What is Microsoft Azure App Services?

Before we understand what is Microsoft Azure App Services, let’s quickly and briefly understand what is Virtual Machine (VM).

Virtual Machine

In cloud technology, Virtual Machine (VM) services are classified under Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). This implies that when we choose a VM, we are provided only with the hardware. It is then the user’s responsibility to install the required operating system and frameworks to run their desired applications.

This approach works well in some scenarios, but it can be cumbersome in others. For instance, if you need to host a website developed on ASP.NET Core, using a VM requires you to install the Windows operating system, IIS (the hosting program), the .NET framework, and other tools and configurations such as storage, firewall, and computing resources. However, if you opt for Azure App Service, the entire process of installation and configuration is streamlined and largely eliminated.

Azure App Services

Azure App Services fall under the Platform as a Service (PaaS) category, which means that Microsoft Azure handles the platform-related setup and maintenance. This allows users to easily host web applications, APIs, Azure Functions, and more without worrying about the underlying infrastructure and configuration.

While creating an App Service, you can select the platform (Windows or Linux), region, and service tier. The rest is managed by the Azure platform. In the background, Azure will create a Virtual Machine, install necessary tools (such as the .NET framework, IIS, etc.), and handle all configurations. All you need to do is deploy your application, and you are live.

Key Advantages

1. Easy to setup: You can literally have you app running online in minutes.
2. Fully managed: Azure will automatically patches and maintains the OS and language frameworks for you.
3. Quick for scaling: By just changing the configurations, you can increase or decrease the number of instances, you can also set it to auto scale based on the usage.
4. Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code Integration: Using existing tools in Visual Studio and VSCode, we can create automated deployment.
5. Power of Azure: By using App Service, we also inherit the power of Azure by default for our application. That includes, auto-sailing, load-balancing, security, DevOps capability etc.

Limitations

1. No RDP: User can’t connect to the VM crated by App Service. It means, we can’t perform low level changes (like registry editing). However, you can run PowerShell and other scripts or executables as background services.
2. No 3rd party Software and Management Tools: As we can’t RDP to the hosting server, we definitely can’t install 3rd party software like
   Splunk, SolarWinds etc. If we need them for our application then we have to look for available alternatives in Azure marketplace.

Conclusion

Azure App Service enables developers to quickly set up and configure their applications in the cloud. Its automatic environment management eliminates the hassles of maintaining the environment, allowing developers to focus on design, development, and application data. However, unlike a Virtual Machine, it does not allow developers to use Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) or install third-party software.

Will you try using Azure app services for your next project? What did you like about it? Please let me know in the comments.