Azure App Service – App Service Plans

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I’ve been playing around with Azure App Service for a couple of days now and decided to address some aspects that haven’t been covered very well within the knowledge sessions I’ve seen so far. Many only include the cool parts, creating new Logic Apps with everything already installed and configured. Also, I haven’t seen any covering topics like scaling and configuration recommendations. In real environments, things require a bit more care and attention. Therefore I will cover some of the basic needed when getting up and running with Azure App Service within upcoming blog posts.

Azure App Service – Before Getting Started

Before getting started creating Azure App Service applications, which currently includes Web Apps, Mobile Apps, Logic Apps, or API Apps, it’s essential to know more about the new Azure App Service plans.

What are Azure App Service Plans?

The new Azure App Service offering allows you to group several services within a single pricing tier (Free, Shared, Basic, Standard, and Premium). This will enable you to save money, given that capabilities and capacity are shared over multiple services/apps. For example, an Azure Web APP can share a hosting plan with an Azure Mobile APP. To make this possible, there must be a way to describe and store this information. Here is where the App Service Plan comes into play.

App Service Plans constraints and recommendations.

There are some constraints you will need to be aware of: An app in Azure App Service can be associated with only one App Service plan at any given time. Also, both apps and plans are contained in a resource group. It’s possible to have multiple plans in a single resource group that enables you to define an application that spans across geographical regions.

Sharing the same App Service Plan among all your resources, it’s always recommended. This basically depends on the characteristics of the applications (requiring different scaling factors). For example, your website/mobile app might require different availability and scaling options compared with a non-real-time background process responsible for making calculations or gathering information.

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1 – Create a new App Service Plan

At the moment, you can’t create an empty App Service Plan. However, you can explicitly create a new plan during the creation of your Application is. This is only possible for the following types: Web Apps, Mobile Apps, Logic Apps or API Apps

Within the Azure management portal, create a new application based on one of the application types mentioned above. Inside the APP SERVICE PLAN section, click on the text Or create new. At this point, you provide a name for the group and make sure to configure the Pricing tier, Resource group, Subscription, and Location.

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2 – Altering an App Service Plan service tier

In case your application requires features offered in different service tier, it’s necessary to alter the App Service Plan. Within the Azure management portal, click on BROWSE » locate the option App Service Plans. Select the plan which needs to be altered.

After the service tier change request has been executed, you will be able to use all new features available based on the selected tier.

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Move an App to a different App Service plan.

You can move an app to a different App Service plan in the Azure management portal. Just keep in mind that Applications can only be moved between plans in the same geographical region.

To move an app to another plan, navigate to the app you want to move. And then click Change App Service Plan.

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Summary

Within this post, I’ve briefly covered all the essential aspects of Azure App Service Plans. App Service Plans play an important role when it comes to Azure App Service offering and, therefore, essential to understand.

In the next post will cover how to install, configure, and use Azure API APPs as found within visit the API apps marketplace.

Additional resources:
Azure App Service plans in-depth overview.
Azure App Service and existing Azure services

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