Web and Mobile

Customers have three options for hosting Web sites on Azure. These options have trade-offs:

• The Azure Web Apps service (formerly Azure Websites) offers the fastest deployment and the least work managing the platform, but deployments are limited to two-tier Web sites with client- or server-side scripting and a database such as SQL Server or MySQL
• Cloud Services Web roles could require more specialized coding than Websites but they enable multitier Web applications, which use separate application servers for performance and security; Web roles is the simplest solution for deployments that need to scale up or down
• Azure Virtual Machines are best when complete control is required over the deployment and configuration of the Web server and supporting services, but they leave the most initial configuration and ongoing maintenance responsibility to the customer. This option is the only way to use a non-Microsoft OS; for example, to run the Apache Web server on Linux.

Azure can host the server side of mobile applications in an environment called Mobile Services, which will be replaced by a new Mobile Apps service (currently in preview) in the near future. Azure also provides digital media delivery and a content distribution network designed for large-scale Web applications, especially Web applications on Azure.