Recommended Node.js Azure Website setup

Question

I'm currently building a small Node.js Website and I want to host it on Azure. I wanted to ask whether I should separate the Front- and Backend parts of the app into two different Azure Websites, or just put the whole app into one Azure Website slot.

The reason I think separating into two parts might make sense is because I want to access the Backend part not only from the corresponding website but also from other parts (eg a mobile app). And I think that in this setup updating the Frontend part would also mean downtime for the Backend API.

On the other hand, two websites make it harder to query the Backend from the Frontend (hardcoded URLs, socket.io can't just easily be setup anymore, etc.)

What would you recommnd in my case?

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

ExpressJS Socket.io some Database jquery on client / cheerio on serverSide (DOM parsing)

Don't have any experience with Azure.. Switch to Linux!! Have access to your apps, data, should be very important and one of things the app is built around..

Answer 2

Azure websites supports creating staged deployments for you site http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/web-sites-staged-publishing/

This means that you don't need to worry about downtime for your backend when you're updating your front end, since you can update the front end in the staging environment, then when it's ready to be deployed you just swap the staging and production environments and all requests get immediately redirected to the updated version of your site with no downtime.

Answer 3

Zain is correct in that you can create slots in your Azure website and swap them to prevent downtime. For example, you can create a staging slot and a production slot and push your updates to staging. Once satisfied that staging is working correctly, you can swap staging with live and in theory there should be no down time at all for the live slot.

That said, it depends on your budget. An Azure app with slots costs more than one without. If you want cheap and don't care about things like custom domains, use two free websites and that will solve your problem. Otherwise, and to keep everything together, I would probably just combine them and pay the higher price, but it depends on how your app works too.

If price isn't an issue, I would ask myself: "How difficult is it going to be to query the back end from the front end?" If it's going to be a pain and make what would be a simple app overly complex, you might want to combine the apps and use deloyment slots (see here for more info: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/web-sites-staged-publishing/ )