DevOps Basics: Adding a Deployment Slot to an Azure Website

  • Article

Creating a website on Azure has its perks and is simple to enable . One said advantage is the ability to deploy a “staging” deployment slot instead of simply just deploying a production slot. This capability allows IT Professionals to:

  • Validate website changes before swapping said website to production
     
  • The previously live site, once swapped, can be backed up as a “last known good site”
     
  • The swapping ability reduces downtime as traffic is redirected seamlessly 

Deployment / Staging slots required a Standard hosting plan and can be implemented via these few steps:

  1. Navigate to the Azure Management Portal
     
  2. Navigate to Web Apps
     
    Azure_Websites_Deployment_Slots_001
     
  3. Select the desired website
     
  4. On the Website Azure Home Page, under Publish you app, select Add a new deployment slot 
     
    Azure_Websites_Deployment_Slots_002
     
  5. As mentioned earlier, the website in question must be deployed in Standard Mode. Click on Upgrade to continue
     
    Azure_Websites_Deployment_Slots_003
     
  6. Click on Standard, then Save to upgrade the desired site
     
    Azure_Websites_Deployment_Slots_004
     
  7. Click Yes to accept changes and continue
     
    Azure_Websites_Deployment_Slots_005
     
  8. On the top of the page, click Dashboard
     
  9. Click Add a deployment slot
     
    Azure_Websites_Deployment_Slots_006
     
  10. Enter the name of your Production slot and select the staging site you would like to clone. Click the checkmark to continue
     
     Azure_Websites_Deployment_Slots_007
     

Once completed, the added Deployment Slot is created.  The next DevOps Basics post will cover swapping the newly created Deployment site with the Staging site.