• Introduction
• Prerequisites
• Configuring the Website
• Deploying on Target Servers
• Deploying on Microsoft Azure
• Deploying on a Windows Server
• Down-Syncing Websites to Target Servers

Down-Syncing Websites to Target Servers

After you have uploaded a website to a blob storage and deployed the server functionality on a target server, you need to down-sync the website from the storage to the server.

The synchronization goes unattended but the server needs to “know” where the website is in the blob storage. That’s why you need to manually map the website on the server to the “website” container in the blob container.

You can do the mapping in the “Websites.xml” configuration file in the “deployment” container.

We recommend using CloudBerry Explorer for Azure Blob Storage to access files in the storage. (We assume that you've downloaded and installed CloudBerry Explorer and configured it to access your blob storage.)

1. Open your blob storage in CloudBerry Explorer.
2. Open the “deployment” container, then the folder named "Configuration" in it.
3. Download Websites.xml to your local computer.
4. Edit the Websites.xml file locally and add your website information, specifying:
   • name: the name for your website to be created on a target server
   • storename: the name of the website container where your website is uloaded
5. Save the changes and upload the modified Websites.xml file back to the blob storage overwriting the existing file.

Example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Websites>
  <Website name="mywebsite" storename="mywebsite"/>
</Websites>

^{Listing 8: Websites configuration sample}

Soon after the Websites.xml gets updated in the storage, the target server will start down-syncing the website based on the information you've specified in Websites.xml (where the website files should be taken from) as well as in WebsiteConfiguration.xml earlier (how the website should be configured and bindings set up).

If the down-syncing process hasn't started automatically:

1. Create an empty file named LastSynchronized.txt.
2. Upload it to [website container]/Configuration.

Normally, new and modified files are down-synced, while unchanged ones are left out and no longer existing files are deleted on the target server.

In the scaled-out deployment, it will down-sync the same website to as many target servers as you have.

Please note that in this manner you can down-sync more than one website within the same deployment. (Please see "Multiple Websites" for more information.)