I want to enable Blob Storage for my website, will this plan work?

Question

My current setup is a website hosted with Azure Websites. Unfortunately, due to site growth, I need to enable Azure Blob Storage on the site, but it's not as easy as flicking a switch.

My plan is to switch from an Azure Website over to an Azure VM, and host the website on the VM, and enable a Storage VHD on the VM (mounted at S:\ for example) that is symlinked to the directory where all my file uploads are on my website. So, basically, I would take all the files at C:\inetpub\wwwroot\mysite\uploads\ and drop them into S:\wwwfiles\ and symlink C:\inetpub\wwwroot\mysite\uploads\ to S:\wwwfiles\ so that all existing files will work, and any future files that get uploaded to the site will also go into storage.

I know what you're saying right now, and unfortunately, there's no way for me to change the upload location of the website (hindsight is a bitch).

My question is: Will this plan work? Will it be efficient? Is there a better way to do this? I am by no means an Azure guy, so I don't know if there's a better way or not.

Answer 1

Yes, I believe this will work. I have just connected into a Virtual Machine I already had on Windows Azure after attaching a new disk. I mounted the disk as drive letter E, created a folder Upload and then created a symbolic link to C:\inetpub\wwwroot\mysite\uploads\ using mklink /d C:\inetpub\wwwroot\mysite\uploads\ e:\upload\

I could then put files in e:\upload and see them using dir C:\inetpub\wwwroot\mysite\uploads\

Having said all that, at this is why I asked what the web site is developed in, is that I would seriously consider changing the code to use Cloud Services / Azure Website for the web site and Blob Storage for the files if at all possible.