This course will show practical applications of key Azure features to meet the programming and configuration challenges introduced by long-running tasks.
We'll start with Azure Batches and how you can use them to create large-scale, parallel, and high-performance apps in the Azure cloud. Then we'll go over Azure Queues and how they can add resiliency to your web applications. Next, you'll look at Webhooks and how they can address events in your cloud apps. Finally, we'll show you WebJobs and how they can deal with continuous processing tasks.
By the end of this course, you should be able to understand and apply these four Azure features to solve some of the challenges you face with long-running tasks, especially in high-performance computing applications.
Learning Objectives
- Create large-scale, parallel, and high-performance apps by using Azure Batches
- Build resilient apps by using Azure Queues
- Implement code to address application events by using Azure Webhooks
- Address continuous processing tasks by using Azure WebJobs
Intended Audience
- People pursuing the Microsoft AZ-203 certification
- IT professionals, web developers, DevOps administrators
Prerequisites
- Basic understanding of cloud concepts
- Familiarity with web programming
- Exposure to Azure configuration (Portal, CLI, or PowerShell)
Feedback
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Let's take a closer look at the different types with an example. Note that we've created the web app ahead of time.
In the Azure portal, I'm going to the app service page of the web app and we'll select web jobs. In the web jobs page, we select add. Let's put in some values for the web job settings. Name, file upload, type. For convenience, I'm just using a PowerShell script that writes a message to the console and then sleeps for five seconds. Here is an example using a cron expression. This one will run the job every minute.
Click OK. The new WebJob appears on the WebJobs page. All Azure web applications have an advanced monitoring capability using Kudo. Let's go in here, and look at some menu options. You can view the console for the web app using the regular command prompt or in PowerShell. I'll just run the web job a few times.
Over here, we can see the history of the WebJob. Here's the console output for my triggered web job showing the messages that were written to the console.
Creating a continuous web job from the Azure portal would follow a similar process but now with the type selection of continuous. The script I've uploaded just sends a console message every five seconds but now with a count indicator. Here I've set up a continuous web job and you can see the output of my script.
Derrick is a content contributor and trainer for Microsoft cloud technologies like Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics 365. He works across North America and Europe to help companies and organizations with these technology shifts. Before that he has worn many hats but prefers to wear them one at a time.
When he is not night walking during his travels, you can find him on a bicycle path or performing guitar solos to an imaginary audience in his basement.