Can I publish an Azure Worker Role ... but it doesn't auto-start?

Question

I wish to put up some workers roles (cloud services) to the staging section/configuration.

Can i publish them to there, but not get them to auto-start?

once they are up. I can manually stop the production one, manually start the staging one and test.

I don't want both running that the same time.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

Yes, it is certainly possible.

If you're deploying your services through PowerShell using New-Deployment Cmdlet, you can specify for the role to not start automatically by specifying -DoNotStart switch parameter.

If you're deploying your services through Visual Studio, I don't think this option is available.

If you're deploying your services through Create Deployment REST API directly, you can specify for the role to not start by setting value of <StartDeployment> element to false.

If you're deploying you services through Windows Azure Portal, you can specify for the role to not start by un checking the checkbox labeled Start deployment as shown in screenshot below.