README.md

Deploying and Monitoring Web Apps in Azure App Service

Description

Azure App Service is a fully-managed platform as a service (PaaS) for building, deploying, and scaling web, mobile, API, and even serverless apps. In this Lab, you will learn all about App Service by deploying an ASP.NET Core app to Azure App Service Web Apps. You will also use a variety of services to monitor the app, including the Application Performance Management service called Application Insights. You will finish the Lab by configuring an alert when certain conditions are met in the monitoring data.

Objectives

Upon completion of this Lab you will be able to:

• Explain and create App Service plans and App Services
• Understand the available App Service Web Apps deployment options
• Use deployment slots for zero-downtime deployments
• Monitor Web Apps using metrics, logs, and Application Insights

Prerequisites

You should be familiar with:

• General software development and DevOps principles
• Familiar with the Azure Portal

Creating an App Service Plan and Web App

App Service is a fully-managed platform as a service (PaaS) for building, deploying, and scaling web, mobile, API, and even serverless apps. In this exercise, you will create an App Service plan and a Web App.

• In the Azure Portal, click Create a resource and search for App Service plan. Click Create.
• In the App Service plan blade, enter the following information:
  • Subscription: Select your subscription.
  • Resource group: Select your existing resource group or create a new one.
  • Name: Enter a unique name for your App Service plan.
  • Operating System: Select Windows.
  • Location: Select the location you used in the previous exercise.
  • Pricing tier: Select S1.
  • Size: Select s1.
  • Runtime stack: Select .NET Core 6.0 (LTS).
  • Region: Select the a region.
  • Review and Create: Click Review and Create.

Creating a stagging deployment slot

Deployment slots are live apps with their own hostnames. App content and configurations elements can be swapped between two deployment slots, including the production slot. Deploying an app to a slot first and swapping it into production ensures that all instances of the slot are warmed up before being swapped into production. This eliminates downtime when you deploy. The traffic redirection is seamless, and no requests are dropped as a result of swap operations. Slot swaps are free.

• In the Azure Portal, navigate to your App Service plan and click Deployment slots.
• There is a default slot called production.
• Click Add Slot.
• In the Add a slot blade, enter the following information:
  • Name: Enter a unique name for your slot.
  • Deployment slot setting: Select Do not clone.
  • Save: Click Save.
• You should now see your new slot in the list of deployment slots.
• Click on the new slot to open the Deployment slot blade. You should see a similar screen as the production slot but the URL will be different.

Deploying an ASP.NET Core app to Azure App Service

In this exercise, you will deploy an ASP.NET Core app to Azure App Service.

• In the Azure Portal, navigate to your App Service plan and click Deployment slots.
• Click on the stagging slot to open the Deployment slot blade.
• From the Development Tools section, click Advance Tools.
• In the Advanced Tools blade, click Go. The Kudu console will open in a new tab. Kudu is the engine behind Git deployments in Azure App Service. We will use it to deploy our app.
• In the Kudu console, click Tools and then Zip Push Deploy.
• In the Zip Push Deploy blade, Drag and drop the app.zip file from the LabFiles folder into the Drag and drop a zip file area.
• Once the deployment is complete, navigate to the URL of your stagging slot. You should see the following page:
• Configure the Applications settings require by the Code to remove the undefined text.
• Go to the Configuration section of the Deployment slot blade.
• Click New application setting.
• In the Add application setting blade, enter the following information:
  • Name: Enter test-settignsT.
  • Value: Enter blue.
  • OK: Click OK.

• Navigate to the URL of your stagging slot. You should see the following page:

Swapping the stagging slot into production

In this exercise, you will swap the stagging slot into production. This will make the stagging slot the production slot and the production slot the stagging slot.

• From the Deployment slot blade, click Swap.
• In the Swap blade, enter the following information:
  • Source: Select stagging app.
  • Destination: Select production app.
  • Swap type: Select Swap.
  • Swap with preview: Select Yes. The preview will show you the changes that will be made to the production slot.
  • Start Swap: Click Start Swap.
• Once the swap is complete, Before clicking on the Complete Swap button, navigate to the stagging URL of your slot. You should see the preview of the production deployment. Notice the undefined text reappear, that is because the application setting is not configured in the production slot.

• Next click on the Complete Swap button.

Monitoring Azure Web Apps using metrics, logs, and Application Insights

Monitoring is a critical part of any application. In this exercise, you will learn how to monitor your Web App using metrics, logs, and Application Insights.

Monitoring using metrics

• From the App Service blade, click Metrics.
• In the Metrics blade, click Add metric chart.
• In the Add metric chart blade, enter the following information:

  Connections

  • scope: Select production app.
  • Metric Namespace: Select App Service
  • Metric: Select Connections
  • Add metric: Click Add metric

  HTTP 2xx

  • scope: Select production app.
  • Metric Namespace: Select App Service
  • Metric: Select HTTP 2xx
  • Add metric: Click Add metric

  HTTP Server Errors

  • scope: Select production app.
  • Metric Namespace: Select App Service
  • Metric: Select HTTP Server Errors
  • Add metric: Click Add metric

  Thread Count

  • scope: Select production app.
  • Metric Namespace: Select App Service
  • Metric: Select Thread Count
  • Add metric: Click Add metric
• Save and close the metric chart.
• You should now see the metrics chart on the Metrics blade.

Monitoring using logs

• From the App Service blade, click App Service Logs.
• In the App Service Logs blade, carry out the following configuration as the image below:
• Click Save.
• From the App Service blade, click Log stream.
• Application logs will be displayed in the Log stream blade. These logs are useful for debugging your application.
• Server logs will be displayed in the Log stream blade. These logs are useful for debugging your application.

Monitoring using Application Insights

Application Insights is an extensible Application Performance Management (APM) service for web developers on multiple platforms. Use it to monitor your live web application. It will automatically detect performance anomalies. It includes powerful analytics tools to help you diagnose issues and to understand what users actually do with your app. It's designed to help you continuously improve performance and usability. It works for apps on a wide variety of platforms including .NET, Node.js and J2EE, hosted on-premises or in the cloud. It integrates with your DevOps process, and has connection points to a variety of development tools. It can monitor and analyze telemetry from mobile apps by integrating with Visual Studio App Center.

• From the Azure Services, click Application Insights or search from the portal.

• In the Application Insights blade, click Create.

• In the Create Application Insights blade, enter the following information:

  • Subscription: Select your subscription.
  • Resource group: Select your existing resource group or create a new one.
  • Name: Enter a unique name for your Application Insights.
  • Region*: Select the location you used in the previous exercise.
  • Resource Mode: Select Classic.
  • Review and Create: Click Review and Create.

• Once the Application Insights is created, navigate to the App Service Production Slot blade.

• In the App Service Production Slot blade, click Application Insights.

• In the Application Insights blade, click Turn on Application Insights.

• In the Turn on Application Insights blade, select the Application Insights you created in the previous step under Resource.

• Click Apply.

• Navigate to the Applicaiton Insights resource.

• Carry out some operations on the prod url of your app by clicking on some links and check the Application Insights blade for the data.

• In the Application Insights blade, click Transaction Search and search for Home or search all.

• Go back to the Overview blade and click Logs. Log Analytics allows you to run SQL-like queries over your Application Insights data.

• Close the welcome screen and enter the following query in the query editor:

  pageViews

• This query will return all the page views for your app.
• Click Run.
• Click the chart icon to view the data in a chart.
• Click Save to save the query.

Checking the health of your Web App

• From the App Service blade, click Resource Health under Monitoring.
• In the Resource Health blade, you will see the health of your Web App. If there are any issues, you will see them here.