Azure App Service
PaaS web hosting: plans define the compute, apps define the workload, slots enable safe swaps.
Readiness
0%
2h 30m baseline
Exam memorization points
- The App Service plan is the compute boundary. Every app in a plan shares the same instances and therefore the same scaling.
- Tiers from lowest to highest: Free and Shared (no slots, no autoscale), Basic, Standard, Premium v3, Isolated v2 (App Service Environment, dedicated VNet).
- Deployment slots require Standard or higher. A swap warms up the target slot and swaps content and configuration.
- App settings and connection strings marked as slot settings stay with the slot; unmarked settings move with the swapped content.
- VNet integration is outbound only. Inbound private access needs a private endpoint on the app or an App Service Environment.
- Backups, autoscale, Always On and custom domain TLS all require Basic or higher tiers.
Traps & distractors
- Creating a deployment slot on the Free or Shared tier and finding autoscale and slots unavailable.
- Assuming a swap deploys your new code. A swap exchanges the content already deployed in each slot.
- Forgetting Always On for low-traffic apps, which get unloaded after idle periods and penalise cold-start tests.
- Assuming App Service VNet integration gives inbound access from on-premises. It is outbound only.
- Scaling up a plan and expecting per-app control - scale up affects every app in the plan.
Suggested lab
Deploy with slots and swap safely
Practise slot settings and the staging-to-production swap.
- 1Create a Standard S1 Linux plan with a Node or .NET web app and deploy sample code.
- 2Create a staging slot and deploy a change to it.
- 3Mark a connection string as a slot setting in production, then swap staging into production.
- 4Confirm the new code is live while the slot-setting value stayed with production.
- 5Swap back and compare the deployment history recorded on the app.
Microsoft Learn
- App Service overviewdoc
- Search Microsoft Learn: App Service plan tiers deployment slots swap slot settingssearch
Live Microsoft Learn ingestion is a Sprint 2 item; until then links are curated and the search fallback always resolves.
Status
No time invested yet. Baseline assumptions only.
Self-assessed mastery
0%
Critical priority
High-yield and still weak. Study this next.
- Exam importance100% × 30% = 30.0
Learner-agnostic frequency on the real exam (5/5).
- Blueprint weight100% × 25% = 25.0
This topic's domain carries 22.5% of the exam objectives.
- Dependency leverage20% × 20% = 4.1
1 later topic depend on it.
- Current gap100% × 25% = 25.0
Readiness is 0%, so 100% of the topic is still uncovered.
Exam Priority Score = 30% importance + 25% blueprint + 20% dependency + 25% gap. Importance is exam frequency, blueprint is the domain's official exam weight, dependency is how many later topics this one unlocks, and gap is how far you currently are from ready.
Unlocks next
Baseline study time
2h 30m
Complexity
3 / 5
Remaining to target
2h 8m
Status weight
0%
Topics: app service, plan, slot, swap, paas, web app, autoscale, vnet integration
Weak neighbours in Compute