Azure & Dreamspark: Explore the Console in your Azure Web App/Site

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Let’s take a look at the “console” in your Dreamspark Azure Web App.  The console has a number of tools that you may not notice initially.

Reference:

Azure: Quick and Easy way to create a Dreamspark Web App and MySQL, using the Azure Marketplace

Discussion:

Ok, we used Web Matrix 3 in previous blogs to implement a PSP based site that also generated a MySQL database.  In this blog, let’s take a quick look at the Web App Console that you can find under the Tools Menu on the Web App blade.  Here is a pictorial of how to get started with the console, which also works with any version of Azure:

Click on Tools in your Web App/Site

Using one of the previous blogs, open your previously generated Dreamspark Azure Web App/Site, then click on tools

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Examine the Console

In the Tools blade select the console item

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Experiment with the console

Looks like DOS, but only soft of…

No commands that require elevated privileges

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Try some of the DOS commands that you know and love… oh you don’t know any DOS commands?  Well, you can just type help…

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Let’s get help for one of the commands, in this case “Date”

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Now let’s use the command “Date”

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Experiment with the Console environment

Now that you can see how you can manipulate the environment, give the DOS commands a try.

  • Find out what version of WIndows is running in the Dreamspark Azure.
  • What time it is on the server?  Is it the same time as your timezone?  Often it isn’t, what timezone is the server using?
  • What happens when you type Tree?  What is it showing?
  • Do all commands work?

Conclusion

The DOS-Like commands are useful, but may not work like they do on your local computer if you are using Windows.  In a future blog we will look at how you can use other tools to create server based programs without using Web Matrix 3 or Visual Studio.