Azure websites with load balancing with Umbraco 6.0.2
I'm trying to find out how Umbraco can work with Azure websites if there's load balancing.
In the past we needed the Umbraco Accelorator which did some strangeness to get the original (old and strange) Azure instances to talk to each other. Is this something that is still required? If so, where is the latest and how do I use it?
The main concerns really are:
1. Sticky sessions - does Azure have them? This is not the biggest concern sinse session state can be put into db. But that's a bit more work.
2. Umbraco.config updating on filesys and in memory. Normal distributed server settings requires server addresses in umbracoSettings.config. In Azure loadbalanced websites there is no way to tell what the server addresses are, so I guess the accelorator did some voodoo to update file and memory cache of the umbraco xml.
Jeavon, after reading that thread, I get the impression that getting Umbraco to work on Azure would result in it being held together with very flimsy tape.
Are there any other options for load balancing Umbraco? I don't care what service, I just want it to be painless and to work.
ATM I'm considering just manually creating Azure VMs and doing the load balancing myself. At least I know that all I need to do is set the distributed servers in the umbracoSettings.config. Azure VMs seem to support easy load balancing from what the interface implies.
Apart from using the Umbraco Accelerator for Umbraco (which does work very will with Umbraco 4.7.2), get multiple IIS machines, add a shared SAN drive attached to all machines by iSCSI (this is importnant), place all your umbraco files there, add to each machine's IIS. Create a DNS specific to each IIS e.g. 0.bob.com, 1.bob.com, add those domains to distributed calls in umbracosettings.config. Also you need to move the TEMP folder to a virtual.
I share Anthony's pain; we currently use multiple VMs (Rackspace Cloud, but the principle is the same), and have to deal with shared storage, DNS, etc.
I've for it to "just work" if I increase the instances count in Azure Websites - plain, simple, and idiot-proof. And yes, I know Concorde is coming, but i) it's not here yet, and ii) I might not like other aspects of it. To me, it's important that the Umbraco CMS product can keep up with modern hosting practices - I just wish I knew enough about the core to help make that happen.
Can you wait for v6.1? There really is a Server Registration Service and a ton of load balancing cache fixes, pretty much all Shannons commits over the last 2 weeks are cache fixes for load balancing!
Hi All, I see that 6.1.1 had an update for Azure 'PetaPoco now has a retry strategy to support SQL Azure better'.
Looks like steps in the right direction, but wondered if we had any progress on load balancing, I can see individual updates which don't mean much to me. Do we have a version that just works with multiple VM's in Azure. I would love to have my Umbraco instance load balanced given everything else is.
On Azure VM's, yes I think everything works fine (it's no different to any other VM), provided you deal with the usual issues of replicating media (but that's all dealt with in the normal load-balanced docs).
On Azure Websites, no; there is no way for Umbraco to publish the cache to each instance since it can't address each instance by a unique URL
Thanks Phil, event though I said VM's, what I meant was multiple instances on Azure Websites. I shall stick to single instance for the time being or maybe spread the load/risk.
Just wondering if there was any update on this? I share the same ambition as Anthony - if we can spin up a couple of additional Azure websites when we like and have load balancing turned on OOTB then this is a massive headache saver for us.
Out of interest interest I've just deployed a test website to Azure and configured the scaling option to use 2 instances. I logged into Umbraco changed some content, published and the content changes were visible on the website (through multiple page refreshes). Given that Azure Websites use Round Robin Load Balancing (AFAIK), shouldn't I expect to see my content change to be visibile on only subsequent requests if Umbraco hadn't published to all instances correctly?
Hi, there still isn't an out of the box way to support multiple instance Azure websites or WebRoles (can be done by using the Accelerator project). Instances other than the one being updated by Umbraco will be become stale until the app pool recycles and even then you can end up with corrupted Examine indexes.
Once "Umbraco as a Service" is fully launched and supports multiple instances it is likely that it will be possible to run native multiple WebRole instances using the Umbraco Server Registration Service but it's not clear if it will ever be possible with Azure Websites.
As I understand it the last hurdle with Azure websites is that the instances don't have individual Urls, therefore instances can't communicate with each other to tell each other to update when a change is made in Umbraco. I would love to know if this has changed now that Azure Websites is out of preview....?
After a quick Google I just came across this recent blog article In the "Scale Out" section there is a fleeting reference to how to support multi instances in your code.
