Hello Windows Azure, Revisited

While the first hands-on lab presented in the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit is a great way to learn about web and worker roles, blob storage, table storage, and queues, I believe it’s always a good first step to write a simple “Hello World” application.  Under Demos, there’s a step-by-step walkthrough of creating a Hello Windows Azure application, but for someone who has never touched Azure in Visual Studio 2010 before, it would have been nice to have a little more clarity, indication of where certain things are, and tips in the instructions.  This is a guide to writing the Hello Windows Azure application using Visual Studio 2010 and coding in C#.

Start Visual Studio 2010 in elevated administrator mode. Start | All Programs | Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, right-click the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 shortcut and choose Run as Administrator for elevated privileges .

If the User Account Control dialog appears, click Continue.

Select File –> New Project.

Select the Cloud Service project type.

Select the Windows Azure Cloud Service template.

Name the solution HelloAzure.

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Click OK to launch a wizard.

From the wizard, add the ASP.NET Web Role in C# by clicking the arrow (>) to add an instance of this role to the solution.

Before closing the dialog, select the added Role and click the pencil.

Rename from WebRole1 to HelloAzure_WebRole.

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Click OK to create the cloud service solution.

From this point, you can either create the Hello Azure application using HTML source code or the Design view.  I highly encourage trying out both.

Option 1: Using HTML Source Code

Double-click on the Default.aspx page in the Solution Explorer (CTRL+ W,S to bring it up if it’s not there).

Add the following in between <div> and </div>: <asp:Label ID=“Label1” runat=“server” Text =“Label”></asp:Label>

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Option 2: Using Design View

Double click on the Default.aspx page. 

Click on the Design tab at the bottom left corner.

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Click on the Toolbox at the top left corner.

Select Label and drag to Default.aspx.

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After you have created a label with either option, View Code with F7

Add the following line to Page_Load: this.Label1.Text = “Hello Windows Azure”;

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Open ServiceConfiguration.cscfg by double-clicking the file in the Solution Explorer.

Change the number of instances from 1 to 2.  (You should always have more than one instance.)

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F5 to Debug

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I found the instructions on deploying an app in the Windows Azure Platform Training Course (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/wazplatformtrainingcourse.aspx) to be much easier to follow.  Hopefully this helps those of you who aren’t as familiar with Visual Studio 2010 and have never touched Azure.