Microsoft Azure Training - [27] Azure Websites - Part 4 - Azure Website settings (Exam 70-533) Video Lecture | Microsoft Azure: A-Z Guide - Database Management

hi everyone this is Shauna smell from
the cloud Ranger and you are viewing the
Microsoft Azure training today we are
going to talk about is your website
settings this is the part four of the as
your websites
Suri's so we have introduced and got
into some hands-on you know creation of
as your website's publishing content and
how to publish content slots and things
as such today we are going to go into
more of the systems part of it where we
go this will be sort of similar to
setting up the i/o settings okay so as
your website settings is similar to
highest settings a lot of things will be
familiar if you are already used to
configuring is for different scenarios
and different things and the way the
session is going to be today is that I
will jump right into showing you where
the settings are and what the settings
are and take you from there so let's go
to our client machine and currently we
do not have any website created but as
you can see I'm obviously logged into my
my subscription here let's go ahead and
it's a clean slate there should be
nothing set up already perfect so let's
go ahead and click on new and you should
be quite familiar with this by now
we are going to just create a web app or
a web site let me bring your website
obviously I'm going to name something
unique Ranger web site is already taken
as you can see so we'll do range your
website 1-0 for example okay
create a new plan I will just name mine
Ranger app plan yes one standard here
name my resource group of Ranger is to
resource group subscriptions the same
and obviously my location is east us too
and whatever is going to be the one you
want to choose from your look close to
your location
I don't want to pin this to start but
let's go ahead and create this website I
am going to be back after this
that is up and running all righty the
site has been created we can see range
our website 10 let's go ahead and click
on that and we are going to browse the
site to actually find out if the site is
up and running obviously it says it's
running over here I'm assuming when we
come over here it will be up and running
okay so we're not going to deploy
anything we just got to keep the site
the way it is right now what we are
interested in this time is actually go
to this all settings over here let's go
ahead and click on that and this is
where all the settings are okay so like
I mentioned before that depending on
what you are trying to do this is
probably the first thing you want to
view after you have created a website in
production to see if everything is up to
specs on what do you want it to be now
since as your web sites or web app is it
has or a platform as a service option
for Missouri you do not have access to a
virtual machine where you can actually
go and pull up your iOS settings and
start working there so you won't be able
to bring up an IAS console but Microsoft
has given all the properties your
website might need to be customized for
or tweaked to you know achieve what
you're trying to do so we're not going
through we are not going to go through
each and every option but this is a good
this is a good opportunity for you to
see or at least browse through all the
options the sites may have okay and the
ones at least that you can tweak so if
we go to properties here obviously it
opens a window you can see the current
URL you can actually see that what what
is used to connect to FTP if you want to
deploy through FTP what the location is
so the properties basically gives you
some basic information about this site
okay let's go to application settings in
application settings you can see what's
the current dotnet framework version if
you're going to use PHP these are the
separate versions that are available to
you that's quite easy to change you
could literally just click on this and
change that version depending on what
you're trying to do
currently Java is not run
on this but if you wanted you could
actually have selected the Java version
then you have Python the platform is
32-bit platform WebSockets always on
these are different options that azure
provides you or exposes for you to
configure okay we'll probably be
spending some time more time on the app
setting some connection strings today
and I'll show you how these are done and
what these actually are used for then
you have default documents means that
when somebody hits the root website if
it's default our HTM or index dot PHP or
HTM then you basically do not have to
you know write the inter website URL it
will just find this name and it will
just bring the website up directly so
for example if we clicked on this one
the reason you don't have to go over
here and put whatever that HTML or ASP
or whatever is because that's the
default document actually the default
document on this one is hosting start
dot HTML okay so let's actually copy
this I'll show you that if you put this
over here directly it will still be the
same page but just because this is
actually one of the default documents
you do not have to put this and you can
just go to the root directory and the
page will show up okay so that's what
and handler mappings these are options
where if you have like a PHP or you know
any other Python or whatever script
extension you want to basically if you
want to rather than having the one
that's provided to you if you want to
provide an executable which will process
that extension or that script you can
obviously mention that here and of
course virtual directories you can
create virtual directories over here and
this is similar to everything once again
if these options are all provided to you
on is so if you are familiar with is
you'll find this to be surprisingly
quite familiar and quite easy because
they're exposed all at one spot so it's
easy to view and see what the settings
are okay there are more things in the
part of the settings that we are
actually not going to go through here
you can see that there is ASCII
so you scale up and down on you as your
website troubleshooting authorization
you can put a custom domain deployment
credentials I believe this is the
deployment Christian we had to set up
