How to find an Azure instance role size programmatically?

Question

Is there an API in azure to find the properties of a role (and an instance role)? I'm looking for the instance size, and it is not available in the Azure Management API.

Answer 1

VM size isn't exposed in the API, as you've already found out. As suggested by Neil Mackenzie here, you can call Environment.ProcessorCount from your Azure application, which lets you deduce VM size. You could then store this in an Azure table, for example, and query the table.

EDIT: Here's a screen snapshot where I pushed an Extra-Large instance to Windows Azure and called Environment.ProcessorCount:

EDIT June 6, 2011 - The Serivce Management API was just updated, including updates to GetDeployment which returns instance size, SDK version, and more. See blog post here for more details.

Answer 2

Now you can get the instance size programmatically using the Service Management API under operations on Hosted Services Get Deployment. See this LINK for info.