What is the best way to update data in all of my Azure instances?
I have several instances, each of which runs the same web role. When a role is loaded, data is read from the blob repository to the local store. With interruptions, the information used by the site will be updated. I want to be able to notify each instance programmatically in order to get updated data from the blob repository to the local instance repository so that each instance is updated.
One idea is to write a custom client program to invoke a web service as a website role, passing the identifier of the role to update. If the endpoint is a role identifier, then the instance is updated. If the client does not try again until all instances report that they are updated. Is this a good approach or is there a built-in method in Azure for this?
I looked at a separate thread that periodically checks for the update flag, although I worry that my instances stop syncing.
There is not a lot of data, so I can put it in the Azure cache. However, I am concerned about network latency using the cache. Is Azure Caching Good?
Another idea is to simply reload the instances one by one (with the update operation performed when the role starts).