Different Options To Run Your Application In Microsoft Azure

If you are a beginner to Cloud technology, I would recommend reading the series of articles on Microsoft Azure.

 

When we develop an application and want to run it in Microsoft Azure Cloud (because the cloud provides scalability, security, etc.). there are a lot of options in Azure for running your application. These include VMs (Virtual Machines) to containers to Cloud Services to Azure Batch to Logic Apps.

 

Here is the list of options for running your application in Azure.

1. Virtual Machines
2. Azure Kubernetes service
3. Azure Container Instances service
4. Azure Batch
5. Azure Service Fabric
6. Azure Cloud Services
7. Azure App Services Web Apps or Mobile Apps
8. Azure Function Apps
9. Logic Apps

 

Options to run applications in Azure

 

You can run your application in an Azure Virtual Machine. This is like any other VM, only running in Azure. This is a managed virtual machine service in the cloud that you can use to run your application. There are different types of machines which you can create like Windows, Linux, etc.

 

 

NOTE - You need to have two virtual machines for the above given SLA.

 

You can also run your application in a container and let Azure manage your containers using Azure Kubernetes Service. You use this service to run and orchestrate multiple containers that make up your application. This is similar to hosting your application in a virtual machine, but the main difference between containers and VMs is that containers start and stop in seconds, whereas VMs start and stop in minutes. Containers are much more lightweight than virtual machines. Kubernetes service is a managed version of the Kubernetes container orchestrator. Kubernetes services run in Azure on a cluster of virtual machines.

 

 

You can also use Containers and have Azure run them in the lightweight Azure Container Instances service. The Azure Container Instances service is meant for running single containers at a time which also start and stop in seconds. You can run both Linux and Windows-based instances.

 

 

You can also run your application in an Azure App Services Web App using the Web App for containers service.

 

 

You can also run your container in Azure Batch, which is a scheduler service in Azure that can orchestrate massive workloads. You can also deploy your application to Azure Batch without a container. You can also run your application in Azure Service Fabric. Server Fabric Mesh is a Service Fabric, but serverless, so it is consumption based.

 

 

 

 

You can also run your applications in Azure Cloud Services. Alternatively, you can run your applications in Azure App Services Web Apps or Mobile Apps.

 

 

 

 

 

WebJobs are a feature of Azure App Services Web Apps. Mobile Apps and Function Apps. They allow you to run background tasks. WebJobs can run continuously or on a scheduled basis (based on a timer).

 

 

 

You can also run your application using Azure Functions Apps which runs small pieces of code in a serverless way.

 

 

 

You can also use Logic Apps to execute a pipeline of tasks in a process.

 

 

 

We can also divide these different options into IaaS, PaaS and LaaS services, as shown below.

 

 

 

Summary

 

In this article, we explored different options to run your application in Microsoft Azure. In the next article, I will explain about securing your applications in Microsoft Azure.

 

Keep Learning!