In this article, we will create our first Service Fabric application like Hello World.

Step 1: Install the Microsoft Azure Service Fabric SDK and Tools

Step 2: Right click on Visual Studio and click on “Run as Administrator”. Running as administrator is required to debug in local cluster.

Step 3: Go to File->New Project->Cloud->Service Fabric Application. You won’t see Service Fabric Application template if you haven’t installed the Azure Service Fabric SDK from the link provided in Step 1.

Step 4: Click on Ok and Select Stateful Service. Enter Name of Stateful Service and click OK again.

Step 5: Now once you click OK, your first Azure Service Application is almost ready. Open MyStateFulService.cs and you will notice two methods there CreateServiceReplicaListeners and RunAsync. At this moment, we will CreateServiceReplicaListeners, RunAsyn is the main entry point of service replica. The RunAsync has code which increments the counter, we won’t go in much detail of the code as we are getting started.

Step 6: Open solution explorer and you will notice two projects MySeriveApplication and MyStatefulServce.

MyApplicationService doesn’t contain any code, it contains configuration and reference of MyStatefulSerivce.

MyStatefulService contains the code and logic which executes.

Step 7: Now run the application, it will take few minutes to start the Service Fabric Local Cluster Manager. Once it is started, your application will be deployed in the nodes of cluster and ready for execution. You will see below Diagnostic Events screen.

Step 8: When you expand ServiceMessage with counters, you will notice the code is running in _Node_3. This might be different for you.

Step 9: Now open System tray and you will see Service Fabric Local Cluster Manager. This is not simulation of Service Fabric Environment; it is real service fabric cluster running with 5 nodes.

Now right click and choose Manage Local Cluster option.

Step 10: Service Fabric Explorer show two views and Applications and Nodes. You will notice that there are two applications and 5 nodes.

Expand Application which will bring MyServiceApplicaitonType and MyStatefulApplicationType.

Step 11: Expand MyServiceApplicationType and you will see deployed application and _Node_3 as primary replica where service is running.

Step 12: Put a breakpoint in the first line of RunAsync method of MyStateFulService.cs. Now go back to Service Fabric Explorer and select the primary node in which your service is running. From right top corner of the screen select Actions dropdown and Select Deactivate (restart). This will move the service to another node in the cluster.

Step 13: Confirm node name by entering the node name you want to Restart and click Restart.

Step 14: You will notice the breakpoint will be hit because when Node change happens service starts executing again.

Open DiagnostivEvents and expand one of the Service Message, you will notice now the service is running on _Node_1.

If you notice even though Node switching happened the state of service is not lost even though there is momentary delay in node switching

This ends the article of getting started with Service Fabric.