I finally created an account for Windows Azure, it is quite easy to do so and the cost are very affordable (if you have a MSDN premium subscription as each Microsoft employee does :)).
I never really had the opportunity learning in-depth IIS and ASP.net so now that I have this server available, I am starting!
The first step is obviously to have IIS role configured on the server (I am using a Windows Server 2012 OS). This is really straight forward to do:
- Open the server manager
- Click on Add roles and features
- Click ‘next’ until you reach the ‘Select server roles’ tab
- Check the Web Server (IIS) entry
- Click ‘next’ until installation is done
Once the installation is completed, you should be able to validate that ISS is running by opening the http://localhost page on a web browser. At this point you should see the ISS8 starting page.
The next step is to try to reach this webpage from the internet, this would generally require a static ip and a new DNS entry (or a dynamic ip and a dynamic dns server) BUT the people at Azure made it super simple to do. Just add a TCP endpoint to your virtual server, to do so follow these steps:
- Open the management portal for your Virtual machine (this can be accessed via the Virtual machines list in the portal)
- Click on the endpoints menu
- Click on Add endpoint
- Give any name for your endpoint, select the TCP protocol and configure the public and private port to be 80.
Once Windows Azure has completed to provision the new endpoint you will be able to access your IIS page from the outside world. Enter the DNS of your virtual machine (*.cloudapp.net) from any web browser and you should see thee IIS8 starting page.