Azure App Service Tutorial

What is Azure App Service?

Azure App Service is a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web applications. With App Service, you can build web apps, mobile app backends, RESTful APIs, and more using a variety of languages and frameworks.

Creating an Azure App Service

To create an Azure App Service, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to the Azure portal (https://portal.azure.com).
  2. Click on the “Create a resource” button (green plus sign in the top-left corner).
  3. Search for “App Service” in the search bar and select “App Service” from the list of results.
  4. Click on the “Create” button.
  5. In the “Basics” tab, select your subscription, resource group, and name for your App Service.
  6. Choose the operating system you want to use (Windows or Linux).
  7. Select the runtime stack you want to use (e.g., .NET, Node.js, Python, etc.).
  8. Choose your region and pricing tier.
  9. Click on the “Review + create” button.
  10. Review your settings and click on the “Create” button to create your App Service.

Deploying an Application to Azure App Service

Once you have created your Azure App Service, you can deploy your application using a variety of methods, including Git, FTP, and Azure Pipelines. Here, we will show you how to deploy an application using Git.

To deploy an application using Git, follow these steps:

  1. Clone your application’s Git repository to your local machine.
  2. Open a terminal or command prompt and navigate to the root of your application.
  3. Run the following command to add the Azure remote:
git remote add azure <your-app-service-git-url>

Replace <your-app-service-git-url> with the Git URL for your App Service. You can find this URL by going to your App Service in the Azure portal, clicking on the “Deployment Center” tab, and selecting “Git” as your deployment method.

Run the following command to push your code to Azure:

git push azure master
  1. This will push your code to the Azure remote and trigger a deployment to your App Service.

Scaling an Azure App Service

One of the key benefits of Azure App Service is that it allows you to easily scale your application as your traffic and workload grows. There are two main ways to scale an Azure App Service: vertical scaling and horizontal scaling.

Vertical Scaling

Vertical scaling involves increasing or decreasing the resources available to your App Service. This can be done by changing the pricing tier of your App Service.

To change the pricing tier of your App Service, follow these steps:

  1. Go to your App Service in the Azure portal.
  2. Click on the “Scale up (App Service plan)” button in the left-hand menu.
  3. Choose the pricing tier you want to use.
  4. Click on the “Apply” button to save your changes.

Horizontal Scaling

Horizontal scaling involves increasing or decreasing the number of instances running your App Service. This can be done by changing the instance count of your App Service.

To change the instance count of your App Service, follow these steps:

  1. Go to your App Service in the Azure portal.
  2. Click on the “Scale out (App Service plan)” button in the left-hand menu.
  3. Choose the instance count you want to use.
  4. Click on the “Save” button to save your changes.

Using CLI commands for Azure App Service

Azure CLI is a powerful command-line tool for managing Azure resources, including Azure App Service. Here are some useful Azure CLI commands for working with Azure App Service:

Creating an Azure App Service

To create an Azure App Service using Azure CLI, run the following command:

az webapp create --name <app-name> --resource-group <resource-group-name> --plan <app-service-plan-name> --runtime <runtime-stack>

Replace <app-name> with the name you want to give your App Service, <resource-group-name> with the name of the resource group you want to use, <app-service-plan-name> with the name of the App Service plan you want to use, and <runtime-stack> with the runtime stack you want to use (e.g., “dotnetcore”, “node”, “python”, etc.).

Deploying an Application to Azure App Service

To deploy an application to Azure App Service using Azure CLI, run the following command:

az webapp deployment source config --name <app-name> --resource-group <resource-group-name> --repo-url <git-repo-url> --branch <git-branch> --manual-integration

Replace <app-name> with the name of your App Service, <resource-group-name> with the name of your resource group, <git-repo-url> with the URL of your Git repository, and <git-branch> with the name of the Git branch you want to use for deployment.

Scaling an Azure App Service

To scale an Azure App Service using Azure CLI, run the following command:

az appservice plan update --name <app-service-plan-name> --resource-group <resource-group-name> --sku <sku-name> --number-of-workers <number-of-workers>

Replace <app-service-plan-name> with the name of your App Service plan, <resource-group-name> with the name of your resource group, <sku-name> with the name of the pricing tier you want to use (e.g., “F1”, “B1”, “S1”, etc.), and <number-of-workers> with the number of instances you want to use.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we covered the basics of Azure App Service, including how to create an Azure App Service, deploy an application to Azure App Service, and scale an Azure App Service using Azure CLI commands. With these tools, you should be well-equipped to build, deploy, and scale your web applications on Azure.