Could sharing resources in Azure bring down an App Service? - azure

Consider having two Azure App Services sharing the same App Service Plan and thus the same resources.
Is it possible due to high traffic, error or memory leak that one App Service could bring down the other by pulling all resources?
How about an S-tier App Service which has the staging/deployment slots? Could one of those slots bring down the whole App Service?

Consider having two Azure App Services sharing the same App Service Plan and thus the same resources. Is it possible due to high traffic, error or memory leak that one App Service could bring down the other by pulling all resources?
Yes, and since slots use the same resources this also applies to deployments to a slot. If you want to avoid that think about containerization and limit the max memory and cpu usage or use seperate App Service Plans.

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Azure App Service Plan: Function vs App Service?

When hosting an Azure Function in an App Service Plan, are there any significant differences compared with using an App Service (EDIT: for a restful API) associated with the same App Service Plan? I assume the only difference is that the Function offers additional out of the box triggers. Any differences I'm missing that would lead to preferring one over the other?
I'd also like to confirm that hosting Azure Functions in an App Service Plan can actually limit scalability if scaling is not configured on the App Service Plan. As I understand it, Functions automatically scale as needed when using Consumption or Premium hosting without additional configuration.
When hosting an Azure Function in an App Service Plan, are there any significant differences compared with using an App Service associated with the same App Service Plan? I assume the only difference is that the Function offers additional out of the box triggers. Any differences I'm missing that would lead to preferring one over the other?
Well, an Azure Function is a different beast than an App Service. An Azure function is triggered by an external event or a timer. It then executes the code of the function. When hosted on a consumption plan this execution is allowed to run for 5 or 10 minutes max. When you need a longer execution time you need to run it on an App Service Plan.
An App Service can host any app you've created. Like a website (that runs continuously and doesn't need to be triggered before it starts doing something) or an api for example.
I'd also like to confirm that hosting Azure Functions in an App Service Plan can actually limit scalability if scaling is not configured on the App Service Plan. As I understand it, Functions automatically scale as needed when using Consumption or Premium hosting without additional configuration.
Correct, when hosting Azure Functions in an App Service Plan you are responsible for making sure the app service is scaled to allow the function to perform well under load. Thats why the consumption plan is designed to handle this so the developer can focus on the functionality and does not need to worry about the infrastructure.
So, for integration scenario's azure functions are a very natural fit. For web sites an App Service might be the best solution.
To address your comment:
I should have mentioned that this question was in the context of hosting a restful API and not a UI application. In this scenario, I'm not seeing much difference between a Function and App Service, but please correct me if I'm missing something
A couple of things: For one, there is a certain sweet spot. If traffic is heavy enough a consumption plan based azure function might be more costly than having a dedicated app service plan. That depends of course on a lot of factors (CPU usage, request duration etc.). Also, you won't be able to use things like Asp.Net Core Middleware out of the box.
Finally, I'd argue that if your api is becoming large enough managing a single asp.net core solution may be easier than having to manage a lot of azure functions with small functions or one azure function project with lots and lots of functions, but hey, that's just my opinion (haven't actually dealt with it to be honest)
Some resources to consider:
https://www.taztopia.com/single-post/2019/07/28/azure-function-vs-web-app-aka-serverless-vs-paas
https://dasith.me/2018/01/20/using-azure-functions-httptrigger-as-web-api/
The main difference is in how you pay for it:
Azure Functions Consumption plan you pay per execution
Azure Functions in an App Service (dedicated plan) you pay for the allocated hardware per minute.
You also have control of which VNET your functions run in when you use an app service plan. You may have security requirements that make this important.
You are correct that if you run it in an app service that is not configured to scale, then throughput will be limited by the allocated hardware.
For details see: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-scale
If you are having limited and predictable workload then deploy az function in AppService plan with supports VNET integration for private compute otherwise go for Premium plan which will provide autoscaling capability of your compute environment.

