Azure App Service Cheatsheets

By Saeed Salehi

7 min read

Authors

App Service can also host web apps natively on Linux for supported application stacks.

App Service on Linux limitations:

  • App Service on Linux is not supported on Shared pricing tier.
  • You can't mix Windows and Linux apps in the same App Service plan.
  • you could not mix Windows and Linux apps in the same resource group.
  • The Azure portal shows only features that currently work for Linux apps. As features are enabled,

az webapp list-runtimes --os-type linux

App Service plans

Azure Functions also has the option of running in an App Service plan.

Each App Service plan defines:

  • Region (West US, East US, etc.)
  • Number of VM instances
  • Size of VM instances (Small, Medium, Large)
  • Pricing tier (Free, Shared, Basic, Standard, Premium, PremiumV2, PremiumV3, Isolated)

pricing tiers:

  • Shared compute: Both Free and Shared share the resource pools of your apps with the apps of other customers. These tiers allocate CPU quotas. the resources can't scale out.

  • Dedicated compute: The Basic, Standard, Premium, PremiumV2, and PremiumV3 tiers run apps on dedicated Azure VMs. Only apps in the same App Service plan share the same compute resources. The higher the tier, the more VM instances are available to you for scale-out.

  • Isolated: This tier runs dedicated Azure VMs on dedicated Azure Virtual Networks. It provides network isolation on top of compute isolation to your apps. It provides the maximum scale-out capabilities.

  • Consumption: This tier is only available to function apps. It scales the functions dynamically depending on workload.

deployment:

  • Automated
    • Azure DevOps
    • GitHub
    • Bitbucket
  • Manual
    • Git
    • CLI az webapp up
    • Zip Deploy curl
    • FTPS/s

Sample reference

  1. az group create
  2. az appservice plan create
  3. az webapp create
  4. az webapp deployment source / az webapp config container set / ...

Github

az webapp deployment source config --name $webapp --resource-group $resourceGroup --repo-url $gitrepo --branch master --git-token $token

DockerHub

az webapp config container set --docker-custom-image-name $dockerHubContainerPath --name $webApp --resource-group $resourceGroup

Slot

  1. az group create
  2. az appservice plan create
  3. az webapp create
  4. az webapp deployment slot create
  5. az webapp deployment source config
  6. az webapp deployment slot swap

deploy Private Endpoint

  1. Create a VNet az network vnet create.
  2. Configure the Subnet az network vnet subnet update:
  3. Create the private endpoint az network private-endpoint create
  4. Configure the private zone
    1. az network private-dns zone create
    2. az network private-dns link vnet create
    3. az network private-endpoint dns-zone-group create

authentication and authorization

Identity providers

  • Microsoft Identity Platform
  • Facebook
  • Google
  • Twitter
  • OpenID Connect providers

How It Works:

  • Authenticates users with the specified provider
  • Validates, stores, and refreshes tokens
  • Manages the authenticated session
  • Injects identity information into request headers

In Linux and containers the authentication and authorization module runs in a separate container, isolated from your application code. Because it does not run in-process

networking behavior

multitenant public service hosts App Service plans in the Free, Shared, Basic, Standard, Premium, PremiumV2, and PremiumV3 pricing SKUs

single-tenant App Service Environment (ASE) hosts Isolated SKU App Service plans directly in your Azure virtual network

Multi-tenant App Service networking features:

Inbound features:

  • App-assigned address
  • Access restrictions
  • Service endpoints
  • Private endpoints

Outbound features:

  • Hybrid Connections

  • Gateway-required virtual network integration

  • Virtual network integration

  • free and Shared SKU:

    • host customer workloads on multitenant workers
    • all use the same worker VM typ
  • Basic and higher plans

    • host customer workloads that are dedicated to only one App Service plan

When you change the VM family, you get a different set of outbound addresses

Standard to PremiumV2, your outbound addresses will change PremiumV2 to PremiumV3, your outbound addresses will change

Find outbound IPs

az webapp show \
    --resource-group <group_name> \
    --name <app_name> \
    --query outboundIpAddresses \
    --output tsv

Query possibleOutboundIpAddresses used for find all possible outbound IP addresses ,regardless of pricing tiers

Create the web app

az webapp up -g $resourceGroup -n $appName --html

CORS

az webapp cors add --allowed-origins https://myapps.com --name MyWebApp --resource-group MyResourceGroup --subscription MySubscription

Configure application settings

app settings are variables passed as environment variable

App settings are always encrypted when stored (encrypted-at-rest).

