VS2013 and Azure - deployment template validation failed, although I haven't edited neither template nor project properties

Question

I'm trying to deploy my website to azure from visual studio. It's a pretty standard website, nothing tricky to it, and I'm using the "one click" (HA!) method of deployment from Visual Studio 2013 express. However, I don't even get as far as creating the web-app. The "create web-app on microsoft azure" dialog fails when I click create after naming the application, creating a resourcegroup and selecting a dbserver and service plan, with the following message:

Request to https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/8ffb8793-a03d-45d4-88b5-647f5baf0fa0/resourcegroups/raocresourcegroup/deployments/website_deployment?api-version=2014-04-01 PUT failed BadRequest 400 (Bad Request)

Deployment template validation failed: 'The provided value for the template parameter 'sku' at line '16' and column '17' is not valid.'.

My main problem is that I have no idea what visual studio is talking about. I googled "deployment template validation failed" and I couldn't find much about the error. I googled "deployment template" to see what that actually is, and came up with pretty much nothing. I have no Idea what the parameter "sku" might stand for. I certainly have not edited it anywhere. I haven't even ever changed the project properties on this thing.

If somebody could point me in the right direction so I at least have an idea where to start and what to look for, I would much appreciate it.

Answer 1

Since no one replied and google wasn't forthcoming with any more information, I still don't know what deployment templates are exactly or what the parameter "sku" does.

What I DO know now is that the problem can be circumnavigated by creating an empty web-app profile through the azure portal and then deploying to that profile, skipping the profile creation part in visual studio.

Answer 2

I had the same problem. It turned out that since I was using VS 2013, I had to update Web Deploy 3.5 to Web Deploy 3.6 in Control Panel/Programs. Worked perfectly after that.

Remember to download Publish Profile and Import the profile when Publishing. Hope that helps!