Microsoft Azure Cloud

Microsoft Azure is a growing collection of integrated cloud services that developers and IT professionals use to build, deploy, and manage applications through global network of datacenters, using the tools, applications, and frameworks of your choice.

Build Highly Scalable Websites and Web Apps with Microsoft Azure!

Deepika Nagpal

The IT Landscape is changing rapidly with a move away from hosting on traditional servers with their high capital costs to one that uses on-demand services that scale automatically to handle load. IT Departments are being challenged to reduce the cost and footprint of infrastructure and maintenance spend with a focus on reducing CAPEX while also increasing agility.

Microsoft Azure Websites is a fully managed Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for hosting websites and web applications. You do not have to manage virtual machines, network load balancers, or deployment infrastructure yourself. All of these capabilities are provided by the Azure Websites service. Focus on your application code, and let Azure take care of the infrastructure to scale and securely run it for you.

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Virtualization on Azure

Evelyn Dennis

You can make use of virtualization in your on-site data-centers, but if you’re using Azure you’ll definitely be relying on virtual machines to one extent or another. To create virtual servers on physical servers, you use software that sets up divisions between each virtual machine (VM) and allows them all to operate independently. This adds a layer of abstraction between information and the physical infrastructure that hosts it. This in turn gives you more flexibility on how you can manage and protect the various elements of your computing environment.

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Azure Websites, Cloud Services, and Virtual Machines comparison

Evelyn Dennis

With Azure, there are multiple ways to host websites – Azure Website, Cloud services and Virtual Machines.

For most web apps, Azure Websites have been the best choice. Deployment and management are integrated into the platform, sites can scale quickly to handle high traffic loads, and the built in load balancing and traffic manager provide high availability. You can easily move existing sites to Azure websites easily with an online migrating tool or create a new site using the framework and tools of your choice.

If you need more control over the web server environment, such as the ability to remote into your server or configure server startup tasks, Azure Cloud Services is typically the best option.

If you have an existing application that would require substantial modifications to run in Azure Websites or Azure Cloud Services, you could choose Azure Virtual Machines in order to simplify migrating to the cloud. However, correctly configuring, securing, and maintaining VMs requires much more time and IT expertise compared to Azure Websites and Cloud Services.

If you are considering Azure Virtual Machines, make sure you take into account the ongoing maintenance effort required to patch, update, and manage your VM environment.

The following diagram illustrates the relative degree of control versus ease of use for each of these web hosting options on Azure.websites_cloudservices_vms_3