how much of a challenge is it to port a asp.net application to azure?

Question

I have a partly developed asp.net application, but now the client wants it to be developed in azure. How much of the existing code can be used in developing the application

Answer 1

It should be very easy to port your application to Azure--especially if you're using a SQL back-end. The code could run almost without modification. You'll need to create an Azure installation package for the project and configuration file.

If your application makes use of persistent storage (other than SQL Server), you may have to rework that code somewhat. However, the platform now has drive storage, which simulates a file system, so this should be fairly easy.

Another issue to watch out for is web.config. If you make heavy use of this for runtime customization, you'll have to rework that too. You can't deploy single files to your application in Azure, so the recommended approach is to migrate these sort of settings to the Azure config file.

The hardest thing you're likely to encounter is external applications. If your app relies on launching other processes, then this will require some serious redesign.