We have two App Services which both appear to be configured identically. Both appear to be using the same service plan, in the same location, and are on the same Pay-As-You-Go subscription. Both are running the same ASP.NET Web Application, pointing to the same database. Both Web Applications also have identical directory structures outside of the Web Application (wwwroot) where required. The only difference between the two is that 'App Service A' has been assigned a custom domain and SSL certificate (which is the user's primary method of access).
We've noticed two fundamental differences however in the way these App Services behave, and cannot understand why -
a) On 'App Service B', when making changes to the Web.Config via the Azure App Service editor, the changes are applied instantally. However, on 'App Service A', a restart of the App Service is required.
However, and more importantly -
a) On 'App Service B', any files uploaded by the user via the Web Application appear in the correct place under the application directory structure (D:\Home\AppSubDir...), and are visible when accessing the site via FTP. However, on 'App Service A', while the Web Application appears to be able to access the uploaded files, they are not visible via FTP or the Kudu tools. When the App Service is restarted, the Web Application then also cannot see the files.
Re-implementing the application using Azure Files/Blob Services is not an option available to us right now given current deadlines. Also, we cannot fathom why if the existing functionality works correctly on one site, why should it differ on another.
We also need files to be preserved outside of the "wwwsite" structure for the sake of application logging (being stored in D:\Home\LogFiles\AppSubDir..). Again, on 'App Service A', these files are not visible.
It seems there's a difference on configuration somewhere between the two sites, but haven't trouble trying to identify exactly what that/those configuation option(s) within Azure could be. Any guidance much appreciated.
David Ebbo (above) has kindly answered this, for anybody else who experiences the same issue. It was simply a case of removing the "WEBSITE_LOCAL_CACHE_SETTING" Application Setting in the Azure Portal, under the "Application Settings" section. After which, reset the App Service and normal behaviour returns.
/Edit - more documentation on the Azure "Local Cache" can be found here - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/app-service-local-cache-overview
Related
My IIS nested application hangs when I browse from IIS -- browser's busy spinner just spins forever.
I added a 2nd VS ASP.NET web app project to my primary web site, as a IIS 'nested' application.
The 2nd web app project debugs from VS OK and opens browser to it.
Is it possible to break in with debugger to see if code is in a loop or something?
BACKGROUND:
IIS 6.5 on my Windows Server 2012 R2 Azure VM
VS is 15.3.4
IIS > Sites > my primary web site > TEST (this Application added to primary) > Advanced Settings:
App Pool = DefaultAppPool
Physical Path = path to TEST's VS project
Virtual Path = /TEST
IIS 6.5...
Test Settings...
If you aren’t sure what issue is causing your website to spin forever, look at the live requests within IIS. From the IIS Management Console select Worker Processes.
Right click on your running application pool and select “View Current Requests”.
This will bring up a list of the currently running ASP.NET web requests as shown below.
I would suggest looking at the “Time Elapsed” to see if you have a lot of requests that are taking a very long time. You should also see if they are all stuck in the same module. This could be a clue that the issue is all related to ASP.NET Sessions or some other step within the ASP.NET request life cycle. You may also be able to identify a specific URL that is causing the problem.
Also in addition to that , I would highly suggest using a logging framework like NLog, log4net or Serilog. You can then send them to a log management service to make it easier to search them across multiple servers. Application logs are good way to trace your application trace across server.
If your web request is returning a 500 Internal Server Error, you need to check your server-side logs for exceptions. As mentioned above about application logs in general, it is important to have good exception handling in place and properly logging all of your errors.
Also you could use some open source diagnostic tool like Glimpse to trace. Glimpse is a thriving and growing family of open source NuGet packages that provides detailed performance, debugging and diagnostic information for ASP.NET apps. It's trivial to install, lightweight, ultra-fast, and displays key performance metrics at the bottom of every page. It allows you to drill down into your app when you need to find out what's going on at the server. Glimpse provides so much valuable information we recommend you use it throughout your development cycle, including your Azure test environment. While Fiddler and the F-12 development tools provide a client side view, Glimpse provides a detailed view from the server. You can try using that too.
Hope it helps.
We are currently moving an old ASP.net web application from a hosted server IIS7 to Azure.
In the current setup the site is accessing a File Server using an UNC path to a shared folder on the file server.
