In my previous Getting Started with Azure App Services article, I provided an overview of Azure App Services and the features available in different service plans. There are different ways to create Azure services and each of these ways can be easier or more difficult depending on your skills and the needs of the application. You can create Azure App Service using Azure Portal, CLI, or PowerShell scripts. You can also build App Services from the Visual Studio IDE. In this article, we will learn how to create and configure Azure App Service using Microsoft’s official Azure portal.
Get started with the Azure portal
I assume you have already created an Azure account and have either a free or paid Azure subscription. To create your first Azure App Service in the Azure portal, you need to click + Create a resource button and search Web application. Once the thumbnail of the web application is displayed, you must click on the Create link below Web Apps.
Alternatively, you can also search for the keyword Application Services in the top search bar and you will see the Application Services option in the auto-complete menu.
Clicking on the App Services option will take you to the App Services listing page where you can click on the icon Create button to create a new application service.
By clicking on the Create the button will open the following Create a web app page that will ask you to provide some basic information to create a web application.
The page is divided into four sections, such as Project Details, Instance Details, App Service Plan, and Zone Redundancy, and each section has one or more fields. I will now explain each section in detail:
project details
This section will ask you to choose the subscription and the resource group.
Subscription
If you have multiple subscriptions, you can select the one you want to use for your web application. This will help you differentiate costs between different web applications/projects.
Resource group
In Azure, a resource group is a logical container that combines multiple resources together so you can manage them as a single entity. When you create a web application, you can choose an existing resource group or create a new one. There is no additional cost for creating resource groups, so you can create multiple resource groups to manage your resources.
Instance Details
This section will ask you to choose the name of your web application, the technology stack, the operating system and the region in which you want to deploy the application.
App name
This field represents the domain name of your application. It is important to select both a unique and valid name, as it cannot be changed later. Please note that you can easily attach your custom domain if needed.
Publish
This field allows you to choose how you want to publish your application. You can publish your code directly or you can choose to deploy your application using Docker Container or a static web application.
Execution Stack
If you selected the Coded option in Publish parameter then this field will allow you to choose the runtime for your web application. You can choose .NET, ASP.NET, Java, PHP, Python, etc.
Operating system
Azure allows you to create a web application using different operating systems, for example Windows, Linux, etc. This choice can impact both cost and performance. So make sure you have chosen the right operating system according to the needs of your web application.
Region
This field allows you to choose the region in which you want to host your application. Sometimes you get less or more features depending on your app region. So make sure that the features you need for your web application are available in your region of choice.
Application Service Plan
This section will ask you to choose the App Service plan, which is required because you cannot create an App Service in Azure without creating an App Service plan. The App Service plan determines the pricing tier, location, features, cost, and compute resources associated with your app.
In this section, Azure will automatically filter the app service plans based on region and operating system selection and you can either choose one of the filtered plans from the drop-down list or create a new plan to the help of the Create a new link.
You also have the option of changing the machine specifications and pricing tier of your application service plan. This choice is really important because it will determine the functionality and environmental characteristics of your web application.
Development/Test
If you are looking for a simple development or testing workload or if you want to deploy a lightweight web application that does not require too many advanced features, you can choose one of the tiers available in the Dev/Test category. Tiers available in this category are Free, Shared, and Basic.
Production
If you need a powerful production environment with many advanced features to deploy a large e-commerce application or a popular web portal or a famous web API, you can choose one of the tiers available in this Production category. The levels available in this category are shown below and you can choose one according to your application requirements and features.
Isolated
If you are building a mission-critical web application that needs to be deployed in your own virtual network or if you want to isolate your application with all types of external access, you can choose one of the tiers available in this isolated category. This is the most expensive tier because the apps use almost the same hardware as the Production tier, but you have more control over the resources your app uses. The levels available in this category are shown below and you can choose one according to your application requirements and features.
For this article, I’ve chosen a free tier in the Dev/Test category, but remember that if you need a specific feature or your app’s popularity has increased, you can always upgrade ( or scale) your App Service Plan instance. This is one of the biggest advantages of the cloud over local, where you have to buy and configure new machines yourself.
To keep this article short, let’s ignore the settings available in other tabs such as Deployment, Networking, Monitoring, and Tags. I will write separate blog posts soon to cover these App Service features in more detail.
Once all the information is provided in the Basic tab, you can click on the Revise + create button displayed at the bottom. You will see a screen showing all of your settings for your final check.
Click on the Create button and wait a few seconds/minutes for the creation of new resources necessary for the operation of your web application. Once the web application is created, you will see a success page similar to the one shown below which lists all the newly created resources.
Test the web application
Click it Go to resource to access your App Service resource page which will show basic details, e.g. status, location, URL, etc. of your newly created web application, as well as many configurations.
Click on your web app URL and you should see your web app running in the browser.
