Individual logical processes that can be decoupled from the rest of the application may be deployed independently to Azure Functions in a “serverless” manner. Azure Functions lets you just write the code you need for a given problem, without worrying about the application or infrastructure to run it. You can choose from a variety of programming languages, including C#, F#, Node.js, Python, and PHP, allowing you to pick the most productive language for the task at hand. Like most cloud-based solutions, you pay only for the amount of time your use, and you can trust Azure Functions to scale up as needed.
Azure offers a wide variety of data storage options, so that your application can use the appropriate data provider for the data in question.
For transactional, relational data, Azure SQL Databases are the best option. For high performance read-mostly data, a Redis cache backed by an Azure SQL Database is a good solution.
Unstructured JSON data can be stored in a variety of ways, from SQL Database columns to Blobs or Tables in Azure Storage, to DocumentDB. Of these, DocumentDB offers the best querying functionality, and is the recommended option for large numbers of JSON-based documents that must support querying.
Transient command- or event-based data used to orchestrate application behavior can use Azure Service Bus or Azure Storage Queues. Azure Storage Bus offers more flexibility and is the recommended service for non-trivial messaging within and between applications.
Your application’s requirements should dictate its architecture. There are many different Azure services available. Choosing the right one is an important decision. Microsoft offers a gallery of reference architectures to help identify typical architectures optimized for common scenarios. You may find a reference architecture that maps closely to your application’s requirements, or at least offers a starting point.
Figure 11-1 shows an example reference architecture. This diagram describes a recommended architecture approach for a Sitecore content management system website optimized for marketing.
Figure 11-1. Sitecore marketing website reference architecture.
References – Azure Hosting Recommendations