\\file-server\files-client
We do, for now, not want to change this approach since it will substantially complicate the moving process.
We have set up an Azure Storage with File Service and a share in this called files-client
This can be access perfectly from a VM by setting up credentials and accessing it via
\\storageaccount.file.core.windows.net\files-client
But
We really would want to have this site run as a Web App Service since it gives us a number of advantages.
We have set up an App Service, have published the Web Application, and all is running great including DB access etc.
Unfortunately our luck runs out when the Web Application tries to access the file share using
\\storageaccount.file.core.windows.net\files-client\test.jpg
We get an access error:
Access to the path '\\storageaccount.file.core.windows.net\files-client\test.jpg' is denied.
This tells me that the App Service sees the share but is not authorized to access it.
I know that we somehow has to grant the App Service access to this storage, but searching the net intensively tells me that this cannot be done which I simply cannot understand, and hopefully I'm not looking in the right places.
Sp the question is: How do I set up the credentials in the App Service to have it access my Storage share?
Any guidance is much appreciated.
Thanks in advance
The App Service sandbox explicitly does not allow access to the ports necessary for SMB protocol (137/138/139/445).
This article mentions it under Restricted Outgoing Ports: https://github.com/projectkudu/kudu/wiki/Azure-Web-App-sandbox.
I am trying to minimize the cost of running my web app in Azure App Service. I have a Visual Studio 2017 solution with two Web Projects: Web and API (both .NET Core). The entire solution is part of a single GitHub Repo. Before adding the API project, the build and deployment to Azure App Service was automated. My goal is to deploy both projects under the same App Service (to minimize cost) with two subdomains (e.g. www.example.com and api.example.com) and keep everything automated.
Is this something that can be done? Can somebody please help me understand how this can be done? Can those settings be commited?
An Azure App Service Plan can contain multiple web apps. Normally when you use the Azure portal to connect it to source control, Kudu (the tool behind App Service Plans), will create a deployment script for that site.
In case you want to deploy two projects of a single solution (and git repo) to different Web Apps you have to do the following:
Create two web apps under the same App Service Plan
Connect both of them to the same git repo for automated deployments
Modify the deployment parameters
I'm going to suppose you know how to do the first two steps.
To modify the deployment parameters, you could either modify the deployment script by downloading it through Kudu and adapting it or, much simpler, configure it through the portal:
Go the App1 => Application Settings => Add setting PROJECT with value
<path>\<path-to-app1>.csproj
Go the App2 => Application Settings => Add setting PROJECT with value <path>\<path-to-app2>.csproj
Every time you push up a change, both web apps will receive an update, but they will deploy a different part to the web site.
More information can be found here (see last paragraph): https://github.com/projectkudu/kudu/wiki/Customizing-deployments
Is there a way I can deploy my entire website/webapp to an Azure WebRole without the need of Visual Studio?
Context: We have a test environment where there's an IIS hosted web app where our testers test (of course). The thing is, we want to grab that exact tested web app folder and deploy it "as is" to a WebRole.
Please avoid commenting on our procedure, we have been looking at it and we will eventually change it if we have to, I just need a 'simple' yes(how)/no answer.
IIS Web Deploy can be used to package/migrate/restore IIS applications. It can be enabled while deploying a web role as described in this article and allows to update the web role with the application as deployed in your test environment.
Be aware that only single instance cloud services are supported and that in case of a maintenance operation by the fabric controller, your service will be rolled back to the state created by the initial azure package deployment. (There once was a tool for syncing between multi-instance web deployments but sadly that did not work out too well and is no longer supported. Do not attempt to use or rebuild it.)
Installing and Configuring Web Deploy shows the steps to get web deploy for your local testing IIS while articles on using web deploy like this one show examples for calling the tool.
Another option to evaluate are azure websites and git deployment. This could provide you with a documented and reproducible form of deployment that is not prone to unwanted rollbacks while allowing the service to scale to multiple instances. This option might not work out if the application it too tied to the web roles infrastructure or contains code not suitable for the more restricted web sites environment.
A third option to look at is using CSPack as presented in this article. You basically create a service definition and package up the webapp manually without building it in Visual Studio or TFS.