when we were doing the FTP deployment
slots currently we do not have any
deployment slots web jobs then let's see
over here you can actually see if we
have any web jobs up and running
obviously this web site was just created
and we know there isn't any traffic
routing traffic managers so a bunch of
settings are over here the one mostly
will be interested in today's the
application settings though they call it
the application settings there are a
bunch of other settings that are here
that are related to the web site the
reason they're calling this is
application settings is because now
they're calling this with app or web
application rather than a website but
this is where we'll be most interested
in okay so this is where you would come
and view all your site settings once
again from the all settings let's go to
our slides right now and discuss couple
of concepts before we get back here so
like I mentioned earlier that we are
going to deal with the connection
strings and application settings we will
get into details so what I'm trying to
first before getting to that concert
says that every website will have a
config file and we have seen that when
we were deploying our website we found
out that there's a config file that was
always being uploaded with the site or
deployed with the site so the config
file will have a lot of configuration
information of the web application and a
lot of things are stored in the config
files now there are certain information
that are not the best practice for
storing so for example if you have a
connection string or you have like some
sort of a web application setting that
requires a username and password
technically you are mentioning that
username and password in the config file
now this config file is a text file you
you could just pretty much open it it's
in an XML format so what happens is that
anybody who gets hold of this
big file will be able to get those
credentials so certain information in
config files should not be stored and as
your understands that also and utilizing
the website or the website settings so
what will happen the website settings
application settings what will happen is
that the information that you would not
install in or should not have in config
files can be stored there so what will
happen is people will do not have access
to those credentials for example
directly from it takes fun because they
are now stored somewhere so that is the
main goal in azure that it has provided
a nice interface even with PowerShell to
store that and when you bring up your
web application bring it up during
runtime so I'm going to get into a
little bit more details in that so it
will start making more sense so let's
move on to our next slide the first
thing we want to talk about connection
strings so I kept mentioning connection
string what connection strings are and
if you have worked with web application
or set up web applications before some
of you already know what it is but for
the ones who do not know what a
connection string is it's actually a
database connection string so what
happens is that it's a way for your web
application to connect to the back-end
database so technically so far all the
websites that we have built like hello
world or whatever these are static HTML
pages they did not go connect to any
database or bring any information out
from any database these days it's very
rare to have just a website with static
pages it has to be it data driven
website means it's interacting with
databases it's collecting information
it's writing information and it's
interacting with the backend database
and this could be quite this could be
quite robust like you could have you
know you could interact with the
database and display those databases in
various ways have multiple queries that
are written so that's how most of the
web applications or websites are these
days so how do you tell your website how
to connect to the backend database the
server and everything else this is where
the connection strengths come come
to play you basically tell to your web
app that this is the connection strain
means this is the server you need to
connect to these are the credentials
this is the database that you need to
connect to and once you have connected
to that then we are going to run those
queries on the website to pull those
information or right information so
connection strings are very important to
any data-driven website and most web
applications these days most likely will
have some sort of a connection string to
connect to a back-end database or
something like that so as your supports
connection strings out-of-the-box for
four different things what is as your
sequel DB as your sequel DB is like
another pass option so you could have a
platform as-a-service
database server where you basically do
not have to go install database servers
or anything like that
you basically just upload your database
and as your does everything for you in
the backend it hosts the database for
you so technically it is similar to what
we are doing that we don't have to do
installation of server and IES feature
same way you won't have to install a VM
and install the sequel server it's done
for you so as your supports the
connection strings for as your sequel DB
then you have the regular sequel
database server so for example you have
a virtual machine that you have created
and you want to install sequel server
over there and have your sewers websites
connect to that VM to the sequel
database server there's a condition
strain for that then of course my skiff
my sequel server which is also something
that's very popular with open source
even not open source my sequel it's
quite robust server just like sequel
database similar features and a lot of
things
esra provides that as well so chances
are if you are doing like a WordPress
site or something you will need a my
sequel server right so Microsoft Azure
provides that support as well and then
you have custom like something that's
not out of the box Microsoft allows you
to create a custom string so you can
connect to other database platforms I
mean by no means sequel as your sequel
as your sequel or sequel server database
or by sequel server this Oracle there's
a lot of other database platforms out
there and Microsoft provides a custom
capability of
