Replatforming WPF and WCF Services to the Cloud: A Comprehensive Guide

2 min readMar 6, 2024

Replatforming your WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) and WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) services from on-premise to the cloud, whether on Azure or AWS, can unlock scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. In this detailed guide, we’ll walk through the step-by-step process, complete with code snippets, to re-platform your services successfully.

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Step 1: Assess Your Current Infrastructure and Dependencies

Before replatforming, assess your existing WPF and WCF services to understand their dependencies, configurations, and resource requirements.

# List dependencies and configurations
Get-Service | Where-Object { $_.DisplayName -like '*WCF*' }

Step 2: Choose Your Cloud Provider: Azure or AWS

Evaluate the offerings and pricing models of Azure and AWS to determine the best fit for your replatforming needs.

Step 3: Set Up Cloud Infrastructure

For Azure:

Create an Azure Account: Sign up for an Azure account if you haven’t already.
Provision Resources: Use Azure Portal or Azure CLI to provision virtual machines, storage accounts, and networking resources.

For AWS:

Create an AWS Account: Sign up for an AWS account.
Provision Resources: Use AWS Management Console or AWS CLI to provision EC2 instances, S3 buckets, and VPCs.

Step 4: Containerize Your WCF Services (Optional)

Consider containerizing your WCF services using Docker for easier deployment and management in the cloud.

FROM microsoft/wcf:4.7.2-windowsservercore-1803
COPY YourServiceFolder /wcf
EXPOSE 80

Step 5: Rehost WPF Application

Deploy your WPF application to a virtual machine or container in the cloud.

New-AzVm -ResourceGroupName YourResourceGroup -Name YourVM -Image Win2019Datacenter -Size Standard_DS1_v2 -Credential $cred

Step 6: Migrate WCF Services

Deploy your WCF services to virtual machines, containers, or platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings in the cloud.

Publish-AzWebApp -ResourceGroupName YourResourceGroup -Name YourWebApp -ArchivePath YourServiceFolder -Force

Step 7: Update Application Configuration

Update application settings, connection strings, and endpoints to point to the cloud-hosted WCF services.

<client>
    <endpoint address="https://yourwcfservice.azurewebsites.net/YourService.svc" binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="BasicHttpBinding_YourService" contract="YourService.IYourService" name="BasicHttpBinding_YourService" />
</client>

Step 8: Secure Your Services

Implement security measures such as HTTPS, firewalls, and access control to secure your services in the cloud.

<bindings>
    <basicHttpBinding>
        <binding name="SecureBasicHttpBinding">
            <security mode="Transport">
                <transport clientCredentialType="None" />
            </security>
        </binding>
    </basicHttpBinding>
</bindings>

Step 9: Test and Validate

Thoroughly test your replatformed services to ensure functionality, performance, and security.

Step 10: Monitor and Optimize

Implement monitoring tools and practices to monitor the performance and health of your cloud-hosted services, and optimize as needed.

Conclusion

Replatforming your WPF and WCF services to the cloud opens up a world of possibilities in terms of scalability, reliability, and cost-effectiveness. By following these step-by-step instructions and leveraging the provided code snippets, you can seamlessly migrate your services from on-premise to Azure or AWS. Remember to plan meticulously, test rigorously, and continuously optimize your cloud infrastructure for optimal performance.