As a side project, I am working on a web application that I want to host in Azure eventually. There is a ton of documentation available around Azure but instructions vary by product. I have documented the steps I needed to run a web application in Azure.
To make it easier to automate the deployment steps I am avoiding the Azure portal. I want to script these steps later so that I can automate my deployments. Everything I want to do can be done using the Azure CLI so, for now, I will be using that.
Creating the Azure infrastructure
If you are following along, do not forget to authenticate the Azure CLI.
az login
First I need a resource group that will hold all the Azure resources. A resource group is essentially a namespace in which different Azure resources can be placed. All the resources in a resource group should share the same lifecycle.
az group create --name $ResourceGroupName --location westeurope
To host a WebApp an AppService plan is required, think of it as the web server or web farm that will host the website.
az appservice plan create --name $AppServicePlanName `
--resource-group $ResourceGroupName `
--location westeurope `
--sku FREE
And the Azure WebApp itself, assigned to the AppService plan.
az webapp create --name $WebAppName --plan $AppServicePlanName --resource-group $ResourceGroupName
Now that the infrastructure is set up in Azure, we can package and deploy the application.
Packaging and deploying the application
First I need to publish the application in a runnable form.
The easiest way for a .NET Core application is the publish subcommand of the dotnet CLI.
dotnet publish $ProjectPath --output $OutputDir
The Azure CLI has support for several different deployment methods. However eventually I want to deploy from Azure DevOps, and for now, I think the easiest way to facilitate this is the ZIP file method.
I will use some PowerShell to create a zip file containing the published application.
Compress-Archive -Path $OutputDir/* -DestinationPath $ApplicationZip
And then the following Azure CLI command to deploy the application to the WebApp.
az webapp deployment source config-zip --name $WebAppName `
--resource-group $ResourceGroupName `
--src $ApplicationZip
And with that you have your ASP.NET Core application running in Azure.
By default, the application will detect the environment is running in as ‘Production’.
You can change this, and other application settings using the config appsettings command.
For example, to switch the ASP.NET environment to ‘Development’.
az webapp config appsettings set --name $WebAppName `
--resource-group $ResourceGroupName `
--settings ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Development