Image credit: runran on Flickr

We made a breaking change between versions 0.6.0 and 0.6.1 of the Windows Azure command-line tool for Mac and Linux. You can get the tool from http://windowsazure.com or via the azure package on npm. The tool lets you create and manage Azure websites and Virtual Machines from any platform.

If you imported your publish settings file using version 0.6.0 and then updated the tool, you might be greeted by the following message:

PS C:\Users\yavorg> azure site list
info:    Executing command site list
+ Enumerating locations
error:   Host is not reachable. This may be due to lost internet connectivity. Please check your connection.
info:    Error information has been recorded to azure_error

This is because we made a change to the way we internally store your publish settings information, and the old format doesn’t work with the updated tool. Fortunately here is an easy fix: just clear your old publish settings and import them again:

PS C:\Users\yavorg> azure account clear
PS C:\Users\yavorg> azure account import '.\node.publishsettings'

Thanks, and sorry for the inconvenience!

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Here are my slides… thanks for all who attended! I will also add the video when it is available. The code I used can be found on my GitHub page.

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Updated with new time and abstract. Come get a personal tour of the announcements at the Meet Windows Azure event with Scott Guthrie on June 7 in San Francisco.

I’ll be speaking on Node.js in Azure at NDC in Oslo, June 6-8. It’s my first time at NDC and my first time in Oslo, but I’ve heard nothing but good things about the conference and the city itself. Skål!

Hell has frozen over: writing Node.js apps for Windows Azure
Yavor Georgiev
June 8 2012, 10:20 - 11:20

Server-side JavaScript? On Windows Azure? Has hell frozen over? Come learn about how Azure is quickly turning into an open and lightweight cloud platform that supports a variety of runtimes: .NET, Java, PHP, and even Node.js! Be among the first developers in the world to get a personal tour of the new Windows Azure, hot on the heels of Scott Guthrie’s “Meet Windows Azure” event in San Francisco. In this session we will show how to build exciting realtime apps in JavaScript, and how to run them in the cloud. We will take advantage of great Azure features such as storage, caches, and queues to make our app scale without a hitch. We will also share the team’s plans for future Azure improvements and give you a chance to voice your opinion.

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Here you go!

We just pushed out a small May update (0.5.4) to the Azure SDK for Node.js, with which we now deploy:

• node.js 0.6.17
• iisnode 0.1.19

Here are the important changes and additions in this release:

• The updated node.js version addresses the recently announced node.js security vulnerability. The vulnerability affects all server-side deployments using versions prior to 0.6.17. If you have deployed a node.js application on Azure using our tooling, you are probably using a version of node.js that is vulerable. Please redeploy your application using the updated tooling to ensure your deployment is secure.
• This is not completely new, but a few weeks ago we also released a refresh (0.5.3) of the npm package for Azure, adding support for accessing the Azure role service runtime. That enables you to: get role configuration settings, work with local role resources (including local storage), get information about the current role instance, as well as other role instances in your application. We have a nice example of this functionality posted here. 
• iisnode 0.1.19 brings improved configuration support using YAML files. For a lot of scenarios, you may now be able to configure your app by deploying an iisnode.yml file, instead of messy XML inside your Web.config.

~~~ yaml

The optional iisnode.yml file provides overrides of

the iisnode configuration settings specified in web.config.

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Thanks to everyone who attended my talk, here are the slides, as promised.

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