This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: New blog articles in Microsoft Community Hub.
Azure App Service is a fully managed Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering from Microsoft that enables developers to build, deploy, and scale web, mobile, and API apps quickly and easily. In this post, we'll look at how Azure App Service aligns with the Microsoft Well-Architected Framework and how it can help organizations to achieve operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization.
The Azure Well-Architected Framework (WAF) is a set of best practices and design principles for building cloud solutions. It helps organizations to understand the trade-offs and considerations involved in cloud design, and to design solutions that are reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective.
- Cost Optimization - helps organizations to minimize the cost of their cloud solutions by identifying opportunities to reduce waste, optimize resource utilization, and reduce the total cost of ownership.
- Reliability - The reliability pillar helps organizations to design solutions that are resilient and fault-tolerant, so that they can handle failures and maintain their availability.
- Operational Excellence - The operational excellence pillar helps organizations to design solutions that are easy to operate, maintain, and improve over time.
- Performance Efficiency - The performance efficiency pillar helps organizations to design solutions that are efficient and scalable, so that they can handle the required workloads without wasting resources.
- Security - The security pillar helps organizations to design solutions that are secure and compliant, so that they can protect their assets and meet regulatory requirements.
In this blog post, we’ll focus on features and patterns to implement within Azure App Service that align to the Azure Well-Architected Framework.
The following table summarizes some features and patterns you can implement within App Service which help support WAF tenets:
|
|
Cost Optimization |
Reliability |
Operational Excellence |
Performance Efficiency |
Security |
|
Automate deployments and testing with CI/CD |
|
X |
X |
X |
X |
|
Deployment slots |
X |
X |
X |
|
|
|
Scale-up/Scale-out |
X |
|
|
X |
|
|
Perform Chaos Engineering |
|
X |
X |
|
|
|
Perform Load Testing |
|
X |
X |
X |
|
|
Use Managed Identity for Azure Resource access |
|
|
|
|
|
|
SSL/TLS support |
|
|
X |
|
X |
|
App Service Environment |
|
|
|
|
X |
|
High availability |
|
|
|
|
X |
|
Store credentials and other values in Azure Key Vault |
|
|
|
X |
X |
|
Install a web application firewall |
|
X |
X |
|
|
|
Authenticate through Azure Active Directory (AD) |
|
|
|
|
X |
|
Virtual Network integration |
|
|
|
|
X |
|
Design for scalability |
|
|
|
X |
X |
|
Reduce response time with asynchronous programming |
|
|
|
|
X |
|
Optimize with data compression |
X |
X |
|
|
|
|
Implement Retry and Circuit Breaker patterns |
|
X |
|
X |
|
|
Logging and Monitoring |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
Automate deployments and testing with CI/CD
It is highly recommended for organizations using Azure App Service to adopt a source control system such as Azure Repos or GitHub to better manage and track changes to their application code. This allows for version control and peer reviews, as well as improved collaboration among developers. Additionally, implementing a CI/CD pipeline with tools like Azure Pipelines or GitHub Actions can automate the build and testing process, catching issues early and enabling more frequent deployments to end users. This not only improves the reliability of your applications, but also the efficiency of your development team.
- Using starter workflows - GitHub Docs
- Create your first pipeline - Azure Pipelines | Microsoft Learn
Deployment slots
Azure App Service deployment slots are a feature that allows you to create additional environments for your app, such as staging or production environments. These environments can be used to test new code or configurations before deploying them to the main environment, helping you ensure that your app is stable and reliable. According to the Well-Architected Framework, deployment slots align with several pillars of the framework, including operational excellence and reliability.
You streamline your deployment process and reduce the risk of deployment errors. You can use deployment slots to test new code or configurations in a staging environment before deploying them to production, helping you ensure that your app is stable and reliable.
Reduce downtime and improve the availability of your app. You can use deployment slots to perform rolling deployments, which allow you to deploy new code or configurations to one slot at a time, reducing the risk of disruptions to your app.
Authenticate through Azure Active Directory (AAD)
Using Azure Active Directory (AAD) for authentication and authorization in Azure App Service can provide significant benefits compared to building a custom solution. AAD leverages the OAuth 2.0 protocol, which supports web, desktop, and mobile applications, and is automatically updated to follow industry best practices. This means you don't need to spend time developing and maintaining a custom solution and can instead focus on the functionality of your application. Additionally, AAD is built directly into the App Service platform, making it easy to use regardless of the language or expertise of your development team. Overall, utilizing AAD for authentication and authorization can save time, improve security, and allow you to focus on delivering value to your users.
