Getting Started with Azure App Service

Azure App Service is a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web apps, mobile backends, and API apps. It supports a variety of programming languages and frameworks, and provides built-in DevOps capabilities.

What is Azure App Service?

Azure App Service enables you to build and host web applications, REST APIs, and mobile backends in your preferred programming language without managing infrastructure. It also provides:

High availability and disaster recovery
Scalability to handle fluctuating traffic
Integration with DevOps tools and Azure services
Support for Windows and Linux
Deployment from Git, GitHub, Azure DevOps, and more

Key Concepts

App Service Plan: Defines the compute resources, location, scale count, and operating system for your web apps.
Web App: The actual application you deploy and run.
Deployment Slots: Allow you to test new versions of your app in a staging environment before swapping them into production.

Prerequisites

To get started, you'll need:

An Azure account. You can sign up for a free trial if you don't have one.
The Azure CLI installed, or you can use the Azure Cloud Shell.

Steps to Create Your First App Service Web App

Create an App Service Plan

An App Service plan is a prerequisite for creating a web app. It determines the underlying compute resources and pricing tier.

Using Azure CLI:

az appservice plan create --name MyFreeAppServicePlan --resource-group MyResourceGroup --sku F1 --is-linux

Replace MyFreeAppServicePlan and MyResourceGroup with your desired names. F1 denotes the Free tier. The --is-linux flag specifies a Linux environment.

Create a Web App

Once you have an App Service plan, you can create your web app. You can deploy code from various sources.

Using Azure CLI (deploying a sample Node.js app):

az webapp create --name MyFirstWebApp12345 --resource-group MyResourceGroup --plan MyFreeAppServicePlan --runtime "node|18-lts"

Replace MyFirstWebApp12345 with a globally unique name for your web app. Replace MyResourceGroup and MyFreeAppServicePlan with the names you used previously. "node|18-lts" specifies the runtime stack.

Deploy Your Code

You can deploy your application code using Git, FTP, or integration with CI/CD services.

For Git deployment, you can enable it on your web app:

az webapp deployment source config-zip --resource-group MyResourceGroup --name MyFirstWebApp12345 --src .\app.zip

This example deploys a zip file. You can also deploy directly from a local Git repository.

Browse Your App

Your web app is now running and accessible via its URL.

You can find the URL in the Azure portal or by using the CLI:

az webapp show --resource-group MyResourceGroup --name MyFirstWebApp12345 --query "defaultHostName" --output tsv

Open this URL in your browser to see your deployed application.

Next Steps

Explore Deployment Slots for zero-downtime deployments.
Learn about integrating with Azure DevOps for continuous deployment.
Configure custom domains and SSL certificates.
Monitor your app's performance and diagnostics.

Important: The Free tier (F1) has limitations on performance and features. For production workloads, consider upgrading to a Basic, Standard, Premium, or Isolated tier.

Learn More About Deployment