Understanding the Cloud Service architecture

We now come to the topic Cloud Service architecture. Look at the following diagram:

As you can see, an Azure Cloud Service consists of the following two elements:

• Cloud Services Package: The service package (ServicePackage.cspkg) is a ZIP file and it includes the Service Definition File (ServiceDefinition.csdef) and the Code Assets for the service and the required binary-based dependencies
• Service Configuration File: ServiceConfig.cscfg

As you also can see, the Service Configuration File is outside of the Cloud Service Package. This is because changes in the configuration can be made without interruption at runtime (by uploading a new Service Configuration File). However, changes to the service itself require a redeployment of the Cloud Service Package.

Roles

Let us continue with the next diagram and the other elements of the Cloud Services architecture. These elements are called roles and they are created by the Service Definition File and the code...