Azure Web Apps is a

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over m ...

based platform for hosting websites, created and operated by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

. It is a

platform as a service Platform as a service (PaaS) or application platform as a service (aPaaS) or platform-based service is a category of cloud computing services that allows customers to provision, instantiate, run, and manage a modular bundle comprising a computing ...

(PaaS) which allows publishing Web apps running on multiple frameworks and written in different programming languages ( .NET,

node.js Node.js is an open-source server environment. Node.js is cross-platform and runs on Windows, Linux, Unix, and macOS. Node.js is a back-end JavaScript runtime environment. Node.js runs on the V8 JavaScript Engine and executes JavaScript code ou ...

PHP PHP is a General-purpose programming language, general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementati ...

, Python and

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

), including Microsoft proprietary ones and 3rd party ones. Microsoft Azure Web Sites became available in its first preview version in June 2012, and an official version ("General Availability") was announced in June 2013. Microsoft Azure Web Sites was originally named Windows Azure Web Sites, but was renamed as part of a re-branding move across Azure in March 2014. It was subsequently renamed "App Service" in March 2015.

History

Microsoft initially offered a basic web hosting service as part of Office Live Small Business, which was launched in late 2007. Office Live Small Business offered customers free and commercial web hosting with a built-in system for creating websites based on built-in templates and a site creation wizard. When Microsoft started allocating resources into developing its numerous cloud solutions, a group was formed in Microsoft Azure to develop Microsoft Azure Web Sites. Microsoft Azure Web Sites was announced in June 2012 as a preview release. In parallel, Microsoft developed Microsoft Azure Pack, which offers the same technology that can be installed as a private-cloud on sets of servers at a customer's site and under direct customer control. In mid-2013, both Microsoft Azure Web Sites and Microsoft Azure Pack were officially released to the public.

Features

Microsoft Azure Web Sites is a web-hosting platform that supports multiple technologies, and programming languages ( .NET,

, Python). Users with Microsoft Azure subscriptions can create

Websites A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikipe ...

, and deploy content and code into the Web sites. Microsoft Azure Web Sites supports a website creation wizard which allows the user to create a blank site, or create a site based on one of several available pre-configured images from the website gallery. As part of creating the website, the site's

URL A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifi ...

is assigned a subdomain of azurewebsites.net. In various for-pay tiers, a website can be assigned one or more custom domains. This is implemented by setting a

CNAME A Canonical Name record (abbreviated as CNAME record) is a type of resource record in the Domain Name System (DNS) that maps one domain name (an alias) to another (the canonical name). This can prove convenient when running multiple services (li ...

record on the

DNS The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to ...

server that hosts the user's domain's zone to point at the user's web site hosted in Azure. On some for-pay tiers, the user has the added option of uploading an

SSL SSL may refer to: Entertainment * RoboCup Small Size League, robotics football competition * ''Sesame Street Live'', a touring version of the children's television show * StarCraft II StarLeague, a Korean league in the video game Natural language ...

certificate Certificate may refer to: * Birth certificate * Marriage certificate * Death certificate * Gift certificate * Certificate of authenticity, a document or seal certifying the authenticity of something * Certificate of deposit, or CD, a financial pr ...

and configuring the site to be bound to

HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It is used for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protocol is e ...

. Once a site has been created, the user can add or modify its content using multiple deployment methods, including Web Deploy (MSDeploy), TFS (via

Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms such ...

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

FTPS FTPS (also known as FTP-SSL and FTP Secure) is an extension to the commonly used File Transfer Protocol (FTP) that adds support for the Transport Layer Security (TLS) and, formerly, the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL, which is now prohibited by RFC75 ...

, WebMatrix,

CodePlex CodePlex was a forge website by Microsoft. While it was active, it allowed shared development of open-source software. Its features included wiki pages, source control based on Mercurial, TFVC, Subversion or Git, discussion forums, issue tr ...

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, co ...

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, U.S. that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and client software. Dropbox was founded in 2 ...

Bitbucket Bitbucket is a Git-based source code repository hosting service owned by Atlassian. Bitbucket offers both commercial plans and free accounts with an unlimited number of private repositories. Services Bitbucket Cloud Bitbucket Cloud (previo ...

