Difference Between Azure Web Site and Azure Cloud Service

Question

I'm about to migrate several separate ASP.NET 4.0 Web Forms applications to Azure. Several are apps using SQL Server 2008. I'm seeing "conflicting" tutorials for this:

Deploying an ASP.NET Web Application to a Windows Azure Web Site and SQL Database

vs

Deploying an ASP.NET Web Application to a Windows Azure Cloud Service and SQL Database

This StackOverflow question goes some way towards explaining this. However, there have been several changes to Azure in recent months and I'm not sure how up to date the information is.

I want as simple a migration process as possible because of the number of sites I have to migrate. Is there a situation where I would have to use the Cloud Service route?

Answer 1

Aside from what the linked-to answer provides: You have to go the Cloud Service route if there are apps you need to install (e.g. an MSI, COM object, etc.). There's simply no facility to do this with Web Sites. In Web Sites, you cannot alter the VM instance at all. With Cloud Services, you have lots of flexibility to install software, alter IIS behavior, pretty much anything you need to do (as long as the installs can be automated).

Answer 2

One point which can be very valuable if you consider migration of ASP.NET 4.0 Web Forms applications - Microsoft Azure Websites do no support SSL for custom domains yet. That might be a blocker for your migration work to the Websites service.

Note that Windows Azure is very dynamic environment with great number of new features coming every new release. In order to be up-to-date I would suggest following ScottGu's Blog to find out about new features and their release dates.

EDIT

Windows Azure Website supports SSL for custom domains now. SSL Certificates and SSL bindings can be configured in Configure tab.

You can also read more about SSL configuration for Azure Website at Configuring an SSL certificate for a Windows Azure web site.