What is High Availability?
High Availability is the ability for your website to be running and available to users on a consistent basis. When you host your site using
Azure Web Sites, the fact is that the underlying architecture and hardware will not be available 100% of the time. This is the reality when using any cloud based web hosting, but do not worry Microsoft already puts a lot of work to ensure the highest possible availability for your web site.
What is the High Availability Test Tool?
This High Availability Test Tool was built to show different types of hardware issues can affect the functionality of your site and you can build it in a way that it is optimized to run in a cloud environment.
How do I use the High Availability Test Tool?
The test tool can be found at
highavailabilitytestconsole.azurewebsites.net.
If this is your first time using the tool, the first step is to install the High Availability Site Extension. This can be done from the Azure Portal or from the Kudu site extension. The High Availability Test Console has directions for both of these options!
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Click on this bar to show the directions and choose which way you prefer |
Once you follow the steps available there and you can see the site extension installed on your site, you are ready to use the tool. The first step is to enter the URL of your site in the textbox shown below:
You will then be asked to enter your publishing credentials for your web site. The only reason it requires you to enter your publishing username and password is so that it can communicate with the High Availability Site Extension. If you are still unsure you can find the source code for the tool on
GitHub.
If you do not know how to find your publishing credentials go to the Azure Portal, then Browse->Web Sites->Your Web Site. Find the Deployment
The browser will prompt you to open or save the file, click save and save the file somewhere where you will remember it. Open the text file and you should be able to locate the username and password as shown below.
After the information is entered, click Verify. This will ensure that the tool can communicate with the site extension and if successful, the Submit button will turn green and you can click that to continue. Now you will be able to see your site URL in the "Web Sites to Test" list.
At this point you are ready to run the test! You may choose from any of the tests to run individually or run them all together.
When a test finishes click on
View Results button to see a graph of both latency and request success with the respective fault injected.
Check back for another blog to explain what each test does and what the results mean for your site.