Tutorial: Deploy a web app from a geo-replicated Azure container registry

This is part two in a three-part tutorial series. In part one, a private, geo-replicated container registry was created, and a container image was built from source and pushed to the registry. In this article, you take advantage of the network-close aspect of the geo-replicated registry by deploying the container to Web App instances in two different Azure regions. Each instance then pulls the container image from the closest registry.

In this tutorial, part two in the series:

  • Deploy a container image to two Web Apps for Containers instances
  • Verify the deployed application

If you haven't yet created a geo-replicated registry and pushed the image of the containerized sample application to the registry, return to the previous tutorial in the series, Prepare a geo-replicated Azure container registry.

In the next article in the series, you update the application, then push the updated container image to the registry. Finally, you browse to each running Web App instance to see the change automatically reflected in both, showing Azure Container Registry geo-replication and webhooks in action.

Automatic deployment to Web Apps for Containers

Azure Container Registry provides support for deploying containerized applications directly to Web Apps for Containers. In this tutorial, you use the Azure portal to deploy the container image created in the previous tutorial to two web app plans located in different Azure regions.

When you deploy a web app from a container image in your registry, and you have a geo-replicated registry in the same region, Azure Container Registry creates an image deployment webhook for you. When you push a new image to your container repository, the webhook picks up the change and automatically deploys the new container image to your web app.

Deploy a Web App for Containers instance

In this step, you create a Web App for Containers instance in the China North region.

Sign in to the Azure portal and navigate to the registry you created in the previous tutorial.

Select Repositories > acr-helloworld, then right-click on the v1 tag under Tags and select Deploy to web app:

Deploy to app service in the Azure portal

If "Deploy to web app" is disabled, you might not have enabled the registry admin user as directed in Create a container registry in the first tutorial. You can enable the admin user in Settings > Access keys in the Azure portal.

Under Web App for Containers that's displayed after you select "Deploy to web app," specify the following values for each setting:

Setting Value
Site Name A globally unique name for the web app. In this example, we use the format <acrName>-chinanorth to easily identify the registry and region the web app is deployed from.
Resource Group Use existing > myResourceGroup
App service plan/Location Create a new plan named plan-chinanorth in the China North region.
Image acr-helloworld:v1
Operating system Linux

Note

When you create a new app service plan to deploy your containerized app, a default plan is automatically selected to host your application. The default plan depends on the operating system setting.

Select Create to provision the web app to the China North region.

Screenshot shows the Web App for Containers with the Create button highlighted.

View the deployed web app

When deployment is complete, you can view the running application by navigating to its URL in your browser.

In the portal, select App Services, then the web app you provisioned in the previous step. In this example, the web app is named uniqueregistryname-chinanorth.

Select the hyperlinked URL of the web app in the top-right of the App Service overview to view the running application in your browser.

Screenshot shows the App Service Overview with web app URL highlighted.

Once the Docker image is deployed from your geo-replicated container registry, the site displays an image representing the Azure region hosting the container registry.

Screenshot shows the deployed web application viewed in a browser.

Deploy second Web App for Containers instance

Use the procedure outlined in the previous section to deploy a second web app to the China East region. Under Web App for Containers, specify the following values:

Setting Value
Site Name A globally unique name for the web app. In this example, we use the format <acrName>-chinaeast to easily identify the registry and region the web app is deployed from.
Resource Group Use existing > myResourceGroup
App service plan/Location Create a new plan named plan-chinaeast in the China East region.
Image acr-helloworld:v1
Operating system Linux

Select Create to provision the web app to the China East region.

Screenshot shows the Web App for Containers Create window with the Create button highlighted.

View the second deployed web app

As before, you can view the running application by navigating to its URL in your browser.

In the portal, select App Services, then the web app you provisioned in the previous step. In this example, the web app is named uniqueregistryname-chinaeast.

Select the hyperlinked URL of the web app in the top-right of the App Service overview to view the running application in your browser.

Web app on Linux configuration in the Azure portal

Once the Docker image is deployed from your geo-replicated container registry, the site displays an image representing the Azure region hosting the container registry.

Deployed web application viewed in a browser

Next steps

In this tutorial, you deployed two Web App for Containers instances from a geo-replicated Azure container registry.

Advance to the next tutorial to update and then deploy a new container image to the container registry, then verify that the web apps running in both regions were updated automatically.