Question

This might sound like a strange request, but I need to test something and need the ability to disable compression on a Windows Azure website. The site is running as a website in preview mode and this means I am not able to log into the VM to adjust the IIS settings.

I updated the web.config file accordingly, but this didn’t make a difference.

<system.webServer>
   <urlCompression doStaticCompression="false" doDynamicCompression="false"/>
</system.webServer>

Compression is still enabled and it seems that it is enabled by default. There are a lot of questions on SO about enabling compression, but I cant seem to find any about disabling compression!

Does anyone have any advice!?

Answer 1

Not every setting in web.config is delegable when deploying your web application to Windows Azure Websites. Some of the settings in web.config are delegable and they reflect in your websites while other settings are respectfully ignored and disabling compression is one of them and that is why you see the above results. Using same exact web.config setting or using Appcmd, you sure can disable compression only if you have enough control on your IIS server. So far if this feature is must important for you, your other options are to use Windows Azure Cloud Service and deploy a Web Role or use Windows Azure Virtual Machines as well.

I am sure that disabling compression feature in Windows Azure Websites is still not delegable and that’s why it is not supported in current preview release of Windows Azure Websites. I can say that it sure is a feature in consideration to include in later releases however, about it’s availability when or if possible, i do not have any comment.