Azure WebApps- What's New: November 2023
Overview
A monthly look back on the new releases from the last month for the Microsoft Azure WebApp platform. I’m spending a great deal of my time working with WebApps, and hopefully this series will help both myself and others keep track of what’s new, what’s coming, and what’s going in the world of Azure App Services and Static Web Apps.
End-to-end TLS Encryption on Linux Multi-Tenant App Services
Info
This feature is in Public Preview. Preview features let you try new functionality before it is released. This feature may have limited support from Microsoft, and could change if/when it becomes Generally Available (GA).
More info at techcommunity.microsoft.com and details of the Front End- Worker design can be found on learn.microsoft.com
Single subnet support for multiple App Service plans
Info
This feature is in Public Preview. Preview features let you try new functionality before it is released. This feature may have limited support from Microsoft, and could change if/when it becomes Generally Available (GA).
Announced at Microsoft Ignite 2023
Prior to this release, each App Service Plan using VNET integration needed it’s own subnet. This could become a huge administrative overhead for customers with a lot of App Services, and this feature- termed “Multi-Plan subnet join” or MPSJ enables App Service Plans to share a common subnet.
The new feature is currently only available through the CLI or ARM templates.
More info on techcommunity.microsoft.com
WebJobs on Linux
Info
This feature is in Public Preview. Preview features let you try new functionality before it is released. This feature may have limited support from Microsoft, and could change if/when it becomes Generally Available (GA).
Another preview announced at Ignite this November was WebJobs on Linux. WebJobs has been available on the Windows App Services for a while, and is used for running background tasks within the WebApp. These can be run on a schedule (think Cron jobs, or Windows Scheduled Tasks), or can run on WebApp creation (and then run continuously, using an endless loop). More info on WebJobs on Microsoft Learn
gRPC for App Service
Announced at Microsoft Ignite 2023
App Services for Linux can now be configured to use gRPC- an open source framework that runs on HTTP/2 to connect together multiple services by enabling high performance, bi-directional streaming. General Availability of this new feature was announced at Ignite in November.
More info on Microsoft Learn and more general information on the framework at grpc.io
Extensibility support on Linux
Info
This feature is in Public Preview. Preview features let you try new functionality before it is released. This feature may have limited support from Microsoft, and could change if/when it becomes Generally Available (GA).
As with WebJobs mentioned above, Extension support has been a feature of Windows WebApps for some time. This has now been brought to Linux App Services.
Azure Static Web Apps now supports .NET 8
.NET version 8 was released at Ignite, and Azure Static Web Apps followed regular App Services in supporting it. With this .NET 8 support, you can deploy Blazor WebAssembly apps and .NET 8 managed functions to Azure Static Web Apps.
More info at azure.microsoft.com
Extended support for .NET 6 (LTS) ends 12 November 2024
.NET 6 was released in 2021 under a 3-year “Long Term Support” model but that means there’s now just under a year left on support for .NET 6, so any WebApps using that version should be upgraded to .NET 8 as security updates will no longer be released. WebApps will continue to run beyond that date, but they won’t be supported and will be at risk from future vulnerabilities due to the lack of patching.
More info at azure.microsoft.com
Extended support for .NET 7 (STS) ends on 14 May 2024
As with .NET 6, it’s newer sibling .NET 7 is coming to an end of support next year, this one in May 2024 as 7 was released in 2022 under the 18-month “Standard Term Support” model. As with 6, apps will continue to run but in a unpatched, at risk, unsupported state so the recommendation is to upgrade to the new .NET 8 before that deadline.
More info at azure.microsoft.com