"To benefit from scale OUT operations your site must be multi-instance safe. Writing a multi-instance safe site is beyond the scope of this posting, but please refer to MSDN resources for .NET languages, such as http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/3e8s7xdd.aspx"
Well I made the choice (a little blindly perhaps!) to deploy a client site on Azure Websites and Umbraco 6.0.2
We are on the shared plan in Azure, with 6 instances (maximum) in our Scaling settings.
The main content editor works from his office and from home and get's back office inconsistencies as well as unpublished content on the live website via different locations / browsers.
The symptoms that are plaguing them (and then they are plaguing me about) are:
Pages publishing as expected from back office but not appearing on the site for (some) end users, including collegues browsing the site in the same office but on different machines
Pages that have published successfully are getting marked with the message: Oops: this document is published but is not in the cache (internal error)
Media files are not updating once updated (this may be a red herring)
Every part of me wants to use Azure and Umbraco for this project (and others) but I am not sure if that is currently possible.
It feels like I have the following choices:
Leave Azure with scaling behind and deploy to a more conventional single server environment.
Employ an Umbraco / Azure wizard to sort out my woes (open to offers here!) if recent Umbraco updates don't fix things
Any advice or direction would be really welcome. It may be that I can't see the wood for the trees but althought there is a lot out there about Azure and Umbraco playing nicely together I am having alsorts of bother with them at the moment.
Ben, it will not work out of the box as each instance in Azure be it Websites or Cloud Services does not have a unique URL which doesn't change.
All that said, I do have this working in Cloud Services and same principle goes for websites too. The only thing I never got around to fixing was the media uploads, I just did this externally.
There is a link I published last year on this thread, works a treat. It ensures that each instances knows whether it is up to date by having a token to reference. This gets around the issue of round robin DNS within Azure.
You said you have looked at some of the Darren Feguson has done on getting Umbraco work in Azure. We did the same thing and spent a long time researching and as Darren did our Umbraco level 2 training we got in touch, to talk about our issues.
Long story short we paid for some consultancy and by working with Darren now have site up and running in azure across multiple instances (which is where you get the issues). It is a test across two instances, we are now using this as base to rebuild our site in Umbraco and host this on azure.
If you still want to head down this route I would get in touch with Darrens company http://www.moriyama.co.uk/.
The fixed IP's are for incoming data only, inside Azure you are still getting workers running under any IP in the Azure Range.
We hit an issue with our firewall - thinking the fixed IP's would allow us to whitelist a known IP to send email data to our SMTP server but the worker role that performs this task does not send from the same IP that is assigned to in bound traffic.
We do however had a Umbraco site up and running across two Azure websites, the front end scales out to 4 - we are looking at the new changes in Azure allows us to host frontend and backend on just one website that scaled out to 4.
You can use virtual networks to create your own range of internal IP's as I have been researching this to create a new virtual appliance infront of Cloud Services (haven't thought through this in context of Umbraco though). Also, on the fixed IP, if I check my IP on a port 80 outbound connection it is my fixed IP address. I wonder if MS are rerouting email traffic to avoid their range getting blacklisted due to spammers using their services? You could create a site to site tunnel but appreciate there is an overhead in that.
I have to connect an SFTP server to a cloud service in a few weeks, so will advice how I get on as it has two firewalls to get through.
You can use virtual networks to create your own range of internal IP's as I have been researching this to create a new virtual appliance infront of Cloud Services (haven't thought through this in context of Umbraco though). Also, on the fixed IP, if I check my IP on a port 80 outbound connection it is my fixed IP address. I wonder if MS are rerouting email traffic to avoid their range getting blacklisted due to spammers using their services? You could create a site to site tunnel but appreciate there is an overhead in that.
I have to connect an SFTP server to a cloud service in a few weeks, so will advice how I get on as it has two firewalls to get through.
Azure websites with load balancing with Umbraco 6.0.2
I'm trying to find out how Umbraco can work with Azure websites if there's load balancing.
In the past we needed the Umbraco Accelorator which did some strangeness to get the original (old and strange) Azure instances to talk to each other. Is this something that is still required? If so, where is the latest and how do I use it?
The main concerns really are:
1. Sticky sessions - does Azure have them? This is not the biggest concern sinse session state can be put into db. But that's a bit more work.
2. Umbraco.config updating on filesys and in memory. Normal distributed server settings requires server addresses in umbracoSettings.config. In Azure loadbalanced websites there is no way to tell what the server addresses are, so I guess the accelorator did some voodoo to update file and memory cache of the umbraco xml.
Can anyone can point me in the right direction?
Have a good read of this thread: http://our.umbraco.org/forum/getting-started/installing-umbraco/37103-Umbraco-on-multi-role-Azure-
Also worth knowing that Shannon is currently doing a lot of work load balancing support for v6.1, there is even a ServerRegistrationService....
