Azure ASE Overview and Key Features

Azure ASE, or Azure App Service Environment, is a secure and isolated environment for hosting web applications.

It's essentially a network that's isolated from the public internet, which helps protect your apps from external threats.

Azure ASE is designed to provide a high level of security and compliance for enterprise customers.

This is achieved through features like network isolation, secure access, and monitoring.

Azure ASE Features are a game-changer for businesses looking to deploy scalable and secure applications. You can deploy an App Service Environment v3 that's enabled for zone redundancy, which means your application will be spread across zones for added resilience.

Zone redundancy is a deployment time only decision, so you'll need to set it up during creation. This means you can't change it after deployment. With zone redundant App Service Environment, each App Service Plan on the App Service Environment needs to have a minimum of three instances.

The benefits of Azure ASE Features don't stop there. You can also deploy an App Service Environment v3 on a dedicated host group, which isn't zone redundant. This gives you more flexibility in how you set up your environment.

Here are some key features of Azure ASE:

App Service Environment v3 has several key differences compared to its predecessors. One major difference is that it doesn't rely on the customer's virtual network for networking dependencies, giving you full control over inbound and outbound traffic.

This means you can secure and route traffic as you see fit. You can even deploy an App Service Environment v3 with zone redundancy, which spreads instances across zones for added reliability.

Zone redundancy is a deployment-time decision, and changing it after deployment isn't possible. To take advantage of zone redundancy, each App Service Plan on the App Service Environment needs at least three instances.

You can also deploy an App Service Environment v3 on a dedicated host group, but keep in mind that host group deployments aren't zone redundant. Scaling is faster with App Service Environment v3, although it's still not immediate like in the multitenant service.

App Service Environment v3 front ends automatically scale to meet your needs, and are deployed on better hosts. Scaling no longer blocks other scale operations within the App Service Environment v3, allowing you to perform multiple scale operations simultaneously.

For example, while your Windows small App Service plan is scaling, you can kick off a scale operation to run at the same time on a Windows medium or anything else other than Windows small. You can also reach apps in an internal-VIP App Service Environment v3 across global peering, which wasn't possible in earlier versions.

Service Endpoints are a powerful feature in Azure ASE that allow you to restrict access to multi-tenant services to specific virtual networks and subnets.

Service Endpoints create routes with higher priority than all other routes, which can be beneficial for security and control.

You can't enable Service Endpoints on one Azure SQL instance and not on another, all instances connected to a subnet must have Service Endpoints enabled.

This is a unique behavior among Azure services, and it's essential to consider this when designing your Azure ASE architecture.

Scaling with Azure App Service Environment (ASE) is a game-changer. With ASEv3, scaling is faster than ever, taking only a fraction of the time it took in earlier versions.

You can deploy an App Service Environment v3 that's enabled for zone redundancy, which allows you to spread instances across zones for added reliability. This is a deployment time only decision, and changing zone redundancy isn't possible after it's been deployed.

Scaling no longer blocks other scale operations within the App Service Environment v3. You can scale multiple App Service Plans simultaneously, without worrying about one operation affecting the others.

Here are some key scaling features in ASEv3:

You can also take advantage of autoscaling capabilities in Azure, which allows resources to automatically scale up or down based on demand. This ensures optimal performance and cost-efficiency, and is a great way to optimize your App Service Environment for maximum efficiency.

Azure offers a wide range of services to cater to different needs, and it's essential to understand the types of services available to make the most of it.

Azure provides three primary types of services: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). These services are designed to provide flexibility and scalability to users.

IaaS allows users to manage the infrastructure, including virtual machines, storage, and networking, but they need to handle the build and deploy of applications manually. Azure supports a wide range of operating systems due to its Hyper-hypervisor.

PaaS, on the other hand, provides a pre-configured environment for applications, including Azure App Service, Azure Functions, and Logic Apps. This service offers autoscaling and load balancing, making it ideal for complex applications.

Here's a brief overview of the main categories of Azure services:

Azure's comprehensive array of features is designed to enhance data protection and application management, making it a reliable choice for businesses.

Azure ASE Pricing can be a bit complex, but don't worry, I've got you covered.

The pricing model for Azure App Service Environment (ASE) v3 varies depending on the type of deployment you have. You have three options: App Service Environment v3, Zone redundant App Service Environment v3, and Dedicated host App Service Environment v3.

Each option has its own pricing structure, with Zone redundant App Service Environment v3 being the most complex. To calculate the cost, you need to consider the number of cores in your ASE and the number of cores required for the Zone redundant App Service Environment v3.

