Azure Basics · Module 08

PaaS Compute – App Service, Container Instances and AKS

Run web apps on App Service with plans, deployment slots, security and monitoring; run containers quickly with ACI and orchestrate them at scale with AKS.

Practice interactively →

What you will learn

• Choose an App Service Plan tier, scale up and scale out
• Create a web app, deploy and swap deployment slots
• Configure app settings, logs, custom domains, backups and Application Insights
• Compare containers with VMs and run containers with ACI
• Create an AKS cluster and connect with kubectl

Lessons

1. App Service Plans — Tiers and Scaling

   An App Service Plan is the set of VMs running web apps; the tier decides features (slots, autoscale) and limits; scaling up changes the tier/size, scaling out changes the instance count.

2. Creating Web Apps, CI/CD and Deployment Slots

   A web app runs on a plan with a runtime stack or container; CI/CD deploys automatically from GitHub/Azure DevOps; deployment slots let you deploy to staging and swap to production with no downtime.

3. Operating App Service — Security, Domains, Backups, Monitoring

   Turn on authentication and access restrictions, keep secrets in Key Vault, map custom domains with TLS, back up from the Standard tier, and use logs and Application Insights to watch the app.

4. Containers and Azure Container Instances

   Containers are lighter than VMs because they share the host kernel, but isolation is weaker; ACI runs a container in seconds with no VM or cluster to manage.

5. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

   AKS is managed Kubernetes — Azure runs the control plane and you manage node pools (VMs); scale with the cluster autoscaler (nodes) and HPA (pods), integrated with Entra ID and RBAC.