Legacy Software on Azure? - or - can I use Azure as a IaaS?

Question

Hi,

I have a bunch of 101 questions, my apologies.

Can I get an Azure instance with a plain Windows server whee I can host my legacy IIS ASP.NET app?

What option would I need to "rent"?

Can I manage my server through remote desktop? Is the user account a server user account?

What firewall limitations do I have? Could I connect to a DCOM server outside of the cloud?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi MetroP,

Your IIS ASP.NET application is actually not a legacy app. If it's ASP.NET you can simply host it in an Azure web role. Download the SDK, create a new cloud project and choose web role. This will be able to host your ASP.NET site.

For this you'll need to "rent" a hosted service with N instances of a web role:

• http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/features/compute/

Yes you can manage your server through remote desktop. But you wouldn't want to do that, seen that the Fabric Controller (the software managing Azure) might remove the machine you made your changes on for a clean installation. Your alternatives in this case are startup tasks or the VM Role:

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg456327.aspx 
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/gg502178

There are no firewall limitations. You'll need to configure the input endpoints correctly to expose the DCOM server: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg433020.aspx

Sandrino

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Sandrino Di Mattia | Twitter: http://twitter.com/sandrinodm | Azure Blog: http://fabriccontroller.net/blog | Blog: http://sandrinodimattia.net/blog

Answer 2

Thanks for the answer. Really helpful.

Just to make sure that I understand, I need the SDK more as a deployment tool, I don't need to modify or re-build my existing ASP solution?

Also, can I host any kind of software? Even some older services and (non-SQL) databases?

Answer 3

Hello.

You need to modify your solution - you need to create cloud project and link it with your existing project.

And yes, you can host any kind of software. Windows Azure has a "bridge" between PaaS and IaaS called Virtual Machine Role. You should prepare your VHD-image with WS2008R2 and your application inside and then upload it to cloud. Recently was announced that VM Role will support Linux as host system, so and even this scenario is ok.