Kentico CMS 7.0 RC Windows Azure Deployment Guide - DevNet

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Kentico CMS 7.0 RC Windows Azure Deployment Guide
The CMS.IO namespace acts as an intermediary between the Kentico CMS business layer and various
file storages, including Azure's blob storage. On a standard non-Azure installation, CMS.IO only
overrides the System.IO namespace. On Windows Azure, the namespace uses a provider which works
with the blob storage, creating an imitation of the regular Windows file system.
The CMS.IO namespace can be extended to support any other type of storage, e.g. the Amazon cloud
drive.
Additionally, you can make use of the Azure storage provider and store files in the cloud even if you're
running a non-Azure installation. You can find more information about this approach in the Hybrid
storage scenarios topic.
The file storage is shared across multiple instances, therefore no file synchronization is needed.
Important!
Contrary to Windows file systems, the blob storage is case-sensitive. As a result,
names of all files processed by Kentico CMS are converted to lower case before
saving.
This won't normally affect functioning of the system, although there are a few scenarios
when you will have to take additional actions to prevent unexpected behavior.
Running on multiple instances
The fact that Kentico CMS can run in multiple instances on Windows Azure creates the need for
synchronization of data between the instances. The CMS handles this by considering each instance a
web farm server. Unlike the traditional web farm comprising multiple physical servers, you don't have to
configure the web farm servers manually in the multiple-instance Azure environment. The only
configuration that needs to be done is setting the number of instances in the service configuration file.
Data is synchronized via web farm tasks, which are created and executed automatically.
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