Azure has announced that App Service Environment versions 1 and 2 will reach end of life on August 31, 2024. If you’ve not already upgraded to App Service Environment v3, we want to remind you of the many technical resources and benefits that should help you to plan the migration right away. Remember, the end of life is dependent on phasing out of the underlying Cloud Service (classic) infrastructure, which means your services may no longer run after the deadline.

We’ve published a range of tools and resources to give your development and IT teams the help they need to confidently upgrade and unlock the new capabilities. In addition to the technical documentation we review later, we highly recommend the Learn Live session with Azure FastTrack Architects, now available on demand, that gives viewers a comprehensive overview of the steps to complete the migration.

An App Service Environment is an Azure App Service feature that provides a fully isolated and dedicated environment for running App Service apps securely at high scale. App Service Environment v3 is the latest version of App Service Environment. It’s easier to use, runs on more powerful infrastructure that can go up to 64 cores and 256-GB RAM with faster scaling speeds for both Windows and Linux, and has simpler network topology. In this article, let us review some of the advantages of App Service Environment v3 and the many ways your team can begin the upgrade process today.

App Service Environment v3 gives you better performance for less cost

App Service Environment v3 delivers a host of enhancements that redefine the way developers and architects design, deploy, and manage their applications. In a previous blog I shared these benefits in detail—here are the highlights:

• Improved performance and scaling: App Service Environment v3 runs on the latest Virtual Machine Scale Sets infrastructure, giving it the best performing and fastest scaling times across all versions. Front-end scaling is managed by the platform and scaling operations do not block other operations, unlike previous versions.
• Enhanced security: App Service Environment v3 is designed to eliminate networking dependencies on the customer’s virtual network, a big improvement over previous versions. Management and dependency traffic stays within the Azure backbone, and the only traffic that traverses your virtual network is the application traffic to and from your apps.
• Higher resiliency: In Azure regions enabled with Availability zones, an App Service Environment v3 can be configured to withstand a zonal failure within a region. This capability provides higher availability for deployed applications and automatically deploy instances across multiple zones for mission-critical apps.
• Cost savings: App Service Environment v3 is often cheaper than previous versions due to the removal of the stamp fee and larger instance sizes. You also get to take advantage of commitment-based offerings to reduce cost for resources using reserved instance pricing and Azure savings plans for compute, which are not available in the older versions. My friend Jordan Selig has a great blog post about how you can calculate your estimated savings.

Tools and resources for completing a smooth upgrade

The App Service Environment v3 upgrade landing page is your one-stop shop to learn more about the features, benefits, and migration resources related to App Service Environment v3. Customers have successfully completed the migration of hundreds of clusters on their own using the free, automated migration tool. You can run a pre-flight check to determine if your environment meets the prerequisites to automate your upgrade using the migration feature, otherwise you can follow the detailed instructions for a manual upgrade.

In addition, Microsoft Learn has collected walkthroughs, tutorials, and links to help you get familiar with the options for upgrading to App Service Environment v3. The Microsoft developer community is a vibrant space where experts and peers gather to share insights, experiences, and solutions. By participating in these forums, developers can seek help and gain valuable insights from others who have already upgraded to App Service Environment v3.

Free whitepaper on use in compliance-oriented industries

Companies in compliance-oriented industries sometimes need cloud-based services within an isolated, policy-based environment while simplifying application lifecycle management. In an in-depth analysis, GigaOM found that the single-tenant App Service Environment v3 complements the public multi-tenant service to deliver the latest generation of Azure platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering, reducing overheads of building and managing the services required by modern, digital-first applications. The platform extends these principles to applications in compliance-oriented organizations, providing valuable time saving in regulatory industries. You can download the whitepaper for free to learn more.

Need help? Azure is here to support you

Stay ahead of the upcoming end-of-life deadline with these intuitive and free resources. If for any reason you run into a roadblock and require additional help with your migration from FastTrack for Azure, please contact your Microsoft account team or Microsoft partner.

With previous versions of Azure App Service Environment sunsetting at the end of August 2024, upgrading to version 3 is not only imperative, but a strategic move that unlocks many benefits for you and your organization. To take advantage of the tools and resources Microsoft offers to assist in your migration, do not miss the on-demand Learn Live session and visit the App Service Environment Learn Collection.

Please share your experience and feedback in the comments. Also, follow @AzAppService to keep in touch with us!