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App Cache

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purva-vasudeo edited this page Aug 5, 2021 · 9 revisions

What is App Cache?

App Service provides a quick way to deploy code apps and run them in a fully managed cloud environment.

Behind the scenes, during the code deployment step, the code is copied to a CIFS (Network File System base) volume, which is then consumed when the app runtime starts up. Under default configuration, the exact same network share is mounted to the runtime. This design has the advantage that the application runtime in App Service has a persistent R/W storage share offered by default, which is a core requirements of frameworks like WordPress.

However, most applications do not require a persistent storage, and some application may favor faster performance of code on a local storage as opposed to remote storage. To optimize for this kind of applications, we have built a new feature called App Cache.

With this feature, each app instance (or VM in the App Service plan) gets it's own local ephemeral copy of the App Code instead of using the shared NFS mount which is used by default on App Service on Linux. This means if an app is running on multiple instances, each container of that app will use it's own local host(/VM) volume to host the app code instead of using the shared storage between instances.

How do I enable App Cache?

  • You need to set the app setting WEBSITES_ENABLE_APP_CACHE=true.
  • After setting this app setting, you will need to do a new deployment in order for the build artifacts to be available to AppCache.
  • Browse to your app.

Workflow

When the app setting is set, the container goes through a recycle to pick up the new app setting. This means the current container will be stopped and a new one will come up with the new app setting. The build is performed in a build container/agent by a Build System called Oryx and build artifacts are generated in a zip file. Information regarding this zip file is stored in /home/data/SitePackages. The App cache code reads this information, creates a docker volume per container and extracts the built artifacts into this docker volume. The docker volume is then mounted onto the /home/site/wwwroot of the app and the app content is served from there. The lifecycle of this docker volume is tied to the container and the docker volume will be deleted if the current container goes down.

Things to consider

  • As the build process for app cache is different with the added overhead of extraction of built artifacts, cold start times might be slower. Once the app is up, there should be no difference in the performance of the app.
  • When the app setting WEBSITES_ENABLE_APP_CACHE is enabled, a new deployment is necessary as build artifacts generated when app cache is enabled are different from those when app cache is disabled.
  • Incase the NFS volume goes down, the main app will remain in a functioning state. As the SCM site depends on the NFS volume, deployments will not be possible during this time.
  • There will be no shared volumes between multiple instances of an app.
  • Currently the docker volume created is read only. So the app cannot write any file etc. onto the volume.
  • AppCache and Run from Package are completely different ways of presenting the app content. Currently these settings are incompatible with each other.

How can I file an issue?

You could either open a support incident on Azure or Open an issue in ImageBuilder Issues for any issues encountered on this regard.

Thanks,
App Service Linux team
Microsoft.

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