azure Azure. How to reach that cloud?

[wrack]

Hi,

 

For a while I have been developing ASP.NET websites and now I want to make a move to Azure Website Development.

 

Where do I start? Any good books or is it just hands on?

 

I have got a copy of VS2013 Universal and SQL 2012 Developer. I haven't installed Azure SDK just yet.

 

Cheers :)

[vhane]

Is there anything specific that you need from the Azure SDK? I try to stay away from vendor-specific features if I can. Otherwise you're basically locking yourself in.

[wrack]

Is there anything specific that you need from the Azure SDK? I try to stay away from vendor-specific features if I can. Otherwise you're basically locking yourself in.

 

Most of the website I write have a custom cms backend where data is maintained in SQL Server and files are uploaded to the file system.

 

I just want to get started with Azure and want to learn what kind of changes do I need to make to deploy the same code base, that can be deployed both in traditional hosting as well as Azure hosting.

 

To achieve that, if SDK are not required then I am fine with that too.

[vhane]

Most of the website I write have a custom cms backend where data is maintained in SQL Server and files are uploaded to the file system.

 

I just want to get started with Azure and want to learn what kind of changes do I need to make to deploy the same code base, that can be deployed both in traditional hosting as well as Azure hosting.

 

To achieve that, if SDK are not required then I am fine with that too.

 

 

You should be able to deploy your application without making any Azure-specific changes.

 

Which Azure hosting product are you looking at? If you fire up an unmanaged VM on Azure, you're basically the admin and you can do whatever you want with it.

 

On the other hand, the `Azure Websites` product is a managed hosting environment and you don't have to admin the box yourself.

[wrack]

At the moment I am using a managed hosting so something equivalent would be fine with me.

I way I understood was, Azure websites will scale nicely with increased load without doing anything extra. What code changes do I need to make to just deploy my current websites to Azure managed hosting.

Would the files uploaded by users and saved on the file system be ok? SessionState, ViewState? Anything that needs to be taken care of?

[+virtorio MVC]

Frankly, everything you need to know can be answered by going here - http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/ - and searching around the various MS blogs.

 

Just go and sign-up for a free trial and get trying things. For what you have, you probably don't need to change much of anything. Sign-up, open the Management portal, add a web site and follow the instructions.

 

Just note, that you have to pay for things with Azure, with things being priced on usage, time or number of transactions, and adding scalability can increase prices quite a bit, so you should study the Pricing section of their web site carefully - http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/overview/.

[wrack]

Thanks :) I will look into that too.