Comparison: Azure App Services vs Cloud Services

By: mwatson

| March 6, 2017

Microsoft Azure provides multiple ways to deploy your applications to the Azure cloud. Azure App Services and Cloud Services are the two most popular, and easiest, ways to deploy your applications. They both support web applications and background service type applications. In this article, we will provide a comparison of Azure App services versus Cloud Services, along with a quick overview of each.

App Services

Microsoft Azure App Services are a platform as a service (PaaS) offering. Azure runs App Services on a fully managed set of virtual machines in either a dedicated or shared mode, based on your App Service Plan. There are 4 types of App Services:

Web App – used for hosting websites and web applications (previously Azure Websites)
API App – used for hosting the RESTful APIs
Logic App – used for business process automation, system integration and sharing data across clouds
Mobile App – used for hosting mobile app back ends (previously delivered by Azure Mobile services)

Pros

Very easy to deploy to, deploys much faster than Cloud Services
Deployment slots are free
Built-in A/B testing features
Can combine multiple applications together to save money
Extendable with Site Extensions

Cons

No server access
Cannot use all monitoring tools because you can’t install an agent
Limited Windows performance counters
Limited VM sizes and specs to pick from

App Services WebJobs

Azure WebJobs provide an easy way to run background processes. These can be configured to run on a schedule, on demand or continuously. For example, Stackify’s Azure monitoring agent runs continuously in the background for every Azure App Service instance that you have. There is no additional cost associated with running WebJobs. You may have to scale your App Service Plan up or out a little to handle the extra resources utilized by the WebJobs.

Pros

Easy to deploy
No cost beyond App Service Plan costs
Easy way to setup scheduled tasks

Cons

Apps must work in a limited permission sandboxed environment

Cloud Services: Web & Worker Roles

Cloud services were the very first Microsoft Azure Platform as a service (PaaS) offering. They provide the ability to deploy web apps (web roles) and background services (worker roles) onto Azure virtual machines. Azure handles all of the initialization of the servers, deployment to them, Windows Updates, etc.

Web Roles are used to host web applications. Worker Roles are used to host background services, similar to Windows Services.

Pros

Can pick from several VM sizes
Full server administrator access
Can install a wide array of software on the server itself
Full access to Windows performance counters and ETW

Cons

Very slow to deploy to
Staging slots cost money to use
Can’t easily combine multiple apps together
Can’t change the VM instance size without redeploying

Comparison Table

The table below compares common App Services and Cloud Services features:

	Azure Web Apps	Cloud Services
Supported Platforms	Support for ASP.NET, Node.js, Java, PHP, or Python	Support for Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, .NET and Ruby
URL	<AppName>.AzureWebSites.Net	<CloudServiceName>.CloudApp.Net
DevOps	Supports CI, CD using Visual Studio Team Services, GitHub or BitBucket.	Supports CI, CD using Visual Studio Team Services, GitHub or BitBucket.
Support for Multi-Tier architecture	Yes	Yes
Swap build between staging and production environment	Yes (free)	Yes (additional cost)
Access to server desktop	No control	Some control
Webserver maintenance	Not required, Azure does OS patching and other activities.	Not required, Azure does OS patching and other activities.
Visual studio integration	Yes	Yes
Access to other services like storage, service bus	Yes	Yes
Configure Start-Up tasks	No (must use WebJob)	Yes
Deployment time	Fast	Very Slow
Multiple applications on same servers	Yes	No
Scale up without redeploy	Yes	No
Auto-scaling	Yes	Yes

Conclusion

Both App Services and Cloud Services provide a lot of good features and are a simple way to deploy your applications to the Microsoft Azure cloud. They are definitely much easier than setting up your own virtual machines! The primary differentiating factor is Cloud Services offers access to the underlying Azure VMs, and App Services do not.

In my opinion, I prefer App Services for these specific reasons:

Combine multiple applications together to save money
Free deployment slots
Faster deployments

Stackify Retrace works perfectly for monitoring App Services and Cloud Services.

Special thanks to Sanjeev Assudani who helped contribute to this article.

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