When we first started out with Azure, we created VM’s to run our web applications and backend services. Afterwards we moved our web application logic into App Services while using native Azure Services for our backend requirements. With containers we could isolate our individual web application components even further and allowed us to go full DevOps. Now Azure Functions allows us to remove a complete application stack allowing us to focus purely on functionality. In this talk I go over the several phases we went through getting our application from bare metal into the cloud and how we now leverage Azure Functions to achieve higher throughput and faster delivery times while reducing the complexity of the web application and costs.

1. Moving from App Services to Azure Functions
A story of how we increased our throughput on Azure
1

2. Michelangelo van Dam
Co-founder/CEO In2it
PHP Community Leader
Open source contributor
CoderDojo Coach
MVP Azure
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3. How we did things in “the old days”
Bare metal servers in local DC
Optional virtualisation
Manual deployments
Releases after office hours
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4. Moving from App Services to Azure Func5ons 4
Web App
MySQL DB Redis Cache
Shared FS

5. Release drama
Broken packages
De-sync between staging and
production servers
Network issues
Hardware issues
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6. We needed better solutions!
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7. Discovery of the cloud in 2006
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8. It worked out initially…
VM’s for test, staging and production that were equal
Storage on S3
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9. Moving from App Services to Azure Func5ons 9
AWS Cloud
S3
EC2
S3 - Bucket

10. … but we encountered some cons
No cloud native database support
Very pricy for the services provided
Still lots of maintenance to keep our VM’s up-to-date
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11. Managed services
Infrastructure support for
Java, .Net and Ruby
Very costly on top of expensive
AWS bills
Lots of restrictions on what was
possible
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12. We needed better solutions!
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13. 2008
Windows Azure intro by Josh
Holmes at MS Belux
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14. Windows Azure was what we needed!
Platform as a Service
You manage your app
Microsoft takes care of the platform and infrastructure
Separate services for database, cache and much more
Supported open source
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15. Automation!
Azure allowed us to fully automate the deployment processes
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16. Moving from App Services to Azure Func5ons 16
Classical Web Application Configuration
West Europe
PHP
Azure Services
Azure SQL
Storage Blob
Storage Queue
Sendgrid Services
North Europe
PHP
Azure Services
Azure SQL
Storage Blob
Storage Queue
Azure
Load Balancing
Replication

17. The DevOps movement
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18. Docker changed everything
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19. Some challenges
Docker containers are immutable
Persistence must be kept outside containers
Not a lot of examples and sources for best practices
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20. Moving from App Services to Azure Func5ons 20
PersistentFile
Sytem
Web Front Web Front Web Front Web Front
PHP-FPM PHP-FPM PHP-FPM
Worker Worker Worker

21. Say hello to Kubernetes
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22. Managed containers on Azure
AKS simplifies deployment and operations of Kubernetes
Dynamically scale application infrastructure
Security provided by Azure AD and Key Vault
Cost effective platform for container infrastructure
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23. Moving from App Services to Azure Func5ons 23
Internet
Azure AKS
POD POD
SCM
CI/CD
AKS Node
Azure Container
Registry

24. The serverless revolution
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25. Azure functions
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26. Azure Functions in a nutshell
Event-driven serverless compute platform
Build and debug locally
Deploy and operate at scale on Azure
Integrate services using triggers and bindings
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27. Inspired by Mr. Hunt
https://in2.se/hipb-serverless
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28. We want that too… but how?
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🤔

29. Where could we implement functions?
Most requests from customers: product details ✓
Most requests from employees: order and support tickets ✓
Most viewed page: sales and shipment dashboards ✓
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30. Moving from App Services to Azure Func5ons 30

31. How to get started?
Download the Azure Functions Core Tools
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https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-run-local

32. Supported Technologies
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Technology V1 V2
C# GA (.NET Framework 4.7) GA (.NET Core 2)
JavaScript GA (Node 6) GA (Node 8 & 10)
F# GA (.NET Framework 4.7) GA (.NET Core 2)
Java N/A GA (Java 8)
Python Experimental Preview (Python 3.6)
TypeScript Experimental GA (supported through
transpiling to JavaScript)PHP Experimental N/A
Batch (.cmd, .bat) Experimental N/A
Bash Experimental N/A
PowerShell Experimental N/A

33. So how do I get started?
Create a directory
Init a “func” project
Write your logic
Run & Test locally
Push to Azure
Run it
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34. Live Demo 😱
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35. The impact of moving to functions
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0
480
960
1440
1920
2400
Sep 18 Oct 18 Nov 18 Dec 18 Jan 19 Feb 19 Mar 19 Apr 19
switch
containers ➤ functions

36. Our serverless journey has just begon
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DONE TO DO
Product details Procurement
Incoming Orders Shipping
Callback requests Customer history
KPI Dashboards Stock management
Portal advertisements
Customs declarations
Commercial mailings
Content management
Import regulation management

37. Some takeaways
Prepare for the “next best thing” and have a loosely coupled code base
Always experiment! It might be good today, but can it be better tomorrow?
Azure offers all required tools to get started, but choosing the “right” tool is
the hardest part
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38. Our most important lessons
Do not create a new client with every function invocation (RTFM)
Fail early by keeping timeouts as small as possible
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40. Moving from App Services to Azure Func5ons 40
www.in2it.be