Here's a breakdown of the costs for Zone redundant App Service Environment v3:

For example, if you have 3 Linux I1v2 instances with 2 cores each, you'll have a total of 6 cores. Since 18 cores - 6 cores = 12 cores, you'll be charged for 6 additional Windows I1v2 instances.

You can also use Reserved Instances to save up to 72% compared to pay-as-you-go pricing. This is ideal for predictable workloads and long-term projects.

To make things easier, Azure provides Cost Management and Billing tools, including the Azure Pricing Calculator and Azure Advisor. These tools can help you estimate costs and optimize your ASE pricing.

In summary, Azure ASE pricing can be complex, but with the right tools and knowledge, you can make the most of it.

Azure ASE Security is a top priority for any organization looking to deploy a secure and compliant App Service Environment. Azure Security encompasses various tools and features to ensure security, including physical, infrastructure, and operational controls.

One of the key benefits of Azure Security Center is its ability to provide visibility and control over Azure resources, including Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, and Blob Storage. This allows users to gain insight and manage the security of their resources from a centralized dashboard.

Azure Security Center also offers protection for hybrid workloads, securing workloads deployed both within Azure and in non-Azure environments. This includes on-premises systems, which is particularly useful for organizations with existing infrastructure.

The Azure Security Center continuously monitors the cloud environment, helping users understand the security status of their resources and improve their security posture. This includes threat detection and mitigation, providing alerts and recommendations to assist organizations in detecting and preventing cybersecurity threats.

Azure employs a shared security responsibility model, indicating that security is a collaborative effort between Azure and its customers. In on-premises environments, the entire security burden lies with the customer, but as customers transition to the cloud, certain security responsibilities shift to Azure.

Here's a breakdown of how security responsibilities vary across different cloud service models:

An App Service Environment can be created in either an Azure Resource Manager virtual network or a classic deployment model virtual network, and can be either Internet-facing with a public IP address or internal-facing with only an Azure Internal Load Balancer (ILB) address.

Azure ASE management is a breeze, thanks to its intuitive design. With Azure ASE, you can easily manage your resources using Resource Groups, which simplify management and enable centralized monitoring and control.

You can also leverage Azure Resource Manager, which facilitates resource deployment, management, and monitoring through templates, providing a unified management interface. This makes it easy to scale and manage your Azure resources.

Here are some key features of Azure ASE management:

Customer DNS is a crucial aspect of Azure App Service Environment management. If your virtual network is configured with a customer-defined DNS server, your tenant workloads will use it, while the App Service Environment uses Azure DNS for management purposes.

To use a customer-defined DNS server, your virtual network's subnet must be reachable from the DNS server. This is a requirement, not a suggestion.

If you try to use a customer-defined DNS server for storage mounts or container image pulls in App Service Environment v2, you'll encounter issues. These features won't be able to use the customer-defined DNS server, even if it's configured in the virtual network or set through the WEBSITE_DNS_SERVER app setting.

To test DNS resolution from your web app, use the console command nameresolver. This will give you the same result as your app would get while making the same lookup.

Implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to manage permissions effectively, using Azure Security Center's RBAC to familiarize yourself with the five built-in roles and two specific security roles.

Regular monitoring of the Azure Security Center Dashboard provides a centralized view of your Azure resources, along with actionable recommendations.

Establishing security policies is crucial to prevent misuse of resources, and Azure can automatically generate a security policy tailored to your subscription.

To enhance security, encrypt virtual hard disk files to ensure the confidentiality of your data.

Azure Key Vault is specifically designed to manage secrets like passwords and database credentials, making it an essential tool for secure management.

By upgrading to Azure Security Center Standard, you can access advanced features such as identifying and resolving security vulnerabilities, leveraging analytics for threat detection, and enabling quick responses to security incidents.

Implementing a Web Application Firewall protects your applications from common threats and vulnerabilities.

Here are some key best practices to keep in mind:

Scaling and management of Azure ASEs has become much simpler. With auto-scaling capabilities, resources can automatically scale up or down based on demand, ensuring optimal performance and cost-efficiency.

Auto-scaling is a game-changer for many users. No longer do you need to worry about ensuring you have enough workers at the ASE level to enable scaling actions to happen. This means you're not paying for computer resources you're not using.

Resource Groups are a great way to organize resources in Azure, simplifying management and enabling centralized monitoring and control. This makes it easier to keep track of your resources and make changes as needed.

Azure Resource Manager is a unified management interface that facilitates resource deployment, management, and monitoring through templates. This provides a streamlined way to manage your resources and make changes to your ASE.

