Azure App Service

What is Azure App Service?

In earlier days (before cloud), we used to deploy our web applications on an On-prem server consisting of configured IIS along with DNS and necessary frameworks installed on the server. For on-prem servers, we used to own the responsibility of underlying OS patching, Networking, and Storage management.

So, when we talk about 'Azure App service', it's the same kind of server that we get from Microsoft Azure with 'Pay-As-You-Go' basis, where all the necessary frameworks get installed based on the configuration which we choose during the creation of App Service.

Azure App Service falls under 'Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)' which means Microsoft owns the hardware, software, and infrastructure maintenance.

Can we use Azure App Service for any platform besides .Net?

Yes, Azure App Service supports many stacks along with .Net, like Java, Ruby, Node, PHP, and Python.

How can we publish code to Azure App Service?

Azure App Service provides 3 ways to release your code to App Service

1. Code
2. Docker Container
3. Static Web App

Please find below the Azure page where we configure 'Azure App Service'.

How much will Azure App Service cost?

This is the sensitive decision to choose the correct plan based on your need. Azure app service comes with couple of tiers which vary based on OS i.e., Linux & Windows.

App Service Tiers are mainly divided into six categories i.e., Free, Basic, Standard, Premium & Isolated.

• Free - For students and learners.
• Shared - Dev & QA ($10/Month).
• Basic - For development & QA purpose ($55/Month).
• Standard - For production purpose with minimal load ($75/Month).
• Premium - For production purpose with high scale and better performance ($150/Month).
• Isolated - For production purpose with a private network isolating infrastructure ($255/Month).

Please find below Azure pricing details (Prices are in INR).

 

How can we secure Azure App Service?

Azure app service provides number of ways like HTTPS & Certificate, Static IP Restriction, Azure Virtual Network, Network isolation, etc., to secure applications from security threats.

Please find below the 'Networking' section where we can secure Azure app service with an appropriate configuration.

 

How can we achieve resiliency, performance, and high availability?

Azure provides number of ways to make your application highly available in case of an outage.

1. Multiregional deployment along with load balancer.
2. To reduce latency with multiregional deployment, we can utilize Azure traffic manager OR Azure front door, which serves the incoming request with the nearby healthy region.
3. In case of any unforeseen workload, azure provides a scaling mechanism(Auto & Manual), including Vertical and Horizontal scaling. Horizontal scaling means scaling by adding more machines to your pool of resources which also knows as "scale out". In contrast, vertical scaling means scaling resources by adding more infra power (e.g., CPU, RAM) to an existing machine which is also known as "scale up".

So, here we have covered Azure App service based on five pillars, i.e., Reliability, Cost, Operational Excellence, Performance efficiency, and security.

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Thank you for reading 👍