I have an ASP.NET application that is deployed in Windows Azure. The application has a lot of images and static content, due to which the package file is big in size. If just add a new aspx page, is there a way that i can just deploy the new aspx page or i do need to package & deploy the whole content again?
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A:
If you are only considering what is provided by default by Windows Azure, then the answer is no: to add a single ASPX page you have to redeploy the entire Azure package.
Then, if you are willing to consider more complex schemes, then, yes, it is possible. Basically, you need some bootstrap logic within your WebRole that retrieves files from the cloud storage and pastes them into a local file directory within the Web Role.
By doing so, the usual IIS7 behavior happens, and newly added ASPX files become visible in your webapp.
Somehow, we did end-up implementing a similar pattern for Worker Roles (not Web Roles) within Lokad.Cloud. You could probably get inspiration from this project to setup the scheme that I am suggesting here.
Joannes Vermorel
2010-01-10 11:40:03
Thanks lot for the reply. Just to confirm, you mean that all the new aspx files, i need to put into some storage account and within the application, pull the new aspx file from the storage account and store it in the application directory, after which the newly added aspx would be available in my web role app?
Ajit Singh
2010-01-11 04:25:50
Yes, if you follow a classical asp.net website, this should work. Although, I haven't run any live experiment to make it work in practice. As far I remember the documentation, there is 1 gotcha: your webrole does not have write access to the root web directory, but any subdirectory should work.
Joannes Vermorel
2010-01-12 14:22:55
Got another reply from Azure Forum:Hello, if you intend to include the page in the package, you will have to upload the package again. However, ASP.NET also supports VirtualPathProvider. So you can upload the single page to blob storage, and use VirtualPathProvider to retrieve it. Have a look at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.hosting.virtualpathprovider.aspx.Yi-Lun LuoMSFT, Moderator
Ajit Singh
2010-01-13 00:24:14