14 DAY TRIAL // Customers looking to streamline and expedite the deployment of websites to Microsoft’s Cloud platform can take advantage of Windows Azure Accelerator for Web Roles.
Created by Nathan Totten, the accelerator is designed to simplify the creation of a Windows Azure web role intended to host one or multiple sites.
It does this by offering a Visual Studio project template, and enabling customers to leverage Web Deploy in order to host their websites across multiple Web Role instances.
According to the official CodePlex site for Windows Azure Accelerator for Web Roles, provided that users have already set up their Windows Azure hosting Web Roles they’ll be able to deploy sites with Web Deploy in as little as half a minute.
Earlier this week, Totten updated Windows Azure Accelerator for Web Roles, introducing a number of enhancements, including support for MVC3, PHP and Windows Azure CDN.
“The first change to the accelerator is that we now install MVC3 and PHP by default. Previously, you were required to modify the startup task to install those tools in the accelerator. Because so many people asked about it we decided to just include them by default. If you don’t want either MVC3 or PHP installed you can simply remove them from the ConfigureIIS.cmd startup task,” Totten said.
“CDN binding (…) allows you to use your web role accelerator sites as a backing store for the Windows Azure CDN. (…)To enable support for the Windows Azure CDN in each site simply check the “Enable CDN” box in the site configuration page.”
There are additional improvements, including Test Site Binding, a new feature designed to simplify testing without requiring developers to perform any DNS or host file changes.
According to Totten, the latest version of Windows Azure Accelerator for Web Roles also sports enhanced logging and Start/Stop Synchronization processes.
Windows Azure Accelerator for Web Roles is available for download here.