Overview of Azure Cloud Services (classic)

Azure Cloud Services (extended support) is a new Azure Resource Manager based deployment model for the Azure Cloud Services product. With this change, Azure Cloud Services running on the Azure Service Manager based deployment model have been renamed as Cloud Services (classic) and all new deployments should use Cloud Services (extended support).

Azure Cloud Services is an example of a platform as a service (PaaS). Like Azure App Service, this technology is designed to support applications that are scalable, reliable, and inexpensive to operate. In the same way that App Service is hosted on virtual machines (VMs), so too is Azure Cloud Services. However, you have more control over the VMs. You can install your own software on VMs that use Azure Cloud Services, and you can access them remotely.

More control also means less ease of use. Unless you need the additional control options, it’s typically quicker and easier to get a web application up and running in the Web Apps feature of App Service compared to Azure Cloud Services.

There are two types of Azure Cloud Services roles. The only difference between the two is how your role is hosted on the VMs:

Web role: Automatically deploys and hosts your app through IIS.

Worker role: Does not use IIS, and runs your app standalone.

For example, a simple application might use just a single web role, serving a website. A more complex application might use a web role to handle incoming requests from users, and then pass those requests on to a worker role for processing. (This communication might use Azure Service Bus or Azure Queue storage.)

As the preceding figure suggests, all the VMs in a single application run in the same cloud service. Users access the application through a single public IP address, with requests automatically load balanced across the application’s VMs. The platform scales and deploys the VMs in an Azure Cloud Services application in a way that avoids a single point of hardware failure.

Even though applications run in VMs, it’s important to understand that Azure Cloud Services provides PaaS, not infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Here’s one way to think about it. With IaaS, such as Azure Virtual Machines, you first create and configure the environment your application runs in. Then you deploy your application into this environment. You’re responsible for managing much of this world, by doing things such as deploying new patched versions of the operating system in each VM. In PaaS, by contrast, it’s as if the environment already exists. All you have to do is deploy your application. Management of the platform it runs on, including deploying new versions of the operating system, is handled for you.

Scaling and management

With Azure Cloud Services, you don’t create virtual machines. Instead, you provide a configuration file that tells Azure how many of each you’d like, such as «three web role instances» and «two worker role instances.» The platform then creates them for you. You still choose what size those backing VMs should be, but you don’t explicitly create them yourself. If your application needs to handle a greater load, you can ask for more VMs, and Azure creates those instances. If the load decreases, you can shut down those instances and stop paying for them.

An Azure Cloud Services application is typically made available to users via a two-step process. A developer first uploads the application to the platform’s staging area. When the developer is ready to make the application live, they use the Azure portal to swap staging with production. This switch between staging and production can be done with no downtime, which lets a running application be upgraded to a new version without disturbing its users.

Monitoring

Azure Cloud Services also provides monitoring. Like Virtual Machines, it detects a failed physical server and restarts the VMs that were running on that server on a new machine. But Azure Cloud Services also detects failed VMs and applications, not just hardware failures. Unlike Virtual Machines, it has an agent inside each web and worker role, and so it’s able to start new VMs and application instances when failures occur.

The PaaS nature of Azure Cloud Services has other implications, too. One of the most important is that applications built on this technology should be written to run correctly when any web or worker role instance fails. To achieve this, an Azure Cloud Services application shouldn’t maintain state in the file system of its own VMs. Unlike VMs created with Virtual Machines, writes made to Azure Cloud Services VMs aren’t persistent. There’s nothing like a Virtual Machines data disk. Instead, an Azure Cloud Services application should explicitly write all state to Azure SQL Database, blobs, tables, or some other external storage. Building applications this way makes them easier to scale and more resistant to failure, which are both important goals of Azure Cloud Services.

What is Azure?

The Azure cloud platform is more than 200 products and cloud services designed to help you bring new solutions to life – to solve today’s challenges and create the future. Build, run and manage applications across multiple clouds, on-premises and at the edge, with the tools and frameworks of your choice.

Trust your cloud

Get security from the ground up, backed by a team of experts and proactive compliance trusted by enterprises, governments and start-ups.

Operate hybrid seamlessly

On-premises, across multiple clouds and at the edge – we’ll meet you where you are. Integrate and manage your environments with services designed for hybrid cloud.

Build on your terms

With a commitment to open source, and support for all languages and frameworks, build how you want and deploy where you want to.