Here are some of the key services used in scaling and management in Azure:

Overall, the scaling and management of Azure ASEs has become much more streamlined and user-friendly. This makes it easier to manage your resources and ensure optimal performance and cost-efficiency.

Monitoring Services play a crucial role in Azure ASE Management. They provide valuable insights into the performance and health of your Azure resources.

Azure Monitor is a centralized monitoring service that offers insights into performance, availability, and usage metrics. This helps you identify potential issues before they impact your users.

Application Insights provides real-time insights into application performance and usage, enabling proactive troubleshooting and optimization. This is especially useful for complex applications with many dependencies.

Log Analytics collects and analyzes log data from various sources, offering valuable insights for troubleshooting, security monitoring, and compliance. With this data, you can identify patterns and trends that might have gone unnoticed otherwise.

Azure Advisor offers personalized recommendations for optimizing Azure resources, enhancing performance, and reducing costs. This is a great tool for getting started with Azure ASE Management, as it provides actionable advice based on your specific resources and usage.

Here are the Azure Monitoring Services in a nutshell:

Azure Cloud Shell is a powerful tool that allows you to manage your Azure resources with ease. It's an extension of Windows PowerShell that provides a unified command-line interface for executing commands and scripts.

With Azure Cloud Shell, you can execute commands and scripts on your Azure resources using features like tab completion and command history. This makes it simpler to manage complex operations.

Azure Cloud Shell also allows you to manage your Azure subscription with a comprehensive set of commands. You can create, list, and delete subscriptions, as well as control user access keys.

To get started with Azure Cloud Shell, you can begin interactive tutorials to learn how to use common features, such as creating virtual machines or virtual networks.

Azure ASE Architecture is built on SDN principles, which allows for dynamic scaling of resources and efficient use of physical hardware. This is key to cloud computing, enabling software to run on any server within a data center.

Reference architectures are designed for growth and changes, and can be easily found to accommodate the needs of your team and project. Each reference architecture includes implementation details for leveraging the architecture.

Azure ASE Architecture is supported by various design patterns, including best practices, guidelines, and rules that encapsulate effective strategies for cloud system design. By leveraging these patterns, you can create a more robust and efficient cloud architecture.

Here are some key features of Azure ASE Architecture:

An App Service Environment is a single-tenant deployment of Azure App Service that runs on your virtual network.

Applications are hosted in App Service plans, which are created in an App Service Environment, essentially acting as a provisioning profile for an application host.

You can scale out your App Service plan, creating more application hosts with all the apps in that App Service plan on each host.

A single App Service Environment v3 can have up to 200 total App Service plan instances across all the App Service plans combined.

A single App Service Isolated v2 (Iv2) plan can have up to 100 instances by itself.

If you need physical isolation all the way down to the hardware level, you can deploy your App Service Environment v3 onto dedicated hardware (hosts).

Dedicated host deployments are limited in scaling across all App Service plans to the number of cores in this type of environment.

An App Service Environment deployed on dedicated hosts has 132 vCores available.

Only I1v2, I2v2, and I3v2 SKU sizes are available on App Service Environment deployed on dedicated hosts.

There are extra charges associated with deployment on dedicated hosts.

An App Service Environment can be created in either an Azure Resource Manager virtual network or a classic deployment model virtual network.

You can leverage the security features of virtual networks to control both inbound and outbound network communications within an App Service Environment.

An App Service Environment can be either Internet-facing with a public IP address or internal-facing with only an Azure Internal Load Balancer (ILB) address.

Network security groups can be used to restrict inbound network communications to the subnet where an App Service Environment resides.

Apps can run behind upstream devices and services such as web application firewalls and network SaaS providers using network security groups.

An App Service Environment can access corporate resources such as internal databases and web services once it's joined to the same virtual network as the internal services.

Apps can access endpoints reachable via Site-to-Site and Azure ExpressRoute connections once an App Service Environment is joined to the same virtual network as the internal services.

Service endpoints can be used to restrict access to multi-tenant services to a set of Azure virtual networks and subnets.

If you enable service endpoints on a resource, there are routes created with higher priority than all other routes.

IP addresses are a crucial aspect of Azure App Service Environment (ASE) architecture. They are used for various purposes, including app traffic, management traffic, and outbound connections.

There are four types of IP addresses to be aware of: public inbound IP address, outbound public IP, internal load balancer IP address, and app-assigned IP-based TLS/SSL addresses. The public inbound IP address is used for app traffic in an external deployment and management traffic in both internal and external deployments.

