Windows Azure - Upgrade Deployed Azure Application Automatically

Introduction:

In this article we are going to see how to do an upgrade to the deployed Azure application in the Windows Azure Management Portal.

Overview:

In our earlier articles we saw how to develop and deploy an application using the Azure templates in Visual Studio 2010 and deploy it to the cloud using the Windows Azure Management Portal. In our traditional approach of publishing, there will be maintenance and enhancement requirements and we need to publish the modifications on a frequent basis. Each and every time it is unnecessary to delete and create a new process in the Azure management portal; instead we have the option to do an upgrade automatically or manually based on the user requirements. In this sample we will see how to do an upgrade automatically. Let us jump to the step by step process of doing that. 

Steps:

As a prerequisite, check my earlier article on developing and deploying an Azure application to the cloud step by step using the following Url:

Developing and Deploying your First Azure Application
Once we are done with the steps from my article above, we will see the result as shown in the screen below.

Now we are ready with our application to upgrade after making some changes to the application. Here we made a change of the version as "Version 2 Update!!!" as shown in the screen below:

Once we are ready with the application, follow the steps as shown below. Right-click on the Azure project and select publish as shown in the screen below.

We will get a window to select the deployment process as shown below (See my earlier article to see more on the various deployment options).

After selecting the appropriate option and clicking the OK button, the project starts to prepare the package and the configuration file and we will see the progress as shown in the screen below.

When the process has completed we will see the build and package result as highlighted in the screen below.

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We will get a folder opened automatically after publishing and we can see 2 files created, as usual as shown in the screen below. (See my earlier article on the usage of these 2 files.)

Now login to the management portal using the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/

We will see a screen like below. Select the Sign into Management portal at the top right corner:



After selecting that sign in to management portal you will be asked for the Username and Password to authenticate the process as shown in the following screen:

 

Upon entering the correct credentials and clicking the submit button we will be navigated to the main screen of the portal as shown in the following screen:



Now click on the Hosted Services, Storage Account and CDN option in the bottom menu and then select the Hosted Services as shown in the screen below.

Now select the deployed application (F5 to Debug) as shown in the screen below. Here we can see the options like the environment on which its deployed and the DNS name to access the application etc.

Click on the DNS name to see the current version of the output as shown in the screen below (Before Upgrade):

Now to start the upgrade process, we have an icon on the top menu as "Upgrade" as highlighted in the screen below.

We will see a pop-up requesting the details of the upgrade application as shown in the screen below:

Now we need to select the Upgrade Mode option, since in this sample we are going to see the Automatic upgrade as shown in the screen below.

Now select the Package file and the configuration file which were created at the time of publish as shown in the screen below.

We will get a warning message as shown below. Click yes to proceed further…

Now we will see the upgrade start and the staging of each component can be seen as highlighted in the screen below.

Once the upgrade is successful we will see the status as Ready as shown in the screen below. Also we will see the DNS name at the right side menu which can be used to access the deployed application in the cloud.

Clicking on the DNS name http://f5Debug.cloudadpp.net will open our deployed application as shown in the screen below.
Now we can see the upgraded version of the application (Version 2) as shown in the screen below.

Conclusion:

So in this article we have seen how to upgrade an existing application (for each of multiple versions) step by step using the Windows Azure Management Portal.