Perform Chaos Engineering
When implementing Chaos Engineering for Azure App Service, it is important to identify the critical components of your application and design your chaos testing plan accordingly. By focusing on these key components, you can ensure that your chaos testing is targeting the most important areas of your system and will provide the most valuable insights. For example, if your application relies heavily on a database, you may want to simulate failures or disruptions to the database in order to test its resilience and identify potential issues.
In addition to targeting specific components, it is also important to consider the various levels of your application architecture when designing your chaos testing plan. This can help ensure that you are testing the resilience of your system at all levels and can identify potential issues at any point in the architecture.
To execute chaos experiments, you can either inject faults manually or use a tool such as Azure Chaos Studio. Azure Chaos Studio is a tool that enables you to easily define and execute chaos experiments in Azure App Service, helping you to test the resilience of your applications and improve their reliability. By using Azure Chaos Studio or a similar tool, you can automate the process of introducing failures and disruptions into your system, making it easier to implement Chaos Engineering practices in your organization.
While it is not possible to directly test Azure App Service with Azure Chaos Studio, it is still important to consider how the service will behave when other critical components of your system are struggling. By simulating failures and disruptions to these components, you can gain valuable insights into how your system responds and identify potential issues that may impact the stability and reliability of your applications.
Perform Load Testing
Performing load testing on Azure App Service can help you ensure the reliability and performance of your app under high traffic conditions. Load testing involves simulating a high number of concurrent users or requests to your app and measuring its performance and stability under these conditions.
You can use Microsoft's Azure Load Testing or a third-party tool to perform load testing on your Azure App Service app. Azure Load Testing is a JMeter cloud-based load testing service that allows you to test the performance of your app under simulated load conditions, helping you identify and fix performance issues.
Load Testing aligns with the pillars of reliability, operational excellence, and performance efficiency. By performing load testing, you can identify and address potential issues that may arise when your app is subjected to high traffic, helping you improve its reliability and availability.
Optimize the performance of your app and streamline your deployment process. You can use load testing to identify and fix performance bottlenecks or to fine-tune the configuration of your app, helping you ensure that it is running efficiently and effectively.
Understand the capacity and scalability of your app, and identify ways to optimize its resource usage. By performing load testing, you can identify opportunities to improve the efficiency of your app and reduce its cost of operation.
Azure Load testing can be integrated into your CI/CD process with tools such as GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines. By integrating Azure Load Testing into your CI/CD process, you can ensure that your app is tested for performance and reliability at every stage of the development lifecycle.
Use Managed Identity for Azure Resource access
To improve the security of your Azure application, consider using managed identities for resource access. Managed identities allow your app to authenticate with other Azure services without storing credentials in your code or configuration files, reducing the risk of exposing sensitive information. In addition, you can use Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to control the access that your app has to other Azure services, ensuring that it only has the necessary permissions to perform its intended functions and prevent unauthorized access to sensitive resources. Implementing managed identities in Azure App Service can help you meet the security principles of the Well-Architected Framework
Store credentials and other values in Azure Key Vault
To improve the security of your application, consider storing your credentials and other sensitive values in Azure Key Vault. Key Vault is a secure, cloud-based repository that allows you to store and manage cryptographic keys, secrets, and certificates. By storing these sensitive pieces of information in Key Vault rather than in your code or configuration files, you can prevent the risk of exposing them.
In addition, you can use Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to control the access that your app has to the keys and secrets in Key Vault, ensuring that it only has the necessary permissions to perform its intended functions. This can help prevent unauthorized access to sensitive resources.
You can also use Azure Key Vault to encrypt sensitive data that your app needs to store or transmit, further protecting it from unauthorized access. Implementing these security measures can help you meet the principles of the Well-Architected Framework.
SSL/TLS support
Implementing SSL/TLS (Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security) on Azure App Service can help you secure the communication between your app and its users, and protect sensitive data from being intercepted or accessed by unauthorized parties. SSL/TLS is a cryptographic protocol that provides secure communication over a network, and is widely used to secure web traffic, email, and other forms of online communication.
Install a web application firewall
Installing a web application firewall (WAF) can significantly improve the security of your Azure App Service web application. A WAF is a security tool that is designed to protect web applications from a variety of security threats, such as SQL injection attacks and cross-site scripting attacks.
