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Leveraging Azure Cloud and Docker for ASP.NET Core Projects: A Comprehensive Guide for Businesses

Businesses are constantly seeking robust, scalable, and efficient solutions to develop, deploy, and manage their applications. Microsoft's Azure Cloud services, along with Docker support for ASP.NET Core, present a compelling proposition for those aiming to enhance their project development lifecycle. This guide explores the integration of Azure Cloud and Docker for ASP.NET Core projects and elucidates why businesses should consider this powerful combination for their ventures.

Introduction to ASP.NET Core, Azure Cloud, and Docker

ASP.NET Core is an open-source, cross-platform framework developed by Microsoft for building modern, cloud-based, internet-connected applications. It's renowned for its high performance, versatility, and modular architecture, making it suitable for developing web applications, IoT apps, and mobile backends.

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Simplified Solution: Troubleshooting Backend API Failures in Azure Cloud

Application failures can be classified into three main types: User Interface failures, Backend API failures, and Infrastructure failures. When users encounter issues, they often submit tickets based on the priority of the problems.

Troubleshooting Application From User Interface

This article focuses on identifying the root cause of Backend API failures without debugging the application code. The main challenge lies in pinpointing the exact cause of the issue. The initial step involves using developer tools Network Fetch/XHR option for debugging, which helps identify the failing API and its response code. Application Support Engineer may get an initial idea about the issue. With this information and timestamp of the issue occurs can help debugging from Azure Portal. 

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NewRelic Logs With Logback on Azure Cloud

Those who work with NewRelic logs for Java applications probably know that the user of an agent might be the most flexible and convenient way to collect log data and gather different application metrics, like CPU and memory usage and execution time. However, to run a Java application with the agent, we need access to an application execution unit (like a jar or Docker image) and control an execution runtime (e.g., an image with JVM on Kubernetes). Having such access, we can set up Java command line arguments, including necessary configurations for the agent.

Though, Azure Cloud-managed services, such as Azure Data Factory (ADF) or Logic Apps, do not have "tangible" executed artifacts nor execution environments. Such services are fully managed, and their execution runtimes are virtual. For these services, Azure suggests using Insights and Monitor to collect logs, metrics, and events to create alerts. But if your company has a separate solution for centralized log collection, like NewRelic, it could be a challenge to integrate managed services with an external logging framework.

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Moving SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 Databases to the Azure Cloud

It's time to move to the Azure Cloud.

Extended Support for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 ended in July 2019, and Extended Support for Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 will end in January 2020. Upgrading the software to the latest versions is always an option, of course, but for a variety of reasons, that may not be viable or cost-effective for some legacy applications. Another option is to pay an additional fee to continue receiving Extended Security Update support for three more years. But for most organizations, the best option will be to get continued support for free by moving the databases to the Azure cloud.

This article highlights the considerations and challenges involved when migrating mission-critical SQL Server 2008/R2 databases to the Azure cloud and offers some useful suggestions to help avoid common pitfalls.

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How to Use Caching With Azure Cosmos DB

Cosmos DB is the new NoSQL database released in Azure Cloud by Microsoft. Unlike relational databases, Cosmos DB is scalable as it is a hosted database service, so it enjoys a lot of popularity among high transaction .NET and .NET Core applications.

However, using Cosmos DB, you need to be wary of performance bottlenecks and cost overhead for accessing the database as Microsoft charges you for each transaction to Cosmos DB. While Cosmos DB is scalable in terms of transaction capacity, it is not as fast because the database service is living in a separate VNet or subscription than the applications. So even if your applications are running in Azure cloud, accessing the database across the VNet is a huge blow to the performance.