Creating your deployment on Microsoft Azure.

Make sure you have your package (.cspkg file) and customized configuration (.cscfg file) ready and a certificate (.pfx file) and the certificate password. You can find all the elements in our downloadable ZIP.

1. Go to https://manage.windowsazure.com/ and log into your account.
   
2. In the lower left corner, click “+ NEW”
3. Select “Compute”, “Cloud Service”, “Custom Create”
4. In the “New cloud service” dialog, specify name, region and subscription. Also check the “Deploy a cloud service package” option. Click “Next ➔”.
5. In the step 2 dialog, specify a Deployment Name and upload the downloaded package and the config file you customized. Also, click the check boxes “Deploy even if one or more roles contain a single instance” and “Add certificates”. Click “Next ➔”.
6. In the step 3 dialog, upload the downloaded .pfx certificate and specify the password (available in the download). Click “Attach certificate”. Click “Finish ✔”.

Your deployment will start – this may take a couple of minutes to complete. Once deployed the web role will be marked as “Starting VM” or “Busy” – in this phase latest .NET is installed on the web role and website data will be downloaded from the blob to the web role, after which your website will appear when you access the URL of your deployment. This may take several minutes to complete.

When your deployment is running, you can use the Azure Portal to monitor your web role(s) and manage instance count and auto scale.

You can also check a trace log for a specific message that signifies that the web role has been deployed properly and now is running. You can use Visual Studio or other 3rd party tools such as Azure Management Studio for monitoring diagnostics data. The message will read something like: Composite.WindowsAzure.WebRole: Ready... ; TraceSource 'WaIISHost.exe' event.

Now that you've deployed the web role in the cloud, you are ready for the final step - having your website published to the web role.