| title | description | author | manager | ms.technology | ms.topic | ms.date | ms.author | monikerRange |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Azure development with Visual Studio |
Learn about how you can connect your apps to Azure services in Visual Studio and deploy them to the cloud. |
ghogen |
jmartens |
vs-azure |
overview |
09/19/2023 |
ghogen |
>=vs-2019 |
Application development can be easier if you use cloud services to handle many issues that you would otherwise have to implement. When you use cloud services hosted in the Azure cloud, you use a reliable and highly available cloud environment that is managed by Microsoft to handle much of the infrastructure that many apps and services need, so that you can focus development efforts on what is unique to your application.
In this article, you learn about how Visual Studio can help with Azure development, whether you're getting a web site up and running, connecting to services like storage, databases, secrets management, or using services that add value like caching. If you don't have an Azure account, you can sign up for a free trial.
With Visual Studio, you can both develop apps that run in the Azure cloud, and connect to Azure services from your on-premises, desktop, and mobile apps. Visual Studio is the most full-featured and complete environment for Windows developers to connect .NET and ASP.NET applications to Azure services. Visual Studio also supports development in other technology stacks, such as Node.js and Python, which you can use to create web sites and web applications that you can deploy to Azure using the Azure command-line interface (CLI).
C++ developers can access Azure services such as Azure storage using a C++ client library, and IoT device developers using C and C++ can connect devices and services to Azure. See Cloud and web programming in Visual C++.
Users of Azure Cloud Services, supported in Visual Studio for many previous releases, can continue to work with these services in Visual Studio using Azure Cloud Services (extended support).
When you want to use an Azure service in your application, it usually requires multiple changes to your project, such as package references, code changes, and configuration changes, as well as many changes in Azure to specify the services to connect to, or create them if they don't already exist. Visual Studio helps make this process easier by making those changes in your project and in Azure, based on the information you provide. Visual Studio also gives a list of all the changes, so you can examine them and fully understand what changed.
Visual Studio Connected Services is the name for the step-by-step wizards you can use to connect your projects (web and on-premises) to Azure services. Read more about the Azure services you can connect to and manage from Visual Studio at About Visual Studio Connected Services.
You can perform all the required Azure operations right from the Visual Studio IDE as you go through the Connected Services wizards. Instead of using the Azure portal, you can provision resources in Azure, create resource groups, browse and view Azure resources, and deploy your applications and services. Once your project is connected to Azure services or deployed, the Connected Services tab displays information about your resources, and contains convenient links to your deployments. See Work with Azure in Visual Studio.
With Visual Studio you can deploy your application to Azure, on demand, with the click of a button. This convenience is great during development and testing, where CI/CD might not be already configured.
What are you deploying?
| Deployment target | Documentation |
|---|---|
| Azure App Service (.NET Core) | Deploy an ASP.NET Core web app |
| Azure App Service (.NET Framework) | Deploy an ASP.NET web app (.NET Framework) |
| Azure Container Apps | Deploy to Azure Container Apps using Visual Studio |
| Azure Functions | Create your first C# function in Azure using Visual Studio |
| Azure Container Registry | Deploy an ASP.NET container to a container registry using Visual Studio |
If you need help configuring CI/CD for a GitHub repo for the first time, Visual Studio can help you get started with GitHub Action starter workflows. Learn more at Deploy your application to Azure using GitHub Actions workflows created by Visual Studio. Read more about setting up CI/CD for deployment to Azure at Continuous deployment to Azure App Service.
When running in the Azure cloud, apps can benefit from Azure's high availability standards, scaling up and scaling out capabilities, monitoring, load testing, and other benefits. Visual Studio comes integrated with Azure functionality like remote debugging, viewing logs, and more.
During the development phase, you can experiment and develop with local emulators of Azure services for convenience and cost-savings, and later deploy to Azure. Learn more at Local and connected configurations.
You can also work with Docker to containerize your apps and services. Using Docker containers provides a consistent and reproducible operating system and environment for a running application. Visual Studio provides the same familiar experience when debugging containers, helps you monitor and manage the lifecycle of your containers locally, and can deploy your containers to a container registry.
Once you've containerized your app, it's easy to deploy the containers to Azure using services such as Azure App Service or Azure Container Apps.
Managing files and data can be a lot easier with Azure storage, which is a highly available, massively scalable, durable, and secure storage for a variety of data objects in the cloud. You can use Azure storage to store everything and make it available to your web sites, desktop apps, or mobile apps.
Azure also provides many different data services suited to different needs, from a cloud-hosted SQL database that makes for an easy transition from an on-premises SQL Server, to big data solutions that can scale up to the largest requirements.
