below for more detailed solution
http://vishwanathsrikanth.wordpress.com/2014/04/16/windows-azure-vmimages-updates-to-clonevm-powershell-script/
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2014/04/14/vm-image-blog-post.aspx
Happy Coding !!
I am developing a website that I intend to run within Windows Azure using a single Web Role. The site will make use of the Sphinx Search engine which will need to run as a Windows Service. So, my question is this...is it possible to install the Sphinx Search Windows Service inside of a Web Role.
From my initial research into Azure I am thinking "yes" for the reason that the Web Role is a VM running IIS. Therefore I should be able to remote in, install the service, and it should work. :)
Does this sound right?
Installing software via RDP is not a viable solution with Web/Worker role instances, as these changes won't persist. You need to install it either from a startup script or from OnStart(). Since you want to install as a service, that would imply startup script, since it would need elevated permissions. Note: The installer must support unattended mode, where all parameters are specified via command line with no human interaction.
What about scalability? If you have more than one instance of your web role running, can sphinx run across two instances? From what I read, it supports ODBC-compliant databases, and you might be able to use it against Windows Azure SQL Database. If that's the case, can two sphinx engines run on two different machines accessing the same data store? If so, this sounds like a viable solution.
If installation cannot be automated, or you need something additional like MySQL, you may want to consider placing the sphinx search engine inside a Virtual Machine (new in June 2012). Now you can spin up a Windows 2008 Server, RDP into it, configure it exactly how you want it.
Strictly speaking yes, you could do that. However this makes the assumption that you would be running on one VM instance and also that the instance would never need restarting.
You should consider looking at Azure worker roles for any functionality that would normally exist as a windows service.
After reading your answers, and thinking about it a bit more, I think dropping the idea of installing a service would be the best course of action. I've been looking at the API for Lucene.NET (this may be the same for Sphinx) and it's possible to encapsulate the writing/managing of indexes, etc, within in code and therefore no need for a service.
For the Azure, there is a library for managing index files using both local and Azure storage which could be of use. Scenarios I've read about show that it's then possible to have a Web Role that will process HTTP requests and perform the searches and a Worker Role to accept DB changes via a queue and have it write them to the indexes.
i have an existing program that i would like to upload to the cloud without rewriting it and i'm wondering if that is possible.
For exemple can i upload and run a photoshop instance in the cloud and use it?
Of course not the GUI but photoshop has a communication sdk so web program should be able to control it!
As far as i can see, Worker roles looks good but they have to be written in a specific way and i can't rewrite photoshop !
Thanks for your attention!
As long as your existing program is 64bit compatible and it has installer that supports unattended/silent install; or your programm is xcopy deployable, you can use it in Azure.
For the programm that requires installation and supports unattended/silent install you can use StartUp Task.
For the program that is just xcopy deployable, just put it in a folder of your worker role, and make sure the "Copy to Output" attribute of all required files are set to "Copy always". Then you can use it.
However the bigger question is, what are you going to do with that "existing programm" in Azure, if you do not have API-s to work with.
Here's the thing, the Worker role should be what you need - it's essentially a virtual machine running a slightly different version of Windows, that you can RDP to, and use it normally. You can safely run more or less anything up there, but you need to automate the deployment (e.g. using startup tasks). As this can prove a bit problematic, Microsoft has created a Virtual machine Role. You create your own deployment and that's what gets raised when you instantiate the machine.
However! This machine is stateless, meaning that files it creates aren't saved if it gets restarted. So you need to ensure the files are saved somewhere else, e.g. in blob storage (intended for just such a purpose).
What I would do in your case, is create a virtual machine role, with Photoshop installed, and a custom piece of software next to it, accepting requests via Azure Queues, that does the processing, and saves the file to blob storage, then sends the file onwards to whoever requested