During my time with Windows Azure development I have been curious to actually time what it takes to deploy my Azure ASP.NET website to Production/Staging environments. Finally during my move to “USA – SouthWest” (required due to the upcoming shutdown of the previous CTP environment) I timed the various steps and here is the info.
Production Deployment:
Hit “Deploy” button on my package
- 00:00 – I pressed the “deploy” button once i selected my package files
- 00:58 – Processed Finished with “Allocated” message, I now had to Run the allocated instances to spin them up
Hit the “Run” button on my allocated instance
- 00:00 – “Working” message appeared
- 00:48 – “Package Is Updating” message appeared
- … Then Instance said “Initializing”
- 07:50 – One instance turned to “busy”, while the other was still “Initializing”
- 08:50 – Everything was good to go, website came up
So to get my application into production it took about 10 minutes.
For reference, here are some notes about what i actually was deploying:
- My Azure Environment is the “PDC08 CTP” as indicated by the deployment portal login page
- This was a deployment of my ASP.NET Azure website for http://www.connectedshow.com, which is a simple site
- File Sizes: 525 KB in size for “Service Package” File and 3kb for “Cloud Service Configuration” file.
- The above timing should have at worst a 10/15 seconds as a margin for error
- This test was done only once and is therefore not super scientific
- Test was conducted at around 11pm EST on 10/25/2009
My personal hope is that this deployment process continues to get faster, though with recent API for deployment becoming available once you script this process it really will feel less like boiling water in a teapot :).
More to come: In the near future ill try to conduct more tests around timing and rolling from Staging to Production, stay tuned!