Developing Distributed Applications with Azure and .NET Aspire

Introduction to Distributed Applications

As your application matures, you might encounter some growing pains, this is a good sign you might want to step away from a monolithic approach. Distributed applications leverage the power of multiple computing resources to provide a more robust, scalable, and efficient system.

• Application Architecture Throughout the Years
• Containers: The Gateway to Distributed Applications
• Docker Basics
• Strengths and Challenges in Modern Application Architecture
• .NET Aspire to the Rescue

.NET Aspire Overview

.NET Aspire is designed to simplify the development of distributed, observable, and production-ready applications using .NET. It provides a set of tools, libraries, and templates that streamline the process of building applications, particularly those that are cloud-native, meaning they are optimized to run in cloud environments.

• The Pillars of .NET Aspire
• Orchestration in C# with AppHost
• Aspire Dashboard: Get the Best Developer Experience you can, for Free!
• Observability, Resiliency and Health Checks using Service Defaults
• .NET Aspire Deployment Options
• LAB: Getting to Know .NET Aspire

Building Distributed Applications with .NET Aspire

So you've decided to build a distributed application, how do you get started and what will you need? In this module we take a look at some of the key building blocks of a distributed application such as APIs, client applications and data sources.

• Basic Building Blocks of a Distributed Application
• Tying the Building Blocks of your Application together
• Connecting Your Projects to eachother with Service Discovery
• Should your Development Environment really try to mimic your Production Environment?
• LAB: Building a Distributed Application with .NET Aspire

Enhancing your Application with Pluggable Integrations

Now that you know how .NET Aspire can tie the parts of your application together, why not add some useful resources like a cache, a database, or basically any container you want?

• What are .NET Aspire Integrations?
• Commonly Used Integrations: Caching, Messaging, Storage,...
• Hosting and Consuming Integrations
• Configuring Integrations
• LAB: Adding existing Integrations to your Application

Building a Microservice Architecture

How do you chop your application into multiple smaller components, called "microservices", and why would you do that? Here, we will show you how to create microservice-applications and introduce you to some key concepts of microservices like data isolation, resiliency, and communication.

• Dealing with Evolution in an Application
• Benefits and Drawbacks
• Scaling
• Communication: Client-Service, Service-Service, Event-Based
• Data Isolation per Microservice
• Integrating Containers and Microservices into a .NET Aspire Application

Asynchronous Communication

In this module, you will learn what event-based communication is and why it's such a great fit for microservices.

• Communication Patterns
• Event-Based Communication
• Event Bus
• Integration Events
• Eventual Consistency

Synchronous Communication

In this module, you will learn how to make synchronous communication more reliable by using a number of patterns.

• Problems with Direct Communication
• Retry
• Circuit Breaker
• Sidecar Pattern
• Solving Problems with Smart Service Defaults

Building Microservices with Dapr

Where do you run your containers? How do you store data? Which message broker will you use? The list of decisions you have to make goes on. But how do you shield your code against all those technical details? Dapr is a distributed application runtime that keeps your code platform-agnostic. This is done through an architecture of pluggable components. Swap out your database without even recompiling the code!

• Dapr Overview
• Installation
• State Management
• Service Invocation
• Publish and Subscribe
• Bindings
• Observability
• Secrets Management
• LAB: Using Dapr with .NET Aspire

Azure Container Apps

Managing scalable containers on a Kubernetes cluster in Azure, but without the complexity. Sounds like a dream? It's not, this is exactly what Azure Container Apps are all about. In this module you will learn how to set up a serverless container solution using event-driven scaling.

• Container Apps and Environments
• Event-based Scaling with KEDA
• Working with Revisions
• Integrating with Dapr Components
• Network and Ingress
• Authentication and Service Connection

Deploying .NET Aspire Applications

We know Azure Container apps is the preferred deployment environment for .NET Aspire, but wouldn't it be great if we could deploy our app anywhere we want? and what about CI and CD? In this module we'll explore all our options.

• Aspire Manifest
• Deploying to Azure Container Apps
• Deploying to AKS using Aspir8
• Continuous Integration & Deployment
• LAB: Deploying to Azure Container Apps