Be future-ready

Continuous innovation from Microsoft supports your development today, and your product visions for tomorrow.

compliance offerings – the largest portfolio in the industry

of Fortune 500 companies trust their business on Azure

investment (US dollars) per year in security to protect customers’ data from cyberthreats

Solutions do the work for you

Find answers to the business challenges you face with an Azure solution that brings together everything you need – related products, services and third-party applications. From DevOps to business analytics to the Internet of Things, you’ll be up and running quickly with a scalable, cost-effective solution that works with your existing investments.

Healthcare

Develop solutions for proactive, personalised healthcare.

Financial services

Better serve customers, empower employees and optimise risk management.

Government

Build secure solutions to better serve and protect your citizens.

Retail

Deliver personal, seamless and differentiated experiences.

Manufacturing

Respond quicker to customer feedback and market trends.

Companies doing great things with Azure

«We did look at different platforms, including Azure, Google, Amazon, and VMware. If we wanted to put the whole city in the cloud, we needed Azure.»

Photo of Corona, CA by sergei.gussev / CC by 4.0

Creating better experiences for 15.4 million customers worldwide

ASOS, a top online fashion retailer, delivered a more personalised, mobile-first experience with Azure.

Onboarding developers in hours instead of weeks

Daimler AG quickly attracts and onboards top talent to innovate faster using the Azure development environment.

Providing a compliant analytics service for healthcare

After assessing multiple options, McKesson chose Azure to offer their customers cloud-based healthcare analytics.

Popular questions about Azure

Is Azure secure?

Yes, security and privacy are foundational for Azure. Microsoft is committed to the highest levels of trust, transparency, standards conformance and regulatory compliance – with the most comprehensive set of compliance offerings of any cloud service provider.

How can Azure help if I outsource my IT?

IT partners use Azure to deploy, manage and support customers’ existing solutions, and to offer ready-made or custom solutions. Ask your IT partner how your organisation can take advantage of Azure to meet your business goals. Or, find an Azure partner that fits your needs. Explore a wide network of partners with verified Azure capabilities.

What other customers are using Azure?

Of the Fortune 500 companies, 95 per cent rely on Azure for trusted cloud services. Companies of all sizes and maturities use Azure in their digital transformation.

Is it only for Windows apps and services?

No. Azure supports open source technologies, so you can use the tools and technologies you prefer. Run virtually any application using your data source, with your operating system, on your device. With Azure, you have choices.

Will Azure really save me money?

With no upfront cost, you only pay for what you use. Azure provides flexible purchasing and pricing options for all your cloud scenarios, such as the Azure Hybrid Benefit, and offers extensive tools to help manage your cloud spend.

Can I try Azure services?

Yes. Create an Azure free account to experiment and build in the cloud. You’ll get access to free Azure products and services, plus a $200 credit to use in your first 30 days.

Will Azure work for my industry?

Azure provides solutions for all industries, through proven combinations of cloud products and services. Address your industry-specific business challenges today, and prepare for the future by innovating with Azure solutions.

How does Azure compare to other clouds?

Azure is the only consistent hybrid cloud, delivers unparalleled developer productivity, provides comprehensive, multilayered security, including the largest compliance coverage of any cloud service provider and you’ll pay less for Azure as AWS is five times more expensive than Azure for Windows Server and SQL Server.

What is cloud computing?

A beginner’s guide

Simply put, cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale. You typically pay only for cloud services you use, helping you lower your operating costs, run your infrastructure more efficiently, and scale as your business needs change.

Top benefits of cloud computing

Cloud computing is a big shift from the traditional way businesses think about IT resources. Here are seven common reasons organizations are turning to cloud computing services:

Cloud computing eliminates the capital expense of buying hardware and software and setting up and running on-site datacenters—the racks of servers, the round-the-clock electricity for power and cooling, and the IT experts for managing the infrastructure. It adds up fast.

Speed

Most cloud computing services are provided self service and on demand, so even vast amounts of computing resources can be provisioned in minutes, typically with just a few mouse clicks, giving businesses a lot of flexibility and taking the pressure off capacity planning.

Global scale

The benefits of cloud computing services include the ability to scale elastically. In cloud speak, that means delivering the right amount of IT resources—for example, more or less computing power, storage, bandwidth—right when they’re needed, and from the right geographic location.

Productivity

On-site datacenters typically require a lot of “racking and stacking”—hardware setup, software patching, and other time-consuming IT management chores. Cloud computing removes the need for many of these tasks, so IT teams can spend time on achieving more important business goals.

Performance

The biggest cloud computing services run on a worldwide network of secure datacenters, which are regularly upgraded to the latest generation of fast and efficient computing hardware. This offers several benefits over a single corporate datacenter, including reduced network latency for applications and greater economies of scale.

Reliability

Cloud computing makes data backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity easier and less expensive because data can be mirrored at multiple redundant sites on the cloud provider’s network.

