Azure App Configuration

What is Azure App Configuration?

Generally, the development team uses config files in the source code itself; later, this gets released as a single package, including config file(s) to the server (on-prem, cloud), which is not the best practice at all.

So, here Azure App Configuration’ comes into the picture, which provides an easy and secure way to store application configuration at the global level on the cloud, and configuration values can be accessed securely from any number of applications from any region(s). Isn’t it cool? 

What are the benefits of Azure App Configuration?

1. First and foremost, as mentioned above, it keeps configuration separate from the codebase.
2. To change any config value, there is no deployment required of a web application as well as no ‘App Service’ restart needed.
3. Centralized and globally managed configuration for all applications of the organization.
4. We can implement ‘Feature Flag’ in ‘Azure app configuration’, and no need of spending extra money on external vendors unless there is a need for any enterprise feature(s).
5. Several ways to secure Azure app configuration, eg. Private endpoint, Azure AD, etc.

What is the difference between Azure App Configuration and Azure Key Vaults?

Azure key vault is particularly designed to store sensitive secrets/certificate information, which may lead to security threats in case it gets leaked.

Azure app configuration mostly prefers to store the insensitive data, but it also provides a reference to the key vault secret within it, as shown in the below image.

These services should be used side by side to make configuration data secure.

How to secure Azure app configuration?

1. Azure app configuration support private endpoint, which makes sure it’s not publicly exposed and can be accessed by authorized resource(s) only.
2. It also supports ‘Azure AD Authentication’. Required App config data reader or App config data owner roles is required to access Azure app configuration using Azure AD.
3. Data in the App configuration is encrypted at rest and in transit. (Encryption requires standard tier)
   
   

How much does Azure app configuration cost?

Azure app configuration provides two tiers i.e. Free and standard. 

The free tier is definitely free of cost with minimal features.

The standard tier request quota is 30000/hour, and it will cost US $1.20 per store per day, plus an overage charge of US $0.06 per 10,000 requests. The first 200,000 requests are included in the daily charge.

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

Azure app configuration support Geo-replication (with Standard tier) which make sure that Azure SLA i.e. 99.99% achieved.

It also recommended enabling ‘Auto failover’ for building resiliency in the application.

How can we use ‘Feature Flag’ in Azure App Service?

A feature flag is available in the Azure app configuration at the below path.

Azure app configuration -> Operations -> Feature Manager -> Create

We can list the feature flag in ‘Configuration Explorer’ as below.

Things to be considered

1. Are 30000 requests/hour enough for your application?

Summary

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

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