Web Service bound to Web role in Windows Azure?

Question

I am stuck with the question if a Web Service implemented in Windows Azure have to run in a Web role, or is it possible to have it run in a Worker role ? If so, is there an alternative way to monitor the http-traffic, because a Worker role don't give access to the IIS logs ?

BR/Christer

Answer 1

You can run your web services in a Worker Role via ServiceHost (you can also run them with ServiceHost in a Web Role if you wanted). By default, IIS isn't activated in a Worker Role, which is why you don't have IIS logs.

There are several WCF performance counters you could look at, but you probably need to look at networking performance counters for byte-level details.

EDIT: To address question of how to access performance counters: using Remote Desktop should be reserved for debugging purposes. Instead, it's better to collect performance counters with the Diagnostic Monitor, then publish them to Windows Azure Table storage for external access. See this article for a quick intro to Windows Azure and performance counters. The article shows how to manually query the performance counters (which get published to WADPerformanceCountersTable ). You can also view this table through Visual Studio (once you install the Windows Azure tools), or through 3rd-party tools such as Cerebrata Azure Diagnostics Manager .