Windows Azure - Upgrade Deployed Azure Application Manually

Introduction:

In this article we are going to see how to do an upgrade of the Azure application manually step by step.

Overview:

In our earlier article we saw how to do an upgrade automatically from the Windows Azure Management Portal (Check the link Automatic Upgrade). Now we will see the step by step process for a manual upgrade of the application online. Let us jump start to see the process in real time for manual deployment to the cloud.

Steps:

As a prerequisite, check my earlier article on how to develop and deploy an Azure application to the cloud step by step using the following Url:

Developing and Deploying your First Azure Application

After completing the steps from my article above, we will see the result as shown in the screen below.

Now we are ready with our application to upgrade after making some changes to the application. Here we made a change of the version as "Version 2 Update!!!" as shown in the screen below:

Once we are ready with the application, follow the steps as shown below. Right-click on the Azure project and select publish as shown in the screen below.

We will get a window to select the deployment process as shown below (See my earlier article to see more on the various options to deploy).

Once we selected the appropriate option and clicked the OK button, the project starts to prepare the package and the configuration file and we will see the progress as shown in the screen below.

Once the process has completed we will see the build and package result as highlighted in the screen below.

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We will get a folder opened automatically after publish, and we will see 2 files created as usual as shown in the screen below. (See my earlier article on the usage of these 2 files.)

Now login to the Management Portal using the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/

We will 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 the submit button we will be navigated 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 for Debug) as shown in the screen below. Here we will see the options like the environment on which its deployed and the DNS name to access the application etc.

Click on the DNS name to see the current version of the output as shown in the screen below (Before Upgrade):

Now to start the upgrade process, we have an icon on the top menu as "Upgrade" as highlighted in the screen below.

We will see a pop-up request details of the upgrade application as shown in the screen below:

 
In the screen below:

Since in our sample we are going to do a Manual upgrade select the Manual check box and in the package location and Configuration file select the files we got when we published the project as shown in the screen below.

We will get a warning message as shown below. Click yes to proceed further…

Now we will see the upgrade started and the staging of each component will be shown as highlighted in the screen below.

After some time we will see a status "Ready to start manual update…" as shown in the screen below.

Now the package is ready to be started, at the top left corner we will see a button Start as highlighted in the screen below.

Clicking on the Start button will start the process and we will see the status update as highlighted in the screen below.

Now we will see a status "Ready to start update domain…" Now click on the start button again to start the domain update as shown in the screen below.

We will see the complete process updating each and every component as shown in the screen below.

Once the process is completed we are done with our manual update to the Azure Management Portal and we will see the status are Ready as shown in the screen below. Also we will see the DNS name as shown in the screen below (left menu):

Clicking on the DNS name will open the upgraded version (Version 2.0) of the application as shown in the screen below:

Conclusion:

So in this article we have seen how to do an upgrade to the online Azure application using the Windows Azure Management Portal step by step.