Windows Azure - Upgrade Deployed Azure Application Manually

Introduction:

In this article we are going to see how to do an upgrade of the Azure application manually step by step.

Overview:

In our earlier article we saw how to do an upgrade automatically from the Windows Azure Management Portal (Check the link Automatic Upgrade). Now we will see the step by step process for a manual upgrade of the application online. Let us jump start to see the process in real time for manual deployment to the cloud.

Steps:

As a prerequisite, check my earlier article on how to develop and deploy an Azure application to the cloud step by step using the following Url:

Developing and Deploying your First Azure Application

After completing the steps from my article above, we will see the result as shown in the screen below.

Now we are ready with our application to upgrade after making some changes to the application. Here we made a change of the version as "Version 2 Update!!!" as shown in the screen below:

Once we are ready with the application, follow the steps as shown below. Right-click on the Azure project and select publish as shown in the screen below.

We will get a window to select the deployment process as shown below (See my earlier article to see more on the various options to deploy).

Once we selected the appropriate option and clicked the OK button, the project starts to prepare the package and the configuration file and we will see the progress as shown in the screen below.

Once the process has completed we will see the build and package result as highlighted in the screen below.

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We will get a folder opened automatically after publish, and we will see 2 files created as usual as shown in the screen below. (See my earlier article on the usage of these 2 files.)

Now login to the Management Portal using the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/

We will see a screen like below. Select the Sign into Management Portal at the top right corner:



After selecting that, sign in to the Management Portal; you will be asked for the Username and Password to authenticate the process as shown in the following screen:



After providing the correct credentials and clicking the submit button we will be navigated to the main screen of the portal as shown in the following screen:



Now click on the Hosted Services, Storage Account and CDN option in the bottom menu and then select the Hosted Services as shown in the screen below.

Now select the deployed application (F5 for Debug) as shown in the screen below. Here we will see the options like the environment on which its deployed and the DNS name to access the application etc.

Click on the DNS name to see the current version of the output as shown in the screen below (Before Upgrade):

Now to start the upgrade process, we have an icon on the top menu as "Upgrade" as highlighted in the screen below.