Today, every project we work on big or small, easy or complex, small team or large team is probably on Source Control. The source control of course can be git, VSTS, SVN etc.
Still, there are times where you need to share your code as zip in an email, or shared link. It could be because your customer, colleague or partner do not have access to your source control or simply you have not added your code to Source Control itself.
Now, if you just zip the solution folder and email or share the link then you would include folders like bin, obj, packages or files like .sou, .user etc. These files are not required to build the solution. These files increase your zip file size significantly. The solution is simple, delete all the files which are not required. However, what if you have over 50 projects in the solution? And what if you have to this activity multiple times? It is too much of manual effort to do perform this activity.
I had a similar issue in my one of my engagements recently. However, instead of spending hours to do this manual work, I decided to automate the process by creating a small console app. The app deletes all the unwanted folders and files recursively from the solution. I have included following folders and files as per my requirements as the part of deletion list:
In a web application this technique is not scalable. Each user request results in the creation of a new HttpClient object. Under a heavy load, the web server can exhaust the number of sockets available resulting in SocketException errors.
From above two articles I could conclude, below are the major issues with disposing the HttpClient object for each request:
The execution time of the HttpClient request is higher. This is obvious since we create and dispose the object every time for a new request.
Disposing HttpClient object every time could potentially lead to SocketException. This is because disposing the HttpClient object does not really close TCP connection. Quoting from the ASP.NET monster post:
..the application has exited and yet there are still a bunch of these connections open to the Azure machine which hosts the ASP.NET Monsters website. They are in the TIME_WAIT state which means that the connection has been closed on one side (ours) but we’re still waiting to see if any additional packets come in on it because they might have been delayed on the network somewhere
I wanted to test the performance improvements when we create a static instance of HttpClient. The aim of my test was ONLY to see the difference of execution time between the two approaches when we open multiple connections. To test this, I wrote following code:
namespace HttpClientTest
{
using System;
using System.Net.Http;
class Program
{
private static readonly int _connections = 1000;
private static readonly HttpClient _httpClient = new HttpClient();
private static void Main()
{
TestHttpClientWithStaticInstance();
TestHttpClientWithUsing();
}
private static void TestHttpClientWithUsing()
{
try
{
for (var i = 0; i < _connections; i++)
{
using (var httpClient = new HttpClient())
{
var result = httpClient.GetAsync(new Uri("http://bing.com")).Result;}
}
}
}
catch (Exception exception)
{
Console.WriteLine(exception);
}
}
private static void TestHttpClientWithStaticInstance()
{
try
{
for (var i = 0; i < _connections; i++)
{
var result = _httpClient.GetAsync(new Uri("http://bing.com")).Result;
}
}
catch (Exception exception)
{
Console.WriteLine(exception);
}
}
}
For testing:
I ran the code with 10, 100, 1000 and 1000 connections.
Ran each test 3 times to find out the average
Executed ONLY one method at a time
My machine configuration was:
System Configuration
Below are the results from the Visual Studio Instrumentation Profiling:
Method
No Of Connections
Time in Seconds
Difference in Seconds
Performance Improvement in %
TestHttpClientWithUsing
10
2.6
TestHttpClientWithStaticInstance
1.8
1
44
TestHttpClientWithUsing
100
408
TestHttpClientWithStaticInstance
240
168
70
TestHttpClientWithUsing
1000
241
TestHttpClientWithStaticInstance
160
81
51
TestHttpClientWithUsing
10000
2456
TestHttpClientWithStaticInstance
1630
826
51
As you can see the time of execution for the static instance is far lesser than disposable object.
Does it means we should use static client object all the time? It depends.
One of the issues people have found with static HttpClient Instance is that it does not support DNS changes. Refer this article. For .NET application, there is a workaround available where you can you can set connnectonLeaseTimeOut by using ServicePoint object as mentioned in post.
However, for an ASP.NET Core, you may be out of luck as per this issue in GitHub as similar property does not seem to exist.
Hope this post help you take informed decision in your projects. Please share your thoughts in comments section.
In my current engagement, we have more than 80 projects in a solution (don’t ask me why :)). Recently, as per quality guidelines, we needed to make few changes to each project.
For example: Treat warnings as errors, enable code analysis for each project, sign assembly etc.