a connection string to get there and the
best part about doing this is since the
connection string is not provided in the
web config file so on premises I know we
used to do this a lot before and now it
does you know you have other ways to
kind of you know store your connection
strings as well in is but we still have
this connection string specified in a
web config file so the website would
always refer to the web config file to
get the connection string so and it was
not secure because you are putting your
username and password and everything in
there so now having this as some sort of
a I mean notice not having this as you
know less secure on a web config file
what we are doing is taking this
connection string and storing it in as
your as your website settings and what
we are doing this is making this
available to the web site during runtime
and during the runtime of the web site
it actually has access to say an
environment variable where this
information is written so when we store
this these are actually located as
environment variable on the VM itself so
the web application can go and access
that and nobody else has access to that
string so let's go ahead and look at an
example of how a connection string looks
so this is a connection string example
what what microsoft as your website does
is that it does this in a pair so what
it says is that I'm going to have a key
and a value for storing this kind of
information
this goes for connection string or
application settings both okay so here
you can see that it create we created a
key called connection there's a little
typo here so what I'm saying is the
connection Ranger DB let me actually fix
that actually no I just realized that
was the right thing I had to read and
it's connection to Ranger database
that's what I'm trying to say over here
so this key says that connection to
ranger DB so that's how you will
identify this a string and the valley
of that key is and over here I'm using
and as yours sequel database so a pass
option so this is the server name if you
had to create a sequel database on as
yours the sequel pass option something
we'll go about in the future sessions
and show you how to actually really do
this but for now we'll just access into
it you know database server that's what
this necessarily is and we have the
database Ranger DB and we are showing
that this is the user ID to get there
and the password I'm using a very simple
password or obviously yours is going to
be a little bit more complicated than
this and trusted connection I'm saying
it's going to be false and encrypted
it's true so what I'm trying to say over
here is that this key will have the
information on how to connect to a
database server how to connect to the
database and this is the title here it's
a DAT a how will connect to the ranger
DB database and it will connect using
these credentials and you know these are
all the configurations for this
connection string so this is how the
website or the web app will connect to
connect to the database obviously if you
are looking at something like this for
the first time you'll notice that having
this in your web config would be very
you know it'd be very unsecure because
you are putting your credentials you're
telling which database to connect to
anybody could get hold of this
information and then connect to the
database by other means and do whatever
they need to do so in s your websites
what we are going to do is we're going
to store this as a key and a value okay
so once that as your website settings
have this information your website can
actually access this during the runtime
as an environment variable and there are
many ways to do this
like I mentioned that there are there
were four options so in our previous
slides we said the visit the four
different options for connection string
that has your support what happens is
you can see when your web application or
web site will try to access this
information it will access in this way
it will first have sequel as your
connection strength that's what it means
so this is this by looking at this I can
understand
is actually secure as yours I mean as
your sequels connection string so this
one it will try to first you'll have to
write this as the variable name
underscore and then put the key value
there so it will be secured as your
connection string connection to Ranger
DB so you have to write the whole thing
in a web app to actually access this
information if you're using a Microsoft
sequel server this will be your
environment variable if you are using my
sequel or something custom so these are
the variables you will have to use to
access this connection strings during
runtime and not only this is important
for production this is absolutely
important for you exam as well that you
understand this for environment
variables and how they can be used to
access this connection is straight okay
so let's go to our Clyde computer and
I'm going to show you how to acquire
exactly where you put this information
so we are back to our site settings here
so we are going to go to all all
settings application settings and in
application settings if you scroll down
like I said there's a key and the value
so these are the connect connection
strings so this is where the name of the
key would be so this is where we'd be
putting that connection to connection is
going to the therapy arranger database
whatever hat and the entire value would
actually go over there and here you are
sort of mentioning that you know this is
a sequel database
what sequel database here means that
it's the azure sequel database so
there's a platform as a service but it
could be a sequel server or my sequel
server or a customer serve
I mean I'm a custom server ok and there
are a bunch of slot settings over there
you can put as well so once again this
is just a key value pair that's what
Microsoft as your websites or web
applications call it it's a key value
pair that you have a key and you have a
value and obviously you can have
multiple keys and values in here right
now I do not have anything set up so I'm
not going to go into details of
developing a website where we will
actually go and pull up database from
somewhere in the
back end it's a little bit out of the
school for this exam or a little bit out
