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Creating an App Service

This is part of my blog series Creating an App in Azure.

One of the steps is creating an App Service to host your website. In the past, you would have a web server somewhere that would host your files. There might be several different websites, managed by different people or businesses, each with their own folder. You would use FTP to upload your files. With App Services in Azure, it's a similar process, but it's now loosely coupled. You have no idea what web server on the back end is hosting your files, and you can easily move them to another location depending on cost and the amount of traffic you receive.

Creating the App Service

From your browser, sign into your Azure tenant: https://portal.azure.com.
Enter "App Services" in the global search bar and click "App Services".
From the App Services page, from the Ribbon, click Create|Web App.
From the Basics tab, select your Subscription and your Resource Group. In our example, "rg-youtube".
Enter the name, our naming convention is the app prefix, so our example is "app-sample".
Select Code under Publish, and .NET 9 for Runtime stack. This will set the Operating System to Windows.
Select the same Region as your Resource Group if possible. Not all names are available on the free tier, especially your name is something like "sample" or "test". Your Region does NOT have to match your Resource Group.
Choose the Free Pricing Plan, especially if you are just building a prototype. Once your website gets more traffic, you can look into a paid tier.
Click "Review + create", verify your properties are correct and click "Create". Using the out of the box options is the best choice if you are just testing the functionality.
A dialog in the upper right corner will tell you the resource is being created, and then when it it ready. Click "Go to resource" in the dialog or in the main panel.
From your App Service home page, the Default domain is a link to your website, once you have uploaded content. In another video we will show how to assign a vanity URL.

Activating the Managed Identity

From your App Service home page, in the left-hand panel, expand Settings and click Identity.
From the Identity page, ensure System assigned is selected and click Status to "On".
Click "Save". In the dialog, click "Yes".
As you create other resources, such as a Blob Storage, Data Storage, or SQL database, you will grant read or edit permissions to this managed identity, which will allow the website to retrieve/modify the data.

I made a video walking through this process: App Services

Saturday, July 5, 2025 3:28 PM