The document outlines essential concepts of Azure Functions, including different hosting plans, pricing models, and function architecture. It emphasizes the principles of creating functions, such as idempotency and efficiency, and provides examples of triggers and bindings. The document also details demos for deploying and debugging functions using various tools and best practices.

2. Ask me how I

3. Why Functions?
Web Jobs

4. WebApps
WebJobs
Where Functions Live?
Functions
App Service Hosting Plan
Dedicated Hosting Plan Consumption Plan
• Basic, Standard, Premium
• Pay based on # of reserved VMs
• You’re responsible for scale
• Pay on number of executions
• Platform responsible for scale
• Max execution time is 5 mins

5. Azure Functions Architecture

6. Consumption Plan Pricing (Dynamic Tier)
Pay per execution, 2 meters, 3 units
- Number of executions
- Execution duration (sec) X reserved memory (GB)
- Monthly 1 Million executions + 400,000GB-sec FREE
- After that $0.000016 GB-sec & $0.20 per Million Executions
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/functions/
- OR use an existing App Plan ;)

7. - Functions should “do one thing”
- Functions should be idempotent
- Functions should finish as quickly as possible
1
What Functions Should Do

8. Functions Basics
- Input trigger(s)
- Body
- Optional return value(s)

9. Triggers
Type Service Trigger Input Output
Schedule Azure Functions ✔
HTTP (REST or webhook) Azure Functions ✔ ✔*
Blob Storage Azure Storage ✔ ✔ ✔
Events Azure Event Hubs ✔ ✔
Queues Azure Storage ✔ ✔
Tables Azure Storage ✔ ✔
Tables Azure Mobile Apps ✔ ✔
No-SQL DB Azure DocumentDB ✔ ✔
Push Notifications Azure Notification Hubs ✔
Twilio SMS Text Twilio ✔
* requires an HTTP trigger
SaaS File (OneDrive, Google Drive, DropBox, etc)
SaaS Table (SalesForce, Dynamics, Google Sheets, etc)

10. Bindings - Declarative
Using function.json

11. Bindings - Imperative
Using IBinder or Binder parameter

12. Show me the money code!
Prerequisites
- A browser
- Node.js (2nd part)

13. Demo 1: Exposing a function on the web
- HttpTrigger
- Authorization level

14. Demo 2: Azure Function Proxies
- Versioning our Function
- To proxy or not to proxy, that is the question

15. Demo 3: Debugging Functions - Azure Portal
- Using HTTP headers/query parameters

16. Demo 4: Debugging Functions - Visual Studio 2017
- Requires npm package: npm i -g azure-functions-cli
- A standard ASP.NET WebApp empty project
- Start action: external program
- Program: %appdata%npmnode_modulesazure-functions-clibinfunc.exe
- Arguments: host start
- Working directory: directory of the function app
- Initiate function app: func init
- Generate a function under fuction app: func new
- Include function under function app in VS solution: function <name> folder
- Include function app files in VS solution: appsettings.json & host.json

17. Demo 5: Function as a .NET class library
- Take an existing function app from portal or create a new
- Update function.json to point to an assembly:
- "scriptFile": "..binAssembly.dll",
- "entryPoint": "Namespace.ClassName.Run"
- Convert .csx into a class
- Add the required packages:
- Microsoft.Azure.WebJobs
- Microsoft.Azure.WebJobs.Extensions
- Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.Client
- Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.Core
- xcopy deployment
- host.json → sitewwwroot
- function.json → sitewwwroot<function app folder>
- Download publish settings
- Publish using the settings
OR

18. Best Practices
- Avoid large long running functions
- Cross function communication (ASQ/ASB)
- Take advantage of dead letter queues
- Write functions to be stateless
- Write defensive functions
- Use async code. Yes, with ConfigureAwait(false)
- Don’t use Task.Result
- Chaining functions can be a challenge – wait till Build2017…

19. Chaining Functions: Monitored Thumbnail Generator

20. Use case: ETL (Failure Auditing)
https://weblogs.asp.net/sfeldman/azure-functions-to-make-audit-queue-and-auditors-happy

21. Use case: Message Deduplication
http://microsoftintegration.guru/2016/09/20/use-azure-function-to-deduplicate-messages-on-azure-service-bus/

22. Use case: Updates Notifier
NuGet packages

23. Thank you!
Connect @sfeldman / feldman.sean@gmail.com
Blog https://weblogs.asp.net/sfeldman
Tools
• Azure Portal
• npm azure-functions-cli https://www.npmjs.com/package/azure-functions-cli