At the end of part 1 of this tutorial I had my nodejs application pushed into Azure container registry. Next, it is time to get this application deployed to use.

Create a resource -> Web app -> Create.

On a Basics section you will be greeted with many choices. Azure, like other cloud providers, is smart here and helps you with easy to understand Ui. Subscription is the most critical one. If you have multiple subscriptions then you can easily choose from the drop-down menus the one you want.

Resource Group is the next big thing. This is basically just grouping your related resources into identifiable structures that can be managed according to the resource lifecycle needs and policies.

On Instance Details my entries were as follows: I chose a descriptive name and since I was publishing a Docker container, I chose that as an option under the Publish section. My operation system of choice was Linux and my region of choice was North Europe. Personally, I always tend to choose regions close to my actual home. There would be nothing preventing me from choosing something else – especially since I am just creating my Instance and the App Service Plan that goes with it.

App Service Plan in Azure is all about SKU (Stock Keeping Units) and ACU decisions(Azure Compute Unit). SKU is basically telling you that something like Basic B1 is an identifier of a service plan. In other words: It acts as an unique identifier for any given plan of choice. ACU’s on the other hand are the CPU specs of the SKU. More about ACU here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/acu

As the memory requirements for my nodejs app go: The smaller the better. I highly recommend checking out additional options from the Sku and size section. This can be done by clicking the Change size option. It might just be that the default is good for you but then again there might be something even better on the list of choices that Azure gives you.

In the end I chose Basic B1

Please note here that Subscription can be Free(meaning subscription is not billing you) but App Service Plan can cost money. App Service Plan is all about renting or reserving capacity from Azure and capacity costs money. How much you want to pay(or don’t want to pay) is entirely up to your preferences. Also note that if you are going to deploy multiple apps into Azure you can use the existing App Service Plan to do so. However, you might need to consider updating your SKU plan if the resource demands get higher than you initially expected.

At the end of the Basics screen, you see Zone Redundancy, you do not need to worry about this unless you are building a critical highly available application that needs to spread across multiple geolocations to guarantee 24/7 uptime. And also, like Azure notes, all regions do not support this feature. If you need Zone Redundancy then create your app in the zone that supports this feature.

Once you are done with the Basics switch to Docker tab/section. There you should choose: