Sitecore + SXA + xCommerce - Azure ASE custom ARMs deployment

Hello fellows,

Today I would like to talk about custom deployment of Sitecore 9.0.2 + SXA  + xCommerce  on Azure PaaS - but here we have to add something more ASE support. I got a case from client to make it in isolated way and this approach was the most acceptable by them.

Because they have used Sitecore 9.0.2 we have to work with this version, which needs our custom work to achieve Azure ASE on Sitecore ARMs files.

But somebody will ask, bro, what is this Azure ASE?

From MS site (more Microsoft Docs - Azure ASE):

The Azure App Service Environment is an Azure App Service feature that provides a fully isolated and dedicated environment for securely running App Service apps at high scale. This capability can host your:

• Windows web apps
• Linux web apps
• Docker containers
• Mobile apps
• Functions

App Service environments (ASEs) are appropriate for application workloads that require:

• Very high scale.
• Isolation and secure network access.
• High memory utilization.

Customers can create multiple ASEs within a single Azure region or across multiple Azure regions. This flexibility makes ASEs ideal for horizontally scaling stateless application tiers in support of high RPS workloads.
ASEs are isolated to running only a single customer's applications and are always deployed into a virtual network. Customers have fine-grained control over inbound and outbound application network traffic. Applications can establish high-speed secure connections over VPNs to on-premises corporate resources.

First of all I have to remind where we can find Sitecore ARM templates:

https://github.com/Sitecore/Sitecore-Azure-Quickstart-Templates

I was digging this topic and I what I got to know more is which ARMs attribute we have to use. The main one are:

• server farm
• hosting environment profile

Where we can find them? -> In infrastructure files of Sitecore

I will make here some out off topic, but I recommend to use ARM templates extension for VSCode, check this out:

Take a look on Sitecore ARM infrastructure.json file

But you have to be aware that there is more than 1 place to switch :)

What you can do more is for instance change default Azure App Service Plan usage. Of course not on a production stage, but if you are building only kind of PoC, you don't need all PaaS App Service Plans (which on ASE costs much). You can e.g. create only one for PoC purpose like I said.

What I would like to highlight is that this parameters values we can also pass from the top, what means parameters.json file. In that way we will keep all values in one place.

The same situation is with xCommerce ARMs template, which have similar structure to Sitecore ARMs templates

Because we knowe already, from where we can get default ARMs for Sitecore I will put here only infrastructure files for Sitecore 9.0.2 and xCommerce 9.0.3 to help understand how to use this paramas.

I would like to notice that my custom templatea are only for PoC purposes and I have changed number of App Service Plans. In the other hand, it will be also a good example for you.

Cheers!