ASP MVC3 with razor running on Azure

Question

I would like to create a simple ASP MVC3 web applications for learning and have this hosted. I am familiar with ASP MVC but don't yet know much about the Azure cloud. If possible I would like to have these hosted on the cloud but I'm not sure where to start.

Can anyone give me any advice. For example for something very very low usage and making use of a SQL CE database what kind of azure account do I need and approximately how much would it cost.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Answer 1

For ASP.NET MVC 3 the thing to do is "bin deploy" it - Scott Hanselman has a post on doing exactly that on his blog: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/BINDeployingASPNETMVC3WithRazorToAWindowsServerWithoutMVCInstalled.aspx

I recommend you download the Windows Azure platform training kit and work through the first few labs just to get the feel of Azure. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=413E88F8-5966-4A83-B309-53B7B77EDF78&displaylang=en

I agree with Nathan and XIII - you have to ditch SQL CE it just doesn't work in the elastic cloud model, look at Azure table storage instead, it's cheap and scalable. (And it's in the first lab)

If you're just playing around then grab the introductory offer on Nathan's link, it's a free start. Unfortunately you can't use it to run something permanently as there aren't enough hours. (Apparently that may change in the new year). If you want to run a very small instance for a month it's about $40, a small is $90.

If you're more serious than that, join Bizspark and get free access to more resources.

Answer 2

You can easily create an ASP.NET MVC project and host it on a single role. While @XIII is correct that you need to have two instances to get the Azure SLA, if you are just playing around a single instance will be fine. You should check out the special offers here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/ With the Development Accelerator Core you get 750 hours of a small compute instance, which I believe you could swapped for 2x extra small insances for the same cost. (Double check this before you do it!) Additionally, you get 1 million storage transaction and 10gb of storage space. If you are starting with a new Azure app, I would recommend looking at blob storage and table storage rather than a traditional database. Azure Storage is much more scalable and will be much less expensive than SQL Azure for small scale deployments. I would suggest using the Windows Azure Toolkit to get started with table and blob storage.

I would stay away from trying to use SQL CE or any other database running on your Azure roles. That is going to be a lot more headache than it is worth for a simple deployment. If you must have a SQL database, you can get a 1gb SQL Azure instance for $10 per month.