These IP addresses don't change as long as your App Service Environment is running. However, if your App Service Environment becomes suspended and is then restored, the addresses used will change.

Here's a breakdown of the different IP addresses and their uses:

These IP addresses are visible in the Azure portal from the App Service Environment UI. If you have an internal deployment, the IP for the internal load balancer is listed.

Fault Tolerance is a significant aspect of Azure ASE Architecture, and it's great to know that it's now managed for you. This means you no longer need to have or pay for standby workers.

One of the benefits of this is that it simplifies the process of maintaining your ASEv2. By not having to worry about standby workers, you can focus on other important tasks.

Fault tolerance is now a built-in feature of Azure ASE Architecture, which is a huge advantage for businesses. This allows you to scale your ASEv2 without worrying about the added cost of standby workers.

This change makes Azure ASE Architecture more efficient and cost-effective.

Microsoft Architecture is a crucial aspect of Azure ASE Architecture. It's built on top of Microsoft Azure, a well-known cloud computing platform that provides users with the tools to design, deploy and manage numerous applications and services.

Microsoft Azure offers a wide range of products, including machine learning, mobile application development, and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, making it suitable for almost all application or service types. This versatility is due to its ability to work from various devices, such as PCs, laptops, smartphones, and tablets, and supports many programming languages.

The Azure platform also provides a safe place to store information, allowing users to store files online and access them from anywhere. This is commonly used to host applications, including email and social media, and can store any kind of data from documents to images to videos.

Microsoft operates many physical data centers globally, which require IT infrastructure, such as server racks and network connectivity, to run their IT requirements. Virtualization is a key technique in this infrastructure, reducing excess physical hardware by dynamically scaling resources required, depending on the demand.

Azure's foundation is envisioned by SDN principles, which means its network is constantly evolving due to user demand. This requires a constant enhancement in the already deployed network hardware and software, affecting the configuration and performance of the overall system. Therefore, the management of such complex network topology is increasingly important for effective scaling and resource management.

Here are some key reference architectures available for Azure ASE Architecture:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a fundamental component of Azure ASE architecture, offering a range of benefits to users.

Azure supports a wide range of operating systems due to its Hyper-hypervisor, allowing for flexibility and compatibility.

With IaaS, users have control over the build and deploy of their applications, giving them a high degree of customization and control.

Virtual machines, storage, and networking are the core components of IaaS, providing the infrastructure needed to support application deployment.

Here's a breakdown of the key components of IaaS in Azure:

An App Service Environment can be configured with up to fifty compute resources for exclusive use by a single application. This level of customization is ideal for large-scale applications that require a high degree of isolation and control.

Each compute resource pool in an App Service Environment is dedicated to a specific function, such as front-end or worker tasks. The front-end pool contains compute resources responsible for TLS termination and automatic load balancing of app requests.

You can choose different compute resources for each worker pool, allowing you to allocate more powerful resources to production apps and less powerful resources to development or test apps. This flexibility is particularly useful for organizations with diverse application needs.

An App Service Environment is composed of a front-end compute resource pool and one to three worker compute resource pools. The front-end pool contains compute resources responsible for TLS termination and automatic load balancing of app requests.

Here's a breakdown of the compute resources available to the front-end and worker pools:

For more details on the quantity of compute resources available to the front-end and worker pools, see How To Configure an App Service Environment.

An App Service Environment has both inbound and outbound dependencies that need to be considered when it's deployed.

To operate, an App Service Environment requires outbound access to multiple external systems, including DNS names that don't map to fixed IP addresses. This means the App Service Environment needs to be able to access all external IPs across various ports.

The App Service Environment communicates out to the internet on several ports, including 53 for DNS, 123 for NTP, 80/443 for CRL, Windows updates, Linux dependencies, and Azure services, 1433 for Azure SQL, and 12000 for monitoring.

Here are the ports used by the App Service Environment for outbound access:

The App Service Environment also has inbound dependencies that need to be considered, including management traffic, App Service Environment internal communication, and Azure load balancer traffic.

To allow management traffic, the network security configuration needs to allow access from the App Service Environment management addresses on ports 454 and 455.

The App Service Environment subnet needs to be configured to allow internal component communication, which requires all ports in the subnet to be accessible from the subnet.

For communication between the Azure load balancer and the App Service Environment subnet, the minimum ports that need to be open are 454, 455, and 16001.

Here are the ports used for Azure load balancer traffic:

The recommended size for your App Service Environment v3 subnet is a /24 Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) block with 256 addresses in it.