Management portal not updating deployments

Question

I was doing a staging deployment just now, which as usual was taking a long time. That's when I noticed that the Last Refreshed time for my deployment was over 30 minutes in the past. The counter in the lower left was reporting refreshes every 30 seconds, but the time shown in the Properties pane never changed. I refreshed the management portal web page (ie, reloaded the Silverlight app) and it still showed the same thing. So I went to the legacy management portal, and it reported that my deployment was long done. Seems like the Silverlight UI is making your fabric controller look bad. This also suggests that anyone experiencing very long deployment times should closely watch that Last Refreshed field in the Properties pane, and if it's not updating then try to debug it. 

I suspect, but have not verified, that this might be related to the Fiddler HTTP proxy, which I had started and stopped a few times previously.

 

 

Answer 1

Hi Brian,

> when I noticed that the Last Refreshed time for my deployment was over 30 minutes in the past. The counter in the lower left was reporting refreshes every 30 seconds, but the time shown in the Properties pane never changed.

I think the Last Refresh property does not show the timestamp the silverlight client refreshs data from server. But it shows when window azure fabric updates the deployment status and caches it on server.

Anyway, as I'm not able to find a document which describes this, you may contact azure support to confirm what does Last Refreshed actually mean.

Thanks,

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Wengchao Zeng
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Microsoft One Code Framework

Answer 2

There's a description here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff700228.aspx

Interestingly, the legacy portal still seems to be more accurate than the Silverlight portal. I had deleted a deployment this morning (almost 5 houirs ago). The Silverlight portal showed it as still in "Deleting" status. I brought up the legacy portal in a separate browser so I could see both portal at once. The legacy portal showed it as already deleted. A few seconds later the Silverlight portal updated to show the same thing. It could've been a coincidence, but it sure looks like the legacy portal forces some kind of refresh that the Silverlight portal does not.

Answer 3

Thanks Brian.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff700228.aspx says the LastRefreshTime is not the SilverLight portal refresh time but the UTC time when the state of the deployment was synchronized with the application cluster. So it makes sense that the Last Refreshed time is over 30 minutes in the past even though the SilverLight portal is refreshing.

> The legacy portal showed it as already deleted. A few seconds later the Silverlight portal updated to show the same thing.

After I tried, I figure out that the refresh interval of legacy portal is about 10 seconds but the SilverLight portal is 30 seconds. Maybe that is why the legacy portal is more accurate.

Thanks,

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Wengchao Zeng
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If you have any feedback about my replies, please contact [e-mail].
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Answer 4

I think you missed my point there. The legacy UI seems to force an update from the application cluster, which the Silverlight UI then picks up on.

I've repeated the following scenario several times.

1. Start a deployment
2. Wait 30+ minutes. The Silverlight UI still shows that the dpeloyment is incomplete. The Last Refresh time has not updated either. Note that I have sometimes waited up to two hours, and confirmed that the web site is in fact accessible, but it still shows as unfinished in the Silverlight UI.
3. Go to the legacy UI. It shows the deployment as completed.
4. A few seconds later, on the next refresh interval, the Silverlight UI shows the deployment as completed.

It seems unlikely that the Silverlight UI, after not seeing that deployment update for 30+ minutes, would just happen to pick up those changes mere seconds after I looked at the status in the legacy UI. It seems very, very unlikely that it would happen repeatedly. I can only conclude that looking at the deployment in the legacy portal forces an update from the application cluster, which the Silverlight UI picks up on it's next refresh

It would be really nice if the Silverlight UI would do whatever the legacy UI is doing, so that they could both show accurate data.

Answer 5

Hi Brian,

> It would be really nice if the Silverlight UI would do whatever the legacy UI is doing, so that they could both show accurate data.

The Silverlight client should do whatever the legacy UI is doing. From your description, it seems like there is an issue in the SilverLight client although I haven't experienced this issue when I am doing deployment.

If it frequently occurs in your side, I'd suggest you contact our support team via http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/support/ then our support engineer will work with you to figure out the root cause. In that page, please click "Windows Azure" then select "Service Deployment and Developer Portal" and "Role does not start". Please be prepared to provide the subscription ID for which you want support. This service is free.

Thanks,

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Wengchao Zeng
Please mark the replies as answers if they help or unmark if not.
If you have any feedback about my replies, please contact [e-mail].
Microsoft One Code Framework

Answer 6

Over a year later and I'm getting the same issue. Is there an A to Z document on Azure deployment?

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DB Architect

Answer 7

Ben - I haven't seen this particular issue in quite a long time. If your role has some sort of error on startup, it can keep restarting itself, which looks somewhat similar but it actually different. Is that perhaps your problem? 

I also haven't used the new portal extensively, so it's possible that has some issue I haven't personally seen. 

Answer 8

Well, here's my puzzle:

At the end of deployment upgrade, I see Ready status on Deployment, Role, and Instance.  However, at the lower left corner, it repeats and repeats countdowns from 29s to 0s and never stops.

Any idea how I can debug this?

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DB Architect

Answer 9

The Silverlight UI updates itself by polling the Azure management service every 30 seconds. It's just telling you when it's going to check again. That doesn't indicate a problem.