Whats new in Windows Azure SDK 1.5 - Use of _CSRUN_SKIP_LIMIT_VALIDATION environment variable

Recently a major change in Windows Azure allows you to have total 25 roles, along with 25 internal and 25 external (total 50) Endpoints in your deployment. More info is as below:

Windows Azure has increased the maximum number of roles allowed in a deployment from 5 to 25. This change allows customers to deploy up to 25 distinct roles, which can be a mixture of Web Roles, Worker Roles, and Virtual Machine Roles, as part of a single deployment. This increase gives application developers a more granular level of control over the lifecycle of different aspects of their deployment, since each of these 25 roles can be scaled and updated independently. https://blogs.msdn.com/b/avkashchauhan/archive/2011/09/02/now-you-can-have-total-25-roles-along-with-25-internal-and-25-external-total-50-endpoints-in-your-windows-azure-deployments.aspx

With the release of Windows Azure SDK 1.5 the Compute Emulator also forces the same limit as in Windows Azure Cloud, to match the compute emulator environment closed to real Cloud.

The current Compute Emulator forces the same Service Model limits as enforces enforced in the cloud i.e.:

  1. Minimum number of roles per deployment is 1.
  2. Maximum number of roles per deployment is 25.
  3. Maximum number of input endpoints per deployment is 25.
  4. Maximum number of internal endpoints per deployment is 25.
  5. Maximum weight instance count is 20.
  6. Maximum number of role instances per deployment is 50.

Use of _CSRUN_SKIP_LIMIT_VALIDATION environment variable:

  • If this environment variable is set, then csrun.exe does not enforce service model limits above, instead it just marks those errors as warning and continues to deploy role(s). 
  • It means you can run your application in compute emulator without being forced to follow above limitation. This option is design for you to test your application scalability.