This is part 18 of azure tutorial. In this video, we'll discuss azure app service. So, what is azure
app service? Well, it's a platform as a service offering from Microsoft. We use it to host
web applications, REST APIs and backend services for mobile applications. It doesn't really matter,
which programming language or framework you have used. Web applications and services that are
developed using any of the following programming languages or frameworks can be hosted using azure
app service. It could be .NET, .NET Core, Java, Ruby, Node.js, PHP or Python. So, in short,
we use azure app service to host web applications and services. At this point, if you're wondering
how is hosting on azure app service different from hosting on your own on premise server, in other
words, why would anyone use azure app service instead of using other alternatives to host their
applications and services. Well, to understand this, it's very important you understand the
difference between infrastructure as a service and platform as a service. We discussed these
two concepts in great detail in parts 11 and 12 of our cloud computing tutorial. So, if you're
new to these concepts, I strongly recommend to watch cloud computing tutorial before proceeding
with this azure tutorial. Now, with on-premise web hosting, you or your organization is responsible
for managing pretty much everything. You may have to spec out and procure physical servers,
storage, networking equipment and all the related hardware. Make sure there is main power supply,
backup power supply, cooling system etc are in place. Install and set up the network.
Install and configure virtualization software, operating system, any middleware or runtime
components that your application needs. Install and configure a web server like IIS, Apache, Nginx
etc. Azure app service on the other hand is a platform as a service offering. This means you or
your organization is only responsible for managing your business application and its data. Everything
else is managed by azure. You don't have to worry about any of the things like managing the network
or underlying infrastructure, installing the operating system updates, critical patches,
runtime or middleware components. All these are taken care by azure. This gives you even more time
to concentrate on what matters to your business. Now, let's look at some of the great features
and benefits of using azure app service. It's a fully managed environment, meaning app service
automatically patches and maintains the operating system and language frameworks for you. You get
the time to focus on designing, developing and maintaining your application and its
data. As we already discussed, azure app service supports a wide variety of programming languages
and frameworks like .NET, .NET Core, Java, Ruby, Node.js, PHP or Python. You can also
run Powershell and other scripts or executables as background services. Scalability is another great
benefit. Based on the demand for your application, app service can scale resources up and down
or in and out. You can do this either manually if you want to or automatically based on
metrics like CPU utilization for example. From compliance standpoint, app service is ISO, SOC
and PCI compliant. From security standpoint, you can authenticate users with azure active directory
or any of the external authentication providers like Google, Facebook, Twitter or Microsoft.
You can also host a custom Windows or Linux container in app service. So, if you want to
you can Dockerize your app and host it in app service. You can also run multi-container apps
with docker compose. We'll discuss how to do all these in our upcoming videos. Devops
automation and optimization is another benefit. Set up CICD that is continuous integration and
deployment with azure devops, github, bitbucket, docker hub or azure container registry. Now,
if you still have some of your data on your own on on-premise servers, you can still access it using
hybrid connections and azure virtual networks. So, there is support for accessing on-premise
data as well. At this point, some of these concepts and features may sound a bit confusing,
but please don't worry, that's completely normal. In our upcoming videos, we'll discuss
how to create azure app service and host our applications with it. We'll also try some of
the concepts and features that we just discussed. That's it in this video. Thank you for listening.