I am glad to share that my new blog (http://wely-lau.net) is now running WordPress on Windows Azure Platform. Not only .NET can run on Windows Azure, it proves that but PHP can also run well on Windows Azure .

Components Used

Here’re Windows Azure components that I used in my blog:

1. Windows Azure WebRole

Bunch of WordPress’s PHP file are hosted on Windows Azure WebRole. Utilizing PHP SDK for Windows Azure is the trick that make it happens successfully.

2. Windows Azure Worker Role

As we know that, at this moment, SQL Azure does not provide any backup and restore mechanism for customer, I design my own backup and restore strategy. The idea is to spin up a Worker Role that is scheduled to perform daily backup from SQL Azure to Windows Azure Blob Storage.

3. SQL Azure

I use SQL Azure as the backend database to store bunch of WordPress data. This must thank to SQL Server (Azure) Driver for PHP!

4. Windows Azure Storage

Windows Azure Storage is used for the following purpose:

• Contents (including images and files),
• Logs (including traces logs and performance counter logs)
• Database backup files (schema and data)

5. Content Delivery Network

I am aware that lots of my blog post contain images. To ensure better performance accessing my blog, CDN is enabled for Blob Storage to cache contents on edges server.

6. Access Control Service

Visitor are allowed register themselves to my WordPress blog. To tackle the issue of “island-of-identity”, ACS Plugin for WordPress is used, so that you can use either your Live ID, Yahoo ID, Google ID, or Facebook Account to create a user on my blog.