In Windows Azure: What are web role, worker role and VM role?

EDIT 3/3/2013 – updated to reference UDP endpoints, Virtual Machines, and more languages EDIT 6/6/2013 – updated to reflect the discontinuation of VM Role, and update to web/worker role baseline OS images to Windows Server 2012 Good link by @Vladimir. A bit more clarification: All roles (web, worker) are essentially Windows Server. Web and Worker … Read more

What is the difference between an Azure Web Site and an Azure Web Role

Web Roles give you several features beyond Web Apps (formerly Web Sites): Ability to run elevated startup scripts to install apps, modify registry settings, install performance counters, fine-tune IIS, etc. Ability to split an app up into tiers (maybe Web Role for front end, Worker Role for backend processing) and scale independently Ability to RDP … Read more

“The certificate chain was issued by an authority that is not trusted” when connecting DB in VM Role from Azure website

2022 Update – This answer (as comments point out) provides an explanation and stop gap, but also offers some better recommendations including purchasing and installing a proper cert (thanks to numerous community edits). Please see also the other highly voted answers in this thread, including the one by @Alex From Jitbit below about a breaking … Read more

Hata!: SQLSTATE[HY000] [1045] Access denied for user 'divattrend_liink'@'localhost' (using password: YES)