Azure Mobile Services: Failover and Redundancy - azure

I am using Azure Mobile Services for a production mobile application. I am looking into failover configuration in Azure portal and can't find anything about it.
There is the "Traffic Manager" as described in the Azure documentation. But in my understanding it only deals with VMs and Networking, not the Mobile Services.
My guess is: failover management is included in the mobile services by design. In other word, if one MS azure server crashes, my mobile service URL will be rerouted on another server automagically.
Am I right?

Availability SLAs are only guaranteed on the Standard and Premium tiers, see Support and SLA in: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/mobile-services/

An Azure Mobile Services is tied to a single Azure region. So if your Azure region fails, you need to manually migrate to another Azure region. Details can be found in Recover your mobile service in the event of a disaster.

Related

Deploying multiple web Apps on Azure App Service.. Is there any implications of this

I have a client coming on board to Azure from other cloud service provider. They would like to host up to 10 web apps on Azure and cost is really an issue for them.
Normally I'm suppose to create VM's that would host each of these web Apps; but they can't afford the price. Hence the choice of deploying all of them on the same Azure App service plan.
I think Azure App service offers only 50gb storage. The 10 Web Apps would require storage capacity far more than 50gb; is it scalable or can we link each of these Apps to an Azure storage account. And also is there any implications for deploying multiple web Apps on an Azure App Service plan
An App Service Plan is capable to run multiple Web Apps, each in its own sandbox. It's like a VM but as a PaaS service. Note that the storage included in the plan will be shared across all Web Apps so you'll have to use Azure Storage if you want to store more data.
An App Service Plan is designed to handle multiple web apps/Function apps, use BLOB Storage or similar for your data it will scale to whatever you need, depending on your needs you can add further services like Azure Front Door to load balance multiple apps on multiple app service plans
One important thing to remember is that the app service plan has limitations with outbound connections so even if each of your webapps are not so busy the sum of them all might bring you over the limit so be very careful how you handle your outbound connections.

Hosting on Microsoft Azure

I already have a domain name purchase from Google Domains.
I would like to host this site on Microsoft Azure, How should I plan to purchase all the required resources on Azure, if I want to host a Wordpress site, but would also need control over the size, if in future I plan to host some microsite with NodeJS or any other technologies like Java or .Net Core.
What would be my cost per month considering the above requirements?
Below is the list that I envisioned that I may need, can anyone suggest something this I missed.
A VM with Ubuntu (That would take care of Wordpress, Database(MySQL), NodeJS, Java and others)
Map my domain with Azure and map it with the VM
The solution you're thinking of is also known as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and it is something you'd usually consider when migrating from an on-prem solution where you already have the VMs images for your needs.
In your particular case I'd recommend looking into PaaS (Platform as a Service) - specifically Azure App Service.
Everything you enumerated can be hosted in an Azure App Service as it supports all major technologies for deploying web apps today (.Net, Node.js, Java, etc).
In addition to your own code, Azure offers a number of build-in templates for 3rd party vendors that allow you to deploy pre-packaged solutions such as Wordpress without having to worry about the installation yourself. See this Wordpress on Azure article for more details.
Pricing information for Azure Web Apps can be found on the docs page. In your case I suspect you could do with a B1 or S1 instance.
Lastly, for your domain name, you can easily map and configure any custom domain to an Azure Web App by simply updating the DNS records in your Domain Management system and reference that in the Azure Portal. See docs for details.
Adding to Alex's response. To provide you a good understanding on hosting website on Azure. Firstly, I wish to highlight that Azure offers several ways to host websites: Azure App Service WebApps (PAAS solution), Virtual Machines (IAAS), Service Fabric, and Cloud Services.
Azure App Service (PAAS solution) is the best choice for most web apps. Deployment and management are integrated into the platform, sites can scale quickly to handle high traffic loads, and the built-in load balancing and traffic manager provide high availability.
WebApp is a fully managed compute platform that is optimized for hosting websites and web applications.
If you wish to host your website/app on an Azure VM (IAAS solution), you would typically install, design and configure the app in a similar way as you would onprem. If you have an existing application that would require substantial modifications to run in App Service you could choose Virtual Machines in order to simplify migrating to the cloud.
Take a look at the supported and unsupported configuration on App Service Migrate - Migration checklist when moving to Azure App Service : https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/migration-checklist-when-moving-to-azure-app-service/

Failover planning for Azure Mobile Services

I have an azure mobile service that is running on top of SQLAzure DB. The Database is geo-replicated. I am looking to setup a failover for mobile service in case if the primary endpoint goes down. I have looked into traffic manager but it does not support mobile service endpoints also setting up another mobile service that talks to the replicated DB not possible as the replicated copy is read-only.
What are the possibilities of setting up a failover for mobile services endpoints.
There are several mechanisms for hosting mobile APIs on Azure - Azure Mobile Services is tied to a single region, so you can't fail that over. Azure Mobile Apps is the next generation of Azure Mobile Services and is built on top of Azure App Service Web Apps - it's an extension of the work there. As a result, you can leverage all the cool features of Azure App Service for your mobile service. If you haven't taken a look yet, then take a look at migrating your service to Azure App Service Web Apps.
Once there, Traffic Manager is definitely what you want. You can read about the process of using Traffic Manager with an Azure web app here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/benjaminperkins/archive/2014/06/02/using-traffic-manager-with-microsoft-azure-web-site.aspx

Is it possible to load balance Azure Queues or Topics using Azure Traffic Manager?

I have read that it is possible to use Azure Traffic Manager to load balance (or failover) web apps and cloud services.
Is it possible to use Azure Traffic Manager to add failover capability to Azure Queues or Topics?
No, this feature is used for Azure Web Apps (former Azure Web Sites), Cloud Services and Virtual Machines.

Signalr on Azure Mobile Services or Web Roles

I am developing a mobile application that makes extensive and continuous use of SignalR to communicate to a SignalR service.
I have previously assumed that I would use a Web Role to host the service, and then add more Web Roles backed by a backplane of Service Bus or Redis as and when the service needs to scale out. Using a Web Role would also allow me to significantly scale up if I wanted to avoid possible latency issues with the backplane.
However when I compare the pricing of the Web Role to Azure Mobile Services it appears that the Mobile Services may be cheaper.
So can Mobile Services be used instead?
And if so what are the pros and cons of doing so?
We are close to rolling out an update to Azure Mobile Services .NET backend which comes with some neat integration with SignalR built in. I'll be posting a blog on it on http://blogs.msdn.com/b/azuremobile/ (and of course on twitter #frystyk) when it's there and how to use it.
Henrik

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