Windows Azure – Hosting multiple WCF services on Azure

Most of SOA applications in today’s world are using WCF. No doubt you may come across a situation wherein you will require hosting your WCF services in Azure.

Today I will discuss the approach, which I have used for hosting multiple WCF services on Azure.

General approach of hosting a web site or WCF service is using a web role or WCF web role. However, if I have say 5 WCF services then? Obviously thinking of 5 WCF web roles is not the cost effective solution.

So, how can I host multiple WCF services using single WCF web role?

The approach is very simple and many have already implemented it.

Windows Azure – Windows Azure Connect Issue – Disconnected status

Few days ago I was completely frustrated with Azure Connect. I was trying to establish connectivity between azure role and local machine. No matter what I do, status of Connect agent on local machine was always displayed as “Disconnected”. Hopefully I have a couple of solutions referred from forums and some of my findings which I am sharing with you. If you get stuck with this issue, these solutions might help you.

Problem – Status of connect agent in system tray is displayed as Disconnected.

Solution – Follow the steps below one by one –

Windows Azure Connect – Joining local machine to a different domain using Azure Connect

Windows Azure Connect has changed the definition of connectivity between the machines. The power of Azure lies in release of Azure Connect.

Here we are going to follow the steps which you can use for making a machine joined to the domain. Many readers will feel that, what is a big deal in that?

Ahhh here is the catch…!!! Joining a local machine of your network to the domain of other network. Yes!!!!  You read it correctly.

Let me put an interesting scenario in front of you so that understanding will be easier.

Consider that, I have a local machine say in domain myDomain1.com. Let’s say that, the domain controller of myDomain1.com is present in India. Also my local machine is also present in the same network in India and eventually in myDomain1.com.

Let’s say I have another myDomain2.com. The associated domain controller is present in Australia. And the network is different. Both networks and domain belong to two different companies. Hence no connectivity between them.

What we want to achieve? We want to connect local machine of myDomain1.com to myDomain2.com.

Windows Azure – Accessing SharePoint hosted site over internet

[This topic assumes that, you are familiar with VM role, SharePoint 2010. You have hosted a SharePoint in Azure using VM role.]

Azure VM role is really a magical thing in Cloud computing introduced by Microsoft. SharePoint server hosting with Azure VM role makes it even more magical.

For making any site publicly accessible, one needs a public IP and public Domain name which you get from ISP (Internet Service Provider). How you can get a public IP and DNS in case of Azure? And more interestingly how it can be used for providing internet access to SharePoint site?

Let’s assume that, using VM role you have hosted a SharePoint server in Azure. Make sure that, you have provided an HTTP INPUT endpoint as port 80 in VM role project of SharePoint. When you specify an input endpoint in Azure, that port specified under the input endpoint is the PUBLIC PORT.

 When you host a cloud service project on Azure, either in staging or production environment; you get DNS name from Azure Management portal. This DNS name is the PUBLIC DNS NAME.

Windows Azure – Opening Cloud Service Package files

Windows Azure – Opening Cloud Service Package files –

When you build and then publish a cloud service project in VS2010, the resultant file is called as Service Package. The file extension is always -.cspkg.

When you want to host your web role or Worker role in Azure, you use this service package file for uploading to Azure.

Consider a scenario where you have created Service package file and you upload it to Azure. Unfortunately while running the web page, you received an error stating that, “Could not load assembly”. The common cause of this error is, the required DLL do not get copied to Azure service package when you had published it in development fabric, and ultimately it is missing in Azure fabric cloud environment also.

So, how can you check that, your published version of Service Package contains all the required DLL’s or not?

Windows Azure - Referring DLL from GAC

Hi All,
Many times you may face requirement that, you are developing a web application and you want to host web application as a web role in Azure. While development lets say that, you have used your application specific DLL's which you added in GAC - Global assembly cache and referencing from there.

So while hosting web role on Azure, how can you make sure that, your required DLL gets added to GAC before role starts?

Following steps wil explain you the same.