Windows Azure Diagnostics gives you the ability to watch directories on your cloud services and copy the files within to a blob container automatically. This is great for archiving things like IIS logs. IIS logs are a special case that you can turn on with a switch, but if you have some other custom logs that you would like to persist to blob storage, it’s fairly easy to do this. Read More...
The WCF Azure table transport is a fun adaptation of
the original example by Dr. Nick, which used files as a transport layer. I thought I would take it a
step further and turn it into a Nuget package.
Communicating with an Azure role through table storage is a common practice. When you setup a worker role, you typically have it watching a queue looking for new messages to signal work. You essentially have something that works like a server and is acting on requests. It fits with a WCF model so I decided to create a WCF transport channel that uses Azure table storage. Instead of creating your own loop and putting in logic for handling concurrent messages, faults, etc. Read More...
If you want to edit a csdef file in a cloud project from your NuGet package, this can be done using the install.ps1 PowerShell script in the tools directory. Note that you cannot add NuGet packages directly to a cloud project. Most likely the user will be adding your package to a web or worker role. The install script will then have to search the solution for csdef files. You will also want to put in a uninstall script to remove the changes your NuGet package made. Read More...
A WF4 activity to reboot a role instance in an Azure cloud service deployment. Note that this method uses the Azure REST API and requires a management certificate to be installed on the machine executing the workflow in the local machine store.