Security

Many cloud providers offer a broad set of policies, technologies, and controls that strengthen your security posture overall, helping protect your data, apps, and infrastructure from potential threats.

Types of cloud computing

Not all clouds are the same and not one type of cloud computing is right for everyone. Several different models, types, and services have evolved to help offer the right solution for your needs.

First, you need to determine the type of cloud deployment, or cloud computing architecture, that your cloud services will be implemented on. There are three different ways to deploy cloud services: on a public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud. Learn more about public, private, and hybrid clouds.

Public cloud

Public clouds are owned and operated by a third-party cloud service providers, which deliver their computing resources, like servers and storage, over the Internet. Microsoft Azure is an example of a public cloud. With a public cloud, all hardware, software, and other supporting infrastructure is owned and managed by the cloud provider. You access these services and manage your account using a web browser. Learn more about the public cloud.

Private cloud

A private cloud refers to cloud computing resources used exclusively by a single business or organization. A private cloud can be physically located on the company’s on-site datacenter. Some companies also pay third-party service providers to host their private cloud. A private cloud is one in which the services and infrastructure are maintained on a private network. Learn more about the private cloud.

Hybrid cloud

Hybrid clouds combine public and private clouds, bound together by technology that allows data and applications to be shared between them. By allowing data and applications to move between private and public clouds, a hybrid cloud gives your business greater flexibility, more deployment options, and helps optimize your existing infrastructure, security, and compliance. Learn more about the hybrid cloud.

Types of cloud services: IaaS, PaaS, serverless, and SaaS

Most cloud computing services fall into four broad categories: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), serverless, and software as a service (SaaS). These are sometimes called the cloud computing «stack» because they build on top of one another. Knowing what they are and how they’re different makes it easier to accomplish your business goals.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

The most basic category of cloud computing services. With IaaS, you rent IT infrastructure—servers and virtual machines (VMs), storage, networks, operating systems—from a cloud provider on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Platform as a service (PaaS)

Platform as a service refers to cloud computing services that supply an on-demand environment for developing, testing, delivering, and managing software applications. PaaS is designed to make it easier for developers to quickly create web or mobile apps, without worrying about setting up or managing the underlying infrastructure of servers, storage, network, and databases needed for development.

Serverless computing

Overlapping with PaaS, serverless computing focuses on building app functionality without spending time continually managing the servers and infrastructure required to do so. The cloud provider handles the setup, capacity planning, and server management for you. Serverless architectures are highly scalable and event-driven, only using resources when a specific function or trigger occurs.

Software as a service (SaaS)

Software as a service is a method for delivering software applications over the Internet, on demand and typically on a subscription basis. With SaaS, cloud providers host and manage the software application and underlying infrastructure, and handle any maintenance, like software upgrades and security patching. Users connect to the application over the Internet, usually with a web browser on their phone, tablet, or PC.

Uses of cloud computing

You’re probably using cloud computing right now, even if you don’t realize it. If you use an online service to send email, edit documents, watch movies or TV, listen to music, play games, or store pictures and other files, it’s likely that cloud computing is making it all possible behind the scenes. The first cloud computing services are barely a decade old, but already a variety of organizations—from tiny startups to global corporations, government agencies to non-profits—are embracing the technology for all sorts of reasons.

Here are a few examples of what’s possible today with cloud services from a cloud provider:

Create cloud-native applications

Quickly build, deploy, and scale applications—web, mobile, and API. Take advantage of cloud-native technologies and approaches, such as containers, Kubernetes, microservices architecture, API-driven communication, and DevOps.

Test and build applications

Reduce application development cost and time by using cloud infrastructures that can easily be scaled up or down.

Store, back up, and recover data

Protect your data more cost-efficiently—and at massive scale—by transferring your data over the Internet to an offsite cloud storage system that’s accessible from any location and any device.

Analyze data

Unify your data across teams, divisions, and locations in the cloud. Then use cloud services, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, to uncover insights for more informed decisions.

Stream audio and video

Connect with your audience anywhere, anytime, on any device with high-definition video and audio with global distribution.

Embed intelligence

Use intelligent models to help engage customers and provide valuable insights from the data captured.

Deliver software on demand

Also known as software as a service (SaaS), on-demand software lets you offer the latest software versions and updates around to customers—anytime they need, anywhere they are.

Microsoft and cloud computing

Microsoft is a leading global provider of cloud computing services for businesses of all sizes. To learn more about the Microsoft cloud platform, our Kubernetes on Azure offering, our serverless application platform, and how Microsoft Azure compares to other cloud providers, see What is Azure? and Azure vs. AWS.