How To Implement "Site Under Maintenance" For Windows Azure Website
Jul 10, 2010
In one of our ASP.NET Web site solutions I need to roll out an update that might take reasonable time. It spawns multiple Windows Azure Workers and projects and so simple Deployment Swap is ruled out.
Essentially I'm just thinking about way to redirect all web requests to a "site is under maintenance" page for some time, given the project is under Windows Azure.
I'm aware of the app-offline.htm trick with IIS, but I doubt that Azure Web Role will allow this one to be deployed or run (it spins down the app domain).
In asp.net 3.5, what's the best (most convenient) way to redirect users to a page that informs them the "Site is currently undergoing maintenance. check back later."
Originally, someone recomended setting the starting page in IIS, but I don't have access to IIS (hosting company does) so that's not an option. Another person said to go into visual studio, right-click on the desired starting page, and mark it as "Set as start page", but that would involve recompiling & uploading the website EVERY time I want to perform maintenance & then recompile again once I'm done.
Am I able to specify the start page in my web.config file or something along these lines?
I just downloaded and installled the Microsoft Windows Azure SDK yesterday for the first time and I am having issues running the application as I all I am getting is 503 errors. I run Windows Server 2008 R2 on my development machine and even tested it on another co-workers 2008 R2 and couldn't even compile the application. He got this error instead "A problem occurred while trying to set the "References" parameter for the IDE's in-process compiler. Error HRESULT E_FAIL has been returned from a call to a COM component."
From within my Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Virtual Windows 7 x86 enviroment, I was able to successfully build and run the Windows Azure SDK and it even showed the base ASP.NET application.So my question is, does the Windows Azure SDK for Visual Studio 2010 w/ Visual Studio 2010 SP 1 installed not work under Microsoft Server 2008 R2?
I have an ASP.NET site that I'm going to have to take down to make some major structural updates to, and I was wondering how I should go about it from the client-side perspective. I have heard of an App_Offline.htm file or something like that, but I've never really gotten that to successfully work. Does anyone know how to do this?
EDIT
My app is running ASP.NET 4.0, for what it is worth.
Currently I am working on an MVC 2 project and we are trying to implement fulltext search. Originally we were going to take advantage of SQL Server fulltext search capabilities but we are aware that the project will be moving to Azure within 6 months.I understand that SQL Azure does not support fulltext search currently. What are the possible solutions to implement full text search in Azure? The solutions we've come across seem to point to Azure Library for Lucene.Net but I want to make sure we aren't overlooking any better solutions.
This is going to be a question really for someone who has knowledge with PingIdentity and ACS, which could be pretty limited.I've got my ACS set up, all working fine and I know how to add a custom STS (PingIdentity) but I can't find any of the PingIdentity Federation MetaData (FederationMetaData.xml) to authenticate with.
Apparently our current system's workflow is such:
Us -> Our PingIdentity server -> Supplier -> Supplier's PingIdentity server -> Route token back to us.
Would I have to use our local PingIdentity Federation MetaData as the STS in order to achieve what I'm looking for (same scenario, but with ACS)? And where can I find this?
does windows azure automatically scale up(by providing more instances), or I need to change this? the extra small instance costs 0.05$/hour. According to Azure SLA I need to use at least 2 instances. This means 2 * $0.05*24*30=$72/month minimum. I can get on premise asp.net hosting for $5/month. Is there any offer I don't know about so I can build from the start on Azure architecture, or should I just switch to azure when I need more scaling and other servies that Azure offers because the difference in price is too high for me.
I want to put website in maintenance mode, so i can rollover my new stuff. How can i keep users away from loging into my website and i will test my website live.
App_offline.html takes admin away as well. Is there any logical way of doing this?
I've currently got Windows Azure AppFabric system set up and running with my own registered Namespace, in which uses the Google/Yahoo/Windows Live STS providers. That all works fine, I can use them and login to my application. Easy.
However, I can't find anything in any way useful on the web that related to adding my own STS to this list from a 3rd party supplier. I've read that it's possible, and it's the last hurdle I'm stuck on here - replacing the Google/Yahoo/Windows Live STS with the ones I need my application to authenticate with. I cannot find anywhere in the STS control panel to allow for this (AppFabric Labs).
