After some more reading starting here I added a counter to the onRun so I could see if log entries were getting dropped (my gut feel was correct, they were)

public override void Run()
{
int index = 0;
Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging.Logger.Write("Run Start " + DateTime.UtcNow.ToLongTimeString());

while (true)
{
Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging.Logger.Write(“Run Loop ” + index.ToString() + ” ” + DateTime.UtcNow.ToLongTimeString());
index++;
Thread.Sleep(10000);
}
}

So after some trial and error I settled on this initialisation approach as the most robust

public override bool OnStart()
{
CloudStorageAccount.SetConfigurationSettingPublisher((configName, configSetter) =>
{
configSetter(RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue(configName));
});
CloudStorageAccount storageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue(“Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString”));
RoleInstanceDiagnosticManager roleInstanceDiagnosticManager = storageAccount.CreateRoleInstanceDiagnosticManager(RoleEnvironment.DeploymentId, RoleEnvironment.CurrentRoleInstance.Role.Name, RoleEnvironment.CurrentRoleInstance.Id);

var configuration = roleInstanceDiagnosticManager.GetCurrentConfiguration();
configuration.Logs.BufferQuotaInMB = 4;
configuration.Logs.ScheduledTransferPeriod = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1);
configuration.Logs.ScheduledTransferLogLevelFilter = LogLevel.Verbose;

roleInstanceDiagnosticManager.SetCurrentConfiguration(configuration);

EnterpriseLibraryContainer.Current = EnterpriseLibraryContainer.CreateDefaultContainer(new FileConfigurationSource(“web.config”, false));

Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging.Logger.Write(“OnStart ” + DateTime.UtcNow.ToLongTimeString());

return base.OnStart();
}
This sample application seems to work and reliably log all the information I expect to the trace logs.

After confirming my environment was good I modified the sample code and added logging to the OnStart, I also added an OnRun with some logging and a simple while loop.

public override bool OnStart()
{
CloudStorageAccount.SetConfigurationSettingPublisher((configName, configSetter) =>
{
configSetter(RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue(configName));
});

base.Run();
}
Initially the webrole wouldn’t start and then after re-reading the full IIS vs. core post I realised that the entlib couldn’t find its config file so I added

EnterpriseLibraryContainer.Current = EnterpriseLibraryContainer.CreateDefaultContainer(new FileConfigurationSource(“web.config”, false));

I could then see some log entries (note the process name…)

<TraceSource>General</TraceSource>

But my onStart logging wasn’t working and when I looked at the timestamps on the log entries it felt like there were some missing. Time for some more reading…

Back when the Azure SDK V1.3 was released several of my cloud services broke due to the change from core to full IIS. I use the Enterprise Library which was also broken by this update. The Azure team talked about the changes in detail here and SMarx talked about how to fix you configuration problems here. My customer was in a hurry so I just put in the quick ‘n’ dirty hack and moved on. Every so often the warnings in the error list tab would annoy me so I would go back and have another look.

warning CloudServices078: The web role XXX is configured using a legacy syntax that specifies that it runs in Hostable Web Core.

One of these webroles was an SMS Gateway which polled an Azure storage queue for messages to send in the onRun and had two simple asp.net pages which inserted inbound messages and delivery notifications into Azure Storage queues for processing by a queue handler worker role.

The problem was that at 5-15mins for a deploy it was easy to get distracted and with the release of the Azure integration pack nearly 2 years later I figured it was time to sort this properly. I wanted to be able use the Entlib logging etc in the onStart, onRun and ASP.Net pages of an webrole. There was some useful reading here and here.

To reduce the application to a managable size I started with the Azure Integration pack logging hands on lab and this is the key section of webrole.cs

public override bool OnStart()
{
CloudStorageAccount.SetConfigurationSettingPublisher((configName, configSetter) =>
{
configSetter(RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue(configName));
});

return base.OnStart();
}

I built the application and deployed it into the cloud and everything worked as expected. When I went to the default.aspx page and clicked on the button. I use Cerebrata Diagnostics Manager and with this I could see log entries appearing.