Does Azure charge for number of app services

Does Azure charge only for the utilization of App service plan resources or for the number of app services we create under that App service plan? Does the number of app services created under a app service plan effects cost?
I am developing a microservices project and I am unsure of whether to deploy each microservice in a dedicated app service or deploying all in one app service as virtual directories. Cost is a concern for our project.
Thanks.
Does Azure charge only for the utilization of App service plan resources or for the number of app services we create under that App service plan?
Ignoring the Free and Shared tiers, you'll pay only for the App Service Plan (cost per selected machine size x number of instances). You'll pay the same whether you have 0 or 50 Apps on the Service plan (although any other I/O, Storage etc consumed by those Apps will be additional).
(Whereas the free tier allows a max of 10 Apps, and the Shared tier allows 100 Apps)
In theory you can then add as many App Services (apps, e.g. Web Apps, Services, Function Apps etc) as you like on each App Service Plan, however in practice you'll be limited by the overall resources of the VM size and plan you've selected (e.g. 10GB Disk space on Basic, and a B1 only has 1.75GB RAM).
From the Microsoft docs, the recommendation is:
Isolate your app into a new App Service plan when:
The app is resource-intensive.
You want to scale the app independently from the other apps in the existing plan.
The app needs resource in a different geographical region.
I would also add the opinion:
If applicable, keep your environments (Dev, UAT, Prod) isolated, either at App Service Plan level, or consider isolation at Resource Group or Subscription level.
Unless your apps are maxing out CPU usage, while installing as many apps per Service Plan as makes logical sense, but monitor performance and the resource usage on the VM instances as you go.
In my situation, I've typically found that RAM to be the bottleneck, so I would typically try to scale up to a VM size with more RAM to host more Apps before separating out the Apps and adding more Service Plans.
If you are on .Net Core or another stack which doesn't need Windows, I would recommend looking into the Linux Service Plans - they are considerably cheaper than Windows instances. One caveat - as at present, there's a weird limitation which doesn't allow mixing of Windows and Linux Service Plans in the same resource group.
Each App is logically fairly well isolated on the Service Plan instances, so you can add, delete, and deploy apps without interfering with the others.
Although Docker containers can be deployed as an App Service, you might find AKS a better fit.
And More Detail
The terminology around the Azure Managed App Service Plans is somewhat confusing, but to clarify:
An App Service Plan (Service Plan) can have 1 or more managed VM instances
e.g. 1 Service Plan scaled to 3 Instances = 3 VMs to pay for.
Ignoring the Free / Shared tier (on the shared tier you pay for each App), and also ignoring the Isolated tier, you'll pay a fixed monthly cost for each Instance
You can add multiple Apps to each App Service Plan - e.g. Web Apps, Function Apps, Misc. Console Apps, and Docker images. These will be deployed to all instances in the plan.
On the Standard tier and above, you can also configure Deployment Slots on your Apps, which provides the ability to smoke-test and provide continued uptime during deployments, especially in your production environment.
App Service Plans (microsoft.web/serverfarms) account for approximately 40% of our overall Monthly Azure costs
This cost can quickly multiply, especially if you are running multiple isolated environments (Dev, UAT, Prod etc) and if you need to scale out to more than one instance per environment for redundancy or scale reasons.
As at time of writing, indicative VM instance costs on US East are approximately
Dev B1 1.75GB RAM are ~$15pm Linux / ~$50pm Windows
Prod P1V2 3.5GB RAM are ~$80 Linux / ~$150pm Windows
So it's only natural to try and minimize costs by deploying multiple apps to a single VM, especially in a fine-grained Microservice enterprise or system.
I would add to this that if you have an app that is memory intensive, I would definitely isolate it to its own App Service Plan. Since usage limits are at the plan level, you don't want to get errors for mission critical apps due to a runaway app or an app experiencing higher traffic. Another good tip is to set up auto scaling with rules you define by your needs, this will prevent downtime if higher traffic than what the plan allocates is experienced.
Though yes, money can definitely be saved by grouping apps together in the same plan.
Yes, you can save cost by hosting multiple apps in one app service plan. You do not need a separate web app plan for each web app.
Generally the price you pay is for the app service plan and not the web app (Exception here is the shared plan) so your costs do not increase as you add more applications to the same plan.

Is Auto scaling process for Azure Chat bot application same as that of app service auto scaling?

I am concerned about the load performance of my Chat bot deployed in Chat bot service.
If for my Bots in production, there is sudden load of huge number of users chatting simultaneously, will my Bot handle that load.
Do I need to consider special criteria for auto scaling different than app service
As we know that Bot Service provides two hosting plans for your bots: App Service plan and Consumption plan.
And Consumption plan scales automatically, even during periods of high load.
Besides, if you host your bot application with an specified App Service plan on Azure web app and you configured autoscaling for the plan, then your bot application and other apps in that plan are scaled out together based on the autoscale settings.
As Fei Han mentioned above, Azure functions provides two option based on scaling and hosting capabilities: App Service plan and Consumption plan.
This article provides guidance to improve the performance and reliability of your serverless function apps.
The Consumption plan automatically allocates compute power when your code is running, scales out as necessary to handle load, and then scales down when code is not running. You don't have to pay for idle VMs and don't have to reserve capacity in advance.
With an App Service plan, you can manually scale out by adding more VM instances, or you can enable autoscale. And the other reason to consider this is, they support Linux.
You can decide by comparing both based on your business requirements. Hope this helps!!

High CPU usage was detected for the kudu app for Azure App service

I noticed that our app was experiencing high CPU usage. In the diagnostics I found the below message.
High CPU usage was detected for the kudu app for 'DemoApiApp'(39.1%) on only one instance out of 4 instances in your app service plan. The affected instance had a peak overall usage of 87.8% during this time. High CPU usage in the kudu process is most often caused by web job usage. Affected instance name: RD0003FF1C445A
Note that, apps in the same App Service plan share the same compute resources. To determine whether the new app has the necessary resources, you need to understand the capacity of the existing App Service plan, and the expected load for the new app. Overloading an App Service plan can potentially cause downtime for your new and existing apps. Refer App Service limits for more details.
As specified in the documentation, isolate your app into a new App Service plan when:
-The app is resource-intensive.
-You want to scale the app independently from the other apps the existing plan.
-The app needs resource in a different geographical region.
If your process is running slower than expected, or the latency of HTTP requests are higher than normal and the CPU usage of the process is also high, you can remotely profile your process and get the CPU sampling call stacks to analyze the process activity and code hot paths. Refer Remote Profiling support in Azure App Service for more details.
Hope this helps.

How can I manage AZURE RAM?

I have B3 service plan with 7GB RAM and 3 app services into a resource group. One service requires over 4GB but it throws out of memory exception after 2.4GB usage. It looks like available memory is divided between 3 services evenly. How can I manage RAM usage?
One way I can think of would be to put the apps on separate app service plans. One of your apps requires quite a lot, so why not give it its own plan?
Then you would have one Basic 3 service plan for that app, and maybe a Basic 1 plan for the other 2 if that is enough for them?
Yes, you are correct. The RAM listed for each instance size based on the pricing tier that you choose is for the underlying VM. So, this includes the OS and various infrastructure processes, in addition to IIS and your Web Apps. It is also shared with the App Services deployed under the same App Service plan.
This issue could be related to your web application, you may try the following:
View the memory utilization in Azure new portal
(http://portal.azure.com).
Use kudu Diagnostic Dump to see the information of memory
consumption.
Move the Web App to another App Service plan that has only one Web
App.
I would suggest you refer the blog post How to view the memory utilization of your Azure Web Site for more details.

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