: should be replaced by __ (double underscore).`

general settings:

  • Stack settings: language and SDK versions
  • Platform settings
    • Bitness: 32 / 64 BIT
    • WebSocket Protocol: SignalR or socket.io
    • Always On: By default, Always On is not enabled (required for WebJobs)
    • Managed pipeline version (IIS Pipeline mode)
    • Http Version
    • ARR Affinity (ensure that the client is routed to the same instance for the life of the session,can set this option to Off for stateless applications)
  • Debugging: This option turns off automatically after 48 hours.
  • Incoming client certificates: TLS mutual authentication

path mappings

  • Windows apps (un-containerized)
    • Customize IIS handler mappings and virtual applications and directories
  • Linux and containerized apps
    • Azure Storage Mount

diagnostic logging

TypePlatformLocation
Application loggingWindows, LinuxApp Service file system and/or Azure Storage blobs
Web server loggingWindowsApp Service file system or Azure Storage blobs
Detailed error loggingWindowsApp Service file system
Failed request tracingWindowsApp Service file system
Deployment loggingWindows, LinuxApp Service file system

Any information written to files ending in .txt, .log, or .htm that are stored in the /LogFiles directory (d:/home/logfiles) is streamed by App Service.

Stream logs live

az webapp log tail --name appname --resource-group myResourceGroup

security certificates

options you have for adding certificates in App Service:

  • Create a free App Service managed certificate
  • Purchase an App Service certificate
  • Import a certificate from Key Vault
  • Upload a private certificate
  • Upload a public certificate

Private certificate requirements:

  • Exported as a password-protected PFX file, encrypted using triple DES.
  • Contains private key at least 2048 bits long
  • Contains all intermediate certificates in the certificate chain

free managed certificate:

your App Service plan must be in the Basic, Standard, Premium, or Isolated tier. Custom SSL is not supported in the F1 or D1 tier.

Free certificate limitations:

  • Does not support wildcard certificates.
  • Does not support usage as a client certificate by certificate thumbprint.
  • Is not exportable.
  • Is not supported on App Service Environment (ASE).
  • Is not supported with root domains that are integrated with Traffic Manager.
  • If a certificate is for a CNAME-mapped domain, the CNAME must be mapped directly to <app-name>.azurewebsites.net.

Autoscale

Autoscaling can be triggered according to a schedule, or by assessing whether the system is running short on resources

only changes the number of web servers.

Autoscale conditions

  • Scale based on a metric (across all instances)

    • CPU Percentage
    • Memory Percentage
    • Disk Queue Length
    • Http Queue Length (HTTP 408 - Timeout)
    • Data In (bytes received)
    • Data Out (bytes sent)
    • can also scale based on metrics for other Azure services
  • Scale to a specific instance count according to a schedule

scale-out or scale-in

A scale-out action increases the number of instances scale-in action reduces the instance count

cool down period , threshold , avoid "flapping"

Not all pricing tiers support autoscaling. The development pricing tiers are either limited to a single instance (the F1 and D1 tiers), or they only provide manual scaling (the B1 tier). If you've selected one of these tiers, you must first scale up to the S1 or any of the P level production tiers.

Autoscale supported on pricing tiers:

  • Standard
  • Premium
  • Isolated

Deployment Slots

Standard tier supports only five deployment slots.

Steps to ensure target slot doesn't experience downtime:

  • Apply the settings from the target slot to all instances of the source slot (Any of these cases trigger all instances in the source slot to restart)
    • Slot-specific app settings and connection strings, if applicable.
    • Continuous deployment settings
    • App Service authentication settings, if enabled
  • Wait for every instance in the source slot to complete its restart.
  • If local cache is enabled, trigger local cache initialization by making an HTTP request to the application root ("/") on each instance of the source slot.
  • If auto swap is enabled with custom warm-up, trigger Application Initiation by making an HTTP request to the application root ("/") on each instance of the source slot.
  • swap the two slots by switching the routing rules for the two slots.

Settings that are swapped:

  • General settings
  • App settings
  • Connection strings
  • Handler mappings
  • Public certificates
  • WebJobs content

Settings that aren't swapped:

  • Publishing endpoints
  • Custom domain names
  • Non-public certificates and TLS/SSL settings
  • Scale settings
  • WebJobs schedulers
  • IP restrictions
  • Always On
  • Diagnostic log settings
  • Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS)

To make swappable setting of specific slot: set WEBSITE_OVERRIDE_PRESERVE_DEFAULT_STICKY_SLOT_SETTINGS to 0 / false

custom warm-up

applicationInitialization in `Web.Config

<system.webServer>
    <applicationInitialization>
        <add initializationPage="/" hostName="[app hostname]" />
        <add initializationPage="/Home/About" hostName="[app hostname]" />
    </applicationInitialization>
</system.webServer>

Route production

Traffic %

x-ms-routing-name Cookie will be set / query string

By default, new slots are given a routing rule of 0%


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