How to Deploy Web Roles Quickly.

One of the most common complains about Azure roles is the time it takes to spin out a new role. When thinking about it, creating a new role has two stages:
1. Create a new VM with Windows Server 2008 installed
2. Install your application on it.

The long part is the first one but the interesting part is the second. So why not spilt the two?

Web-Deploy allow us to do exactly that. We create an empty web role (with the OS only) and then inject our site to it.

Windows Azure Accelerator For Web Roles which was just released  help us to run Web-Deploy and deploy our sites within 30 sec (would you believe that)
In the codeplex site you will find detailed instruction how to deploy your application.

Windows Azure Accelerator For Web Roles helps also to deploy multiple sites on one web role. The accelerator installs a simple "portal" on your web role with which you will create and configure your sites. (Think of it like the IIS home page)
When you browse to the DNS provided by the Azure portal (i.e. HostedServiceName.cloudapp.net) you will see this simple portal.  

In the portal you create "sites" (similar to sites on IIS). You have to configure a hostname for each site that will be used to browse to your application.

 
To direct the host name to your web role you have to create a CName DNS entry with the mapping: "mydns.com" -> the VIP from the Azure management portal. This can be easily done by updating the hosts file in "\Windows\System32\drivers\etc"

Now you can deploy your web application to the new site and after 30 sec you can start Now browsing to http://mydns.com and see your new application.

Enjoy

Manu