Azure App Service, Azure Cloud Services, or VMs - Which Hosting Service Is Right for Your App?

Learn How To Choose Between Azure App Service, Azure Cloud Services, and VMs To Host Your App in the Azure Cloud

Microsoft Azure provides different ways to deploy your applications to the Azure cloud and choosing the right fit can often become a challenging. Azure App Services, Cloud Services, and Virtual Machines are the most popular and easiest to use. 

Let us have a look at all 3 and then compare them against each other to figure out the strengths and weaknesses, and over all compatibility with your project.

Microsoft Azure App Service

Azure App Service is Microsoft’s PaaS or Platform-as-a-Service cloud service. It is a managed platform. Azure App Service supports various applications types including the following catogories:

• Web Apps- This is used for hosting websites and web applications.
• Mobile Apps- This is used for hosting RESTful APIs.
• API Apps- This is used for business process automation, system integration, and sharing data across clouds
• Logic Apps- This is used for hosting mobile app back ends. 

In this service, the customer only needs to take care of deploying his code and developing his project. He does not need to worry about the additional responsibilities that deal with the creation and deployment of the environment. Tasks, such as creating a middleware, installing the requirements to create a virtual environment, installing timely software patches for the operating systems, etc. are handled by the cloud provider. This is especially useful in cases where your team has fewer people or lacks experience with such hardware.

But if you want to know app configurations for some task, like maybe analyzing performance issues, it is not possible to do so. 

Advantages of Microsoft Azure Apps

• It's quite simple to set up, and it's a lot faster than Cloud Services.
• It's deployment slots are free of cost.
• It's A/B testing capabilities are built-in.
• It can save money by combining multiple programs.
• It's site Extensions can be used to extend the functionality of the site.

Disadvantages of Microsoft Azure Apps 

• There is no access to the server.
• You cannot use all monitoring tools because you won't be able to install an agent.
• There are only a few Windows performance meters to choose from.
• There are only a few VM sizes and characteristics to choose from.

If you want some access to the background services while using Azure app services, you may use an integrated service called WebJobs. These background processes can be configured to run on a schedule, either on-demand or continuously. There are no added costs for running WebJobs. To know more about Azure, it's recommended you join Azure training online today.

Advantages of Using WebJobs

• Simple to set up.
• Aside from the App Service Plan fees, there are no other expenses.
• Setting up scheduled tasks is simple.

Disadvantages of Using WebJobs

• There is only one disadvantage of using WebJobs and it is that the apps must operate in a sandboxed environment with limited permissions.

Cloud Services

Azure Cloud services were the first services to be offered. It provides partial management. This means that you can control the server to some extent. You can deploy web apps and background services onto Azure virtual machines. While the tasks such as initialization of the servers, deployment to them, Windows Updates, etc. are taken care of by Azure.

With Azure Cloud services, you also get features like support for multiple deployments, automatic OS upgrades, and seamless platform switching. Additional features include access to Remote Desktop (RDP) servers and custom MSI installations. You can also define and execute start-up tasks, listen to Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) events. 

Advantages of Azure Cloud Services

• You can choose from a variety of VM sizes.
• You gain Administrator privileges on the server.
• You can get full access to Windows performance counters. 
• ETW can install a wide range of apps on the server itself.

Disadvantages of Azure Cloud Services

• It takes a long time to deploy. 
• Staging slots are expensive.
• It's difficult to mix many apps.
• It's impossible to adjust the VM instance size without redeploying.

Virtual Machines

Azure Virtual Machine is an IaaS or Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud service provided by Microsoft. Through virtual machines, you get full control over application management and deployment. While it gives you more control over and access to configuration assets, it also means additional work and responsibility for handling all the operations. By using Virtual Machines, you save costs of buying and maintaining hardware. 

Azure handles the physical security of the machine and data center. Through VM, you can move your application anywhere easily. You can also control and upgrade the operating system. You are also responsible for your application availability, security, and performance. It also provides you the ability to deploy multiple deployments like staging and production.

Advantages of Azure Virtual Machines

• The system capacity can be increased gradually with the demand.
• You can store data in private storage, public storage, or both.
• You can customize the control options based on your requirements.
• You can increase the speed of the process by using prebuilt out-of-the-box tools.
• You can customize to increase the security of your data according to the requirements.
• It is easily accessible from any device that has access to the internet.

Disadvantages of Azure Virtual Machines

• Lower performance as compared to VMs with the same specifications.
• Expensive to use.
• Provisioning of the VM becomes slow while adding a customized script.

Comparison Between Azure App Services and Cloud Services

Comparison Between Azure VMs and Azure App Service

Azure VMs	Azure App Service
More expensive to run	Less expensive to run
They are more scalable	They have constraints in scalability.
Require more efforts for managing application and deployment	Require fewer effort for managing.
App development is more difficult and slower.	App development is easier and faster.
Provide more control over application management and deployment	Provide less control.

To be able the leverage the maximum potential of any service, it is essential to make the right choice based on comprenhsive analysis of all the available options. I hope this article cleared some of your confusions about Azure hosting services.