Jeavon, after reading that thread, I get the impression that getting Umbraco to work on Azure would result in it being held together with very flimsy tape.
Are there any other options for load balancing Umbraco? I don't care what service, I just want it to be painless and to work.
ATM I'm considering just manually creating Azure VMs and doing the load balancing myself. At least I know that all I need to do is set the distributed servers in the umbracoSettings.config. Azure VMs seem to support easy load balancing from what the interface implies.
Apart from using the Umbraco Accelerator for Umbraco (which does work very will with Umbraco 4.7.2), get multiple IIS machines, add a shared SAN drive attached to all machines by iSCSI (this is importnant), place all your umbraco files there, add to each machine's IIS. Create a DNS specific to each IIS e.g. 0.bob.com, 1.bob.com, add those domains to distributed calls in umbracosettings.config. Also you need to move the TEMP folder to a virtual.
Actually you can follow these old instructions http://our.umbraco.org/wiki/install-and-setup/installing-umbraco-for-load-balanced-environments
The key is iSCSI, without that, I don't think it works any other way!
Oh, add a load balancer to share the load between the IIS machines.
I share Anthony's pain; we currently use multiple VMs (Rackspace Cloud, but the principle is the same), and have to deal with shared storage, DNS, etc.
I've for it to "just work" if I increase the instances count in Azure Websites - plain, simple, and idiot-proof. And yes, I know Concorde is coming, but i) it's not here yet, and ii) I might not like other aspects of it. To me, it's important that the Umbraco CMS product can keep up with modern hosting practices - I just wish I knew enough about the core to help make that happen.
Phil
Shit I hate IT admin.
It's for Umbraco 6.0.2. You up for some freelance azure loadbalcing setup?
Can you wait for v6.1? There really is a Server Registration Service and a ton of load balancing cache fixes, pretty much all Shannons commits over the last 2 weeks are cache fixes for load balancing!
Hi All, I see that 6.1.1 had an update for Azure 'PetaPoco now has a retry strategy to support SQL Azure better'.
Looks like steps in the right direction, but wondered if we had any progress on load balancing, I can see individual updates which don't mean much to me. Do we have a version that just works with multiple VM's in Azure. I would love to have my Umbraco instance load balanced given everything else is.
On Azure VM's, yes I think everything works fine (it's no different to any other VM), provided you deal with the usual issues of replicating media (but that's all dealt with in the normal load-balanced docs).
On Azure Websites, no; there is no way for Umbraco to publish the cache to each instance since it can't address each instance by a unique URL
Phil
Thanks Phil, event though I said VM's, what I meant was multiple instances on Azure Websites. I shall stick to single instance for the time being or maybe spread the load/risk.
Have just found this which may work for me as I use Cloud services already. http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/584908/Umbrazure-Limitless-Websites-with-Umbraco-on-Azure#challenge2_azure_setup
Steve.
Just wondering if there was any update on this? I share the same ambition as Anthony - if we can spin up a couple of additional Azure websites when we like and have load balancing turned on OOTB then this is a massive headache saver for us.
Out of interest interest I've just deployed a test website to Azure and configured the scaling option to use 2 instances. I logged into Umbraco changed some content, published and the content changes were visible on the website (through multiple page refreshes). Given that Azure Websites use Round Robin Load Balancing (AFAIK), shouldn't I expect to see my content change to be visibile on only subsequent requests if Umbraco hadn't published to all instances correctly?
Janusz
Janusz, I am working through this now. I am still having a few teething issues but getting there. Give me a week and I should have some feedback.
Steve
Hi, there still isn't an out of the box way to support multiple instance Azure websites or WebRoles (can be done by using the Accelerator project). Instances other than the one being updated by Umbraco will be become stale until the app pool recycles and even then you can end up with corrupted Examine indexes.
Once "Umbraco as a Service" is fully launched and supports multiple instances it is likely that it will be possible to run native multiple WebRole instances using the Umbraco Server Registration Service but it's not clear if it will ever be possible with Azure Websites.
As I understand it the last hurdle with Azure websites is that the instances don't have individual Urls, therefore instances can't communicate with each other to tell each other to update when a change is made in Umbraco. I would love to know if this has changed now that Azure Websites is out of preview....?
After a quick Google I just came across this recent blog article In the "Scale Out" section there is a fleeting reference to how to support multi instances in your code.