- Store and retrieve a blob
- Manage files
- Implement messaging using queues
- Manage structured NoSQL data
Learn more at Azure storage and learn how to Connect to Azure storage with Visual Studio.
Connecting to Azure SQL database and other Azure database offering such as Cosmos DB is as easy as connecting to a local SQL Server. For details, see Databases and data providers.
Data providers are making services available via standard protocols, such as OData and gRPC. You can connect to these services, or if you're creating web services yourself, you can choose ASP.NET Web API, Azure Functions, or Azure API Management, and add those connections. For a list of supported services and protocols and how to connect to them, see Connect your app to gRPC, OpenAPI, and WCF endpoints.
ASP.NET Core provides a comprehensive solution for simple web sites and complex web applications. Azure services can help address many of the needs and solve many of the challenges that arise in web site and web application development. ASP.NET Core web applications frequently use client-side JavaScript.
:::image type="content" source="./media/overview-azure-integration/scalable-ecommerce-web-app.png" alt-text="Diagram of web application example architecture." lightbox="./media/overview-azure-integration/scalable-ecommerce-web-app-high-res.png" :::
Azure Cache for Redis provides an in-memory data store for Azure services, web sites, and web applications. You can use Azure Cache for Redis as a distributed data or content cache, a session store, a message broker, and more. Supported scenarios include:
- Cache data coming from an API (and thereby reduce API calls)
- Cache output (this can reduce CPU usage)
- Cache session state
Learn more at What is Azure Cache for Redis? or get started with Connect to Azure Cache for Redis by using Visual Studio Connected Services.
Most web sites need some kind of user management and authentication mechanism, either site-specific or provided by an identity provider with which a user has an existing account. Built-in user authentication is supported in Azure App Service. Learn more at Authentication and authorization in Azure App Service and Azure Functions and get started with Add app authentication to your web app running on Azure App Service. Microsoft Entra ID (previously known as Azure Active Directory) is a full-featured cloud-based identity management service. Learn more at What is Microsoft Entra.
Supported authentication providers include:
- Social accounts: Facebook, Google, Microsoft account, and others
- Microsoft Entra accounts (from a single tenant)
- Microsoft Entra accounts (from multiple different tenants)
Learn how to start using these services in your apps at Connect to Microsoft Entra ID by using Connected Services in Visual Studio.
Your ASP.NET web app deployed to Azure might need configuration for all environments (test, UAT, pre-production, and production). You can manage this configuration through Azure App Configuration. Learn how to connect your apps to Azure App Configuration at Connect to Azure App Configuration by using Visual Studio Connected Services.
Secure storage of passwords and other secrets, such as access keys to databases and tokens for API providers, is a common problem for which Azure Key Vault provides a secure solution. You can use Azure Key Vault to store secrets for your app running in Azure, and also during development, you can use the Key Vault in Azure, or a local store (secrets.json) for local execution, testing, and debugging. Get started during design and development without any dependencies on the cloud, but then transition to later stages of testing and production with no disruption. Learn more at Azure Key Vault and get started at Connect Key Vault to your web application by using Visual Studio Connected Services.
Visual Studio helps solve the issue of developing your app and changing a database locally and then synchronizing with a production database in Azure.
In the case of ASP.NET Web App using Azure SQL Database and Entity Framework, when you make local changes to the database, you can push those schema changes and data changes to Azure in a structured way using Entity Framework migrations. See Entity Framework migrations.
ASP.NET web apps can benefit from running worker services. There's no additional cost to run a worker service on an existing App Service instance and it can be a direct replacement for the Windows Services that you might be running on-premises or in a virtual machine. See Worker services in .NET.
Developers who use JavaScript and Python can use Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code for Azure development. With either development environment, install the Azure CLI and follow tutorials in the documentation for Azure CLI, and find quickstarts and tutorials in the documentation for every Azure service that help you add the connection code manually.
Node.js offers another option for web application development with server-side JavaScript. Learn more at What is Azure for JavaScript developers Get started with Deploy a Node.js web app in Azure.
Python is an increasingly popular language which, when using web frameworks Django and Flask, is another way of developing web applications. See Get started with Python on Azure.
This section can help you learn what Azure services might be useful. Start by going through these quickstarts that show you how to get started with each service using Visual Studio as a development tool. These links take you into the documentation for each Azure service, starting at a page that is geared toward Visual Studio users (where available).
If you are unsure of what Azure service might best fit your needs, try Azure App Service.
If you need triggers, try Azure Functions.
If you need easy containers, try Azure Container Apps.
If you need advanced containers, try Azure Kubernetes Service.
If you want added control on top of your APIs, try Azure API Management.
If you want to support multiple long client connections, try Azure SignalR Service.
Learn more about Azure services that you might be interested in at Azure services.