The day azure kills off the classic portal is the day I’m screwed.
TL;DR Edition: Create a new site in the new azure portal, Get IIS error. Create new site in classic portal, works fine.
Full Post: When I first started using azure - I loved it and I mean LOVED IT! As a web developer, I could spin up a site, deploy my code to it, it just worked and didn’t have to configure the server at all. At my previous employment, I pushed hard to try and get them to use azure, within my first couple of months I used my personal account for demos since the staging environment was just configured in an annoying way. A year later once I finally was able to get a client to use azure, I felt it was a start of something big - First it was much cheaper compared to other hosts we were using, deployment slots allowed an easy roll back in the event someone pushed before they got the green light to do so (I made sure that when I wrote the instructions on deploying to azure that the only way to do so was to create a deployment slot - so anyone who was new that never used azure would think that was the only way and if someone knew how to use azure that got hired after me, well I think they would agree to my process), and a big plus was I didn’t have to worry about half of the security nightmare that 2014 was or having to hope a server completes a reboot at 4am.
During that time span, I got close to the new portal in azure, the classic portal was slow and wasn’t as easy as the new one. I kept a close eye on the Azure Friday videos and pretty much had nothing negative to say. Fast Forward to the current day - left my previous employer and now at my current employer we pretty much are all azure, the new portal changed a bit (not much of look and feel, but more of wording - I’m sure that obviously it had major changes not only in the back end but also the front end), suddenly the classic portal must of had some improvements because it was quicker and I started notice things which was a bit odd.
At some point, we received word from our remote team that they had trouble accessing the site, which at first we assumed it was internet issues because they were having internet issues a few days previous and azure wasn’t reporting any issues and then the next thing we knew, we had issues. We would type the domain, hit enter and nothing. Visit another site, instant load. Tried stopping the site, starting it back up. No luck. Checked error logs, nothing stood out. Tried a different client on azure, loads right up. Tried a different deployment slot thinking maybe someone pushed a bad config or code. No luck. How is it that a site that is still under development, that is really only being hit by a small team not respond but HaveIBeenPwned handles an average of 8.5k simultaneous sessions over a period of an hour without any hiccups?
So after a few hours of debugging, making changes to the site we are having issues with and deploying it, one of the developer’s on the team get’s a genius idea - he spins up a brand new website, creates a new default asp.net mvc project, makes no changes to the code, no database connection used, just pretty much the boilerplate mvc site visual studio creates, publishes to azure and hang.... The brand new site didn’t have any configuration changes, just whatever was enabled by default when creating a new azure site, default boilerplate asp.net mvc project and it just doesn’t work. Check azure status - no issues, but clearly it is an azure issue. So now we start trying to figure out what could be the problem - while also trying to explain to those who aren’t developers that the problem isn’t us but azure... which you can see their confused face ask they go “but isn’t azure the cloud? Isn’t it suppose to scale if there is a heavy load, etc?” It’s difficult to try and explain to them that it clearly isn’t the project’s code but something wrong with something with azure without making them start doubting azure - because the last thing you want is someone in a management position that isn’t technical and suddenly is pushing to avoid using azure after X amount of time of convincing them.
Somehow we throw out the idea of maybe it’s because of the new portal, maybe we should try creating the new site with the classic portal. At this point we are clearly just throwing ideas out into the open because the remote team lost a day of work and we had lost half a day trying to debug this issue. So we create a new site in the classic portal, push the default asp.net mvc project to it and loads super quick, we then delete the default asp.net mvc project, deploy the current project we were working on to it and loads super quick, no problems.
End of story right? Not so much, a month or two later we attempt to deploy another site which a different developer worked on who wasn't present at the time. Builds successfully, works locally, publishes with no issues, attempt to view it on azure - no such luck. We keep getting an IIS issue, which makes you wonder - why the fuck am I getting an IIS error on what should be a "simple" web site? Is something wrong with a configuration somewhere? Did we miss something in the web.config transform? One hour passes... then another... it's past 6pm now and I ask "How was this site created?" which I get a response of "Logged in, Create a new site" from coworker.
Me: Was it via the new portal? Coworker: Yeah. Me: I bet you that's why you are getting that IIS error. If you create it in the old portal I bet you it will work.
He deletes the site, creates it in the classic portal and deploys - during this time span I tell him if it works I'm going to have to blog about this if it 'fixes' the issue. I could of been wrong and honestly I wish I was. - Deployment finishes, no iis error, works just fine. We both laugh and then go "We are so screwed"
I know Microsoft has some talented developers and I mean fucking talented! I can't deny that at all - not only that but they have to have it rough depending on what team you are on. I've been a fan of what they've done with azure. The edge team has done great work so far when it comes to my default browser choice at home. Visual Studio tends to have it's quarks after a brand new release which I can understand and it generally gets better overtime. Skype for business.... well I look forward to the day it remembers my password when I click that damn remember my password checkbox but that's a story for another day. ;)
Back on topic - I wouldn't worry as much but at some point when logging into Azure it defaults to the new portal which makes sense - I'm sure that half of the functionality on the new portal probably doesn't exist on the classic portal but the concern with that is - if I can't create a simple web site without having an IIS error then it's probably not ready to be set as the default view on log in. I'm hoping that maybe it's some edge case or maybe somewhere maybe something related to our work account is just jacked up and maybe it will get fixed.


















