Windows Azure - Reboot a Running Role Instance of an ASP.Net Azure Web Application

Introduction:

In this article we are going to see how to reboot a running instance of an ASP.Net Azure Web Application using the Windows Azure Management Portal

Overview:

In our earlier articles we have seen how to create a new Azure application, deploy it to cloud, manage the application etc.

In this article we are going to see how to manage the running role instance by rebooting the role completely during the maintenance or the downtime of the application in order to provide better performance. Let us see step by step how to do the manual reboot of the Azure Application using 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 "Sign into Management Portal" at the top right corner:



After selecting "Sign into 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 Ribbon Menu we can see the "Reboot" option as highlighted in the screen below. We need to use this option to Reboot the running instance of the Azure Application.

Once the application role instance is selected and the Reboot button is clicked, we can see a window pop up asking for the instance to go offline during this action as shown in the screen below. Click on Yes to proceed further.

Clicking on Yes will start the process and we can see the progress (Starting Reboot) as shown in the screen below.

We can now see the WebRole Instance has been stopped and the Role is still in transition as shown in the screen below.

Now we can see the status processing further and initializing the role and preparing the instance which indicates that the reboot has been partially done and the process is starting back as shown in the screen below.

Once the process is completed successfully we can see the status of the Azure Application is Ready as shown in the screen below:

Conclusion:

So in this article we have seen how to reboot the running role instance of the Azure application using the Windows Azure Management Portal.