Microsoft's Azure App Service has done very well since its release in 2015. Over 350,000 customers are currently using the service to host their apps on Azure, with over a million active applications.
Microsoft is looking to grow that number further, and a key part of that is catering to Linux. As of yesterday, Node.js and PHP stacks have native Linux support.
The latest preview also gives you the ability to choose Linux as the base platform, so you can run your web app natively with no extra effort.
According to Azure App Service software engineer Nazim Lala, this makes it easier to work with .htaccess files and includes streamlined deployment, custom domains, SSL configuration, continuous deployment and horizontal and vertical scaling.
In addition, the marketplace instance of WordPress now supports Linux, with Drupal and Joomla support coming soon.
Azure App Service Data Solutions
The App Service team has also been working on some new data solutions over the months. Thanks to recent efforts the following are now supported:
- “ClearDB managed MySQL solutions including ClearDB database and ClearDB Clusters
- Marketplace solutions for MySQL, MariaDB and other MySQL-compatible solutions from partners like Bitnami and MariaDB
- Community-contributed Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates deploying on VMs
- MySQL on virtual machine on Linux or Windows OS“
MySQL in-app will also be supported on the Linux preview, giving fast MySQL dev/test functionality. In general, the update makes Linux a much more viable alternative.
App Service on Linux is now available to all Azure customers. You can get started by reading the official documentation, or find out more detail about this update here.
