Azure App Service Hosting Requirements/Options - node.js

Question

I'm interested in using Azure as a PaaS solution to host a Node Js app that I'll be developing in the few coming months. I've done a fair bit of research on the pricing models and tiers so I sort of have a grasp on that, however, I'm not sure how to accurately spec my server requirements. When looking at pure CPU, Memory and Storage specifications between the Basic, Standard and Premium plans they all look similar, with the exception of storage I suppose.
The application I intend to build will primarily perform CRUD based actions. It will not host large images/videos and static files will be used in JS libraries or small images for theming (icons, logos etc I'm hoping there's a CDN). I anticipate no more than 1000 web page requests per day and the AppService is only intended to serve as a WebApi and Web Server, I intend to host the DB on Mlab.
I'm looking for an option that will give me reasonable page load and server response times (1-2secs). The app service also needs support for SSL, is that something I need to get from Microsoft or I can purchase and apply elsewhere.
Finally, I'd love to be able to test and dev on Azure, as from my experience it is better to do so on an architecture that matches your production. Is there any low cost Dev/Test server options that I can use instead of using the production service (which I anticipate will exceed my test performance requirements and would also cost more)?

Answer 1

While the CPU, memory, and storage options may look similar between the plans, the VM underneath and the additional features are not.
For plans:
Shared/Free are plans where you share a VM with other users. You have
quotas for how much of the VMs resources you are allowed to use, and
if you go over them the site will be shut down until the quota
resets. This is fine for dev/test environments, but can be risky for
production as a traffic spike can cause your site to be turned off
temporarily.
Basic plans give you a dedicated VM for your app, so there are no
quotas and thus removes the risk of having your site shut off it gets
too popular.
Standard adds autoscaling (the ability to increase and decrease resources based on usage metrics) and SSL.
Premium is similar to Standard, but the underlying VM is running on better hardware.
The Shared plan and higher (basically anything but free) offers load balancing and custom domains. You can purchase a domain within your Azure account or bring your own.
The default yourwebsite.azurewebsites.net is protected by the azurewebsites.net SSL cert. However, if you use a custom domain and need SSL support, then you need to be on a Standard plan or higher. As with domains, you can purchase one through Azure or bring your own.
You can put a CDN of your own choosing in front of your Azure App Service, or you can use Azure's CDN. It is not included in the App Service plan.
For production with a custom domain and SSL, you are looking at one of the Standard plans.
For dev/test there are a couple ways you could go. If your dev server doesn't use any of the extra features like custom domains, you can scale the plan up and down as you please. That means you can scale up to the matching plan for final testing of a release, but leave it in a lower tier the majority of the time.
The second option is to use deployment slots to create your dev site on the same VM as your prod site. You need to be on a Standard plan or higher to use this feature, and it comes with some added benefits. Particularly that you can swap which code is in production or funnel some of your traffic to a staging slot before swapping new code into production.