Windows Azure - Loading an Edited Configuration File of an Existing Deployed Azure Application

Introduction:

In this article we are going to see how to load a configuration file of an Azure application edited locally.

Overview:

Normally, in cases we do a formal deployment of an application to the cloud or to the server and we have much process in updating the latest patches to the clients by doing an auto update of the application files to the server. In those cases, to edit the configuration file we need to login to the server to do some modifications and save the config file to the same location with same name and applicable tags. In Azure portal we have been provided with the option of doing the editing online or to upload a new or edited config file with a small wizard. Let us see the step by step process on how to do that in this article.

Steps:

Login to the management portal using the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/
We can see a screen like below. Select the Sign into Management portal at the top right corner.



After selecting that, sign in to the management portal; you will be asked for the Username and Password to authenticate the process as shown in the following screen:



After providing the correct credentials and clicking on the submit button, it will navigate to the main screen of the portal as shown in the following screen:



Now click on the Hosted Services, Storage Account and CDN option in the bottom menu and then select the Hosted Services as shown in the screen below:

Now select the deployed application (F5 Debug) as shown in the screen below. Here we can see the options like the environment on which its deployed and the DNS name to access the application etc.

In the top Menu Ribbon we can see Configure option as highlighted in the screen below. We need to use this option to configure the application configuraiton file.

Clicking on the Configure button will open a window pop up as shown in the screen below. We can see 2 options one is to load the configuration file directly and the other is to change the configuration file real-time in the portal itself.

Since this sample we are going to load the existing edited configuration file. Select the first option (Upload a new configuration file) and click on the browse button. Navigate to the path where the new configuration file (Edited file) is available and select the .cscfg file as shown in the screen below.

Now after selecting the configuration file your screen will look like the following with the selected configuration file name as shown in the screen below.

Now click on the OK button; we will see a warning as shown in the screen below. Since this is a warning we no need to consider much on this, instead we can click on Yes and proceed further. To check what the warning is click on the See More Details as highlighted in the screen below.

Clicking on the See More details will provide the warning message of the instances running as shown in the screen below. Since this is a sample application which is not highly scalable we can ignore that and click on the Yes button to proceed further.

Clicking on the Yes button will start the process to configure the application and we can see the status as shown in the screen below.

We will see the process of each component updating as shown in the screen below.

Once the component update is completed successfully and the application is available we can see the status of the application as Ready as highlighted in the screen below.

Now the application is configured and available online in the cloud.

Conclusion:

So in this article we have seen how to configure the application deployed online, by uploading the latest configuration file edited or created locally.