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I've a conceptual question about Static web site on Storage Account & App Service.

My team have develop an Angular10 + ASP.NET Core (API) application. Our frontend (Angular10) only consumes our API , so the availability of our app depends on the availability of both, frontend + backend (our API will NOT be consumed by any other app). We don't have any latence issue or requirement as our final users are all in the same region. Our app must be consumed through HTTPS and with a specific name (CNAME).

When we deploy the app to Azure, my team decide to deploy it separately using a Store Account as static web site for Angular 10 and an AppService for the API as backend of our App. As far I see on MS docs (here is the related article):

"App Service Static Web Apps is a great alternative to Azure Storage static website hosting and is also appropriate in cases where you don't require a web server to render content"

Because of we currently need an AppService to render content, i have some questions:

  • The app works but, is a correct arquitectural approach or is better only publish our app to an AppService?
  • There are any security/cost related/whatever topic that makes StaticWebSite + AppService approach better than only AppService deploy?

I think that this approach does not give us any facility or advantage. Instead of this, we have to configure more things on Azure to connect through SSL and to give a CNAME to our app and AppService deploy.

Please, can you give me your oppinion?

Thanks in advance

Best regards

Luis

LLA
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The best approach would be to split out the SPA and API and host them separately. This creates a loose coupling between the applications giving you more flexibility around performance, scalability, and deployment.

The .NET Core API could be hosted on an Azure App Service, or could it even be refactored into running as a set of serverless Azure Functions? Converting it into functions would allow for auto scaling and a likely reduction in cost as you only pay when the function is running. It depends what the API methods are actually doing.

The SPA could be hosted as a static web site in a storage account blob container, and with a CDN endpoint mapped to it you can set it up to expose the SPA using HTTPS on a custom domain. Alternatively you could use an Azure Static Web App (although this is still in preview). This simplifies the deployment of SPAs as it will connect to your code repo and build and deploy the SPA for you when changes are committed to the repo.

That would of course mean configuring two separate CNAME subdomain records (assuming you wanted to the API to have a custom domain name), but that's not a big deal and ultimately a clearer separation on concerns.

Static Web Hosting: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/storage/blobs/storage-blob-static-website-how-to

Azure Static Web Apps: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/static-web-apps/overview

Static Hosting with Azure CDN: https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/cloud/azure/static-hosting-with-azure-blob-storage-and-azure-cdn/

Ira Rainey
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Hosting option depends on your requirements.

Use case for using Static web site on Storage Account is a need to manipulate or process data on the server side, simply call the relevant managed Azure service like Azure Cognitive Services or leverage a web server of your own hosted on Azure Functions.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/static-websites-on-azure-storage-now-generally-available/

Your are Static web site makes a call to Azure WebApp API, so you should have Azure WebApp Plan.

Azure WebApp Plan can host both API and Static web site. Benefits of such scenario are:

  • Reduce cost as you can host multiple WebApps in same Azure WebApp Plan.
  • Azure WebApp gives you more hosting features versus Storage Account
  • Deployment can be implemented in same way for both Static web site and API
Andriy Bilous
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  • Thanks for your answer. Of course an AppService needs an AppServicePlan, but my question is a bit more philosophical.... What requirements would make you adopt this architecture? Do you consider that the architecture is correct? Using a Staticwebsite in this scenario is properly? – LLA Mar 23 '21 at 17:20
  • Your scenario is not really typical for using Static web site on Storage Account as web site on Storage Account calls API on WebApp, also you need to pay for both Azure WebApp Plan and Static web site on Storage Account. I would recommend to host API and Static web site in same Azure WebApp Plan – Andriy Bilous Mar 24 '21 at 09:15