Yes - make sure you have enabled Remote Access on your webrole. Then copy your web app from your local IIS folder to F:\sitesroot\0 (NOTE - may be E:\sitesroot\0 on same web roles).
Yes, you can write a programmatic interface against Web Deploy from your C# code. If you're deploying to Azure Web Sites, you could also use the Windows Azure Management Libraries to spin up new web sites or clouand deploy them.
I am very new to Windows Azure and am tinkering with it to learn how it works. To keep things as simple as possible, I am trying to deploy the default MVC 4 template that is generated by VS 2012 Express for web. I created a new project - an Azure cloud service. I selected an MVC 4 web role. And that creates a nice little asp.net application with home, about and contact pages, and links to register and login. I just want to deploy this site to Azure and see it work on the cloud.
However the membership does not appear to work on azure. The pages of the application appear correct. However when I click the 'Register' link it does not take me to a page to nter a new username and password. I do not believe the membership tables are being generated anywhere either.
Considering how simple this is, I think I must be making a silly mistake somewhere. I would really appreciate if someone could help me with this.
Also, for the record, I have noticed that if I create a stand alone MVC 4 project in VS2012 Express (as opposed to a Windows Azure Cloud service project with an mvc 4 web role) then when I right click that MVC4 project and choose to publish it, it allows me to specify a sql database using a connection string. What is more is once it is published to Azure, the membership works perfectly. I can create useraccounts and log in. If I examine my SQL Azure database using the azure portal, I can see the new membership tables created there.
But when I try to publish a Windows Azure Cloud service with MVC4 webrole, I do not see any option to provide a connection string of any sort to the azure project. Maybe that is why the membership is not working... since there is no database linked with the web role... but I cannot figure out how to specify this. I was under the impression that publishing a stand alone MVC4 project to Azure, and publishing an Azure Cloud Service with an MVC4 Web Role is the exact same thing, please correct me if I am wrong. And either way, I should be able to see the membership functionality of my mvc 4 web role.
Here are the steps to recreate what I have. Basically it is all default stuff:
Create a new project in VS2012 Express
File -> New Project -> 'Windows Azure Cloud Service'.
On the next screen add an ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Role to it.
On the subsequent screen choose 'Internet Application'.
These 3 steps create a new project. It runs locally just fine.
Now I try to put it on the cloud.
Right click on the windows azure project in solution explorer and choose 'Publish'.
Choose the subscription (I already have certificate/credentials in place to publish to azure from VS so I select that)
Create a cloud service on the next screen (I name it 'garyazurecloudservice').
Accept all the default settings in the Publish wizard and click Publish.
The publishing process takes a few minutes.
The web application can be viewed at http://garyazurecloudservice.cloudapp.net/.
The Home, About and Contact pages all display correctly. However it I click the 'Register' link at the top right I see a webpage with the correct layout template, but an error in red that says:
"Error. An error occurred while processing your request."
I have tried to create an SQL database on Azure but I don't see any way to connect this role to it. Possibly that is the problem? Or maybe it is something else altogether. I would appreciate if anyone can tell me what is wrong.
I have spent the entire day googling and going in circles with no success. Thank you for any help you can provide.
Gary
You're right in that the Membership section of your website would not be able to create the SQL tables in the background when running on Azure, due only the problem of where those tables would reside.
Remember, that Azure hosting space is different from traditional hosting, in that your site would exist on a virtual machine, with files being replicated to another virtual machine if the first were to experience problems. Also, what would happen if you were to invoke a second 'server' to host your website, to cater for a load, perhaps? Where would the tables live then, and how would the second virtual machine know how to access the first?
The answer would be to create a SQL Azure database, upload your tables there, and then you'd have a permanent place for 1, 2 or 1000 'servers' that are running your website to access a central database repository of your data.
I know in your example, it should just 'work' and I agree to some extent, but your application running on your local machine or with your existing (traditional) web host is quite different to the Azure model of working.
In terms of your question regarding how the SQL Azure set-up works, presumably you've created this through the Portal, via the www.windowsazure.com website? If so, then you should be able to see and manage your SQL Azure database from there, including gaining access to the Connection Strings section, whereby you would copy and paste these into your web.config file for your MVC4 application. From there, you can utilise this database pretty much as though you would any other.
I hope this all helps - Azure is a beautiful beast once tamed.