Windows Azure: How-to enable classic ASP support

When you’re planning to migrate your existing application to Windows Azure, one of the first things in your compatibility checklist is the compatibility of your app with Windows Azure. Classic ASP web application is always the concern when planning to host on a server. This is because by default, the current/new web servers does not support classic ASP codes. The administrators have to enable it manually.
If you’re familiar with Microsoft Internet Information Service (IIS) server, you know that you will have to manually enable the classic ASP support in IIS. It’s the same in Windows Azure. You will have to specify or ask Windows Azure to enable classic ASP support in your web role.
The easiest way to do this is to do it in the start up task. You will need to add some codes in the .csdef file.

1. Load Visual Studio and open your Solution.
2. Double-click on the .csdef file from the Windows Azure project.
3. In the WebRole tag, add a Startup tag. Then add a Task tag within the Startup tag.

Description of the Task tag:

CommandLine : This is the command line including the parameter to execute.
ExecutionContext : You can specify an executionContext that allows it to run in the same security context as the role or with administrative privileges.
TaskType : Here you can specify how this task is scheduled.

• Simple – the startup process launches the task and does not proceed until the task completes.
• Background – the startup process launches the task in the background and then continues
• Foreground – similiar to a background task, but the role cannot shut down until all the foreground task have ended.