I've been watching some videos from the build conference re: Inside Windows Azure etc.
My take away from one of them was that unless I loaded in a preconfigured VHD into a virtual machine role, I would lose any system settings that I might have made should the instance be brought down or recycled.
So for instance, I have a single account with 2 Web Roles running multiple (small) websites. To make that happen I had to adjust the settings in the Hosts file. I know my websites will be carried over in the event of failure because they are defined in the ServiceConfiguration.csfg but will my hosts file settings also carry over to a fresh instance in the event of a failure?
i.e. how deep/comprehensive is my "template" with a web role?
The hosts file will be reconstructed on any full redeployment or reimage.
In general, you should avoid relying on changes to any file that is created by the operating system. If your application is migrated to another server it will be running on a new virtual machine with its own new copy of Windows, and so the changes will suddenly appear to have vanished.
The same will happen if you perform a deployment to the Azure "staging" environment and then perform a "swap VIP": the "staging" environment will not have the changes made to the operating system file.
Microsoft intentionally don't publish inner details of what Azure images look like as they will most likely change in future, but currently
drive C: holds the boot partition, logs, temporary data and is small
drive D: holds a Windows image
drive E: or F: holds your application
On a full deployment, or a re-image, you receive a new virtual machine so all three drives are re-created. On an upgrade, the virtual machine continues to run but the load balancer migrates traffic away while the new version of the application is deployed to drive F:. Drive E: is then removed.
So, answering your question directly, the "template" is for drive E: -- anything else is subject to change without your knowledge, and can't be relied on.
Azure provides Startup Scripts so that you can make configuration changes on instance startup. Often these are used to install additional OS components or make IIS-configuration changes (like disabling idle timeouts).
See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/lucascan/archive/2011/09/30/using-a-windows-azure-startup-script-to-prevent-your-site-from-being-shutdown.aspx for an example.
The existing answers are technically correct and answer the question, but hosting multiple web sites in a single web role doesn't require editing the hosts file at all. Just define multiple web sites (with different host headers) in your ServiceDefinition.csdef. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg433110.aspx
Related
while setting up a basic 1 x NGINX load-balancer in front of 2 backends, I ended up in what it is clear to me to be a bug: the cron of this Certified App cannot be edited:
As you can see, in this particular App the cron file is owned by root:root and doesn't have the extended attribute (the plus on the right of permissions) necessary for the file to be edited also by the logged in user (nginx in this case).
All other certified apps allow instead the main login user to have crontabs, even though I found the permissions of each file vary a lot.
I've stumbled on https://github.com/jelastic/jem/blob/master/etc/jelastic/export.conf and it seems the file to go for proposing a bugfix, but it's last update if Aug-2016, so I guess Jelastic had closed much of its source code.
How can we contribute to Certified App source code?
indeed it is a bug as cron file of nginx user isn't editable in a balancer template, by design in has to be.
As for exports.conf - this file left for backwards comparability, but no more used.
The problem will be definitely fixed in latest templates, as for existing containers - we would like to apply a patch to fix them, if you provide us more details about hosting service provider you are using - we will help with that.
As for contribution to certified templates, all the images are publicly available on Docker Hub, you can create your own version of template based on existing one if you build a docker image and in your Dockerfile you specify
"from jelastic/nginxbalancer" as a base, then you can do any modifications to the filesystem. Next step will be just to replace existing balancer with your custom one.
Anyway, let's start with fix of existing containers.
Many thanks for finding out the bug!
We have a CMS on heroku, some files were generated by the CMS, how can I pull those changes down? Can I commit the changes remotely and pull them down? Is there an FTP option of some kind?
See: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/dynos#ephemeral-filesystem
It's not designed for persistent file generation and usage.
In practice, it works like this: User puts some code into a repository. That code is dynamically pulled into temporary Amazon EC instances and executed. The code can be pulled from virtual machine to virtual machine, node to node, without disruption, across data centers. There is no real "place" to get the products of your code from the environment, because anything generated by the checked-out code can (and will) be destroyed as your code deploy skips around between the temporary machines.
That being said, there are some workarounds:
If your app includes something like a file browser within your deployed code, you can grab the (entirely) temporary files using that file browser, and commit it back to your persistent code trunk.
Another option is using something like S3 for your persistent storage, with your application reading from, and writing to, a data storage service, knowing that while heroku will just re-write and destroy your local data on a frequent basis, the external service will maintain the files.
Similarly, you can change your application to use heroku's postgres for persistent data storage, or use Amazon's RDS, (etc.).
Alternately, you can edit your application in such a way as to ensure that any files generated by it will be regenerated every time the code is refreshed, redeployed, and moved around.
THE MISSION:
I have a development environment running on an Amazon AWS EC2 virtual server which i want to have tested by third parties.
