What is the difference between an Azure Web Site and an Azure Web Role

Question

What are the material differences between the new Azure Web Sites and the traditional Azure Web Roles for an ASP.NET MVC application? What reason would I choose a \"web sit

Answer 1

This is a common question, and I would like to give out an excerpt from msdn.

Access to services like Caching, Service Bus, Storage, SQL Azure Database- WebSite:Yes WebRole:Yes

Support for ASP.NET, classic ASP, Node.js, PHP- WebSite: Yes WebRole:Yes

Shared content and configuration- WebSite:Yes WebRole:No

Deploy code with GIT, FTP- WebSite:Yes WebRole:No

Near-instant deployment-WebSite:Yes WebRole:No

Integrated MySQL-as-a-service support-WebSite:Yes WebRole:Yes

Multiple deployment environments (production and staging)-WebSite:No WebRole:Yes

Network isolation-WebSite:No WebRole:Yes

Remote desktop access to servers-WebSite:No WebRole:Yes

Ability to run programs with elevated permissions-WebSite:No WebRole:Yes

Ability to define/execute start-up tasks-WebSite:No WebRole:Yes

Ability to use unsupported frameworks or libraries-WebSite:No WebRole:Yes

Support for Windows Azure Connect/ Windows Azure Network-WebSite:No WebRole:Yes

To get a more in detail, visit this link: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/silverlining/archive/2012/06/27/windows-azure-websites-web-roles-and-vms-when-to-use-which.aspx