I realized doing it manually can take me entire day so I spent few mins to create a small script in C# to save my time. Here is the code snippet:
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using Microsoft.Build.Evaluation;
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var projectList = new List()
{
// Your Project file paths
};
foreach (var project in projectList)
{
var projectCollection = new ProjectCollection();
var proj = projectCollection.LoadProject(project);
// Select Debug configuration
var debugPropertyGroup =
proj.Xml.PropertyGroups.First(
e => e.Condition == " '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Debug|AnyCPU' ");
debugPropertyGroup.SetProperty("TreatWarningsAsErrors", "true");
debugPropertyGroup.SetProperty("RunCodeAnalysis", "true");
// Select Release configuration
var releasePropertyGroup =
proj.Xml.PropertyGroups.First(
e => e.Condition == " '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|AnyCPU' ");
releasePropertyGroup.SetProperty("TreatWarningsAsErrors", "true");
releasePropertyGroup.SetProperty("RunCodeAnalysis", "true");
//Sign assembly with a with strong name key
proj.SetProperty("SignAssembly", "true");
proj.SetProperty("AssemblyOriginatorKeyFile", "test.pfx");
//Save
proj.Save();
}
}
}
Hope it helps save some time for some of you 🙂
Update: I have created a command line utility for the solution and added it to GitHub. This utility accepts different set arguments to based on operations required to be performed. Please refer to ReadMe.md in GitHub for more details.
Recently, I needed to scale out my web app hosted on Virtual Machine. After a few hiccups and learnings, I was finally able to Load Balance my web app hosted over multiple Virtual Machines. I have tried to document the steps in the form of a blog here.
To scale out I used following configuration:
Two Azure virtual machines, Windows Server 2012 R2 hosting web app on IIS
Azure load Balancer (By Microsoft)
1. Create Resource Group
We will start with creating a Resource Group. The VMs and Load Balancer will be created in the same Resource Group. This helps us to keep things together.
On the Azure portal, go to Resource groups -> click Add -> Provide Resource group name, select Subscription and Resource Group location -> Click Create
Create Resource group
2. Create Azure VM1 (First Virtual Machine)
Select New -> Virtual Machines -> Select VM Windows Server 2012 R2 -> Select deployment model to Resource Manager -> Click Create.
You will be taken to Create Virtual Machine wizard.
a. Basics – Configure basic settings
Provide the name of Virtual Machine, Server User name, password -> Select the Resource Group created in the previous step -> click OK
Create Virtual Machine
b. Size – Choose virtual machine size
Select the size of Virtual Machine and click Ok
c. Settings – Configure optional features
Under Settings, Create new Virtual network.
Create new Virtual network
Next, create new Availability set
Create New availability set
d. Summary
Under Summary, validate the details and Click Ok to create the Virtual machine.
3. Create Azure VM 2 (Second Virtual Machine)
Create second virtual machine similar to the first Virtual Machine. Make sure to select same Virtual Network and Availability Set.
Create Second Virtual Machine with same Virtual network and Availability set
4. Publish Web App to Azure VM
The next step is to publish the Web App to Azure VM. You can follow steps as explained in my previous blog post. For this demo, I have deployed a simple web app which displays the machine name of the server.
Virtual Machine1: test-vm1
Web App hosted on Virtual Machine 1
Virtual Machine2: test-vm2
Web App hosted on Virtual Machine 2
4. Configure Load Balancer
a. Create Load Balancer
From the Azure portal, Click New -> Search Load Balancer -> Select Load Balancer with publisher as Microsoft -> Click Create
Create new Load balancer – 1
Next, in the Create load balancer wizard, Provide the Name of Load Balancer -> Create new IP address -> Provide the Resource group same as created in earlier step -> Click Create
Create new Load balancer – 2
b. Add Probe
Once, the load balancer has been created, select the load balancer -> Click Settings -> Select Probes -> Click Add -> Provide the name of the probe, keep the Port number as 80 -> click Ok.
Add probe
c. Add backend pool
Select the load balancer -> Click Settings -> Select Backend pools -> Click Add -> Provide the Name of the backend pool -> Select the Availability set created while creating Virtual Machines -> Choose both the Virtual Machines -> Click Select and Ok
Add backend pool
d. Add Load balancing rule
Select the load balancer -> Click Settings -> Select Add Load balancing rule -> Click Add -> Provide the Name of load balancing rule -> Select the backend pool created in the previous step -> Click Ok
Add Load balancing rule
e. Configure DNS Name for Load balancer
Select Public Ip Address -> Click Settings -> Click Configuration -> Provide DNS name label –> Click Save
Configure DNS name for Load balancer
That’s It!. We are done. Navigate to the DNS address you provided for the load balancer and you will be navigated to one of the Azure VM. To verify the load balancing, shut down one of the machines and see all the requests being redirected to the second Azure Virtual Machine.
