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Adding new Windows Azure data centers to your Sitecore Azure module

Recently a couple of new data centers have become available to host your cloud based applications using Windows Azure.

The Sitecore Azure deployment module has been implemented in a flexible way so that the module doesn’t need to be updated when a new Azure region becomes available. If you want to add a new region simply open the App_Config/AzureVendors sub folder under your Sitecore website root and edit the Microsoft.xml file:

  1. Navigate to the <datacenters> node
  2. Add new <datacenter> nodes for each additional region
    The name of the node needs to exactly match the region name which can be found here:
    Windows Azure Regions
    azure regions
  3. Save the file and re-open the Sitecore Azure dialog from the Sitecore desktop.
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Leverage Azure Cache Services with Sitecore

When I first started to look at hosting Sitecore on Windows Azure using the module provided by Sitecore I noticed that the default setup is using in-role caching. This means that a portion of your web role’s memory will be dedicated to caching and cannot be used to serve web requests. Some people might say ‘no problem’ I just scale out if I have the need to handle more requests. In essence that’s true, but based on your solutions’ needs this could come at a cost. Hence I was wondering whether there were any alternative options available within Windows Azure.

Windows Azure offers various caching options:

  1. In-role Cache
  2. Managed Cache Service
  3. Azure Redis Cache

Option 2 and 3 are Services that allow you to take caching off your web roles which might be cost beneficial depending on your requirements. Using a dedicated caching service is sometimes cheaper and could work better in terms of scalability.

In this blog post I am going to describe how Azure Redis Cache can be configured in Sitecore but the same way you could use the Managed Cache Service.

Configure a new Redis cache in Windows Azure

ConfigureRedis

I have chosen the Standard tier that comes with 1GB and replication. Based on your needs and the number of items that you have in your Sitecore solution you might want to consider another plan.
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