Publish Windows Azure Application Wizard

Before you use the wizard for the first time, you must download your credentials. Choose the Sign In To Download Credentials link. Sign in to the Windows Azure portal when prompted, provide your Windows Azure user name and password, and then save the settings to a file. You will import the settings file in the next step.

Caution
The settings file contains certificate information. Save the file to a secure location.

Choose Import to populate the subscription list.

Note
The settings file is in the same format that WebMatrix uses and has a .publishsettings extension.

In the Choose your subscription list, choose the subscription to use for this deployment. If you choose <Manage…>, you can create, edit, or delete subscriptions.

Note
The settings file can contain more than one subscription.

At this point, you can publish the application, or you can modify any setting for this deployment. If you are ready to publish, choose Publish to deploy this application. Otherwise, choose Next to continue.

Note
If you chose Publish in this step, you can monitor the status of this deployment in Visual Studio.

In the Hosted service list, create or choose a hosted service.

In the Environment list, choose either Production or Staging. Choose the staging environment if you want to deploy your application to a test environment. You can move your application to the production environment later.

In the Build configuration list, choose either Debug or Release.

In the Service configuration list, choose either Cloud or Local.

Select the Enable Remote Desktop for all roles check box to enable Remote Desktop. This option is primarily used for troubleshooting. When you select this check box, the Remote Desktop Configuration appears. Choose the Settings link to change the configuration.

Select the Enable Web Deploy for all web roles check box to enable web deployment. You must enable Remote Desktop to use this feature. For more information, see Publishing a Windows Azure Application using the Windows Azure Tools.

Choose the Advanced Settings tab. In the Deployment label field, either accept the default name, or enter a name of your choosing. To append the date to the deployment label, leave the check box selected.

In the Storage account list, choose the storage account to use for this deployment.

Note
The Windows Azure storage account stores the package for the application deployment. After the application is deployed, the package is removed from the storage account.

Leave the Enable deployment upgrade check box selected so that this upgrade will performed in-place.

Note
Your service must define two instances to be upgraded without downtime. Otherwise, your service is taken offline while it is upgraded, and the service is unavailable until the upgrade is complete.

If you want to use IntelliTrace, select the Enable IntelliTrace check box. For more information, see Debugging a Published Hosted Service with IntelliTrace and Visual Studio.

If you want to profile this application, select the Enable profiling check box. Choose the Settings link to display the profiling options. For more information, see Profiling a Windows Azure Application.

Important
You can enable either profiling or IntelliTrace but not both.

Choose Next to view the summary page for the application.

You can create a publishing profile from the settings that you have chosen. To save this profile, choose the Save icon. The wizard creates the profile and saves it in the Visual Studio project. To modify the profile name, open the Target profile list, and then choose <Manage…>.

Note
The publishing profile appears in Solution Explorer in Visual Studio, and the profile settings are written to a file with an .azurePubxml extension. Settings are saved as attributes of XML tags.

Choose Publish to publish your application. You can monitor the process status in the Output pane in Visual Studio.