Microsoft recently announced the availability of Azure App Service running on Linux and support for Web App for Containers. When provisioning web apps, developers now have the ability to choose an underlying Operating System of Windows or Linux. They also have the ability to ingest containerized applications…
Microsoft recently announced the availability of Azure App Service running on Linux and support for Web App for Containers. With this recent news, Microsoft is expanding its developer reach by providing more options for developers when bringing their apps and technology stacks to Azure. When provisioning web apps, developers now have the ability to choose an underlying Operating System of Windows or Linux. They also have the ability to ingest containerized applications from popular container repositories.
Today, developers can take advantage of Azure App Service features like integrated CI/CD, deployment slots and auto-scaling. Microsoft claims that more than 1 million cloud applications have been deployed on Azure App Service to date.
Microsoft now looks to bring even more applications into Azure App Service by supporting additional technical stacks. Nir Mashkowski, partner director of program management at Microsoft, explains:
In Azure, we continue to invest in providing more choices that help you maximize your existing investments. Supporting Azure App Service on Linux is an important step in that direction.
When provisioning underlying infrastructure, developers now have an option to take advantage of built-in images for ASP. NET Core, Node.js, PHP and Ruby all on Linux. Microsoft will then take care of on-going patching and maintenance of the platform, but developers will still have the ability to SSH into their application and issue commands.
Image Source: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/general-availability-of-app-service-on-linux-and-web-app-for-containers/
In addition to support for Linux within Azure App Service, Microsoft has also announced Web App for Containers. For the past few years, Microsoft has been ramping up their open source support. As part of this ongoing work, Microsoft ramped up open source investment in Azure App Service as well. Apuva Joshi, principal pm manager at Microsoft, explains:
We started on this journey with an intention to support OSS workloads running natively on Linux VM inside Azure App Service. During the journey, it became obvious that a substantial set of customers are interested in bringing their Docker formatted containers to the Azure App Service Platform. This provided us with a unique opportunity to address the scenario with Web App for Containers offerings.
Using the new Web App for Containers capability, developers are able to
Pull container images from GitHub, Docker Hub or a private Azure Container Registry, and Web App for Containers will deploy the containerized app with your preferred dependencies to production in seconds. The platform automatically takes care of OS patching, capacity provisioning, and load balancing.
Image Source: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/general-availability-of-app-service-on-linux-and-web-app-for-containers/
Continuous deployment is available through Jenkins, VSTS or Maven and scaling can take place through setting up auto scale rules which can be enabled through the Azure Portal or REST API. Using Azure App Service also allows for high availability within an Azure region or across multiple geographical regions.
