ASP.NET Web Forms Applications on Azure (or any cloud hosting)

Question

This is a pretty vague question but I'm struggling a bit to get my head around what is involved in cloud hosting.

Say for instance if I had an asp.net web app using: - Webforms - linq to sql - an sql server database - Calling some external restful webservices

What would need to be done to host it on a cloud service?

Are there specific code changes that would be required and do these need to be considered in the initial design?

Can sql server and linq to sql be used in this type of setup?

What platform if any would be best suited?

Strophe

Answer 1

in it's most basic form, Azure is just a highly available web-hosting environment - if you have an ASP.Net web application, you can deploy it to cloupapp.net and it should work.

To try it out, get yourself a Vista/7 machine, download the Azure SDK and VS Tools, and create a new Azure application. There are 2 main parts at this point, the Cloud project, and an ASP.Net Web Application. The ASP.Net will have a "web-role" relationship with the Cloud project. This is as it sounds, it is the visual front-end to the Cloud application, that interacts with visitors.

You can, at this point, just leave it there - it's a normal ASP.Net application with very good hosting. Your SQL connection strings should work, though you may want to consider SQL Azure. You can also host WCF services.

As Manoj points out, Azure does have a different programming model which you can take advantage to produce very robust applications. Azure also has the concept of Worker Roles, which are similar to Managed Services, in that they perform processing without a public interface. Instead, your web-roles take the requests, place them on the Queues, and the worker-roles then pick them up, process and send back responses.

It's a very powerful system, which I haven't fully explored, but the good news is that you don't have to be an immediate expert in the whole system, but can create simple ASP.Net sites as web-roles, deploy those then expand from there.

Have a go, it's well worth it

Toby

Obsequious

I should also point out now - this was written back in the good old days of free Azure accounts ... make sure your hours are covered in your hosting deal, or it could end up very expensive .... – Obsequious

Answer 2

AppHarbor is a .NET Platform-as-a-Service. We can host your ASP.NET websites more or less un-modified and without the Visual Studio plugins and other crud that Windows Azure requires.

Waldack

Answer 3

It depends on what type of cloud hosting are you looking for. There is some cloud hosting which will just give you space for application data like Amazon. While Azure gives you complete application framework which supports your application to be hosted in cloud. But programming in cloud is different programming paradigm than in traditional web form. You will have some limited classes from .Net framework available but better resources for scalability.

You cant directly use sql server in azure application. What you can use SqlAzure services.

Gusset

Answer 4

Just referring a book which i feel would provide you the answer

Cloud Computing Book

EDIT :

Check this microsoft link Ramp Up

Feticide

Answer 5

yes, it is supported and live demo of Asp.NET 4.5 Web Forms available on Microsoft azure websites... you can visit this link for detailed information Create and deploy a secure ASP.NET Web Forms app with Membership, OAuth, and SQL Database to Azure App Service

Echt