When diving into the world of Microsoft Azure, it’s essential to understand application hosting options available. These include Azure App Service with its Web Apps feature, containers, and virtual machines. Each offers unique advantages that adapt to different application needs.
Azure App Service and Web Apps Feature
Azure App Service empowers developers to build, deploy, and scale enterprise-grade web, mobile, and API apps. One critical feature it offers is Web Apps – a fully managed platform for building and hosting web applications.
Web Apps allow developers to quickly create and deploy web applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. Developers can use multiple programming languages, such as .NET, .NET Core, Java, Ruby, Node.js, PHP, or Python. It also supports both Windows and Linux environments.
An example of using Azure App Service for hosting a Web App would be creating an API for a mobile application. You simply create the API in your preferred language/stack, and then use Azure to host it. The App service will handle all the hardware and servers necessary to keep your application up and running.
Containers
Containers are another robust solution for hosting applications in Azure. They offer a lightweight, portable, and consistent platform for developing and deploying applications.
A key advantage of containers is that they encapsulate the app’s runtime environment. This includes the application itself, libraries, and system tools that are required to run the app. Everything an application needs to run is bundled together, ensuring that the application runs the same, regardless of the hosting environment.
Azure Container Instances (ACI) provides a solution for any scenario that can operate in isolated containers, without orchestration. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) provides a more sophisticated solution for applications that require coordination and scaling across multiple containers.
For instance, you may have an application that has fluctuating usage patterns. Using AKS, you can ensure that during periods of high use, new containers are spun up to manage the load, keeping the application performant.
Virtual Machines
Virtual machines (VMs) in Azure provide an environment that mimics dedicated physical servers, where you have full control over the operating system and the system resources. This makes them an excellent option for running applications that need specific OS-level access, or for running applications that are not yet fully optimized for the cloud.
Azure Virtual Machines enables you to deploy a wide array of computing solutions in an agile way. For example, you can deploy mission-critical applications, and large-scale compute workloads.
For example, an application that needs access to low-level operating system features may not be suitable to run in a container or App Service. In such a case, an Azure Virtual Machine would be the most appropriate choice.
| Features | Azure App Service | Containers | Virtual Machines |
|---|---|---|---|
| Management | Fully Managed | Self / Azure-managed with AKS | Self Managed |
| Scalability | Auto-scale | Manual / Auto-scale with AKS | Manual scale |
| Deployment | Direct Code Deploy, Docker containers | Docker containers | Manual |
| Portability | Limited Portability | High Portability | Limited Portability |
| Access Control | Managed Identity, Azure AD | Managed Identity, Azure AD | VM access (RDP / SSH) |
Deciding the best application hosting option in Azure largely depends on your application and organization’s needs. It might be a single selection or a combination of all of them. Each of them offers various features, controls, and levels of responsibility that can be leveraged to build robust applications. Understanding the capabilities of each will enable you to make an informed decision aligning with your application requirements.
Practice Test
True or False: Azure App Service is a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web apps.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Azure App Service enables you to build and host web apps, mobile app back ends, RESTful APIs, or automated business processes.
Virtual Machines in Azure allow you to:
- A) Run multiple operating systems simultaneously
- B) Scale applications on demand
- C) Isolate applications and services
- D) All of the above
Answer: D. All of the above
Explanation: Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) offer the flexibility of virtualization without having to buy and maintain physical hardware. They provide on-demand, high-scale, secure and isolated resources for running applications.
Which of the following can be considered application hosting options in Azure?
- A) Web Apps
- B) Containers
- C) Virtual Machines
- D) All of the above
Answer: D. All of the above
Explanation: All of these options- Web Apps, Containers, and Virtual Machines are application hosting options provided by Azure.
True or False: Containers provide an isolated environment for running applications.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Containers encapsulate an application’s software environment—both its software dependencies and its runtime environment so it can run independently.
Single select: Which of the following is not a benefit of Azure Web Apps?
- A) Auto scaling
- B) High availability
- C) Integrated DevOps
- D) Hardware Maintenance
Answer: D. Hardware Maintenance
Explanation: While Azure Web Apps offers scalability, availability, and integrated DevOps, they do not involve hardware maintenance as it’s a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering.
