This article explains Azure Cloud Services Deployments including how to do them.
Once you are done with creating your cloud services project, it's time to do the deployment.Primarily there are the following two types of deployment that can be done to Azure cloud services:
To do a Web Deploy, a one-time full deployment (with enabled remote desktop settings) must be done at least once. All the subsequent deployments can use web deploy.Let's see it step-by-step. (Steps 1 to 6 show the full deployment process, whereas steps 7 and 8 are used to do a web deployment.)Full DeployStep 1
Select your cloud services project and select publish.Step 2
Select your Azure subscription and click on "Next".Note: You must make your subscription available in the list before choosing it from the list. The best way to do that is by importing your subscription settings file that you can download from the Azure portal.Here is the link that you can use to download the publish settings file. It will ask you for your login credentials, once you enter those it will go ahead and download the file. Please ensure that you keep this file in a secure location since it contains sensitive information to connect to your subscription.Step 3
Make sure that all the fields are initialized to the correct values based on your project.
Step 4
This is the summary page of all the settings you have done. Verify them and you can click on Publish. This starts the full publishing process.You can track the progress of deployment using Windows Azure activity windows in Visual Studio.Web DeployOnce you are done with full deployment, you will be able to do a web deployment.For example: You have modified just a JavaScript file in your web project and now I need to deploy this change to the web role hosted on Azure. Step 1
Select the web project, right-click on it and choose the option Publish. After clicking on Publish, a Publish Web dialog is shown. Here it automatically shows the publishing profile that you used in full deployment. Make sure that you have selected the web deploy method as the publish method. The Service URL should be the URL of your Azure hosted web site. In the credentials section, enter the credentials that you created in Step 3 of full deployment. This will be used to connect to your web role. All these settings are stored in the XML file that resides in your project files. Usually with name – yourprojectname.Publish.xml, use Visual Studio Solution Explorer to view this file.Click on Publish and you are done. You can observe the progress of the deployment in the output window of Visual Studio. The deployment will be done in a few seconds (depending on the changes done).
The Developer’s Guide to Microsoft Azure - Second Edition