After my previous blog post a question came if you can convert a Windows Azure Cloud Service to a Windows Azure Website. The short answer is, not really needed. A Windows Azure Website is just publish the WebRole to Windows Azure. The but belongin to it.If you use settings in the ServiceConfiguration.cscfg that won’t work and if you use Role specific properties (like RoleEnvironment.CurrentRoleInstance.Id), that won’t work to. For short be aware of what you are doing.
But how do you deploy a WebRole as a Windows Azure Website (WAWS)?
First we make a WAWS. After a click on the Create Website button the Websiteis empty.
Then we go to the details of the Website.
There we download the Publish profile.
The Publish profile looks like this.
Then we go to Visual Studio 2012 RC. Rightmouse click on the WebRole and choose Publish.
This is followed by a Wizard. First import the publish profile. Then choose the configuration, preview the deployment. And if everything is alright, then we can publish for real.
When deploying is busy, this will be shown by the little moving icons and progress will be shown in the output window.
After deployment the website will be shown.
That is really simple and looks a lot like we are used to. A Windows Azure Cloud Service can also be published like this, but it is not persistent.
Watch it! If you try it from within Visual Studio 2010, you get this error. Why is not clear yet. It looks to me using VS2010 or VS2012 should not make the difference.
Windows Azure Website are definitely not the same as Windows Azure Cloud Services. Remember this picture?
More info later when I played more with it..