To maximize the effectiveness of your WAF, it is important to configure it to block known malicious traffic, such as requests that contain SQL injection strings or cross-site scripting payloads. This will help prevent these types of attacks from reaching your web application.
In addition, it is essential to regularly update the rules and configurations of your WAF to ensure that it is able to protect your web application from the latest security threats. By implementing a WAF and maintaining its effectiveness, you can meet the security principles of the Well-Architected Framework and help protect your web application from potential attacks.
Virtual Network integration
Virtual network integration in Azure App Service provides a secure and private connection between your app and an Azure virtual network. This connection allows your app to access other resources in your Azure environment, making it useful in scenarios where you want to restrict access to your app or ensure secure communication between your app and other resources.
By using virtual network integration to restrict access to your app to a specific network or set of networks, you can control who can access your app and improve its security. You can also use Azure Private Link to securely connect your app to other resources in your Azure environment, protecting those resources from exposure to the public internet.
Implementing virtual network integration and using Private Link can help you meet the security principles of the Well-Architected Framework and improve the security of your app in Azure.
- Virtual network integration of Azure services for network isolation | Microsoft Learn
- What is Azure Private Link? | Microsoft Learn
Reduce response time with asynchronous programming
To improve the performance and scalability of your Azure App Service app, consider using asynchronous programming to perform long-running or resource-intensive tasks in the background. This will help improve the responsiveness of your app and allow it to handle more requests simultaneously. You can also use Azure Queues or Azure Service Bus to enable asynchronous communication between the different components of your application, improving its scalability and reliability. By using asynchronous programming and leveraging Azure messaging services, you can meet the performance principle of the Well-Architected Framework and improve the overall performance of your app.
Optimize with data compression
Use data compression to reduce the size of the data that your app sends and receives over the network. This will help improve the performance of your app, especially for applications that transfer large amounts of data.
Use Azure CDN to offload data compression to the edge, which can help improve the performance of your app by reducing the amount of data that needs to be transferred over the network.
Design for scalability
Use Azure features like Traffic Manager and App Service Environments to create a scalable and resilient environment for your app. This will help ensure that your app can continue to function even if one or more of its components fail.
Use Azure Queues or Azure Service Bus to decouple the different components of your application and to enable them to scale independently. This will help improve the scalability of your app, and can help it handle more requests simultaneously.
Implement Retry and Circuit Breaker patterns
Use the retry pattern to automatically retry failed operations a specified number of times, with a delay between each retry. This will help improve the resilience of your app by allowing it to recover from transient failures.
The circuit breaker pattern is a software design pattern that is used to prevent a system from repeatedly trying to perform an operation that is likely to fail. It works by "opening" the circuit after a specified number of failures, which prevents the system from trying to perform the operation again until the circuit is "closed" again. Use the circuit breaker pattern to prevent your app from repeatedly trying to perform failed operations. This will help improve the reliability of your app by avoiding situations where the app becomes unresponsive due to a large number of failed operations.
- Retry pattern - Azure Architecture Center | Microsoft Learn
- Circuit Breaker pattern - Azure Architecture Center | Microsoft Learn
Logging and Monitoring
What you can't see, you can't measure. What you can't measure, you can't improve.
Logging and monitoring are essential components of any well-architected system, and Azure App Service is no exception.
In the context of Azure App Service, logging and monitoring can help organizations achieve operational excellence by providing visibility into the health and performance of their applications. They can also help with security by providing a way to detect and respond to potential threats. Additionally, logging and monitoring can contribute to the reliability of a system by alerting teams to issues that may affect the availability of their applications. They can also help with performance efficiency by providing insight into the performance of different components of the system and identifying bottlenecks that may be causing performance issues. Finally, logging and monitoring can help with cost optimization by providing insight into resource utilization and identifying opportunities to optimize usage.
Azure Monitor is a monitoring service that provides real-time visibility into the health and performance of Azure resources. It includes features like alerts, metrics, and logs, which can be used to monitor the performance of Azure App Service. Azure Monitor also integrates with other Azure services, like Azure Automation, to enable automated responses to issues that are detected.
Application Insights is a monitoring service that provides real-time analytics and visualization of the performance of web applications. It includes features like application performance monitoring, log analytics, and diagnostics. Application Insights can be used to monitor the performance of Azure App Service applications and identify issues that may affect the availability or performance of the application. It can also be used to track user behavior and identify trends that may be affecting the performance of the application.