Ruslan's Blog
-
How to find out outbound IP addresses used by Azure Web App
When an Azure Web App makes an outbound network call it uses a set of predefined IP addresses. Usually the Web App developer needs to know those IP addresses in order to configure firewalls of external services to allow requests from that Web App. In the past it was not easy to discover the IP [...]
-
Using Azure Web Site as a reverse proxy
IIS has been supporting reverse proxy configuration since URL Rewrite and Application Request Routing modules were released a few years ago. It is possible to configure an IIS hosted web site to act as a reverse proxy and forward web request to other URL’s based on the incoming request URL path. This is described in [...]
-
Azure Web Sites – block web access to non-production deployment slots
Windows Azure Web Sites supports Staged Publishing functionality, which allows you to create a staging site slot where you can publish a new version of the website and then test it before swapping to the production environment. By default the non-production deployment slot has its own hostname that you use to test the bits deployed there. Sometimes, however you may want to prevent users from browsing to your non-production deployment slot while you are testing it.
-
Azure Web Sites – Continuous Deployment with Staged Publishing
In the beginning of the year Windows Azure Web Sites team has released a preview of the Staged Publishing functionality. The Staged Publishing allows you to create a staging site slot where you can publish a new version of the website and then test it before swapping to the production environment. This feature together with Continuous Deployment via GitHub, BitBucket or DropBox enables some very powerful deployment scenarios.
-
PHP 5.5, WinCache 1.3.5 available in Azure Web Sites
The recent upgrade of Windows Azure Web Sites includes several PHP related improvements:
-
How to backup Windows Azure Web Sites
Windows Azure provides a reliable web sites hosting infrastructure where sites data is replicated in Azure data centers for redundancy. However it is still important to do regular backups of the site’s content and databases in order to be able to recover from a human error, problematic upgrade or a hacking attempt. With the Azure Store Add-On Cloud Cellar it is easy to setup automated backup task that will run on a predefined schedule and will backup site content and database. This post explains how to do it.
-
How to setup IP SSL on Windows Azure Web Sites
Azure Web Sites started to support custom domains SSL functionality recently. There are two SSL modes supported:
-
Cloud Cellar: Azure Web Sites Backup Service
My site (RuslanY.net) is powered by WordPress and is hosted on Windows Azure Web Sites. I’ve migrated it from a private hosting to Windows Azure last year and since then I am pretty happy about the level or reliability and performance that I got on Windows Azure. The one thing that I’ve been missing though was the regular backups that I used to have when I self-hosted my site. I backed up the site content and the database regularly and those backups have saved me several times. Often when I upgraded some WordPress plugins, the newer plugin version got some bug or change in behavior that I did not like. On those occasions I just restored the site from the most recent backup that I took. I really wanted to have this capability even when hosting my site in Windows Azure.
-
Azure Web Sites – WordPress plugin update bug fixed
Windows Azure Web Sites has recently been upgraded to a new version. Among all the improvements and bug fixes in the new version there is one change that fixes a known issue with update of WordPress plugins. There have been numerous questions about this problem at the Azure Web Sites forum.
-
PHP Troubleshooting in Windows Azure Web Sites
The need to diagnose and troubleshoot application’s failures often comes up during deployment to a hosting environment. Some configuration settings in hosting server may differ from what application expects. Often it is not as easy to figure out the cause of the problem in a hosting environment as it is on a development machine. I found the following techniques useful when troubleshooting errors in PHP applications hosted in Windows Azure Web Sites.