I'm looking for the current (2013) recommendation for Session State management on Windows Azure. There is a number of articles I found on the web but they reference older mythologies. I thought I found the latest method in this Microsoft article but when I went got to step 2 that says to setup Caching in Windows Azure Management Portal, it wasn't an option. I'm assume that there is a newer methodology that I just didn't see.
Here are my requirements:
- All load balanced instances of the application can use a shared Session State.
- That session state is not affected if one of the web role instances fails.
Basically I'm looking for the equivalent to out-of-process storage providers such as Session State Service or SQL Session State option that are used in non-Azure ASP.NET deployments.
One other concern I have to using the Cache is what are the scenarios when sessions are deleted? Normally I think of Cache as not guaranteed because of expiration and making room for newer cache items. I want to make sure sessions don't start to disappear because they are in Cache.
UPDATES:
- I found this Microsoft article and I'm going through the steps, it doesn't have a date last updated but seems to be recent. I'd still like to know if there is a better solution based on my requirements.
- I found this FAQ from Fall 2012 that answers the question about the preferred Caching options.