Preserve dynamically-created static content between redeploys?

Question

So I have an Azure site that has a reporting area, which generates images on the fly as the user needs them, and saves them to be accessed via emails that are automatically sent out by the system. We had to link the images instead of attach them due to email security reasons. Unfortunately, the entire site folder is deleted when I redeploy the application. Is there any way to avoid this problem, while keeping the generated images publicly accessible via a URL?

Answer 1

Hi,

General recommendation would be to store these images in blob storage instead of storing these images in the VM itself as Windows Azure VM is not a persistent storage.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Gaurav Mantri

Cerebrata Software

http://www.cerebrata.com

Answer 2

Hi,

Adding @Gaurav Mantri answer:

Putting images at blob storage is a good approach also because you can retrieve the image directly from blob storage, that option can add performance because roles are not in the way anymore and are free to answer another kind of requests.

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Answer 3

Depending on your needs, another option is, in addition to or instead of blob storage,  used to the Azure cache service.

Edited.
Gaurav, You are correct. I actual meant CDN.

Answer 4

Depending on your needs, another option is, in addition to or instead of blob storage,  used to the Azure cache service.

I'm not sure how caching service can be used in this scenario. Can you please explain? Plus, it could become very expensive as well based on the pricing available here: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/features/caching/

Thanks

Gaurav

Answer 5

Alright, I'm working down this blob path, and it's all fine and well, except for this:

CS0234: The type or namespace name 'ServiceRuntime' does not exist in the namespace 'Microsoft.WindowsAzure' (are you missing an assembly reference?)

The line in question:

using Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime;

Upon Googling, the common answer seems to be "set the target framework to 4 rather than 4 Client Profile", but I don't have that option... all I have is 4. The references are most certainly there for the ServiceRuntime namespace, and I don't see Microsoft.WindowsAzure as a reference I can add, so.. I'm clueless. Any ideas?

Also, this WYSIWYG editor sucks.. very unpredictable. Not good UI.

Answer 6

Hi,

As far as i know, if you install Azure SDK (for example, SDK 1.6) and create a Cloud application (with Web Role), the Windows Azure References were added automatically (Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics, Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime, Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient). Does your application is web role application, if not please try to create a new web application to see if it works. The solution in Google "set the target framework to 4 rather than 4 Client Profile" because of if you create a Windows Console application via VS, the default target framework is 4 Client Profile, and if you want to use Azure assemblies, you need change it to 4.

Hope it can help you.

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Answer 7

I've double-checked everything, and I can't see anything wrong. The project is a Role project, all the references are there, even VS recognizes all the namespaces and doesn't have any problems with the code. It's only when I try to run it that it starts freaking out about the Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime namespace. However, I do believe I just found my way around the issue, by storing the StorageConnectionString in the web.config rather than service config, so I was able to remove that namespace from the code itself. Hopefully this works as advertised...

Thanks for the help, and for clearing up the Client Profile confusion.