the scope for you know what I'm trying
to do here but if you are and web
application developer this is where
you'd be putting your connection strings
as and as they I don't know
infrastructure administered or systems
administrator if the developer provides
you the connection string this is where
you put the connection string as well
okay and having as your as your baseline
or having as your as you're you know
primary platform you can see that the
option of having your website as your
web sites which is a path and again
connecting to a sequel as your as your
sequel these are very out of the box I
mean you could literally be having a web
driven or data-driven web site up and
running in a moment because you don't
have to bring up your is installed VM
and do all of that you don't have to
install a VM and you know you know
install and configure its sequel server
you could be bringing up a data-driven
website in a very short amount of time
okay so that's all about the connection
strings now what we want to talk about
is a let's go back to the slides and
we're going to talk about the
application setting so what our
application settings application
settings are anything or it's some sort
of a resource that your web application
or website uses for some information so
I'll give you a I mean it's I mean you
could use application settings for like
hundreds of different things but I'll
give an example so for example you have
your as your website which has a form
you're filling it up and you know you
want that form to be emailed to some
email address so how does your website
know how to send this email so you would
have or you need to have access to an
SMTP server and that SMTP server once
again will have credentials and
basically your website will take that
content of that form or feedback or
whatever and take that as an email and
relay it through your SMTP server to for
you to go email server so how does your
website get to send
information well one is as usual back in
the days we put in in the web.config
file and you know the web.config file
just like connection string will have
the information for your SMTP server and
it's a variable or it's a key that we
would have in the web config that we
read and we'll find out what this
information and wait to all of that
application settings similar to
connection settings is once again a key
and a value pair and what you can do is
you can store anything there so for
example I could go and tell that one of
my applications setting is my SMTP
server and the value of that is the
entire string or the entire information
on how to connect to the SMTP server and
this is similar but you know connection
strings are just for databases but
application settings could be for
numerous things it could be also an IP
address to a server it could be an IP
address to a web service that your
website needs to connect to for example
to like you create a website it goes to
the weather network to bring up the
weather so what it can do is that you
can have an app setting where you say
hey go go collect that information from
the app setting and you will know how to
get to the weather network and pull up
the information so you can see app
settings are used for many things and I
mean I can think of a hundred different
things so you can use this for and your
website could use that for so similar to
not putting this information in a web
config as Europe provides you that
application settings option where you
can have a value and a key and similar
to how connection string was accessed
you can access this by this app setting
underscore and the key so for connection
string we had all these options and in
app setting it is just app setting and
the key value and the key will pull up
the value and provide that information
okay so just to reiterate during the
runtime of the website these are
actually available as environment
variables so as soon as they access this
environment variables there may you know
there are many ways to do this with your
code to access this information I'm not
gonna get into that but this is how
you've been accessing this information I
want to actually go right now - my
client machine and show you what this is
stored
so you can see in app settings there is
already in app settings it's it's called
website North version node default
versions so as your when it creates your
site already has an app site AB setting
with this value so you could have
another app settings over here you can
just call this key as you know SMTP
server for example and you can probably
have the you know the server's IP over
here the mail servers IP or more
information depending on what you are
trying to do obviously during the
runtime it's going to have that
application settings underscore and then
have this key to search and get this
value okay so that's very basic about
what app settings can do and how to
access and to store and collect or
retrieve the app settings from is Europe
so let me see if I missed anything over
here so these are all the settings that
you can access and do from here
feel free to actually explore this since
this is I mean you're creating a test
site feel free to look into and find out
that what this application settings does
and you know you know find out all the
capabilities look into probably if
you're in production looking to one of
your production deployments see that if
you had any customized is setting that
you had and how to do that in Azure as
well sometimes you don't touch this at
all a lot of times you don't have to
come to application settings and do
anything for whatever you are doing
which is rare though because you will at
least in the connection string for
databases and sometimes you have to come
and have to make sure like for example
you're making a PHP side you want to
make sure that you are using something
off PHP that's one you have label
probably in five to six so you have to
come and make sure that you have done
that save that information you have to
make sure that you have changed all the
settings and sometimes you leave this
completely alone like for example when
we were doing the deployment example we
had nothing to do over here so we left
this as it was okay so let's copy that
go back to the slides I want to show you
how some of these things are done in
