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OSVALDO ALVES
OSVALDO ALVES

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Cloud App Journey — Ep. 1: Deploying your Backend to Azure — The Easiest Path

Welcome to the first article of our new series App na Cloud — designed to help software developers who are taking their first steps with cloud development on Azure.

In this series, we’ll go hands-on with common use cases, best practices, and practical guidance on how to run your apps in the cloud — with real examples using Azure services.

We’ll focus on how to deploy, secure, and scale your backend applications — with minimal friction.

What Are We Building?
Every modern application needs a backend running somewhere. Azure offers several options to host and run your backend, but we’ll start by covering the three most practical and beginner-friendly options for developers:

✅ Azure App Service
✅ Azure Container Apps
✅ Azure Functions

Each one will be covered in its own article. Today, we begin with the Azure App Service, one of the simplest ways to deploy REST APIs and web applications to Azure.

What is Azure App Service?
Azure App Service is a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web apps and APIs. It takes care of the infrastructure so you can focus on your code.

You can deploy .NET, Node.js, Java, Python, and more — and benefit from built-in scaling, SSL support, custom domains, staging environments, and easy CI/CD integration.

Step-by-step: Publishing a .NET 9 Web API on Azure App Service
Let’s go through how to publish a basic REST API built with ASP.NET Core (.NET 9) using Visual Studio.

🔹 Step 1 – Create an App Service on Azure
In the Azure Portal:
Go to Create a Resource > App Service.

🔹 Fill in the basic settings:
Resource Group
App Name (e.g. my-api-demo)
Runtime Stack: .NET 9 (LTS)
Region: Choose one close to your users

🔹 Step 3 – Create your Web API Project
In Visual Studio:
Create a new ASP.NET Core Web API project.
Choose .NET 9 as the target framework.
Add a simple controller like this:


[ApiController]
[Route("[controller]")]
public class HelloController : ControllerBase
{
    [HttpGet]
    public string Get() => "Hello from Azure!";
}
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🔹 Step 4 – Publish from Visual Studio
Right-click the project > Publish.
Choose Azure > App Service (Windows).
Sign in, select your subscription and App Service.
Click Publish — and you're live!

Your API will be publicly available at a URL like:
https://my-api-demo.azurewebsites.net/hello

✅ Why Use Azure App Service?

  • No infrastructure management
  • Built-in DevOps support (GitHub, Azure DevOps, etc.)
  • Automatic scaling and high availability
  • Easy integration with Azure AD, Blob Storage, SQL, and more

What’s Next?
In the upcoming articles, we’ll explore:
Azure Container Apps — perfect for containerized apps and microservices
Azure Functions — ideal for serverless and event-driven architectures
Stay tuned and follow the series to keep learning how to build modern cloud-native backends using Azure! 🚀

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