Is the file system shared across multiple Azure websites?

Question

Quick question. I'm looking to deploy a website to Azure using websites.

I read a comment that stated that the file system is shared across multiple instances of the website?

1. Is this true?
2. Does this mean if I upload an image to the file system on one instance, all requests on the second instance will have access to the file?
3. Are the files synced across the instances or do they all point to a single drive i.e. in the blob storage somewhere?

We will be deploying an Umbraco 7 site, so I still need to test for any issue this might have on the lucene indexing etc. Does anyone know of any complications with Umbraco 7 and this method of deployment?

Thanks in advance

Gordon

Answer 1

The answer from bedane is incorrect. This question is about Azure Web Sites (not about Azure Web Roles)

1) Yes it is true. Azure Web Sites stores your content using Azure Storage blobs that are mounted and presented to the web site as a common share that is read/writable.

2) By virtue of 1), when you upload the file you are uploading it to the common share and therefore all instances will see the upload immediately.

3) The instances all point to a single drive (just repeating point 1)

This architecture for Azure Web Sites was designed specifically to enable applications like Umbraco, Wordpress, etc. that install plugins and make changes directly to the site content directory. This design point fixes the problem that currently exists in Azure Web Roles.