THE PROBLEM:
I do NOT trust the companies who will test it not to sabotage environment and / or steal code. Therefore, i don't want them to know URL's, permanent IP's or even to access the web pages, which they could eventually use a crawler to find.
My environment includes web applications and socket servers. I do NOT want to expose the web applications, while giving access only to socket servers.
THE CONCEPT:
I have opted to use a secondary, impermanent Elastic IP pointing to the environment. this IP will be destroyed after 1 or 2 days, after basic tests have run. Subject to change (depending on suggestions from this thread).
THE QUESTION:
Can i create a secondary Elastic IP instance that allows access only to ports 5000-5100? If so, how?
THE ALTERNATIVE: In case this is not the most efficient procedure, what alternative would you propose?
MY SOLUTIONS: followed FAQ Launching Instance From Backup
create snapshot
create image from snapshot (snapshot menu - create image tag)
instances - launch instance
choose image created from snapshot as your root volume
edit security groups (opened port range for sockets only, no web)
deleted all web code from this instance
after 2 days, will delete instance
followed Create Image From, Instance
select (exclusively) running instance you wish to mirror
right click on selected instance
choose create image from dropdown
to 7. same as above
this second solution seems to be more stable (especially re: status check and connectivity issues).
any better solutions? thanx!
I am new windows azure user. I have gotten selected for 90 days trial account and I am able to upload my ASP.NET MVC3 application to my account. My site is also running now. After I did publish my site, I added more model, views and controller to my proramme. Now I can not find a way to update my application. I can again publish my application but update option is not there. I want to update my new code only but the package option is creating full application. How I can update the new code to my site in windows azure cloud?
[Changed spelling]
With Windows Azure you can publish/update an application following ways:
Log into you Windows Azure account. Select you hosted server name and at the top panel you will see "Upgrade" option, when you will use this option you will be given a chance to select your CSPKG and CSCFG file from local file system or from Windows Azure storage. Once you selected new or updated CSPKG, your current running service will bee upgraded.
You can also use Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets to upgrade your current running hosted service using "Update-Deployment" command:
2.1 http://wappowershell.codeplex.com/
You can other 3rd party applications created using Windows Azure Service Management API to upgrade/manage your current running hosted service.
3.1 http://wapmmc.codeplex.com/
3.2 http://www.cerebrata.com/Products/CloudStorageStudio/Default.aspx
Note: With Visual Studio if you again publish your application, it will delete the current running hosted service and then create the new on so for update it is not the good one.
Finally based on your question about partial update, that is not supported. Even when you make a single line change in your code the deployment will be considered a full deployment even when the action is "update/upgrade". There is no diff package deployment so evertime you update your Windows Azure application, you will use the newly created CSPKG file and upgrade your hosted application.
Regarding partial update: If you have multiple Roles, you may choose to upgrade a single role (so that would be a partial update of the deployment). For a given Role, all code is redeployed. If you're running more than one instance, the update will be rolled out across groups of instances, not all instances at once.
For updates such as static content: if you move these into blob storage (a great place for css, jquery, images, etc.), then you may update this content by simply uploading new items to blob storage individually. These updates don't require any code to be rebuilt or redeployed.
If you're in dev mode (e.g. non-production), you may enable Web Deploy, which then allows very fast updates of your app to the running instance. This only works in single-instance mode, and it's great when doing frequent code+test cycles.
I'm connected to one of my WebRole instances. But what can I do now? I startet the Server Manager and navigated to Roles -> WebServer -> RD00123..., but what I see seems not to be the active instance. When I click on "Browse WebSite" I don't see the deployed site even I can't see or edit for instance the configured rewrite rules (defined in the web.config).
It's also funny that the inetpub is on systemdrive D (d:\inetpub\wwwroot) but the deployed (editable) files are on E (e:\approot). I'm wondering how this comes togehter.
Ok the things I want to know are:
How can I launch the unique instance version of the web role (I can't find an IP or port)?
How can I assume temporary debug changes in the web.config?
How can I restore the deployed version of the instance?
1) I don't believe you can. This is managed by the Azure Fabric controller. The most you can do is force an individual instance (the one you've RDP'd into) to reboot/restart.
2) Yes. But they won't be reverted unless the VM is recycled, so be prepared to back them out yourself. This is a good use of RDP
3) Not directly. Again, this is controlled by the Azure Fabric controller. But you could put the original bits you had back into the VM manually.
I'm not sure I understand the questions regarding server manager, but I can answer the question about where things live. The "base" Windows Azure VM image is the root drive where you see INetPub at. The application is deployed to a seperate VHD (thus its presence on another drive). If you request local storage, that will come from yet another virtual drive. This is just how the Azure Fabric manages the application deployments. Properly constructed, the roles of course won't care where things live.