Can I copy/paste my .NET websites to Windows Azure?

I'm currently hosting my websites on Windows 2008 Servers through an old-school hosting company.

I'd like to switch to something like Windows Azure in hope that it'll be a better service.

Is it as easy as copying my .NET websites and databases开发者_运维问答 across or will they not work and might have to be re-coded? I have websites, database and REST services (REST talking with mobile apps).

Would Amazon Cloud be an easier switch?

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Quite a few people have asked similar questions in the past - check out questions/answers like:

• how much of a challenge is it to port a asp.net application to azure?
• Running a .NET app on Azure
• Windows Azure - Transfering .NET Web Application to Azure
• search - https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=%5Bazure%5D+port+site

For a typical ASP.Net SQL Server application, you probably won't have to change too much - but there are always possible problems/challenges in things like Session management and local file storage.

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If you do rely on a lot of local machine customisation - e.g. if you absolutely need access to a persistent disk drive, then one alternative to consider is to use an X-Drive - see, for example, how Umbraco and DNN have been ported - http://azureaccelerators.codeplex.com/, http://dnnazureaccelerator.codeplex.com/ and http://waacceleratorumbraco.codeplex.com/. However, in general, I'd advise not to take this route unless your codebase is large and has to - taking this route will impact your architecture and your scalability and durability.

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You need to recode the site for Azure with main changes in the SQL/Storage area