Stage 1 — MVP¶

Trigger: "We need a real public web app online this week."

Stage 1 stands up the smallest thing that is genuinely production-shaped: a public ASP.NET Core web app on Azure App Service, backed by Azure SQL Database, with Application Insights wired in from the first deploy. Everything lives in one resource group so the whole stage tears down with a single command.

This stage deploys the Practical Storefront sample app using the foundation Bicep modules composed by stages/stage-01-mvp/main.bicep.

Before you start¶

Read these foundations first — Stage 1 applies the decisions they describe:

• Compute selection basics — why App Service (managed PaaS) over VMs.
• Data selection basics — why Azure SQL Database for a relational MVP.
• Resource organization — why a single resource group per stage.
• Observability foundations — why telemetry ships on day one.
• Service selection patterns — the selection logic behind this baseline.

What you'll build¶

flowchart TD
    User[Public user] -->|HTTPS 443| WebApp[App Service Web App<br/>Linux B1, DOTNETCORE 8.0]
    WebApp -->|SQL 1433, TLS 1.2| SQL[(Azure SQL Database<br/>Basic tier)]
    WebApp -->|Telemetry| AI[Application Insights]
    AI --> LA[Log Analytics workspace<br/>7-day retention]
    subgraph RG[Single resource group]
        WebApp
        SQL
        AI
        LA
    end

Cost: ~$0.09–$0.13/hour. Time: 20–30 minutes.

Prerequisites¶

• Azure CLI logged in (az login) with rights to create resource groups.
• A strong SQL administrator password exported as SQL_ADMIN_PASSWORD (never commit it).

Deploy¶

The generic driver scripts under scripts/practical/ wrap the Bicep deployment with a repeatable deploy → verify → destroy flow:

export SQL_ADMIN_PASSWORD='<choose-a-strong-password>'

scripts/practical/deploy-stage.sh stage-01

The script creates the resource group, runs the deployment, and prints the web app name, URL, and Application Insights name.

To deploy the Bicep directly instead:

az group create --resource-group rg-practical-storefront-stage01 --location koreacentral

az deployment group create \
  --resource-group rg-practical-storefront-stage01 \
  --template-file infra/bicep/stages/stage-01-mvp/main.bicep \
  --parameters infra/bicep/stages/stage-01-mvp/main.bicepparam \
  --parameters sqlAdministratorLoginPassword="$SQL_ADMIN_PASSWORD"

Verify¶

scripts/practical/verify-stage.sh stage-01

This runs two smoke tests:

1. HTTP smoke — GET / returns 200, GET /healthz returns {"status":"Healthy"}, GET /ops/info returns JSON with a version field.
2. SQL smoke — confirms the database is reachable on TCP 1433.

Confirm telemetry is flowing after a few requests:

az monitor app-insights metrics show \
  --app <appInsightsName> \
  --resource-group rg-practical-storefront-stage01 \
  --metric requests/count \
  --interval PT5M

A value greater than 0 confirms Application Insights is capturing requests.

See labs/trunk/stage-01-mvp/ for the full checklist, sample requests, and expected results.

Best practices embedded in this stage¶

• Managed PaaS over VMs — no OS to patch; App Service and Azure SQL are fully managed.
• Stateless app design — all durable state is in SQL, so the app can scale out later without change.
• Telemetry on day 1 — the Application Insights connection string is injected at deploy time, not bolted on later.
• Single resource group — the entire stage is created and destroyed as one unit.

Stage 1 intentionally uses SQL authentication and a public SQL endpoint to keep the first deploy simple. This is not a production target. Later stages migrate to managed identity, Key Vault, and private endpoints.

Clean up¶

scripts/practical/destroy-stage.sh stage-01

This deletes the resource group and everything in it.

Go deeper¶

• Public web and API — baseline — the workload blueprint this stage instantiates.
• Compute selection cheatsheet
• Data selection cheatsheet
• Design Lab 01 — public web baseline

See Also¶

• Compute selection basics
• Data selection basics
• Observability foundations
• Public web and API — baseline

Sources¶

• Azure App Service overview
• Azure SQL Database — PaaS overview
• Application Insights overview