Azure in my cloud

For one of my projects at work I’m trying to figure out what the best way of sending email from a Windows Azure application is.

Installing your own SMTP server in the cloud is not recommended for a couple of reasons. The main one, not having a static IP, which is a requirement when configuring the SMTP server to its DNS and PTR records.

So that leaves me with a few other choices:

1. Use an on-premise SMTP server
2. Use a third party email provider
3. Use our new Office 365 to relay mail

Well option 1. isn’t going to be sustainable for the long run seeing as our on-premise Exchange server is being replaced by Exchange Online which is part of the Office 365 offering.

Option 2. Is a very good option and probably the best on which I will elaborate shortly.

For my setup I chose option 3, for the most part because I liked the idea of having a full Microsoft solution.

So what exactly did I do? I created myself a MVC.Net 3 application that includes the following class:

/// <summary>
/// Sends email
/// </summary>
public class EmailNotifier
{
    readonly string smtpUserName;
    readonly string smtpPassword;
    readonly string fromEmailAddress;
    readonly string smtpServer;
    readonly string smtpPort;

    public EmailNotifier()
    {
        smtpUserName = RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("SmtpUsername");
        smtpPassword = RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("SmtpPassword");
        smtpServer = RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("SmtpServer");
        smtpPort = RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("SmtpPort");
        fromEmailAddress = RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("EmailAddress");
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Sends an email to specfied address <paramref name="emailAddress"/>.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="emailAddress">The email address.</param>
    /// <param name="subject">The subject.</param>
    /// <param name="body">The body.</param>
    public void SendEmail(string emailAddress, string subject, string body)
    {
        var message = new MailMessage(fromEmailAddress, emailAddress)
        {
            Subject = subject,
            Body = body,
            IsBodyHtml = false,
            BodyEncoding = Encoding.UTF8
        };
        
        var smtpClient = new SmtpClient(smtpServer, int.Parse(smtpPort))
        {
            Credentials = new NetworkCredential(smtpUserName, smtpPassword),
            EnableSsl = true
        };
            
        smtpClient.Send(message);
    }
}

As you can see nothing special just a simple class using the System.Net namespace to send email directly via the SmtpClient class. Just note line 40 using SSL is required.

As for the SMTPserver and Port settings we need to retrieve those from Office 365. If you login to the account, from which name you will be sending the email from, go to the account settings page and at the bottom you’ll find the Settings for POP, IMAP and SMTP Access.

So nothing to it! But wait there is a little caveat I should warn about. Unlike your on-premise SMTP server, Office 365 has some limits as to the amount of recipients a single user can send emails to. These limits can be found in the Office 365 help. So I have a limit of 500 emails recipients I can send email to, good enough for me.

If your requirement is to send lots and lots of email this might not be the best solution and that’s why I would recommend Option 2 too use a third-party email provider. (ie. unifiedemail, sendgrid)

Whilst tinkering with my solution, I’m trying out different configurations which sometimes involve adjusting my transformation templates I’ve configured on the web.config’s.  Unfortunally the Windows Azure Tools 1.3 version packages the solution, does the transforms BUT doesn’t put them in the web application folder. The files are stuck in the obj\release\transformwebconfig\transformed folder.

My quick fix for now is to, remote desktop in and copy the file by hand. But of course this is just a cheap transient solution which won’t survive a Re-Image.

Keep you updated!

Update: 08-02-2011

What did I found out thus far: Webtransformations do work if it is the main webrole/site being transformed. But if you have virtual directories pointing to other webprojects in your solution the behavior is as mentioned earlier.

Publish packages are actually encrypted zip files. For debugging purposes you can turn of encryption by adding the _CSPACK_FORCE_NOENCRYPT_ environmental variable to your system variables and set it to true.

If you wonder what the publish… – action really does, it calls for MSBUILD file Microsoft.CloudService.targets which can be found at: C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\Cloud Service\1.0\Visual Studio 10.0\.

If you want to view the output of the publish you’ll have to adjust your Visual Studio settings: Tools –> Options.. –> Project and Solutions –> Build and Run, set the MSBuild project build output verbosity at Detailed.

…. keep you updated

Update 2:

Submitted a bug at microsoft connect: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/641913/visual-studio-azure-tools-sdk-1-3-not-packaging-multiple-sites-correctly