True or False: Azure Containers allow you to run a large number of consistent applications on a single machine.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Containers are lightweight and fast, you can run multiple containers on one machine and be sure that they are isolated and consistent across different environments.
In Azure, if you need direct control over your virtual machines, which hosting option would be best?
- A) Web Apps
- B) Containers
- C) Virtual Machines
- D) None of the above
Answer: C. Virtual Machines
Explanation: Virtual Machines provide direct control over your virtual machines including choice of operating system, hardware, etc.
Single select: Which hosting option in Azure is a fully Managed Platform as a Service (PaaS) that provides a platform to build, deploy and scale web apps?
- A) Containers
- B) Virtual Machines
- C) Web Apps
- D) None of the above
Answer: C. Web Apps
Explanation: Azure Web Apps is a fully managed PaaS offering that abstracts underlying infrastructure and allows focus on application development.
True or False: With Azure Containers, you cannot use different languages and frameworks for your applications.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Containers support the ability to use different languages and frameworks as they encapsulate an application’s software environment.
Which of the following is the primary advantage of using Virtual Machines in Azure?
- A) Lower costs
- B) Automatic scalability
- C) Hardware isolation
- D) None of the above
Answer: C. Hardware isolation
Explanation: The use of Azure Virtual Machines allows companies to have hardware isolation and complete control over the virtual machines.
Interview Questions
What is Azure App Service?
Azure App Service is a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web applications. It’s designed to support applications written in various programming languages such as .NET, Java, Ruby, Node.js, PHP or Python, and also simplifies the deployment and management of API.
What are Azure Web Apps?
Azure Web Apps is a feature of Azure App Service. It allows you to build and host web applications in the programming language of your choice. It also provides auto-scaling and high availability, supports both Windows and Linux, and enables automated deployments from GitHub, Azure DevOps, or any Git repo.
Can you briefly describe what application hosting is?
Application hosting is a type of computing platform that allows for the deployment, running, and management of software applications. It encompasses the servers, storage, network, and other resources necessary for hosting an application.
What are Containers in the context of cloud computing?
Containers are a virtualization environment for running applications and their dependencies in an isolated way. They are lightweight and start quickly, which makes them ideal for high-density, high-performance environments.
How does Azure support Containers?
Azure provides a variety of services to work with containers, such as Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), which simplifies the deployment, scaling, and operations of Kubernetes, and Azure Container Instances (ACI), which is the fastest and simplest way to run a container in Azure, without having to provision any virtual machines.
Can you explain what virtual machines are?
Virtual Machines (VMs) are software emulations of physical computers. They include a virtual processor, memory, storage, and networking resources. VMs run an operating system and applications just like a physical computer.
How does Azure support Virtual Machines?
Azure provides scalable virtual machines with a variety of sizes and options for computing power, memory and storage. Azure VMs provide full control of the guest operating systems and allow the installation of any software that runs on the operating system.
How can running your application in a container compare to running it on a virtual machine?
Running your application in a container is more lightweight as it shares the host system’s OS kernel, while a VM requires its own operating system. Containers start almost instantly and are suitable for microservices-based application structures, VMs are more suitable for monolithic application structures.
What is a good scenario to use Azure Web Apps service?
Azure Web Apps is great for building scalable web applications and mobile back ends, where we don’t want to worry about infrastructure.
Can Azure support multi-regional deployment?
Yes, Azure’s global infrastructure allows you to deploy your applications in multiple regions around the world.
How does auto-scaling feature work in Azure Web Apps?
Auto-scaling in Azure Web Apps can automatically adjust the amount of computational resources that are allocated to the web app, based on demand or a schedule.
Can you migrate existing applications to Azure App Service?
Yes, Azure App Service supports migration of existing applications, whether they are on on-premises servers or hosted with another cloud service provider.
What is Azure DevOps?
Azure DevOps is a service provided by Microsoft Azure to facilitate software development, including source code repositories, continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD), bug and task tracking, and agile project management.
Who can access an application hosted on Azure App service?
Any user on the internet can access an application hosted on Azure App service, given they have the right URL and the necessary permissions.
How does Azure handle updates and patches for the VMs?
Azure performs periodic updates to the underlying platform infrastructure to improve overall reliability, performance, and security of the platform infrastructure that your virtual machines, and other Azure services run on.
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