Deploying Ruby On Rails Application On Windows Azure Windows And Linux Instances

In this tutorial am going to explain how you can launch windows and Linux instances on windows azure to deploy a sample ruby on rails application. I assume you have an azure account and if you dont , you can create an account here Azure SignUp. You can subscribe for a one month free trial, in which you get to use most of the azure services for free.

Deploying Rails Application On Linux Instance:

1.Go to azure portal , click virtual machines and then click create a virtual machine option.

2. You can use quick create option or you can select image from gallery and customize the launch. If you want to use keys for your instance , you should go for launching instances from gallery. Here am going to use the Openlogic CentOS 6.3 image to deploy the rails application.

3.For quick create, give a DNS name which will be unique and using which you can access your deployed web application. Select the Openlogic Centos 6.3 from the images and select the extra small instance. Also provide a password, the username by default will be azureuser. Once you filled up all the details, click create virtual machine option.

4. Once the virtual machine is created, connect it using putty.

Refer : How to connect a linux instance using Putty

Setting Up Rails Environment:

1. Update the server

 sudo yum update -y

2. Install the development tools for rails environment

sudo yum -y groupinstall "Development Tools" 

3. You might get a kernal error while group install. If you did, then edit the /etc/yum.conf file and comment the last line #exclude = kernal* and try group install again.

4. Install few dependencies by executing the followinf command

sudo yum -y install ntp zlib zlib-devel sqlite-devel httpd mysql-server mysql-devel curl-devel httpd-devel apr-devel apr-util-devel mlocate manlibxml2-devel libxslt-devel libffi-devel readline-devel

5. Install Ruby version manager (rvm) by executing the following commands.

sudo curl https://raw.github.com/wayneeseguin/rvm/master/binscripts/rvm-installer | bash -s stable

sudo source /etc/profile.d/rvm.sh

sudo rvm install 1.9.3

sudo rvm use 1.9.3 default

6. Install Rails frame work using gem

gem install rails

7. Once rails got installed , you can create a new rails application in /var/www folder. You can create the application anywhere but i prefer it inside www. Execute the followinf command to create a new application.

rails new demo_app

demo_app is the name of the rails application.

8. Now we have an application and in order to access it through the DNS provided by azure you have to specify the inbound firewall rules called endpoints in the azure portal. Click on the virtual machine and select the endpoints option. Click add and add http enpoint, so that you can publicly access the rails application using the DNS provided by Azure.

9. Rails comes with a default webrick web server, so you dont have to install and configure other web server for testing purposes. Execute the following command to start the webrick server with posr 80. By default webrick uses 3000, we will change it to 80 using the -b bind option.