Why does Azure deployment take so long?
I'm trying to understand why it can take from 20-60min to deploy a small application to Azure (using the configuration/package upload method, not from within VS).
I've read through this situation and this one but I'm still a little unclear - is there a weird non-technology ritual that occurs while the instances are distributing, like somebody over at Microsoft lighting a candle or doing a dance?
Answer
As a fellow Azure user, I share your pain - deploying isn't "quick"/"painless" - and this hurts especially when you're in a development cycle and want to test dev iterations on Azure. However, in general deployments should take much less than 60 minutes - and less than 20 minutes too.
Steve Marx provided a brief overview of the steps involved in deployment: http://blog.smarx.com/posts/what-happens-when-you-deploy-on-windows-azure
And he references a deeper level explanation at: http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/pdc2008/es19