Azure App Services vs Azure Cloud Services

-

Microsoft Azure provides a lot of options to deploy your applications to Cloud. In this article we will discuss about two of the hosting options provided by Azure:
  • Azure App Services
  • Azure Cloud Services
Both of the options supports web applications and background service type applications. We will discuss about both of the options and then sum up with comparison between two.
Azure App Services (or just Web Apps)
Azure app service is a PAAS offering from Microsoft to host your web applications in fully managed set of VM's in a dedicated or Shared mode. There are 4 types of App services:-
  • Web App - used for hosting websites and web applications (previously Azure Websites)
  • API App - used  for hosting REST APIs
  • Logic App – used to build automated scalable workflows that integrate apps and data across cloud services and on-premises systems.
  • Mobile Backends - used for hosting mobile app back ends (previously delivered by Azure Mobile services)
Azure Cloud Services
Cloud services were the very first Microsoft Azure PAAS offering that provided the ability to deploy web applications (using web roles) and background tasks (using worker roles) on azure VM’s. Similar to Azure App services Microsoft with handle all the server updates, patching etc. With Azure cloud services you get an additional benefit of having control over the VMs. You can install your own software on VMs that use Azure Cloud Services, and you can access them remotely. There are two types of Azure Cloud Services roles. The only difference between the two is how your role is hosted on the VMs:
  • Web role: Automatically deploys and hosts your app through IIS.
  • Worker role: Does not use IIS, and runs your app standalone as a background process.



Now that we have a knowledge of both service offerings lets see the differences between the two:-
Azure Web Apps
Cloud Services
Supported Platforms
Support for ASP.NET, Node.js, Java, PHP, or Python
Support for Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, .NET and Ruby
URL
<AppName>.AzureWebSites.Net
<CloudServiceName>.CloudApp.Net
DevOps
Supports CI, CD using Visual Studio Team Services, GitHub or BitBucket.
Supports CI, CD using Visual Studio Team Services, GitHub or BitBucket.
Support for Multi-Tier architecture
Yes
Yes
Swap build between staging and production environment
Yes (free)
Yes (additional cost)
Access to server desktop
No control
Some control
Webserver maintenance
Not required, Azure does OS patching and other activities.
Not required, Azure does OS patching and other activities.
Visual studio integration
Yes
Yes
Access to other services like storage, service bus
Yes
Yes
Configure Start-Up tasks
No (must use WebJob)
Yes
Deployment time
Fast
Very Slow
Multiple applications on same servers
Yes
No
Scale up without redeploy
Yes
No
Auto-scaling
Yes
Yes
Conclusion

Both App Services and Cloud Services offerings from Azure provides a lot of good features and are a simple way to deploy your applications to the Microsoft Azure cloud.  They are definitely much easier than setting up your own virtual machines! The primary differentiating factor is Cloud Services offers access to the underlying Azure VMs, and App Services do not.
Although it depends on the requirement when to use what. If you want to have access to the server and wants to configure some server tasks then Azure Cloud services is an option. But if you do not bother about underlying hardware then Azure App Service is a the right choice for you. 
Hope this helped in understanding the two.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Read all lists/views/fields using pnpjs in spfx webpart

-
Image
Recently I started exploring pnp js with spfx webparts. I wanted to explore few things which are more of basic functionality for any webparts. In this Post I'll explain How to read all the lists from a site and bind to dropdown in spfx webpart Read all the views for a selected list and bind to 2nd dropdown. Get all the fields/columns for a selected view and render then as checkboxes in spfx webpart. I have created a react spfx project and imported all the sp,web from @pnp/sp library. i mport { sp , Web , List } from '@pnp/sp' ; First step is to declare 3 collections for above 3 requirements so that you can use them in getPropertyPageConfiguration() method. private listDropDownOptions : IPropertyPaneDropdownOption []; private viewDropDownOptions : IPropertyPaneDropdownOption []; private fieldsListCollection = [];   Use these collections in getPropertyPageConfiguration() method. protected getPropertyPaneConfiguration (): IPropertyPaneConfigu...
Read more

Deploy artifacts with spfx webparts

-
Image
SharePoint framework (commonly known as spfx ) webparts can be used to deploy the artifacts like js/css/image files etc. There are multiple options to host your artifacts.  First option is to host to CDN (like azure) Other option is to include that within the package and then deploy to appcatalog along with sppkg file. Host to CDN In order to host the webparts to Azure or any CDN,  open copy-assets.json file in config folder of your spfx webpart and update the CDN path. This CDN path can be any SharePoint library or Azure CDN. Basically any path which is accessible using http protocol. If you are publishing to Azure CDN please make sure to add the azure credentials in deploy-azure-storage.json file. Deploy to AppCatalog In case you want to deploy the artifacts to app catalog, package-solution.json file under config folder and make sure that includeClientSideAssets is set to true . Once this is set when you will deploy the webpart to the webpart gallary....
Read more

SharePoint Hub Sites

-
What is SharePoint Hub Site? Hub sites are new intranet building blocks in office 365 (only no OnPremise support yet, not even SP2019).  In the new flat world of modern SharePoint, each unit of work gets a separate site collection. Hub sites allow us to eliminate the inflexibility and governance limitations of “dreaded” subsites, while providing a way to replicate one of the key benefits of subsites — a way to create a shared experience among related sites. Hub sites can help kill subsites, but not without a little planning. Modern SharePoint has given users power to create multiple types of sites, Team Site, Communication sites and Hub sites . A lot of people really gets confused about all three. I'll briefly sum up the three  Team site :  Collaborate  with members of a project or organizational team Communication site :  Communicate  to a broad group of people or the entire organization Hub site :  Connect  related sites to create a s...
Read more