Create an Azure cloud service project with Visual Studio

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Applies to: yesVisual Studio noVisual Studio for Mac

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

Visual Studio provides a project template that lets you create an Azure cloud service, which is a simple general-purpose Azure service. Once the project has been created, Visual Studio enables you to configure, debug, and deploy the cloud service to Azure.

Steps to create an Azure cloud service project in Visual Studio

This section walks you through creating an Azure cloud service project in Visual Studio with one or more web roles.

  1. Open Visual Studio as an administrator.

  2. On the main menu, select File > New > Project.

  3. Select Cloud from the Visual C# or Visual Basic project template nodes, and select Azure Cloud Service from the list of templates.

    New Azure cloud service

  4. Specify which version of the .NET Framework you want to use to develop your project.

  5. Enter a name and location for your project and a name for the solution.

  6. Select OK.

  1. In the New Microsoft Azure Cloud Service dialog, select the roles that you want to add, and choose the right arrow button to add them to your solution.

    Select new Azure cloud service roles

  2. To rename a role that you've added, hover on the role in the New Microsoft Azure Cloud Service dialog, and, from the context menu, select Rename. You can also rename a role within your solution (in the Solution Explorer) after it has been added.

    Rename Azure cloud service role

The Visual Studio Azure project has associations to the role projects in the solution. The project also includes the service definition file and service configuration file:

  • Service definition file - Defines the run-time settings for your application, including what roles are required, endpoints, and virtual machine size.
  • Service configuration file - Configures how many instances of a role are run and the values of the settings defined for a role.

For more information about these files, see Configure the Roles for an Azure cloud service with Visual Studio.

Next steps