In my previous post (http://thinkfirstcodelater.com/blog/?p=3407) I showed you how to use the Windows Azure Cross Platform command line tools to view the scalability settings of a Windows Azure Mobile Service. In this post I’ll show you how to use the command line tools to change the scalability settings of a Windows Azure Mobile Service.

Once again, just a reminder that I’m using the command line tools on a MacBook Air with OSX (Mavericks) installed, and I’m using Google Chrome as my default browser. However, the experience should be identical on Windows and Linux as well.

Open an instance of your command line (Terminal, Bash, Command Prompt, etc.) and type the following:

azure mobile scale change -h

As you can see from the output, the azure mobile scale change command is the command to use to change the scalability settings of a Windows Azure Mobile Service. Besides the servicename parameter, there are two other options you can specify

• -t, —tier. The tier you want your Windows Azure Mobile Service to run in. Currently there are three tiers available
  • free. In the free tier you can have up to 10 free services/month. You also get up to 500K API calls, 500 active devices, 1 scheduled job and one 20 MB database. In the free tier you do not have the ability to scale.
  • standard. The standard tier currently costs $25/month/unit and includes 1.5M API calls, an unlimited number of active devices, 10 scheduled jobs and one 20 MB database. In the standard tier you have the ability to scale up to 6 units.
  • premium. The premium tier costs $199/month/unit and includes 15M API calls, an unlimited number of active devices, 10 scheduled jobs and one 20 MB database. In the premium tier you have the ability to scale up to 10 units.

  For full pricing details please see http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/mobile-services/.

• -i, —numberOfInstances. The number of instances you want your Windows Azure Mobile Service to run on (only available for the standard and premium tiers).

Let’s proceed by moving an existing Windows Azure Mobile Service from the free to the standard tier by typing the following into your CLI, substituting where necessary:

azure mobile scale change -t standard ‘[YOUR MOBILE SERVICE NAME]‘

I used the following:

azure mobile scale change -t standard zumo-00005′

Once the command completes, you can use the azure mobile scale show command that I discussed in my previous post (http://thinkfirstcodelater.com/blog/?p=3407) to verify the changes.

You can also verify this by going to the Windows Azure Management Portal and looking at the SCALE page for you mobile service.

Now, let’s move this service to the premium tier and increase the instance count by one. Enter the following into your CLI, once again substituting where appropriate:

azure mobile scale change -t premium -i 2 ‘[YOUR MOBILE SERVICE NAME]‘

I used the following for my mobile service:

azure mobile scale change -t premium -i 2 ‘zumo-00005′

Once again, you can use the azure mobile scale show command to verify the changes.

That’s it. In my next post I’ll show you how to use the Windows Azure cross platform command line tools to restart a Windows Azure Mobile Service.

Did you know you can try Windows Azure for free for 30 days? Just go to http://aka.ms/thecloud and sign up.