In this tutorial we are going to see how to configure a Windows Azure Website FTP account which is used for file transfer. With Windows Azure we use Webmatrix to upload and download the files from the server and the local in order to make the website changes changes. Here we have the option for the traditional approach using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) but we need to configure and get the credentials. Initially with any hosting environment we use the FTP to upload and download the files from different sources of the server using some of the 3rd party FTP Clients like Filezilla, SmartFTP etc.

As per Wiki, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and uses separate control and data connections between the client and the server. FTP users may authenticate themselves using a clear-text sign-in protocol, normally in the form of a username and password, but can connect anonymously if the server is configured to allow it.

Let us see how to configure Window Azure Website FTP account right from the Windows Azure portal. We will use the Windows Azure Website which we created and deployed initially in our existing article.

Steps:

Open Windows Azure Management Studio and login with your Live Credentials which has the active Azure Subscription using the link http://windows.azure.com. We can see the list of running services under the subscription as shown in the screen below.

Now select the website which we created earlier (f5debug), which will open the website dashboard of the website as shown in the screen below.

We will see the option Reset Deployment Credentials at the right side menu, with this option we can reset the initial configuration of the deployment credentials. Clicking on Reset Deployment Credentials will open a pop up window as shown in the screen below.

We can create a new username and password for the FTP or the GIT environment where the user will be accessible to the entire websites in the subscription rather than we need to create a user for each and every website or the cloud services. Once we provide with a valid user name and password click on the right mark and it will reset the configuration as shown in the screen below.

Where to get the FTP Server details?

This will be interesting, as each and every website will be deployed in different locations the FTP access will differ from one to other websites. So to get the FTP Server details of the particular website, go to the Dashboard of the website and we can see the FTP Server details as shown in the screen below.

Now the deployment can be done with FTP using any of the FTP Clients, here we are going to use Filezilla the most active client available in the market. Download the FTP Client and install on your local machine, once the installation is completed open the client and provide the credentials and the FTP server hostname as shown in the screen below.

On providing the user name f5debugmetro we can see the connection will be erroring out in the Filezilla client, we need to provide with the domain as f5debug/f5debugmeto as shown in the deployment user section on the right side of the Dashboard as shown in the screen below.

On successful connection to the server we can see the directories are listed and the connection established message as shown in the screen below.

We can upload and download the files anytime using the same FTP Credentials without affecting the sites performance. Hope you got some good understanding on managing the website while deploying the files easily with the FTP Client. See you all in the next tutorial mean while Happy Programming!!!