Windows Azure Can I run multiple WebSites on the same Extra small instance or Small instance [closed]

Question

I'm evaluating MS cloud Windows Azure for hosting 3 completely separated websites.

Every website has its own database and they are not connected, so 3 websites and 3 databases.

My aim is to optimize costs for a start-up project with the possibility to scale up on demand.

I would like to know:

• If is possible to host 3 websites on the same instance (Extra small instance or Small instance).
• if is possible to host 3 databases on the same Sql Azure database (so I would use the total amount of SQL storage for my 3 databases) or for each website database I have to pay an instance of SQL Azure.

Thanks for your time on this.

Inexperience

Thanks Richard for your revision – Inexperience

Have a look at this article. It is amazing: Running Multiple Websites in a Windows Azure Web Role – Secretion

Answer 1

You can absolutely run multiple web sites on the same instance, starting with SDK 1.3, as full IIS is now running in Web Roles. As Jonathan pointed out with the MSDN article link, you can set up the Sites element to define each website. You should also check out the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit, which has a lab specifically around building a multi-site web role.

You can also take advantage of something like Cloud Ninja or Windows Azure Accelerator for Web Roles, which provides a multi-tenant solution that you can load into your Web Role (check out the Cloud Cover Show video here for more info).

When hosting multiple websites, remember that they're all sharing the same resources on an instance. So you might find that an Extra Small instance won't meet your performance needs (it's limited to 768MB RAM and approx. 5Mbps bandwidth). I think you'll be fine with Small instances and scaling out as you need to handle more traffic.

Mcallister

Answer 2

For the past several months, I've been running three websites on a pair of extra small instances, including albahari.com, linqpad.net and the LINQPad licensing server (which uses LINQ to SQL). The trick is to serve large static content directly from blob storage so that it's not subject to the 5MBit/second I/O bandwidth restriction. And I've never got anywhere close to running out of memory.

A pair of extra small Azure instances is a great alternative to shared hosting when you need better reliability, security and performance.

Edit: close to a year now, still no problems with multiple websites on Azure. I will never go back to shared hosting.

Commissar

Helpful info as I'm moving all my stuff to azure now as well. BTW, LINQPad is the best, I use it every day...thanks. – Alie

Answer 3

You can definitely run 3 websites in the same instance. Check out this MSDN article that shows you how to form your configuration file such that you can host multiple websites within a single role. One thing to note though since you mentioned "scaling on demand" - when you scale an instance with multiple websites, you are scaling the instance, which means all of the sites will scale together. You can't scale just one of the sites on the shared instance.

For the databases, in theory this can be done, but it would be "manual" in that you would have to all of your tables across the three databsaes in the same database and you would probably want to prefix them with some sort of indicator so that you know which table belongs to which application. This is certainly not a recommended practice, but if it works for your solution, then there is nothing technical preventing you from doing it. If at all possible, I would recommend multiple databases.

Sybarite

Thanks for your answer. In my case it would be a reasonable solution use one instance with 3 website and 3 separate database. Another question but not related. What about Azure support? Tecnical support is it included? Prices? What is the average time to haev a solution for a tickets? Thanks for your help on this. – Inexperience

This should be posted as a seperate question, but... :-) Depends on what you consider technical support. Will the technical support folks review your code if something is not working, probably not, however, they do do an amazing job at making sure that they point you in all of the right directions to solve any problem that you might be experiencing. They will also escalate issues to the product teams and such if you find something that is more of a global problem. In other words, they're great. You can acess support from microsoft.com/windowsazure/support and there is no cost. – Sybarite

Thanks Jonathan Rozenblit for your feedback, unfortunately I cannot find any price list for technical support.. but it is another topic :-) – Inexperience