The last couple of years has meant a incredible things for us developers as they now can stay focused on the important stuff and forget about stuff that used to take hours, days and sometimes even weeks.
Lets take an example. Using the Azure command-line tools (which are built in node/javascript and are platform agnostic running on Windows, Linux, OSX) and GIT i want to:
- Create new cloudbased WebSite
- Create a distributed source control repository locally and at my remote website
- Setup automatic continuous-integration from the remote GIT repository
- Create a html file
- Add file to local repository
- Push to remote repository and have the site automatically deployed from there.
Ok, lets begin…
azure site create reallycoolsite --location "North Europe" --git copy con default.html <!doctype html><title>Really cool site</title><p>Nothing to see here...</p>^z git add . git commit -m "Added deafult.html to this really cool site" git push azure master
Thats it! Done! Thanks to Azure, Kudu and GIT it took 4 (!) commands. Well, 5 if you count creating the website homepage. The site could be ASP.NET, Node.JS, PHP or static HTML.
If this was an ASP.NET application i could attach to and debug the application running in Azure directly from my local Visual Studio.
Now what if we want to use the real power of cloud computing, scaling! Can we do that? Well then we need to issue another command…
azure site scale mode standard reallycoolsite azure site scale instances 3 reallycoolsite
Now we have a website running load-balanced on 3 server instances. I can scale up and down and pay for the minutes i use. No IIS, no applicationppol, no NLB-setup and no script editing. The developer can focus on the site content and functionality.
When i need more control i just go to the default created log/debug/diagnostic site created by Kudu at https://
The abstraction and simplification provided by Azure Websites is really really effective and powerful yet lets you gain more detailed control when you need it.