Inter role communicaiton - endpoints only?

Question

I know it's possible for roles to communicate via internal endpoints (programtically), but what about via regular IP traffic (ping, CIFS, etc).

Answer 1

An internal endpoint is basically just an open port. You can communicate via any IP-based protocol over that internal endpoint.

Answer 2

Steve,

Thanks for the reply.  I understand about opening up a port, but how would that help with say exposing a CIFS share on one role and then having one or more access it.  I know I can create an internal endpoint which opens port 445 (for CIFS), but then how would a client access the share (\\role\share) from Windows Exporer.  I guess what I'm really after here is is there an internal name which I can access between roles/services?

Answer 3

Hi,

I would like to point out internal endpoints are for internal communications only. That is, communication between role instances within the same deployment. But we can’t connect to internal endpoints from external client machines. It is not recommended to use shared documents in Windows Azure. If you want external clients to be able to work with the files, you can store the files in blob storage. You may not be able to use Windows Explorer, but there’re a lot of Azure storage client tools on the market. Some of them are even free. If you want to consume the files within the deployment only, you can still use blob, or write a WCF service to work with the files. It is not recommended to logon to cloud machines using remote desktop, and then use Windows Explorer to check the files, but this can be used for debugging purposes.

Best Regards,

Ming Xu.

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