Nucleus .Net Core CMS

Set up Nucleus in Azure App Service

See also:

  1. If you don't already have one, create an Azure free account. The free App Service tier isn't appropriate for a production site, but you can use it to get started, and upgrade your App Service tier later.
  2. Sign in to the Azure portal, click "App Services" and create an App service. Choose .NET 8 and 64-bit when prompted.
  3. Identify your app service IP address. In the Azure portal App services page, click your App Service, then choose the Networking option under Settings. The IP address is displayed as "Inbound Address". Copy the IP address, you will need this value for step 6.
  4. Select the Configuration menu item (in Settings), then click the Default documents link at the top of the page. Remove all of the default documents, and add a single "/" default document. Click Save at the top of the page.
  5. Return to the Azure portal home page, click "SQL Databases" and create a database.
  6. In the Azure portal SQL databases page, select your database, and click the "Set server firewall" link at the top of the page. Add the IP address that you collected in step 3, then click Save at the top of the page.
  7. Get your database connection information by clicking the Connection strings link. Note that the connection string password is not set in the displayed connection string - you must substitute the password that you entered when you created the database. The connection string is required later, in the Nucleus Setup Wizard.
  8. Connect to your App service using an FTP client. You can get your FTP credentials and endpoint by using the Deployment Center option after selecting your App Service. Click the FTPS credentials link at the top of the page to view FTP information.
  9. Download the install set (zip format) from the downloads page. For a new installation, you will need to download the Nucleus.[version].Install-win_x64.zip file.
  10. Un-zip the install package (zip file) locally, then upload the files to your Azure /site/wwwroot folder.
  11. Create an Azure storage account.
  12. In Azure Portal, open your storage account, select Access Keys from the Security+Networking submenu and click the Show Keys link. Click the copy button next to the first connection string to copy it to the clipboard.
  13. Nucleus writes logs, cache and other files to sub-folders of %ProgramData%\Nucleus by default. In Windows, this is C:\ProgramData\Nucleus, which is an appropriate location for the files. In an Azure App Service, %ProgramData%\Nucleus is mapped to \local\ProgramData, which is treated as temporary storage and is reset every time your Azure App Service is restarted. This is not ideal for logs, so you should configure Nucleus to save log files within the Azure %HOME% folder. For more information, refer to Understanding the Azure App Service file system. Create or edit the appSettings.Development.json or appSettings.Production.json file and set Nucleus:FolderOptions:DataFolder to {WebRootFolder}/App_Data/Nucleus. The {WebRootFolder} token is replaced automatically at run time. 
        "Nucleus:" 
    {
      "FolderOptions": {
        "DataFolder": "{WebRootFolder}/App_Data/Nucleus"
    }

    In an Azure App Service, {WebRootFolder} is replaced at run-time by /site/wwwroot/, so the logs would be written to /site/wwwroot/App_Data/Nucleus/Logs. /site/wwwroot/App_Data is a safe location to use for logs and other Nucleus data because files stored within /App_Data are never directly served by IIS. The /site/wwwroot/ folder is in the Azure App Service %HOME% directory, which Azure App Service treats as persistent storage.

  14. Get your site Url from the Azure portal by clicking "App services", then select your App Service. Click the site Url to launch your site to, run the setup wizard.

Click here to return to the Installing Nucleus page.

Troubleshooting

If your App Service does not launch or returns an error:

  • First, try stopping and starting your App Service.
  • View Application Logs. Select your App Service, then click the App Service Logs option in the Monitoring menu in in Azure Portal. Enable Application Logging(Filesystem) and Web Server logging, then click "Log Stream". Try to browse to your site again, and error details will be shown in the Log Stream page.
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