Azure - What do I need to deploy my MVC API and Web API to Azure

Question

I am building a solution in Visual Studio that contains both an MVC application as well as a few RESTful endpoints constructed using Web API. I am not planning on using on Azure SQL Storage. I also have my website already created in the Azure Management portal that I want to publish my solution to.

When I choose to "Publish" from within Visual Studio, it tells me that I need to create a Cloud Service Account and a Storage Account in order to publish? Why is this? Why do I need a Storage Account when I don't plan on using Azure storage? Second, why do I need a cloud service account? My understanding is that those are used for Web Roles and I specifically want to run this in a simple Azure web site.

I'm trying to determine why Cloud Service and Storage accounts are required. Any help or advice provided would be a great help! Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I'm trying to reproduce the behavior you are seeing, and this is what I have observed.

I created an empty solution and added two projects following different approaches:

Project 1. File > New > Project > ASP.NET Web Application > ASP.NET Web API

Project 2. File > New > Project > Windows Azure Cloud Service > ASP.NET Web Role

In essence, both are ASP.NET MVC/WebAPI projects. However, the options that appear when you right-click the projects are different.

If you right-click Project 1 you should get a Publish... option, which when clicked should display the Publish Web wizard, which should allow you to deploy to Azure Websites.

If you right-click Project 2 you should get the same Publish... option, which should show you the same Publish Web dialog. Additionally, you should see a Publish to Windows Azure... option, which displays the Publish Windows Azure Application wizard, and should allow you to deploy to a Azure Cloud Services Web Role.

This behavior was the same in Visual Studio 2013 and 2012.

If your project is not showing the option to publish to Azure Websites, it could be because the project is not of the correct type. Experiment creating different kind of projects and checking what options you get when you right-click them.

Also, you can verify what project type your project has: Open your .csproj file in a text editor, and look for the ProjectTypeGuids section. Copy the Guid(s) shown there and google them (or look here: http://www.mztools.com/articles/2008/MZ2008017.aspx).

Hope this helps.