.NET Core and ASP.NET Core offer several advantages over traditional .NET development. You should use .NET Core for your server applications if any of the following are important to your application’s success,

• Cross-platform support
• Use of microservices 
• Use of Docker containers 
• High performance and scalability requirements
• Side-by-side versioning of .NET versions by application on the same server 

Traditional .NET applications can - and do - support these requirements, but ASP.NET Core and .NET Core have been optimized to offer improved support for the above scenarios.

More and more organizations are choosing to host their web applications in the cloud using services like Microsoft Azure. You should consider hosting your application in the cloud if the following are important to your application or organization,

• Reduced investment in data center costs (hardware, software, space, utilities, etc.) 
• Flexible pricing (pay based on usage, not for idle capacity) 
• Extreme reliability 
• Improved app mobility; easily change where and how your app is deployed
• Flexible capacity; scale up or down based on actual needs 

Building web applications with ASP.NET Core, hosted in Microsoft Azure, offers numerous competitive advantages over traditional alternatives. ASP.NET Core is optimized for modern web application development practices and cloud hosting scenarios. In this guide, you will learn how to architect your ASP.NET Core applications to best take advantage of these capabilities 

Table of Contents

• Characteristics of Modern Web Applications
• Choosing Between Traditional Web Apps and Single Page Apps (SPAs).
• Architectural Principles
• Common Web Application Architectures
• Common Client-Side Web Technologies
• Developing ASP.NET Core Apps
• Working with Data in ASP.NET Core Apps
• Testing ASP.NET Core MVC Apps
• Development process for Azure-hosted ASP.NET Core applications
• Azure Hosting Recommendations for ASP.NET Core Web Apps
• Summary