PowerShell so the common command late or
the main command late you'll keep
thing over here is the set as your
website this is a very important command
lit like if you do a get as your website
you should be able to see all the
websites there if you do set as your
website you can go and change the
settings in PowerShell so the way you do
that is set as your website and the name
of your website over here I actually did
not put the - name but you could put
that this is the default parameter so
range your website I'm changing the web
sockets here to true so I'll show you
what this was doing
I have something called here as the web
sockets I'm not getting into details and
what the website does but you can click
this little exclamation here and you can
see what this web sockets does I'm just
trying to turn it to true so what you
can do is set as your website and go and
do it - web sockets true similarly
there's another option called set as
your website - HD to be logging enabled
I'm enable the log in for HTTP you can
do that as well so the basic thing to
note here is that it's the set as your
website command line you can always go
and look for some it help on set as your
website from the powershell and you
should be able to see all the options
that are available to you so you can
actually do a get command set as your
website or set as your website and you
know look at details or examples and
it'll give you the entire all the
options that are available in fact MSDN
has details about all command lifts so
you can go to MSDN and look for set as
your website and to show you all that
information the next thing i want to
show the two things we have discussed
about in great detail was the connection
strings as well as the application
settings so next one is the connections
string so my connection strings so
basically this is where I'm setting up
the key and the value for the entire
connection string I did not put one over
here but this is where your connection
string would be the thing that I want to
primarily show over here to set the
connection strings it's set as your
website the name of the website and -
connection strings and you basically put
the entire connection string over here
so this would go and update the
connection string for you as your
website that's how you destroy it
through PowerShell similar to your app
setting said I actually went and created
a couple here because I wanted to show
you how the key and the value thing was
done so my app settings I'm saying that
is going to be a hash table in a hash
table you have a key and the value so
that's exactly what we need a key and
the value so what I'm saying is that my
app setting variable will have a key
it's called for example Ranger SMTP
server and the value of that is mail
server cloud ranger meant for example so
the way once again you said that is set
as your website and this is a website
and you called the - app settings and
you put the entire app settings there
how do you access this later well we
just mentioned in our previous slide you
would have app settings underscore
Ranger SMTP server that's how you access
it during runtime from your website how
do you access this connection string
well this connection would be connection
strings so let's go back to our previous
slides here sequel as your connection is
string for example and you would go
sequel as your connection string
underscore and you would put the entire
connection string so the value of the
connection string would be provided over
here so you take the value you put that
over there so this is how you do it in
PowerShell there's not a whole lot to
the session because these are how you do
it and the concepts behind it the reason
I'm not going and doing this in a proper
website and deploying it is because you
know you can do this in numerous ways
and unless you are a developer I
personally do not see a reason for you
to do that however to support a
developer as an infrastructure person or
as a systems person you should know how
these things interact a lot of times
I've seen in production that someone
will set up IAS for example and the
developer takes over is to actually find
out that the kind of settings they want
to do right but not this is not always
something you would be this is not
something you'll be always doing in a
regular basis because you desire
settings that we do once and you leave
it alone and let the developer access
them or do whatever they need to do so
for your exams or any of production work
this is almost that's all you need feel
if you are a developer feel free to play
with the settings write a little
application that can actually go and
retrieve the settings and see how your
web application works okay so that it's
a very short session that's all I have
for today
so as usual our training site is at
cloud range at net forward slash as your
training YouTube that's where you're
probably viewing this right now is at
four slash cloud Ranger Network Twitter
is at cloud Ranger blog and you can
always email me at Shawn at cloud Ranger
dotnet recently somebody inquired
something on email they wanted some
consulting for their enterprise and they
asked if I was interested in doing
something like that I'm currently not
interested in taking engagements
directly for production work that's just
because my day time commitment and you
know the stuff that I am usually busy
with but so I'm not doing anything on
the site I'm not taking anything
personally to get into an engagement to
provide solutions to enterprises but I
know a lot of people including my
organization who can provide you
services for a sure
let it be migration let it be
consultation let it be you know getting
him started this will be something I
would absolutely like to address and I
know really good people who'd love to do
this for you so feel free to still can't
contact me if you want some help if it's
something sorry if this is something
that you want to you just want to want a
little bit help with I could obviously
send you through email or if you want
some help with exams but if it's a
full-fledged engagement do email me and
I'll get you sorted out I'll connect you
with the right people who can do that
for you
so I just wanted to put that outside
anyways thank you for viewing and I will
be seeing you in my next session