My life has been super comfortable since I started using azure app service.It enabled me to build/host, Web Apps and Restful APIs in programming language of my choice, at equal speed. E.g., front end in angular, back end in .Net core.

This experience made me write this blog so I could share the cool features of app service, that I enjoy.

Why Cloud Hosting/Deploying? Cloud removes the hassle of maintaining and updating systems, allowing us to invest our time and resources into fulfilling core business strategies.

What is Azure App Service Plan?

• An App Service plan defines a set of computing resources for a web app to run.

• One or more apps can be configured to run on the same computing resources (or in the same App Service plan)

What is App Service?

• Azure App Service is a fully managed “Platform as a Service” (PaaS).

• PaaS helps developers and business users focus on build great apps with clicks & code without having to worry about infrastructure

• Azure App Service is One Integrated Offering where we can host Web Apps, Mobile Apps, Logic Apps & API Apps.

Key Features of Azure App Service

• Supports Linux and Windows platform

• Supports various programming languages

• Supports Multiple deployment methods

• Deployment Slots  & Deployment Options.

Creating Azure App Service from Azure Portal

• Overview of creating a new app service from the Azure portal.

step 1: Create New resource from azure portal.

step 2: Search Web App / Api App / Function App and select the desired one and select create

step 3: Choose the desired configuration and click on review and create, your brand new app will be ready in less than five minutes.

step 4: Verify app service status once deployed, we can also navigate to the app by clicking on the URL hyperlink.

What is a deployment slot?

• Deployment slots are live apps with their own hostnames, hosted in the same app service.

Advantages of deployment slots?

• You can validate app changes in a staging deployment slot before swapping it with the production slot.

• Deploying an app to a slot first and swapping it into production makes sure that all instances of the slot are warmed up before being swapped into production. This eliminates downtime when you deploy your app.

• The traffic redirection is seamless, and no requests are dropped because of swap operations.

• After a swap, the slot with the previously staged app now has the previous production app. If the changes swapped into the production slot aren’t as you expect, you can perform the same swap immediately to get your “last known good site” back.

• We can also use deployment slots for ab testing.

Using Deployment Center for Continuous Deployment (CI / CD)

step 1 : GitHub as Build Provider and click on continue

step 2 : Configure GitHub Repository and click continue

step 3: Review workflow configuration and click finish

step 4: once setup is done you can see deployment center with latest deployments

step 5: Verify the build status in GitHub

Since we set up a build provider(GitHub) as soon as we commit changes to the master branch deployment center triggers the build automatically.

Hosting Multiple Websites on one app service

• Sometimes it’s necessary to host multiple sites under the same parent address, in Azure this can be done by deploying multiple projects to separate folders within a single Web App.

• Root Site Publish Settings

• App1 Publish Settings

• App2 Publish Settings

• with the above configuration changes we can host easily from visual studio web deploy.

Topics Covered…

• What is App Service and App Service Plan?

• Creating Azure App Service from Azure Portal

• Deployment Center for Continuous Deployment (CI / CD)

• Using Deployment slots.

• Hosting multiple website on one app service.

• Publishing apps into app service from visual studio.