Recently, I worked on a ASP.NET 4.6 MVC 5 project which didn’t have anything MVC about it. 🙂
It was a Single Page Application built on TypeScript, Knockout JS, CSS. Now, since it we didn’t have any server side code, we decided to give Gulp a try to concatenate and minify the JS and CSS files. Below I have explained the steps to configure gulp on ASP.NET 4.6 application with Visual Studio 2015. I created a sample application to explain the steps.
Disclaimer: This is my first attempt to use gulp in any of my projects. I do not claim to follow all the best practices. I you see there is anything I could have differently, please feel free to comment and share your ideas 🙂
Once Node.js is installed, open Node.js Command Prompt
Execute command: npm install –global gulp-cli – This command will install gulp globally.
Optionally, execute command npm install -g npm3.This will install npm3 alongside npm.The reason I installed npm3 alongside npm was because npm3 installs the dependencies in flat file structure while npm v2 installs the dependencies in hierarchical structure. For windows machine this can be issue as full file path could exceed more than 255 characters.
Configure Gulp in Visual Studio
Right click your Visual Studio project, and click new item. Search for NPM template. and select NPM Configuration File. This will add package.json file to your Visual Studio project.
Similarly, add Gulp Configuration File from installed template. This will add a file with name gulpfile.js to the Visual Studio Project. You will add your gulp tasks to concatenate and minify in this file.
Now, add a JavaScript file with name gulp.config. This is a configuration file which will be later used by our gulpfile. It contains configuration settings like html source, js/css files source that needs to be minified, name of minified js file etc. A sample gulp.config file is shown below:
module.exports = function() {
var config = {
htmlSource: [
"index.html" /* The HTML file */
],
js: [
"./lib/js/Javascript1.js",
"./lib/js/Javascript2.js" /* List of js files in the order as they appear in index.html*/
],
minJs: "js-min.js", /* Minified JS file name */
minJsDestination: "./lib/js/", /* Minified JS file destination */
css: [
"./lib/css/*.css" /* List of css files that need to be minified */
],
minCss: "css-min.css", /* Minified CSS file name */
minCssDestination: "./lib/css/" /* Minified CSS file destination */
}
return config;
}
Now, open your html file where the minified js and css files need to be injected. Remove the css files reference from html file and add below code to your html file.
<!-- inject:css -->
<!-- endinject -->
Similarly, remove the js files reference and add below code to your html.
<!-- inject:js -->
<!-- endinject -->
Next, we need to install the Gulp packages to first concatenate, minify js/ css files and later inject the minified files to html. To achieve this following packages need to be installed through NPM:
gulp – The streaming build system
gulp-csso – Minifies CSS
gulp-uglify – Minifies JS
gulp-inject – Injects file references into html
gulp-concat – Concatenates files
Open, Node.js Command Prompt. Go to your project folder and execute the below command.
As you can see we used npm3 to install gulp packages locally to install the dependencies in a flat structure. And instead of installing each package one by one we used a single command to install all the packages together.
Once the packages are installed, go to package.json and you will see the installed packages under devDependencies. You will also notice a folder node_modules created under your project where all the packages are installed.
Next, we will start writing gulp tasks in gulpfile.js. Go to gulpfile.js and add the required packages you need for your tasks.
var gulp = require("gulp");
var concat = require("gulp-concat");
var uglify = require("gulp-uglify");
var minify = require("gulp-csso");
var inject = require("gulp-inject");
var config = require("./gulp.config")();
Now, add the gulp tasks to minify js and css files.
// Task to minify JS
gulp.task("min-all-js", function () {
return gulp
.src(config.js)
.pipe(concat(config.minJs))
.pipe(uglify())
.pipe(gulp.dest(config.minJsDestination));
});
// Task to minify CSS
gulp.task("min-all-css", function () {
return gulp
.src(config.css)
.pipe(concat(config.minCss))
.pipe(minify())
.pipe(gulp.dest(config.minCssDestination));
});
To verify the above tasks go to View-> Other Windows -> Task Runner Explorer. In the Task Runner Explorer window you will see the two tasks created by you. Run these tasks from the window and verify that it creates the minified files in destination folder.
