Building Serverless Applications in Azure
Serverless computing may be a relatively new concept, but it is gaining a lot of momentum, with all the major cloud providers keen to become the best hosting option for serverless architectures. Just this week Microsoft blogged about “Why you should care about serverless computing” and launched a new page devoted to serverless computing in Azure.
So I’m very pleased to announce that my latest Pluralsight course, Building Serverless Applications in Azure is now live. In the course, I demonstrate the benefits of the serverless approach by building out a simple real-world application, taking advantage of several different Azure services that fit well within a serverless architecture.
The course covers:
- What the benefits of adopting a serverless approach are
- How you can host your static web content for a SPA
- What options you have for your database (we look at SQL Azure, Cosmos DB and Table Storage)
- How you can use Azure Functions for custom back-end logic
- How you can use Azure AD B2C to simplify security and log-in
- How you can use Azure Resource Manager to automate deployment
- How you can use Azure Application Insights to monitor what’s going on
Of course Azure Functions (which I also have a Pluralsight course on) is one of the core building blocks for serverless applications, but Azure offers even more options such as Logic Apps, and even the new Azure Container Instances offering, which can be thought of as serverless meets docker.
What’s really exciting is the pace of innovation in the serverless world at the moment. In the last week since the course was released Microsoft not only released a new Visual Studio update that brings greatly improved Azure Functions tooling, but have also announced the Azure Event Grid – another service that is built with serverless computing in mind.
So if you’ve not dipped your toes into serverless computing yet and are wondering what the big deal is, then why not check out my new course, and see how quick and easy it is to create and deploy a serverless application in Azure.
One of the great things about serverless is that its not an “all or nothing” proposition – you can benefit from it where it makes sense, and use more traditional web hosting platforms or Virtual Machines where you need the greater control that those can offer.
I hope you enjoy the course, and I’d love to hear your feedback as well as how you’re using serverless and Azure in your own applications.