How to quickly build a new cloud service?

Azure's Management Portal offers customers two ways to build and deploy cloud services: Quick Create and Custom Create.

This article shows you how to build a new cloud service using a quick build method and then upload and deploy the cloud service pack in Azure using the Update feature. If you use this approach, the Azure Management Portal provides easy links to meet all your requirements. If you are ready to deploy a cloud service while building a cloud service, you can use Custom Build to do both.

Note: If you plan to publish cloud services from Windows Team Foundation Services (TFS), use Quick Build and then set up TFS Publishing from the Quick Launch or Dashboard. For more information, see "Using Team Foundation Services, Continuous Delivery to Azure," or see the Quick Start page for help.

table of Contents

How to Use Quick Build to Build a Cloud Service Before You Begin How to Upload a Certificate to a Cloud Service How to Deploy a Cloud Service

concept

To deploy your application as a cloud service in Azure, you need the following three sections:

note:

Service Definition File: The Cloud Service Definition File (.csdef) defines the service model, including the number of roles. Service Profile: The Cloud Service Profile (.cscfg) provides configuration settings for cloud services and individual roles, including the number of role instances. Service Packs: Service Packs (.cspkg) Contains application code and service definition files.

Prepare the application

Before you can deploy a cloud service, you must build your cloud service pack (.cspkg) using your application code and build a cloud service configuration file (.cscfg). Each cloud service pack contains application files and configuration. Service profiles provide configuration settings.

The Azure SDK (Software Development Kit) provides tools for preparing these necessary deployment files. You can install the SDK from the Azure download page and choose the language you prefer when developing your application code.

If you are new to cloud services, you can download the sample cloud service pack (.cspkg) and service configuration file (.cscfg) from the Azure Code Samples.

Before you export a service pack, the three cloud service features require special configuration:

If you want to deploy cloud services that use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) for data encryption, configure your application for SSL. For more information, see "How to Configure SSL Certificates on HTTPS Endpoints? ". If you want to configure Remote Desktop Connection for a role instance, configure the role for Remote Desktop. For more information on preparing service definition files for remote access, see "Setting Up Remote Desktop Connection for the Role Overview." If you want to configure a detailed monitoring mechanism for cloud services, enable Azure Diagnostics for Cloud Services. Minimum Monitoring (default monitoring level) uses performance counters collected from the host operating system of the role instance (virtual machine). Detailed Monitoring collects additional metrics based on the performance data in the role instances to enable further analysis of issues that arise during application processing. To learn how to turn on Azure diagnostics, see "Enabling diagnostics in Azure."

before the start

If you have not installed the Azure SDK, click Install Azure SDK, open the Azure download page, download the SDK, and choose the language you prefer to write your code. (After that you have a chance to do that.) If any role instance needs a certificate, build a certificate. The cloud service needs a .pfx file with a private key. You can upload the certificate to Azure as you build and deploy the cloud service. For more information on building certificates, see "How do I configure SSL certificates on HTTPS endpoints? ". If you plan to deploy a cloud service to an affinity group, build a geo-group. You can use geopolitical groups to deploy cloud services and other Azure services to the same location in a region. You can build geopolitical groups on the Geo Groups page in the Networks area of ​​the Management Portal. For more information, see Help on the Geo Groups page.

How to use "Quick Build" to build cloud services

1. In the Management Portal, click New, click Cloud Service, and then click Quick Create.

2. In the URL, enter the name of the subdomain to use in the public URL to access the cloud service in your production deployment environment. The URL for the production deployment environment is http://myURL.chinacloudapp.cn.

3. In the Region / Affinity Group, select the geographic area or geo-group to deploy the cloud service in. If you want to deploy cloud services to the same location in a zone as other Azure services, select a geo-group.

Note: If you want to create a geo-group, open the Networks section of the Management Portal, click Affinity Groups, and then click Create a new affinity group or Create. You can use the geopolitical groups built in the previous Azure Management Portal. You can also use the Azure Service Management API to build and manage geo-groups. For more information, please refer to "geopolitical group operations."

4. Click Create Cloud Service.

You can monitor the status of this process in the message area at the bottom of the window.

The Cloud Services area opens to show the new cloud service. When the status changes to Created, it indicates that the cloud service build completed successfully.

If any of the roles in the cloud service require a certificate for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) data encryption and the certificate is not uploaded to Azure, you must upload the certificate before deploying the cloud service. After you upload a certificate, any Windows application running in the role instance can access the certificate.

How to upload a certificate for cloud service

1. In the Management Portal, click Cloud Services. Then click on the name of the cloud service to open the dashboard.

2. Click Certificates to open the Certificates page as shown below.

3. Click Add new certificate or Upload. Add a Certificate opens.

4. In Certificate file, use Browse to select the certificate (.pfx file) to use.

5. In Password, enter the private key of the certificate.

6. Click OK (hook symbol).

You can check the upload progress in the message area as shown below. After uploading, the certificate is added to the table. In the message area, click the down arrow to close the message, or click X to delete the message.

You can deploy your cloud service from the dashboard or from the Quick Launch.

How to deploy cloud services

1. In the Management Portal, click Cloud Services. Then click on the name of the cloud service to open the dashboard.

2. Click Quick Start, the icon to the left of the Dashboard, to open the Quick Launch page as shown below. (You can also use the "upload" on the dashboard to deploy your cloud service.)

3. If you have not installed the Azure SDK, click Install Azure SDK, open the Azure download page, download the SDK, and choose the language you prefer to use when writing your code.

On the download page, you can also install client libraries and source code to develop web applications in Node.js, Java, PHP, and other languages ​​that you can deploy as scalable Azure cloud services.

note:

For previously built cloud services (formerly called Hosted Services), you need to make sure guest operating systems on the virtual machines (role instances) are compatible with the version of Azure SDK you are installing. For more information, see Azure SDK Software Release Notes.

4. Click New Production Deployment or New Staging Deployment.

If you want to test cloud services in Azure before deploying them to a production environment, deploy them to a pilot environment. In a commissioning environment, the cloud service's globally unique identifier (GUID) identifies the cloud service (GUID.chinacloudapp.cn) in the URL. In a production environment, the more friendly DNS prefix that you assign (for example myservice.chinacloudapp.cn) will be used. If you're ready to release trial-run cloud services to your production environment, you can use Swap to redirect client requests to your production deployment environment.

After you choose to deploy the environment, Upload a Package will open.

5. In Deployment name, enter the name of your new deployment, such as MyCloudServicev1.

6. In Package, use Browser to select the service pack file (.cspkg) to use.

7. In Configuration, use Browser to select the service profile (.cscfg) to use.

8. If the cloud service will include any role with only one instance, select Deploy even if one or more roles contain a single instance to allow the deployment to continue.

If there are at least two instances of each role, Azure can only guarantee access to the cloud service 99.95% of the time during maintenance and service updates. If you need to, after deploying the cloud service, you can add additional role instances on the Scale page. For more information, see "Service Level Agreements."

1. Click OK to begin deploying the cloud service.

You can monitor the deployment status in the message area. Click the down arrow to hide the message.

Want to verify that the cloud service you deployed has been successfully completed.

Click Dashboard.

2. Under quick glance, click on the website URL to open your cloud service in a web browser.