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Azure App Service

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376
+ 1
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Azure Functions

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Azure App Service vs Azure Functions: What are the differences?

Azure App Service and Azure Functions are both services provided by Microsoft Azure for building and hosting web applications and APIs. Here are the key differences between the two.

  1. Architecture and Functionality: Azure App Service is designed to host web applications and APIs, providing a full-fledged hosting environment with support for multiple languages and frameworks. On the other hand, Azure Functions is a serverless compute service that allows you to run small pieces of code (functions) in the cloud, triggered by events or schedules. It provides a more lightweight and event-driven architecture.

  2. Scaling and Cost: Azure App Service allows you to scale your application horizontally by adding more instances, or vertically by upgrading the underlying VMs. The scaling options are more flexible but also require manual configuration. Azure Functions, being a serverless service, automatically scales based on the incoming workload. You only pay for the actual execution time of the functions, making it more cost-effective for sporadic or bursty workloads.

  3. Execution Model: Azure App Service uses a continuous execution model where your application is constantly running and waiting for incoming requests. It provides features like session state management and application-level caching. Azure Functions, on the other hand, follows an on-demand execution model where functions are instantiated and executed only when triggered. They are stateless by design, making them suitable for lightweight and short-lived tasks.

  4. Triggers and Bindings: Azure App Service primarily relies on HTTP traffic as the trigger for your application, although it also supports other protocols like FTP and WebSockets. In contrast, Azure Functions provide a wide range of triggers, including HTTP requests, timers, message queues, data changes in Azure services, and more. Bindings in Azure Functions allow you to easily connect to different data sources or services without writing extensive code.

  5. Deployment and DevOps: Azure App Service provides a more traditional deployment model where you package your application and deploy it to the hosting environment. It supports different deployment methods including Git, Visual Studio, and Azure DevOps. Azure Functions, being a code-first approach, integrates well with modern DevOps practices. It supports CI/CD pipelines and can be easily deployed using tools like Azure DevOps or Azure Functions Core Tools.

  6. Service Integrations: Azure App Service integrates well with other Azure services like Azure SQL Database, Azure Cache, and Azure Application Insights, allowing you to build robust and scalable applications. Azure Functions also have similar integrations but are more focused on event-driven architectures. They have built-in integrations with Azure Event Hubs, Service Bus, Storage, and more, making it easier to build serverless workflows and event-driven applications.

In summary, Azure App Service is suitable for hosting web applications and APIs with more flexibility and control over the hosting environment. Azure Functions, on the other hand, are designed for lightweight and event-driven tasks, providing automatic scaling and cost optimization for serverless workloads.

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Pros of Azure App Service
Pros of Azure Functions
  • 6
    .Net Framework
  • 5
    Visual studio
  • 14
    Pay only when invoked
  • 11
    Great developer experience for C#
  • 9
    Multiple languages supported
  • 7
    Great debugging support
  • 5
    Can be used as lightweight https service
  • 4
    Easy scalability
  • 3
    WebHooks
  • 3
    Costo
  • 2
    Event driven
  • 2
    Azure component events for Storage, services etc
  • 2
    Poor developer experience for C#

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Cons of Azure App Service
Cons of Azure Functions
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    • 1
      No persistent (writable) file system available
    • 1
      Poor support for Linux environments
    • 1
      Sporadic server & language runtime issues
    • 1
      Not suited for long-running applications

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    What is Azure App Service?

    Quickly build, deploy, and scale web apps created with popular frameworks .NET, .NET Core, Node.js, Java, PHP, Ruby, or Python, in containers or running on any operating system. Meet rigorous, enterprise-grade performance, security, and compliance requirements by using the fully managed platform for your operational and monitoring tasks.

    What is Azure Functions?

    Azure Functions is an event driven, compute-on-demand experience that extends the existing Azure application platform with capabilities to implement code triggered by events occurring in virtually any Azure or 3rd party service as well as on-premises systems.

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    What companies use Azure App Service?
    What companies use Azure Functions?
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    What tools integrate with Azure App Service?
    What tools integrate with Azure Functions?

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    What are some alternatives to Azure App Service and Azure Functions?
    Azure Service Fabric
    Azure Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable microservices. Service Fabric addresses the significant challenges in developing and managing cloud apps.
    AWS Elastic Beanstalk
    Once you upload your application, Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring.
    Google App Engine
    Google has a reputation for highly reliable, high performance infrastructure. With App Engine you can take advantage of the 10 years of knowledge Google has in running massively scalable, performance driven systems. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow.
    Azure Service Bus
    It is a cloud messaging system for connecting apps and devices across public and private clouds. You can depend on it when you need highly-reliable cloud messaging service between applications and services, even when one or more is offline.
    Kubernetes
    Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions.
    See all alternatives