When a Windows Azure worker role instance is rebooted from within the Azure portal, are the contents of the e:\approot folder deleted? I have an elevated startup task which checks for the existence of a file in this folder before adding some registry settings. This has worked in the past but is now failing because the file it expects to find is no longer there following a portal-induced reboot. If I perform a 'shutdown' command from within the startup task, the instance reboots but the contents of e:\approot are unaffected.
Answer is that when the Reboot button is clicked on the Azure portal, the contents of the AppRoot folder are deleted and the package redeployed.
To test, deploy something (anything...) to an Azure instance. RDP onto the instance and create a file (test.txt) in the AppRoot folder (this will be on the E: or F: drive).
Click the Reboot button on the portal. Wait for restart, then RDP onto the instance again - test.txt no longer exists.
Note that if you RDP onto the instance and choose Restart from the Windows UI, then test.txt is not deleted.