User_ChronoZoom Operations Guide
You can use the Azure Management Portal to configure and monitor your ChronoZoom site (and any other sites or resources that you have created on Azure). This guide summarizes the most common tasks that you will need to perform on Azure.
To Monitor Performance Data: Use the Azure Management Portal DASHBOARD management page. Here you can access performance data such as current service load, data flow, connections and requests. You can also download diagnostics logs under the quick glance section. Note that the option to generate logs must first be enabled from the CONFIGURE management page.
To Increase Service Capacity: Use the Azure Management Portal SCALE management page.
To Take Site Down for Maintenance: Use the STOP button on the bottom bar of the Azure Management Portal DASHBOARD management page. Users will see a generic "This site is currently not available" page. To start the site again, click the START button on the bottom bar.
To Add Endpoint Monitoring: See How to Monitor Cloud Services.
To Add a Staged Deployment: TBD.
See the Windows Azure Documentation for more detailed information.
Wednesday: stabilization day. Only hot-fixes are accepted to alterm4nn.
Thursday: ChronoZoom teams sign off on test.chronozoomproject.org build and proceeds with deployment to production.
The process for deployment consists of the following steps:
- Read-Only Mode
- Database Copy
- Database Upgrade
- Website Deployment
The following rollback procedures are available for failed deployments:
- Website Roll Back
- Data Roll Back
To prevent any data loss for authors conencted to the site, set the database to read-only mode using:
ALTER DATABASE [cz-nodelete-chronozoom-prod-YYYYMMDD] SET READ_ONLY
YYYYMMDD needs to match the current production database. This command must be run from the production master database (not the ChronoZoom database).
To copy the new production database, call CREATE DATABASE using the following syntax:
CREATE DATABASE [cz-nodelete-chronozoom-prod-YYYYMMDD] AS COPY OF [cz-nodelete-chronozoom-prod-########]
YYYYMMDD is set to the current date, ######## is set to the date of the previous deployment. All the commands form this section must be run from the production master database (not the ChronoZoom database).
Wait for the copy to complete by monitoring progress in Windows Azure management portal. Once its complete, trigger:
ALTER DATABASE [cz-nodelete-chronozoom-prod-YYYYMMDD] SET READ_WRITE
Extract database upgrade script and execute it.
- Launch Visual Studio.
- Click Tools, Library Package Manager, Package Manager Console.
Update-Database -V -ProjectName Chronozoom.Entities -ConnectionString "<connection>" -ConnectionProviderName System.Data.SqlClient-script
If data loss is expected, add the-Forceparameter. - Run the generated script in the ChronoZoom database using SQL Server Management Studio.
- Merge alterm4nn:main into alterm4nn:production. Windows Azure automatically picks the production branch and deploys the update.
- Change the connection string from the old database to the new database using Windows Azure Management Portal.
- From the Azure Management Console, click the DEPLOYMENTS tab.
- Select the previous deployment and redeploy.
- Restart the Azure Website.
- Perform a website roll back.
- Swap with the previous database.
- In the Azure Management Console, click the DEPLOYMENTS tab.
- Point the Storage parameter to the previous database.
When you first sign in to Azure, you are presented with a list of resources. The Web site that you are using to host ChronoZoom should appear within this list along with the associated SQL database.
Along the bottom of the page are several options: New, Browse, Stop, Restart, Manage Domains, Delete, and Help. Clicking the Help icon will display help content for whichever tab you are currently working in. The contents of the bottom bar will change depending on the tab you are in.
Click the name of your Web site to bring up the DASHBOARD management page. Here you can see all of the usage statistics for the site, as well as other useful information such as connection strings, URLs, FTP host name, and more.
Click DEPLOYMENTS to view the deployment history for your site.
Click MONITOR to view real-time Web metrics for your site.
Click CONFIGURE to access the CONFIGURE management page for the web site. Here you can change web application specific settings, the type and level of diagnostic logging that is employed and any alternative hostnames used to connect to the web site.
Click SCALE to bring up the SCALE management page. Here you can modify scale options to give a Web site additional load capacity and/or fault tolerance.
Click LINKED RESOURCES to see the LINKED RESOURCES management page. This page is where you can manage all of the resources that your Web site is dependent upon. At the start, you should see only your SQL database. Note that you can scale the capacity of your SQL database on the SCALE tab for your Web site.