Now, add the gulp tasks to inject js and css files into html source
// Task to inject minifed JS
gulp.task("inject-min-js", function () {
return gulp
.src(config.htmlSource)
.pipe(inject(gulp.src(config.minJsDestination + config.minJs)))
.pipe(gulp.dest("."));
});
// Task to inject minifed CSS
gulp.task("inject-min-css", function () {
return gulp
.src(config.htmlSource)
.pipe(inject(gulp.src(config.minCssDestination + config.minCss)))
.pipe(gulp.dest("."));
});
With this we have created all our required gulp tasks. Next step is to run these tasks at the time of build. Go to Task Runner Explorer, right click task min-all-css, select Bindings -> Before Build. This will tell Visual Studio to run this task before the build starts. Similarly, add tasks min-all-js, min-inject-css, min-inject-js. Make sure these tasks are added in correct order.
Gulp task binding
That’s it. Now, just build the application. And you will see the gulp tasks are run before the build starts. If you go to your html source file, you will see the minified css and js files are injected into your html file.
This post is Part 2 of the series – Publish web app to Azure VM. In this post I will take the application, we created in Part 1 and publish it on Azure Virtual Machine through Visual Studio Team Services.
Before you go any further I you recommend to go through Part 1 of the series, if you have not already.
As a pre-requisite I have assumed that your solution along with the publish profile you created in part 1 is checked in Visual Studio Team Services. For this demo I have used the Team Foundation as my version control. But steps are same if you have used Git as your version control.
Publish Web App from Visual Studio Team Services
First, go to your Visual Studio Team Services dashboard of your project. Your visual studio team services dashboard should look similar to the figure below:
Visual Studio Team Services Dashboard
Now, click on Continuous Integrate to create your build definition. This will take you to a new page where you will see a “+” icon on left navigation pane. Click on icon to create a new build definition and then select Visual Studio template.
Create new build Definition
Click next, select your repository in the second step and then click create.
Your build definition will have some default build steps added. Keep only Nuget restore and remove rest of the build steps as this demo is focussed only on publishing the build to Azure VM.
Visual Studio Definition – Nuget restore build step
Next, click on Add Build step and add MsBuild task from Add build step window. We will use MsBuild to publish the publish profile we created in first part of this series.
Now, select MS Build step and specify your MsBuild arguments as
DeployOnBuild: Setting DeployOnBuild to true means, we will deploy the solution after building
PublishProfile: Defines the name of the publish profile we use for the deploying. We have provided the value of publish profile as user defined variable, $(publishProfileName). We will define this variable later.
Password: Defines the user password of the Azure virtual machine. Again, we have provided the value of password as variable $(userServerPassword) which we will define later.
Configuration: Defines the build configuration of the solution. This build configuration value can be either be release or debug based on kind of deployment you are doing.
With this our build steps are completed.
Visual Studio Definition – MS Build Step
Next, we need to define the variables we used in MSBuild step. Select Variables tab in the build definition. Click, Add variable and give the variable name as publishProfileName. Provide the value of the variable same as the name of your publish profile. Click, on Add variable again and give the name of variable as userServerPassword. Provide password of Azure VM user in the value field of variable. Since, password is sensitive information, make sure to click on the lock icon present on the right side of the variable field.
For both the variables also check Allow at Queue Time. This will prompt the user to change the values of variables before queueing the build.
Also, notice that variable $(BuildConfiguration) is created by default so we do not need to add it again.
Visual Studio Definition – Variables
Next, you can optionally define the when this build definition would be executed from Triggers tab. You can chose to either build each check-in (Continuous Integration) or schedule it at a specific time.
Now, click save and provide the name of the build to complete our visual studio definition.
Visual Studio Definition – Save
With this all our build definition is complete. Now, just queue you build and verify that publish to Azure is successful.
Queue Build
Important Note
Your build definition may fail with error #ERROR_CERTIFICATE_VALIDATION_FAILED. This error comes up because the remote server has a self-signed certificate for the Remote Agent Service or the Web Management Service. In this case, you need to bypass the certificate validation. Go to your publish profile in your solution under Properties -> PublishProfiles. Add below line to the property group
This post is two-part series where I will explain how we can publish a web app to Azure Virtual Machine.
In the Part 1 of this post I have explained how to publish a web app directly from Visual Studio. In the Part 2, I will publish the same web app from Visual Studio Team Services.
Important Note: Publishing a web app from Visual Studio directly should be use only during development. Usually, developers do not have access to Production VMs. In Production you can use PowerShell script to publish the web app outside the Visual Studio.
Prerequisites
Active Azure Subscription. Create your free Azure account if you don’t already have one.
Windows Virtual Machine on Azure: Follow these steps on to create an Azure Virtual Machine. For this demo I have created “Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter” with deployment mode as “Resource Manager“.
Visual Studio 2015 – Update 2 with Azure SDK 2.9 or greater.
