Umbraco at scale on Azure Web Apps, is it even worth it?
I am increasingly under the impression that Umbraco running on Azure is simply not worth the effort.
If you have a reasonably sized website that uses Examine you have to jump through a few hoops and in effect manage and run two websites to get the app to scale.
Along with scaling issues, there seems to be a bunch of specific configurations just to have a site on Azure run properly.
Is it even worth it, is Umbraco on Azure Web Apps only ever going to be practical via Umbraco Cloud?
It depends on the requirements of the site, if you need to have flexible scalability, then yes, I think it's worth jumping through the hoops... but if it's a fairly standard stable site then you might find a different platform that fits.
Also, again depending on the solution there's so much you can do with Azure Front Door, Azure Search, Service Bus and Azure Devops, that having a Web App makes it part of a 'stack' that is easier to integrate with these other services.
If your pain point here is Examine - then consider using AzureSearch instead, it's really fun to work with, there are a few open source integrations, I worked on Moriyama.AzureSearch for V7 back in the day, there is an updated Cogworks.AzureSearch package for v8 too...
... but if you want the ultimate convenience of not having to work it all out - have a look at ExamineX: https://examinex.online/
it's a paid for version of Examine that works with AzureSearch - it solves so many issues with rebuilding indexes, because there is just one shared instance - so scaling up webapps is lightening fast as you don't need to recreate/rebuild examine indexes before coming online, but you retain the familiarity of working with Examine...
Umbraco at scale on Azure Web Apps, is it even worth it?
I am increasingly under the impression that Umbraco running on Azure is simply not worth the effort.
If you have a reasonably sized website that uses Examine you have to jump through a few hoops and in effect manage and run two websites to get the app to scale.
Along with scaling issues, there seems to be a bunch of specific configurations just to have a site on Azure run properly.
Is it even worth it, is Umbraco on Azure Web Apps only ever going to be practical via Umbraco Cloud?
Hi No1sBothered
It depends on the requirements of the site, if you need to have flexible scalability, then yes, I think it's worth jumping through the hoops... but if it's a fairly standard stable site then you might find a different platform that fits.
Also, again depending on the solution there's so much you can do with Azure Front Door, Azure Search, Service Bus and Azure Devops, that having a Web App makes it part of a 'stack' that is easier to integrate with these other services.
If your pain point here is Examine - then consider using AzureSearch instead, it's really fun to work with, there are a few open source integrations, I worked on Moriyama.AzureSearch for V7 back in the day, there is an updated Cogworks.AzureSearch package for v8 too...
... but if you want the ultimate convenience of not having to work it all out - have a look at ExamineX: https://examinex.online/
it's a paid for version of Examine that works with AzureSearch - it solves so many issues with rebuilding indexes, because there is just one shared instance - so scaling up webapps is lightening fast as you don't need to recreate/rebuild examine indexes before coming online, but you retain the familiarity of working with Examine...
regards
marc
Thanks Marc, appreciate the reply, i will have a look at the solutions you mentioned!
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