Windows Azure - Manually Edit a Config File Using Azure Management Portal

Introduction:

In this article we are going to see how to edit a configuration file of an Azure application using the Windows Azure Management Portal.

Overview:

In our earlier article we saw the option to upload the edited or the newly created configuration file; in this article we can see the step by step process of editing the configuration file using the Windows Azure Management Portal. The purpose of both the options is the same to edit the configuration file with ease as per the requirement. Let us see step by step about how to do the editing manually using the Windows Azure Management Portal.

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 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 will 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 article targets editing using the Azure Management Portal, select the 2nd option (Edit Current Configuration) as shown in the above screen and do the modifications as required.

Once the configuration file has been edited we will see the changes in the screen itself and then click on the OK button to process further. We will see a warning as shown in the screen below. Since this is a warning we do not need to be concerned about this much; 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 will see the status as shown in the screen below.

Once the component update has 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 with the edited configuration options.

Conclusion:

So in this article we have seen how to configure the application deployed online, by editing the configuration file using the Windows Azure Management Portal.