Write about worker role & web role while configuring an application in windows Azure.
In Azure, a Cloud Service Role is a collection of managed, load-balanced, Platform-as-a- Service virtual machines that work together to perform common tasks. Cloud Service Roles are managed by Azure fabric controller and provide the ultimate combination of scalability, control, and customization
What is a Web Role?
Web Role is a Cloud Service role in Azure that is configured and customized to run web applications developed on programming languages/technologies that are supported by Internet Information Services (IIS), such as ASP.NET, PHP, Windows Communication Foundation and Fast CGI.
What is a Worker Role?
Worker Role is any role in Azure that runs applications and services level tasks, which generally do not require IIS. In Worker Roles, IIS is not installed by default. They are mainly used to perform supporting background processes along with Web Roles and do tasks such as automatically compressing uploaded images, run scripts when something changes in the database, get new messages from queue and process and more.
Differences between the Web and Worker Roles
The main difference between the two is that:
- a Web Role automatically deploys and hosts your app through IIS
- a Worker Role does not use IIS and runs your app standalone
Being deployed and delivered through the Azure Service Platform, both can be managed in the same way and can be deployed on a same Azure Instance.
In most scenarios, Web Role and Worker Role instances work together and are often used by an application simultaneously. For example, a web role instance might accept requests from users, then pass them to a worker role instance for processing.
Worker Roles
Azure Portal provides basic monitoring for Azure Web and Worker Roles. Users that require advanced monitoring, auto-scaling or self-healing features for their cloud role instances, should learn more about CloudMonix. Along with advanced features designed to keep Cloud Services stable, CloudMonix also provides powerful dashboards, historical reporting, various integrations to popular ITSM and other IT tools and much more. Check out this table for a detailed comparison of CloudMonix vs native Azure monitoring features.