Code repository on Visual Studio Team Services: Create an account on Visual Studio Team Services and set up your code repository using Git or Team Foundation Version Control. I have used TFS as my version control for this demo. This step is required only for part 2 of this series.
Configure Virtual Machine
1. Open http port 80 and web deploy port 8172
Our first step is to open http port 80 and web deploy port 8172 on Azure VM. In the classic Azure VM this step is straightforward. All you need to do is to create an endpoint. While port 80 is opened by default, you can follow these steps to open endpoint 8172.
In the Azure Resource Manager (ARM) VM we need to open both ports 80 and 8172. You can follow my previous blog post where I have explained how add an Inbound security rule to open port 80 on the Azure VM. Similarly, you need add an Inbound security rule to open port 8172 on the VM.
Your Inbound security rules window on Azure portal after adding rules to open the port should like figure below:
Inbound security rules
2. Configure DNS Name
With classic Azure VM, the cloud service is created automatically and you do not need to do anything special to configure DNS name.
To configure DNS name with ARM VM, follow the steps to configure azure vm in my previous blog post.
3. Set up web deploy on remote machine
Now, remote desktop on your virtual machine and install IIS on your machine. To install IIS, go to Add Roles and features Wizard and select Web Service (IIS), under Application Development select all options.
Now, install Web Platform Installer 5.0 on your server from this link. Once installed search for web deploy on the Web platform installer. Look for “Web Deploy 3.6 for Hosting Server” and install.
Install Web Deploy on Azure VM
The next step is to create a website in IIS where we will host our application. To keep the things simple for this demo, I will deploy my application on Default Web Site. Now, select your website from IIS. Then, under IIS Manager Permissions add user with appropriate permission.
IIS on Azure VM
Before we proceed further make sure that you have opened port 8172 on Windows Firewall. For this you need to create following firewall rules on your machine:
Direction
From Port
To Port
Port Type
Inbound
Any
8172
TCP
Outbound
8172
Any
TCP
Publish Web App from Visual Studio
For this demo I have created a simple MVC web application from the standard visual studio template. I modified the home page to show my machine name and hosting server. On local, my homepage looks like below:
Web App on localhost
Now, the next step is to create a publishing profile to publish the web app directly from Visual Studio to Azure. Select the project, right click and select publish. On the publish window, expand More Options and select Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines.
Select Publish target – Azure Virtual Machine
You will be then asked to login to the Microsoft Azure account. Login to your Azure account and then select the Windows VM you have created already.
Log in to Azure subscription and select Virtual Machine
Click Next and provide your publish details. Keep the publish method as “Web Deploy“. Do not change the server details. Provide the name of the site you created in previous steps. Provide your VM username and password.
Validate Connection with Azure VM
Now, click Validate Connection to validate your connection. You may get a Certificate Error. This error comes up because the remote server has a self-signed certificate for the Remote Agent Service or the Web Management Service. Click Accept to bypass certificate validation.
Bypass certificate validation
Click “Next” and then “Publish”. Once, the publish completes go to the publish URL to verify that the web app is up and running.
Setting up a website on classic Azure Virtual Machine is straight forward as in classic Azure VM we have the Endpoints for port 80 and 443 open by default. For each classic Azure VM we also had cloud service created. Hence, if we host a website directly on port 80 or 443 it would work without much hassle.
Recently, I landed up in an issue where I created a new Windows Virtual Machine with deployment mode as “Resource Manager” and deployed my web app on Azure VM, but I did not find the corresponding cloud service for the virtual machine. Hence, I could not browse my application through internet since I didn’t have DNS. I then tried to access my application through public IP address of the Virtual Machine but again it didn’t work. After digging into various Virtual Machine options in new Azure Portal I found out the issue. The new Azure VMs do not have port 80 or 443 opened by default. Additionally, they do not have DNS configured by default. To resolve the issue you need to follow below two steps.
Open http port 80/ 443
The open port option in new Azure VM is a bit obscure. You need to go Virtual Machine -> Settings -> Network Interfaces -> Select Network Interface -> Network Security Group -> Settings -> Inbound security rules as explain in the below two figures.
Now, click on Inbound security rules and add a new inbound security rule to open port 80 as shown in figure below.
Similarly, open port 443 or any other port where your application is hosted. With this you can now access your application via public port number.
But you still cannot access your application through DNS. For that you need to first configure DNS name.
Configure DNS Name
To configure DNS name you need to go to first go Network Interface as explained in the previous step. Now, Select Public IP address -> Settings -> Configuration as shown in figure below:
Now, just provide preferred DNS name and you are free to access, test, share your web app.
