In a previous post, I introduced the Azure Services Platform, and provided step-by-step procedures for getting started with Azure. It can take a bit of time downloading the tools and SDKs and redeeming invitation tokens, but once that’s all done, it’s remarkably simple and fast to build, debug, run, and deploy applications and services to the cloud. In this post, I’ll walk through the process for creating a simple cloud application with Visual Studio 2008.
You don’t need to sign up for anything or request any invitation tokens to walk through the steps in this post. Once you’ve installed the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio July 2009 CTP and related hotfixes as described in my previous post, you’ll have the necessary templates and runtime components for creating and testing Windows Azure projects. (Of course, your Azure account and services must be set up to actually deploy and run in the cloud, which I’ll cover in a future post.)
Installing the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio July 2009 CTP provides templates that simplify the process of developing a Windows Azure application. It also installs the Windows Azure SDK, which provides the cloud on your desktop. This means you can build applications on your local machine and debug them as if they were running in cloud. It does this by providing Development Fabric and Development Storage services that simulate the cloud environment on your local machine. When you’re ready, it then takes just a few clicks to deploy to the real cloud.
Let’s dive in!
Start Visual Studio 2008, and begin a new project. Scroll to the new Cloud Service project type, select the Cloud Service template, and name the project HelloCloud.
When you choose the Cloud Service template, you are creating at least two projects for your solution: the cloud service project itself, and any number of hosted role projects which Visual Studio prompts for with the New Cloud Service Project dialog. There are three types of role projects you can have, but the one we’re interested in is the ASP.NET Web Role. Add an ASP.NET Web Role to the solution from the Visual C# group and click OK.
We now have two separate projects in our solution: a Cloud Service project named HelloCloud, and an ASP.NET Web Role project named WebRole1:
The HelloCloud service project just holds configuration information for hosting one or more role projects in the cloud. Its Roles node in Solution Explorer presently indicates that it’s hosting one role, which is our WebRole1 ASP.NET Web Role. Additional roles can be added to the service, including ASP.NET Web Roles that host WCF services in the cloud, but we’ll cover that in a future post. Note also that it’s set as the solution’s startup project.
The project contains two XML files named ServiceDefinition.csdef and ServiceConfiguration.cscfg. Together, these two files define the roles hosted by the service. Again, for our first cloud application, they currently reflect the single ASP.NET Web Role named WebRole1:
ServiceDefinition.csdef
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ServiceConfiguration serviceName="HelloCloud" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration">
<Role name="WebRole1">
<Instances count="1" />
<ConfigurationSettings />
</Role>
</ServiceConfiguration>
ServiceConfiguration.cscfg
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ServiceDefinition name="HelloCloud" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition">
<WebRole name="WebRole1" enableNativeCodeExecution="false">
<InputEndpoints>
<!-- Must use port 80 for http and port 443 for https when running in the cloud -->
<InputEndpoint name="HttpIn" protocol="http" port="80" />
</InputEndpoints>
<ConfigurationSettings />
</WebRole>
</ServiceDefinition>
The second project, WebRole1, is nothing more than a conventional ASP.NET application that holds a reference to the Azure runtime assembly System.ServiceHosting.ServiceRuntime. From your perspective as an ASP.NET developer, an ASP.NET Web Role is an ASP.NET application, but one that can be hosted in the cloud. You can add any Web components to it that you would typically include in a Web application, including HTML pages, ASPX pages, ASMX or WCF services, images, media, etc.
For our exercise, we’ll just set the title text and add some HTML content in the Default.aspx page created by Visual Studio for the WebRole1 project.
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head runat="server">
<title>Hello Windows Azure</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<h1>Hello From The Cloud!</h1>
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>
We’re ready to debug/run our application, but unlike debugging a conventional ASP.NET Web application:
- The ASP.NET Web Role project is not the startup project; the Cloud Service project is
- The ASP.NET Web Role project won’t run on the Development Server (aka Cassini) or IIS
So debugging cloud services locally means starting the Cloud Service project, which in turn will start all the role projects that the service project hosts. And instead of Cassini or IIS, the ASP.NET Web Role projects will be hosted by two special services that simulate the cloud on your local machine: Development Fabric and Development Storage. The Development Fabric service provides the Azure computational services used in the cloud, and the Development Storage service provides the Azure storage services used in the cloud.
There are still a few things you need to ensure before you hit F5:
- You must have started Visual Studio as an administrator. If you haven’t, you’ll get an error message complaining that “The Development Fabric must be run elevated.” You’ll need to restart Visual Studio as an administrator and try again.
- SQL Server Express Edition (2005 or 2008) must be running as the .\SQLEXPRESS instance, your Windows account must have a login in .\SQLEXPRESS, and must be a member of the sysadmin role. If SQL Express isn’t configured properly, you’ll get a permissions error.
Enough talk! Let’s walk through a few build-and-run cycles to get a sense of how these two services work. Go ahead and hit F5 and give it a run.
If this is the very first time you are building a cloud service, Visual Studio will prompt you to initialize the Development Storage service (this won’t happen again for future builds). Click Yes, and wait a few moments while Visual Studio sets up the SQL Express database.
Although it uses SQL Server Express Edition as its backing store, make sure you don’t confuse Development Storage with SQL Azure, which offers a full SQL Server relational database environment in the cloud. Rather, Development Storage uses the local SQL Express database to persist table (dictionary), BLOB (file system), and queue storage just as Windows Azure provides the very same Storage Services in the real cloud.
Once the build is complete, Internet Explorer should launch and display our Hello Cloud page.
While this may seem awfully anti-climactic, realize that it’s supposed to. The whole idea is that the development experience for building cloud-based ASP.NET Web Role projects is no different than it is for building conventional on-premises ASP.NET projects. Our Hello Cloud application is actually running on the Development Fabric service, which emulates the real cloud fabric provided by Azure on your local machine.
In the tray area, the Development Fabric service appears as a gears icon. Click on the gears icon to display the context menu:
Click Show Development Fabric UI to display the service’s user interface. In the Service Deployments treeview on the left, drill down to the HelloCloud service. Beneath it, you’ll see the WebRole1 project is running. Expand the WebRole1 project to see the number of fabric instances that are running:
At present, and by default, only one instance is running. But you can scale out to increase the capacity of your application simply by changing one parameter in the ServiceDefinition.csdef file.
Close the browser and open ServiceDefinition.csdef in the HelloCloud service project. Change the value of the count attribute in the Instances tag from 1 to 4:
<Instances count="4" />
Now hit F5 again, and view the Development Fabric UI again. This time, it shows 4 instances hosting WebRole1:
As you can see, it’s easy to instantly increase the capacity of our applications and services. The experience would be the same in the cloud.
Congratulations! You’ve just built your first Windows Azure application. It may not do much, but it clearly demonstrates the transparency of the Azure runtime environment. From your perspective, it’s really no different than building conventional ASP.NET applications. The Visual Studio debugger attaches to the process being hosted by the Development Fabric service, giving you the same ability to set breakpoints, single-step, etc., that you are used to, so that you can be just as productive building cloud applications.
You won’t get full satisfaction, of course, until you deploy your application to the real cloud. To do that, get your Windows Azure account and invitation tokens set up (as described in my previous post), and stay tuned for a future post that walk you through the steps for Windows Azure deployment.
