Azure WebApps- What's New: October 2023

calendar Oct 31, 2023 · 3 min read · microsoft azure app-service  ·
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Overview

A monthly look back on the new releases from the last month for the Microsoft Azure WebApp platform. I’m spending a great deal of my time working with WebApps, and hopefully this series will help both myself and others keep track of what’s new, what’s coming, and what’s going in the world of Azure App Services and Static Web Apps.

Traffic Splitting for Azure Static Web Apps

Info

This feature is in Public Preview. Preview features let you try new functionality before it is released. This feature may have limited support from Microsoft, and could change if/when it becomes Generally Available (GA).

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Traffic splitting across environments has been added to Azure Static Web Apps to allow for A/B testing of new features or a staged rollout of a new version. This is only available in the Standard plan, so isn’t included in the Free tier.

This new functionality uses the existing Preview environments in the Static Web App which are generated from different branches in your repository. Splitting the traffic is simply a case of assigning percentage values to the various environments, totalling 100%. In this example, using the Azure Portal, a quarter of the website traffic will hit the Staging environment, with the remainder going to Production as normal.

More info at learn.microsoft.com

Snippets for Azure Static Web Apps

Info

This feature is in Public Preview. Preview features let you try new functionality before it is released. This feature may have limited support from Microsoft, and could change if/when it becomes Generally Available (GA).

Snippets allow custom code to be inserted into the head or body of your Static Web App. This is very useful when you want to apply code outside of the repository- for example an analytics script such as the Google Analytics in the screenshot below, or other common scripts or UI elements. Because you can apply a snippet to a specific environment you could include a banner on your staging site or, as in this example, only include the Analytics token in your production service.

Snippets are currently available in preview on both the Free and Standard tiers of Static Web Apps. More info at learn.microsoft.com

Backup and Restore App Service over a Virtual Network

Info

This feature is in Public Preview. Preview features let you try new functionality before it is released. This feature may have limited support from Microsoft, and could change if/when it becomes Generally Available (GA).

In this preview, Web Apps can be backed up over a virtual network, rather than traversing the more public routes to a Storage Account.

To enable this, ensure that “Virtual Network Integration” is configured on the App Service and the “Backup/restore” option is ticked for Configuration routing.

More info at learn.microsoft.com

Azure Container Apps can use Savings Plans

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Azure savings plan for compute was introduced as a more flexible way of saving compared to Reserved Instances on Virtual Machines. This commitment-based cost-saving scheme has now expanded to include Container Apps- offering 15-17% savings compared to normal pay-as-you-go pricing.

More info at techcommunity.microsoft.com