I'm migrating an ASP .NET 2.0 WebSite to WebRole (ASP.NET 4.0 and VS2010). After created new web role, I moved all files and folders from website to WebRole then reference all needed dlls. I build and run web role stand alone and everything ok without problems. But when I build and run WindowsAzureProject, below errors come up
[fabric] Role state Stopping [fabric] Role state Stopped [fabric] Role state Aborted [fabric] Role state Teardown [fabric] Role state Destroyed [runtime] Role entrypoint could not be created: System.Reflection.ReflectionTypeLoadException: Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information. at System.Reflection.RuntimeModule.GetTypes(RuntimeModule module) at System.Reflection.Assembly.GetTypes() at Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime.RoleEnvironment.CreateRoleEntryPoint(RoleType roleTypeEnum) at Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime.RoleEnvironment.InitializeRoleInternal(RoleType roleTypeEnum)
and the status "Operation was canceled" It takes me days to resolve but nothing found. I did set "Copy local" to true for all reference dlls but it doesn't effect also. I've just thought spring.core and spring.aop caused the error but I don't know how to debug and catching where it crash
I have written an web application in VS2010 ASP.net C#, to display Crystal reports. I moved this application to Azure Emulator. It was working fine locally. However after deploying it with Azure, crystal report is not getting displayed and not even an exception is thrown.
I have installed
Installed CRforVS_13_0.exe
Then installed CRRuntime_64bit_13_0, on my machine sequentially.Any input from any1 will be helpful. Please let know if you want more information.
My current ASP.NET site requires to launch FFMPEG.EXE to convert uploaded videos. With shared web hosting server, can't be done but via a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or a dedicated server.
I've been reading some info about Windows Azure but haven't found any info regarding:
1. Be able to launch external executable
2. Be able to remote desktop into the allocated virtual machines
We have a Web Role that we are hosting in Windows Azure that uses an old ASMX based Web Reference to contact an external system. The Web Reference proxy code is big enough that instantiating it the first time has a significant cost.
We'd like to be able to have this run when the Web Role starts instead of on the first request.
I know IIS 7.5 has an Application Warm-Up module that would allow us to achieve this, but I'm having trouble figuring out if something similar exists with hosting on Windows Azure.
In order to show a "site under maintenance" page we are looking at two alternatives.
1) Have an app_Offline.htm page and sync it to the server when maintenance starts.
2) Create a separate folder with a totally different site (which can show a lot more dynamic information than what we can with the app_offline page). During maintenance, it is being that we change the virtual folder mapping of the site to point to this other folder while we work on updating the site.
Is there a way to change the virtual folder to point to another folder using MSDeploy? Is there any other way to do this via a script rather than having to go to each server and manually change the folder ?
I have a Silverlight/RIA application that worked fine locally and on my IIS 7 server. Now that I've moved it to Azure, I'm getting EndpointNotFoundExceptions.
[EndpointNotFoundException]: There was no channel actively listening at [URL]
DomainService.svc/binary/SeviceEndpoint
ive seen the solution for wcf services here [URL] but im not sure if this is also applicable for ria services
I have a ASP.NET application. From that, User register, User will get email after registration. My Req : When user click on link provided in email. Then it should go to my ASP.Net application page . That page should install a wincows application on Client system through web ( I was inspired by Microsoft Windows update from Microsoft site)
I want to open B site as new window from A site, so its ask for windows credential. I have credential in A site. I am opening B site using Javascript.window.open.
I have been trying to avoid the windows login userid and password window when I use the Windows Authentication mode for a web site. I need to capture the the windows logon user name without prompting for the user id and password and display that on the web site. I had tried almost everything... changed authentication,security setups on IE and IIS etc... still not being able to avoid the window...
I'm trying to enable automatic Window authentication working on our ASP.NET Intranet. I've changed the Authentication on our IIS 7.5 server from Anonymous to Windows Authentication Enabled only, and changed the Web.config file for the website to:
The Windows login box appears when accessing the website via IE 8, I enter valid credentials, but the login window keeps reappearing as if it does not accept my credentials. By repeatedly cancelling the login box it disappears, and my login name can be viewed on the website. Is there any possible reason for the login box to keep popping up even though valid credentials are being entered? I've restarted the servers / cleared browser cache etc. Also, ideally I would like the user to enter the login details once in the login box and not be required to reenter login details whenever he reopens the browser.
I'm running windows 7, so I installed on my machine the oracle client version 11.1.0.7.0 (ODP.NET - Oracle.DataAccess version 2.111.7.20) . I'm trying to deploy an asp.net web application to a server that is running windows 2003, which has the oracle client version 11.1.0.6.0 (ODP.NET - Oracle.DataAccess Version 2.111.6.20)
Now when I compile my application and deploy it in a setup project (as pre-compiled). The start page of my web app tires to connect to Oracle and it returns the following error message:
"Could not load file or assembly 'Oracle.DataAccess, Version=2.111.7.20, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89b483f429c47342' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified."
Which is super weird because, cause the web.config file as shown above has Version=2.111.6.20.
Now the strange part is that if I copy the source code from the client to the server, the same code, same config file, it works just fine.
So I'm thinking that the pre-compiled version is telling the server to load Oracle.DataAccess Version=2.111.7.20, maybe in one of the dlls, not in the config file for sure.
Has anyone run into this problem?
what's the best approach to deploy to servers with different oracle client version? (I have a similar problem trying to deploy to a 64 bit machine)
