Can I open ports on Azure Websites?

Question

If I want to self host WCF in a Windows Azure Website by spinning up my own ServiceHost can I host end points on 8080 or any other port I want to? Is there any specific usab

Answer 1

No, WAMS won't let you open ports. If you need that, you should host in a Web Role (Cloud services). Then you can configure your endpoints through windows azure management portal.

Answer 2

This blog post is slightly out dated now as Windows Azure Websites have more features now (like staging and production slots, WebJobs, etc) but the part regarding ports is still true for Azure Websites.

When to use Cloud Services [...] Windows Azure Websites is all IIS, the web server provides the entire platform, there is no room for long running processes or threads that can sit and wait for communication on another port outside of IIS

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cdndevs/archive/2013/11/21/windows-azure-websites-vs-cloud-services.aspx

Note that now you can have a long running process using webjobs that does back-end work, but you can't listen on anything other than 80