Ruslan's Blog

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.

Azure Web Sites started to support custom domains SSL functionality recently. There are two SSL modes supported:

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.

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.

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.

In my previous post about the migration of a WordPress site to Windows Azure I mentioned that I used phpMyAdmin to import existing blog data into a MySql/ClearDb database in Windows Azure. phpMyAdmin is a web based tool for administering MySql databases. It can be used to create tables, edit the data in tables, export/import/backup data and many other tasks. I found it to be an adequate tool for all MySql db administration needs in Windows Azure. This post describes how to install and configure phpMyAdmin on Windows Azure Web Sites.

I have not been writing any blog posts for a while. That was because for the past two years I have been busy working in a team that develops the Windows Azure Web Sites – a scalable web hosting platform in Windows Azure.

The latest release of PHP Manager 1.2 for IIS now includes Windows PowerShell commands that can be used to install, configure and manage PHP on IIS 7 from command line. In addition those commands can be used to automate the configuration and management tasks.