Benefits of migrating to Azure App Service

Migrating from Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub to Azure App Service in Azure enables organizations to take advantage of the latest platform innovations, broader geographical reach, enhanced security capabilities, and greater operational flexibility.

Why migrate?

Azure App Service in Azure receives continuous platform investments, new features, security enhancements, and support for emerging development frameworks. By migrating to Azure, organizations can modernize their application platform while reducing operational complexity associated with managing applications on infrastructure hosted within Azure Stack Hub.

Expanded hosting options

Azure App Service in Azure supports a broader range of application hosting models than Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub.

Benefits include:

  • Native Linux application hosting
  • Linux and Windows custom containers
  • Multi-container deployments
  • Support for modern runtime versions
  • Faster access to newly released frameworks and platform updates
  • App Service Environment for complete single tenant isolation

Example scenarios

  • Migrate Windows-hosted applications to Linux for lower operating costs, for example PHP, Java, Node.js, or Python.
  • Deploy custom containerized applications without managing Kubernetes infrastructure.
  • Host mixed Windows and Linux application portfolios on a single managed platform.

Multi-region availability

Azure App Service can be deployed in multi-region, providing greater flexibility for application placement.

Benefits include:

  • Deploy applications closer to users
  • Meet data residency requirements
  • Improve disaster recovery options
  • Reduce application latency
  • Support multi-region architectures

Organizations are no longer constrained by the physical location of their Azure Stack Hub deployment.

Advanced scaling capabilities

Azure App Service provides more flexible and scalable hosting options compared to Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub.

Benefits include:

  • Larger scale-out limits
  • Higher-capacity and more powerful Premium plans
  • Rapid scale operations
  • Availability zone support
  • Autoscaling based on performance metrics or customer defined rules (for example, scheduled scaling)

Enhanced networking capabilities

Azure App Service provides additional networking features for advanced application architectures.

Examples include:

  • Private endpoints
  • Regional VNET integration
  • Azure Front Door integration
  • Application Gateway integration
  • Virtual WAN integration
  • Multi-region traffic routing

Improved security and compliance options

Azure App Service enables organizations to secure their workloads using security best practices covering identity and access management, network security, data protection, logging, and monitoring and compliance and governance.

Identity and access management

  • Microsoft Entra ID integration
  • Managed identities
  • Conditional access integration

Network security

  • Private endpoints
  • Access restrictions
  • Web Application Firewall integration
  • DDoS protection integration

Secrets management

  • Azure Key Vault references
  • Managed identity-based secret access
  • Certificate lifecycle management

Monitoring and security operations

  • Microsoft Defender for Cloud
  • Azure Monitor
  • Application Insights
  • Log Analytics
  • Security recommendations

Greater reliability and resiliency

Azure App Service enables organizations to build more resilient applications through:

  • Availability zones
  • Regional redundancy options
  • Automated platform maintenance
  • Built-in platform patching
  • Azure Front Door global failover
  • Geo-distributed architectures

Faster innovation and feature adoption

Azure App Service is a platform which is continually innovating, taking care of all the heavy lifting of building and running a high scale platform, so you can focus on creating great applications.

Examples include:

  • New App Service Plan generations
  • New runtime versions
  • Enhanced deployment features
  • Advanced observability integrations
  • New networking and security capabilities

Reduced operational overhead

Moving from App Service on Azure Stack Hub to Azure App Service reduces operational overhead by transferring platform maintenance, operating system updates, patching, scaling, and availability management to Azure. Operators no longer need to plan for platform lifecycle management and can instead focus on application and business requirements.

Benefits include:

  • Reduced infrastructure lifecycle management
  • Reduced capacity planning requirements
  • Simplified disaster recovery planning
  • Automated platform maintenance
  • Consumption aligned to business growth

Migration outcome

Area Azure App Service Advantage
Hosting Platforms Windows, Linux, and Containers
Regional Availability Multi-region footprint
Scale larger scale limits
Security Private endpoints, Key Vault, managed identities, Defender
Networking Advanced Azure networking integration
Reliability Availability zones and multi-region architectures
Innovation Fast access to new App Service capabilities
Operations Reduced platform management overhead

Key Azure App Service features not available in Azure Stack Hub

In summary here is a breakdown of key Azure App Service features and capabilities not available in Azure Stack Hub.

Application hosting and runtime features

Feature Azure App Service App Service on Azure Stack Hub
Linux Web Apps ✅ ❌
Linux code hosting ✅ ❌
Built-in Linux runtimes ✅ ❌
Custom Linux containers ✅ ❌
Sidecar containers ✅ ❌
Multi-container applications ✅ ❌
Latest runtime availability ✅ Limited
Rapid runtime updates ✅ Limited

Scale and performance

Feature Azure App Service App Service on Azure Stack Hub
Availability zones ✅ ❌
Large-scale regional deployments ✅ Limited
Advanced autoscale capabilities ✅ Limited
Latest hardware generations ✅ ❌

Networking

Feature Azure App Service App Service on Azure Stack Hub
Private Endpoints ✅ ❌
Azure Front Door integration ✅ ❌
Global load balancing ✅ ❌
Azure Virtual WAN Integration ✅ ❌
Multi-region active-active architectures ✅ ❌
Availability zone networking ✅ ❌

Security and compliance

Feature Azure App Service App Service on Azure Stack Hub
Managed identities ✅ ❌
Key Vault references ✅ ❌
Customer managed keys ✅ ❌
Microsoft Defender integration ✅ ❌
Conditional access integration ✅ Limited
Private endpoint security ✅ ❌

Regional reach and reliability

Feature Azure App Service App Service on Azure Stack Hub
Multi-region ✅ ❌
Cross-region disaster recovery ✅ ❌
Region pair support ✅ ❌
Global traffic routing ✅ ❌
Geo-distributed architectures ✅ ❌

Note

Azure App Service continues to receive new platform investments, service innovations, runtime updates, and modernization capabilities. Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub provides a subset of Azure App Service capabilities and follows a separate release cadence.

Next steps

Planning migration to Azure App Service

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