Question

I have seen several references to people running Redis on Azure, but no implementation or any sort of ‘howto’ on it. Has anyone seen such an example?

Answer 1

1. Download Redis for Windows – see the section ‘Redis Service builds for Windows’ on https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.Redis. I ended up using the win64 version from dmajkic https://github.com/dmajkic/redis/downloads
2. Create an Azure worker role, delete the default class (you don’t need c# code at all). Add the file redis-server.exe from the downloaded redis source (the exe can be found in redis/src).

3. In the service definition file add the following config

   <WorkerRole name="my.Worker" vmsize="Small">
     <Runtime executionContext="limited">
       <EntryPoint>
         <ProgramEntryPoint commandLine="redis-server.exe" setReadyOnProcessStart="true" />
       </EntryPoint>
     </Runtime>
     <Imports>
       <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" />
       <Import moduleName="RemoteAccess" />
       <Import moduleName="RemoteForwarder" />
     </Imports>
     <Endpoints>
       <InternalEndpoint name="Redis" protocol="tcp" port="6379" />
     </Endpoints>
   </WorkerRole>
   

4. You can refer to the redis server from your web role using the following

   var ipEndpoint = RoleEnvironment.Roles["my.Worker"].Instances[0].InstanceEndpoints["Redis"].IPEndpoint;
   host = string.Format("{0}:{1}", ipEndpoint.Address, ipEndpoint.Port);
   

Hope that helps.