Mercurial Mercurial is a distributed revision control tool for software developers. It is supported on Microsoft Windows and Unix-like systems, such as FreeBSD, macOS, and Linux. Mercurial's major design goals include high performance and scalabilit ...

and local Git. Other features of Azure Web Sites are: * User-selected placement in one or multiple data centers across the globe. * Uptime SLA of 99.95% for Standard tier customers. * Continuous monitoring of site metrics such as CPU time, Data in, Data out, HTTP errors and additional metrics. * Setting of monitoring alerts. * Log collection and failed request tracing for tracking and troubleshooting. * Deployment of a Microsoft SQL or MySQL database to be used with web applications. * Websites are hosted on IIS 8.0 running on a custom version of Windows Server 2012. * Support for 4 service tiers: Free, Shared, Basic and Standard (dedicated). * In the Basic and Standard tiers, support for 3 VM sizes for scaling up. * In the for-pay tiers, support for manual or automatic scaling-out with up to 10 instances of VMs. * Support for integration with Azure Traffic Manager to route traffic manually or automatically between websites in different regions across the globe. * Authentication using Microsoft Azure Active Directory

Implementation

Microsoft Azure Web Sites is implemented as websites that are dynamically created on-demand on servers running

Windows Server 2012 Windows Server 2012, codenamed "Windows Server 8", is the sixth version of the Windows Server operating system by Microsoft, as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It is the server version of Windows based on Windows 8 and succ ...

and IIS 8.0. When a client posts a request to a web site, Microsoft Azure Web Sites dynamically provisions the site on one of the Azure

virtual machines In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/ emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hard ...

pointing it at content stored in

Azure Storage Azure may refer to: Colour * Azure (color), a hue of blue ** Azure (heraldry) ** Shades of azure, shades and variations Arts and media * ''Azure'' (Art Farmer and Fritz Pauer album), 1987 * Azure (Gary Peacock and Marilyn Crispell album), 2013 ...

containers. The Azure Virtual Machines are deployed in groups called "Stamps", which may contain hundreds of such machines. Microsoft deploys these stamps in its Azure

data centers A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommun ...

across the world, and adds more stamps as demand grows.

Tiers

Azure Web Sites services are offered in 4 tiers. The entry-level tier is the "free" tier. The free tier supports up to 10 websites with 1 GB of content storage, and is limited to 165 MB of daily data egress. The first for-pay tier is the "Shared" tier. Shared tier sites support custom domains and can be scaled out to up to 6 instances. The current highest for-pay tier is the "Standard" tier. Standard tier websites run on VMs dedicated exclusively to a single customer's websites. The Standard tier supports SSL (both SNI and IP-based), scaling out to up to 10 instances, and file storage of up to 50 GB of content. Basic and Standard tier websites can be deployed on 3 sizes of virtual machines: Small VMs with 1 virtual

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

and 1.75GB of RAM, Medium VMs with 2 virtual CPUs and 3.5 GB of RAM, and Large VMs with 4 virtual CPUs and 7GB of available RAM.

Data centers

Microsoft operates Microsoft Azure in a number of

throughout the world with Microsoft Azure Web Sites available in a subset of these. When deploying websites on Microsoft Azure Web Sites customers can choose to deploy sites in a data center in any of the following geographical regions: East US, North central US, West US, East Asia, Brazil South, North Europe, West Europe, Japan East or Japan West.

References

External links

;Microsoft
Microsoft Azure Web Sites Service Home Page

Microsoft Azure Web Sites Documentation Home Page

Microsoft Azure Service Dashboard with Current Availability Status

"Introducing Microsoft Azure", David Chappell, Chappell & Associates

''Microsoft Azure Web Sites'', James Chambers, Wrox

''Microsoft Azure Web Sites: Building Websites at a Rapid Pace'', Tejaswi Redkar, Dynamic Deploy
;Other
Microsoft makes Microsoft Azure services generally available, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft starts making more of its Azure cloud services generally available, Mary Jo Foley
{{Microsoft Computer-related introductions in 2013 Cloud computing providers Microsoft cloud services