Microsoft is well known for developing relevant software which are using in today’s time of technology to conquer the demand of users and developers to build up applications. In sequence of it Microsoft introduces Azure well known as Microsoft Azure to make quality applications. In this article, we will discuss Backing up, restoring and cloning Microsoft Azure App Services to use technology in a better way.

What is Microsoft Azure?

Azure is a cloud-computing public portal introduced by Microsoft in 2010 to allow users and developers to access cloud services and resources provided by Microsoft in order to develop relevant applications to store data in encrypted manner and also transforming it. It is formerly known as windows Azure ,used for cloud services, storing, analytics, computing and networking the data. As services are there so users can pick service according to their preference and build , run , or scale applications.

It basic aim is to meet organizational goals and hike in business and meet challenges. It provide tools even for e-commerce, finance and compatible with open source. It gives flexibility to use services and technologies.

In addition, Azure offers four different forms of cloud computing: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), software as a service (SaaS) and serverless functions. Microsoft charges for Azure on a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) basis, meaning subscribers receive a bill each month that only charges them for the specific resources and services they have used.

How Does Microsoft Azure Work?

In order to use Azure users need to subscribe it and after it they can access all services and resources include Azure portal. Users can create cloud-based sources involving Azure virtual machine VMs and databases. These services can run in environments used to store data and workload. Vendors also make software using azure. The cost billed for third-party applications varies widely but may involve paying a subscription fee for the application, plus a usage fee for the infrastructure used to host the application.

Microsoft Different Customer Support Options for Azure

1. Basic
2. Developer
3. Standard
4. Professional Direct
5. Enterprise (Premier)

These customer support plans vary in terms of scope and price. Basic support is available to all Azure accounts, but Microsoft charges a fee for the other support offerings.

Uses of Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure resources and services are extremely diverse and of varied range hence uses are also diverse. One of the most popular uses of Microsoft Azure is running virtual machines and container in cloud. These compute resources can host infrastructure components, such as domain name system (DNS) servers; Windows Server services, such as Internet Information Services networking services such as firewalls; or third-party applications. Microsoft also supports third-party operating system called Linux.

Database hosting on clouds is also done on Azure platform. Microsoft offers serverless relational databases such as Azure SQL and non-relational databases such as NoSQL. Azure is also used for backup and disaster recovery and storing data retention for long term bases.

Products and Services in Azure

There are various kinds of cloud services and resources available for users to access on Azure. Here are some of them.

• Mobile– These are products which help users to build cloud applications which could run on mobile devices, providing services for notification, tools for building application program interfaces (APIs), the ability to couple geospatial context with data and support back-end tasks.
• Web– Web services allow to develop and deploy an application. It also offers features for search, content delivery, API Management, notification and reporting.
• Storage– This service allow cloud storage for structured and unstructured data. It also supports big data projects, persistent storage and archival storage.
• Compute– These services allow user to deploy and manage VMs, containers and batch jobs, as well as support remote application access. Compute resources created by azure can be configured using public or private IP addresses.
• Integration– These are services for server backup, site recovery and connecting private and public clouds.
• Analytics– This service allowed to access big data analytics, data lakes, real- time analytics, machine learning, business intelligence, internet of things(IoT), data streams and data warehousing. It also provide distributed analytics and storage.
• DevOps– It offers services for application diagnostics , DevOps tool integration, and test labs for experimentation and tests. This group also provides project and collaboration tools, such as Azure DevOps formerly Visual Studio Team Services that facilitate DevOps software development processes.

There are two dozen of services available on Microsoft Azure , these are only few.

Azure App Services

For hosting web applications, mobile back-ends , Rest APIs ,Microsoft provides App services which is HTTP based service to accomplish it. Users can use it in any language but would be in .NET, .NET Core , Java, Node.js, PHP, and Python. Applications run and scale with ease on both Windows and Linux-based environments.To know more about Microsoft Azure – Create App Services in Azure Portal.

App service basically to nothing but add power of Microsoft Azure to applications. From security, load-balancing, auto-scaling and automated management.  Additionally, you can take advantage of its DevOps capabilities, such as continuous deployment from Azure DevOps, GitHub, Docker Hub, and other sources, package management, staging environments, custom domain, and TLS/SSL certificates.

User can pay for azure compute resources using app services. The compute services user use are determined by the app service plan that a user run for applications.

There are various functionality available for Microsoft Azure App services. Some of them are as follows-

1. Backing-up Azure App Services

Backing-up is seen an important functionality for the security reason in Azure app services. Azure app services have backup and restore feature available for standard, premium , and isolated tiers. This feature allowed to make backups manually or on an automated schedule. It is useful for data retention on long-term bases.

The Azure App services can backup the following features:

1. The application configuration
2. File content
3. Databases interconnected for use with the app, including Azure SQL databases, Azure database for MySQL and Azure database for PostgreSQL.

Following steps could be taken to backup app services-

Backup Using Azure Portal

To make the backup of app service using Azure portal follow these steps-

Step 1: In the left pane of web app’s configuration page, under settings, click backup. By default, no backup configured.

Step 2: Under Backup ,click the backup is not configured. Click here to configure backup for your app link.

Step 3: In the Backup Configuration page, enter the following information –

• Backup Storage Click the container in which you want to store the backup.
• Scheduled Backup Click On.
• Backup Every Specify how frequently backups should occur, in days or hours.
• Start Backup Schedule From Specify the date, time, and time zone when the backup schedule should start.
• Retention (Days) Specify how long (in days) the backup should be retained.
• Keep At Least One Backup Click Yes to ensure that at least one backup is always retained.
• User can also backup using the Azure Powershell and Azure CLI.

2. Restoring Azure App Services

Following are steps to restore Azure App services:

• First, list deleted apps.
• Now, List all the deleted apps in your subscription.You also have options to list deleted apps in your subscription-based on filters like Resource Group, App name, location, etc.
• Restore deleted Azure Web App.
• In the below e.g. We are restoring a web app that was hosting a container.

3. Cloning of Microsoft Azure App Services

There are various ways in which user can clone an Azure App services:

Cloning an existing app using Azure portal

• In the Azure Portal, open your web app’s blade.
• Click Tools. Then, in the Tools blade, click Clone App.

• In the Clone App blade provide a name of the new web app, Resource Group, and App Service Plan. Also the user will be able to choose whether to clone a number of source web app settings or not

• After clicking create the platform will start working on creating a clone of the source web app.
• Cloning an Existing App to App Service Environment

In the Clone App blade the customer will have the option to choose an app pool in an existing App Service Environment.

Conclusion

Microsoft Azure is needed because in today’s Technology app development and deployment is foremost demands of users. For security purposes also Microsoft Azure is necessary. In order to meet this demand backing up, restoring and cloning Azure App services is done. In this article you would learn about these functionality and at the end would learn how to use Azure effectively.

FAQs On Backing up, Restoring, And Cloning Microsoft Azure App Services

1. How Do I Rollback Deployment In Azure App Service?

Login into Azure console and go to App Services and select on the app services that you want to rollback and click on rollback button a dialog box will open know select the deployment that you want to rollback and click on the roll back button.

2. How Do I Restore a .BAK File In Azure?

Run the command mentioned below to restore the .BAK file.

az storage blob list –account-name <account-name> –container-name <container-name>