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In this section we will take a look at Azure Web Apps.
What is it?
Azure Web Apps is a hosting platform delivered as PaaS for hosting web applications. If you are unfamiliar with Web Apps then think of IIS delivered as PaaS. That is probably a very simple comparison.
Web Apps has many more features however which allow it to be a rich and powerful hosting platform.
While a Web App can be hosted on an App Service plan which can use Windows or Linux under the hood the abstraction allows you to focus on delivering the solution rather than focusing on infrastructure.
Features
- Multiple languages and frameworks supported for writing your Web App
- Web apps are focused on supporting rich Devops experiences
- High availability and hosting supported in any Azure data centre
- Support for hybrid connections and virtual networking
- Visual Studio integration
- Tight adherence to many recognised security and compliance standards
- Dynamic scaling
Target Use Cases
From an integration perspective the likely use cases you will consider a Web App for include:
- REST API's
- SOAP Web Services
- Web Apps to support your solution
Strengths
The key strength of a Web App is the simplifying of the many challenges of deploying a public facing component. Microsoft have allowed you to outsource so many of the IT challenges to them that you are left focusing so much on your application that it becomes a compelling option.
Weaknesses
Probably the only weakness it the lack of cross region support for a Web App. This can be achieved by using Traffic Manager and hosting in 2 data centres but this could be simplified.
Dependancies
A Web App depends upon an App Service Plan which is the hosting plan on Azure.
Hosting
Web Apps are the hosting environment for your component. You can publish your component to the web app in a number of ways.
Costs
The cost model for Web App depends on your chosen plan. The big benefit of Web App is that you can add a new Web App to an existing App Service plan with no additional costs.
Typically the cost is a per hour cost for compute. There are a range of plans where you pay a higher cost for more advanced features.
Related Technologies
I think in general there are a number of technolgoes