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I am working on Windows 7 OS and Visual Studio 2012 Express for Web.

I have tried installing the Enterprise Library Config console but it says that the extension is not installable on this product. Am guessing I need Visual studio 2012 ultimate for it?

Since I cant afford it, is there any way that I can manually write the rules?

I have been reading the mammoth article of WASABi . Its a lot of theory and I have gone through most of it. I understand what kind of rules i should write to scale up or down but its not exactly a tutorial. For starters I dont know where I should store the rules.xml and how i should reference it to my windows azure application. Or where i should mention which roles should the rules.xml apply to etc. I know about AzureWatch which provides a simple UI to define all the scaling rules but again I cant afford it.

Hence I would really appreciate if anyone can throw some light or some sample tutorial etc to help me understand on how to get started on writing the scaling rules manually.

Thanks

Bitsian
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    Since you mentioned, you can't afford Azure Watch, Windows Azure Management Portal provides scaling capability. Have you looked at that? Also see if your subscription is eligible for MetricsHub through Windows Azure Store. – Gaurav Mantri Nov 05 '13 at 14:46
  • MetricsHub has been absorbed into the Windows Azure Management Portal Autoscaling capability and is no lomger available. As Gaurav indicates, the Management Portal Autoscaling is probably the way to go if you are looking to pay nothing. – Neil Mackenzie Nov 06 '13 at 05:02
  • do be prepared that autoscaling from Azure portal is free while in preview. It may cost money once it goes live. If you're truly looking to pay for nothing, WASABi is your own choice - assuming you can find a place to host the bits – Igorek Nov 06 '13 at 05:07
  • @Everyone But Windows Azure management portal only provides scaling capability based on only two metrics - CPU usage and Queue size. I know requests/sec is the best metric for scaling Web APIs role instance, but from your knowledge would CPU usage suffice for a decent metric to scale API server ? – Bitsian Nov 06 '13 at 06:27
  • It goes out of the scope, but I would **never** scale based on **requests/sec** !! There are much more indicative metrics on the ASP.NET perf. counters one could use. And there are still goodies like AzureScaleMe (https://github.com/two10degrees/AzureScaleMe) that allow you to provide your own logic for scaling and are much more lightweight and easily configurable than the WASABI. – astaykov Nov 06 '13 at 07:59
  • @astaykov Thank you for AzureScaleMe, but any idea how reliable is it? Have you used it before? – Bitsian Nov 06 '13 at 11:00
  • you want **free** and you want **SLA** ... please revise your requirements ... – astaykov Nov 06 '13 at 12:06
  • @astaykov no problem! I think i will go with azure management portal itself. Its been scaling ok with CPU Usage as a metric as well – Bitsian Nov 06 '13 at 14:27
  • @Everyone Please clarify this. If i have my Scale Up wait time as 5mins, then would that mean the management portal will check the CPU usage avg every 5mins to check whether it should scale or not irrespective of whether it has performed any scale action in the past hour? – Bitsian Nov 06 '13 at 14:35

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Absolutely, you can configure the rules in XML and we worked hard to design a usable schema to help you do that. Also, take a look at Labs 2 and 3 from this set for additional guidance.

Do keep in mind that the built-in autoscaling feature in Windows Azure addresses the basic autoscaling needs without a need for hosting anything. I would recommend to look at that, because if it fits your autoscaling requirements, then it’s easier to use. Wasabi, on the other hand, is more flexible. See my post with the comparative analysis.

Grigori Melnik
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