"To benefit from scale OUT operations your site must be multi-instance safe. Writing a multi-instance safe site is beyond the scope of this posting, but please refer to MSDN resources for .NET languages, such as http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/3e8s7xdd.aspx"
Hi there,
Well I made the choice (a little blindly perhaps!) to deploy a client site on Azure Websites and Umbraco 6.0.2
We are on the shared plan in Azure, with 6 instances (maximum) in our Scaling settings.
The main content editor works from his office and from home and get's back office inconsistencies as well as unpublished content on the live website via different locations / browsers.
The symptoms that are plaguing them (and then they are plaguing me about) are:
I've spent the day reading the forum and web for a solution, I've watched Darren Ferguson talk about the three flavours of Azure. I've seen references to the Oops error message and formalisation of that issue here: http://issues.umbraco.org/issue/U4-3145 and a fix 82ba1a24a3492ad399e3f5389743368ab199c8be ...
Is this something that has been addressed in the latest release? (Think is 6.1.6) Or do I need to implement [that and] some other solution?
I have seen a new project being discussed by Matt & Darren here http://our.umbraco.org/projects/backoffice-extensions/rbcumbracoonazure but this is embryonic.
Every part of me wants to use Azure and Umbraco for this project (and others) but I am not sure if that is currently possible.
It feels like I have the following choices:
Any advice or direction would be really welcome. It may be that I can't see the wood for the trees but althought there is a lot out there about Azure and Umbraco playing nicely together I am having alsorts of bother with them at the moment.
Many thanks
Ben
Ben, it will not work out of the box as each instance in Azure be it Websites or Cloud Services does not have a unique URL which doesn't change.
All that said, I do have this working in Cloud Services and same principle goes for websites too. The only thing I never got around to fixing was the media uploads, I just did this externally.
There is a link I published last year on this thread, works a treat. It ensures that each instances knows whether it is up to date by having a token to reference. This gets around the issue of round robin DNS within Azure.
Steve.
Hi Ben,
You said you have looked at some of the Darren Feguson has done on getting Umbraco work in Azure. We did the same thing and spent a long time researching and as Darren did our Umbraco level 2 training we got in touch, to talk about our issues.
Long story short we paid for some consultancy and by working with Darren now have site up and running in azure across multiple instances (which is where you get the issues). It is a test across two instances, we are now using this as base to rebuild our site in Umbraco and host this on azure.
If you still want to head down this route I would get in touch with Darrens company http://www.moriyama.co.uk/.
Now that it's possible to get fixed IP's with Azure, does this mean we can now effectivly get Load Balancing using Azure VM's?
http://up2v.nl/2014/03/05/windows-azure-now-allows-to-set-fixed-ip-addresses-for-virtual-machines/
No, or so I believe out of the box.
The fixed IP's are for incoming data only, inside Azure you are still getting workers running under any IP in the Azure Range.
We hit an issue with our firewall - thinking the fixed IP's would allow us to whitelist a known IP to send email data to our SMTP server but the worker role that performs this task does not send from the same IP that is assigned to in bound traffic.
We do however had a Umbraco site up and running across two Azure websites, the front end scales out to 4 - we are looking at the new changes in Azure allows us to host frontend and backend on just one website that scaled out to 4.
Hi Dan,
You can use virtual networks to create your own range of internal IP's as I have been researching this to create a new virtual appliance infront of Cloud Services (haven't thought through this in context of Umbraco though). Also, on the fixed IP, if I check my IP on a port 80 outbound connection it is my fixed IP address. I wonder if MS are rerouting email traffic to avoid their range getting blacklisted due to spammers using their services? You could create a site to site tunnel but appreciate there is an overhead in that.
I have to connect an SFTP server to a cloud service in a few weeks, so will advice how I get on as it has two firewalls to get through.
Steve.
Hi Dan,
You can use virtual networks to create your own range of internal IP's as I have been researching this to create a new virtual appliance infront of Cloud Services (haven't thought through this in context of Umbraco though). Also, on the fixed IP, if I check my IP on a port 80 outbound connection it is my fixed IP address. I wonder if MS are rerouting email traffic to avoid their range getting blacklisted due to spammers using their services? You could create a site to site tunnel but appreciate there is an overhead in that.
I have to connect an SFTP server to a cloud service in a few weeks, so will advice how I get on as it has two firewalls to get through.
Steve.
With the latest version 7.1.4, is there any changes to the Azure load balancing support?
Or alternatively, if we want to sync a local VM to a remote Azure VM, what sort of advise would You give?
Basicall local Vm being the main and Azure VM being a fall-back if the local VM is down.
any advise and directions on how to achieve that would be greatly appreciated!
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