Cloud Service - Extended

Question

Cloud Service - Extended

dkn 0

Can we host "iis asp.net 4.8 old school code behind aspx" apps to azure service app? The Cloud Service - Extended is dying and it's simply not possible to change a app architect to what Microsoft is asking by next year.

Alekhya Vaddepally 1,670 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-05-19T20:10:00.9566667+00:00

Hi dkn,
It seems that you are at a difficult place with the need to host your IIS ASP.NET 4.8 apps and encounter Cloud Services - extended. While cloud services (extended support) allows you to host heritage applications, it is important to know that it will retire on 31 March 2027.

If you are looking for a straight hosting option for your existing Asp.net applications, here are some options that you can consider:

It is a fully managed platform that supports ASP.NET applications, and if you do not want to deal with the underlying infrastructure then it is a great option. You can easily deploy your application here.

If you like more control and want to repeat your current environment, running your ASP.NET app on Azure VM can be a viable option. This will require more management, but the inheritance can offer flexibility required for the app.

If you want to live with cloud services, there is an option to migrate the existing cloud service (classic) deployment for cloud services (extended support). However, keep in mind that it only supports short -term needs until full retirement.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/overview#supported-frameworks
if you have any further concerns or queries, please feel free to reach out to us.
Alekhya Vaddepally 1,670 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-05-20T17:23:51.36+00:00

Hi dkn,
We haven’t heard from you on the last response and was just checking back to see if you have a resolution yet. In case if you have any resolution, please do share that same with the community as it can be helpful to others. Otherwise, will respond with more details and we will try to help.
dkn 0 Reputation points

2025-05-20T20:02:17.3033333+00:00

We already migrated our app from classic to extended, now extended is also dying in 2027, we have to figure out our options. Our app is very big and to change core structure could take serious investment that we lacks. What I need to understand is what is the option that Microsoft is giving us to for our app.. Are you saying hosting on VM is where we should be headed like pre azure era with data centers and us managing VMs?
Alekhya Vaddepally 1,670 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-05-20T21:54:57.1066667+00:00

Hi dkn,
It seems that you are in a difficult place, trying to find out how to host your heritage Asp.net 4.8 applications on azure, especially with imminent retirement of cloud services (extended support) in 2027.

From what I gather, you are looking for an option to ensure that your large application continues to work without a complete architectural overhaul, which can be a heavy investment in both time and resources.

This is a fully managed platform that can host your ASP.NET applications. This is very good because it removes the underlying infrastructure management, allowing you to focus completely on your code. This can be ideal if you are looking for easy deployment options.

If you prefer to maintain more control as traditional data centers, it may be a good direction to deploy your ASP.NET applications on Azure VM. This option mimics a pre-Azure environment where you manage the VM and his configuration, but you have to handle the upcoming overhead with it.

If you are not already, you have the option to migrate your application on Azure's cloud services (extended support). However, keep in mind that this is only a temporary solution as this service will retire in the near future.

Depending on how your application is structured, it may be worth discovering other Azure services such as virtual machine scale set, Azure Kubernetes Service or Azure Service Fabric. These services often provide more capabilities and can be beneficial in the long run as your application develops.

if you have any further concerns or queries, please feel free to reach out to us.
Alekhya Vaddepally 1,670 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-05-21T16:44:05.43+00:00

Hi dkn,
We haven’t heard from you on the last response and was just checking back to see if you have a resolution yet. In case if you have any resolution, please do share that same with the community as it can be helpful to others. Otherwise, will respond with more details and we will try to help.
Alekhya Vaddepally 1,670 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-05-22T16:30:04.8733333+00:00

Hi dkn,
We haven’t heard from you on the last response and was just checking back to see if you have a resolution yet. In case if you have any resolution, please do share that same with the community as it can be helpful to others. Otherwise, will respond with more details and we will try to help.
Kantamsetti Aslesha 330 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2025-05-23T05:39:55.8033333+00:00

Hi @dkn
Just checking in to see if above information was helpful. If you have any further updates on this issue, please feel free to post back.
Kantamsetti Aslesha 330 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2025-05-26T06:15:43.02+00:00
Hi @dkn

Yes, you can host your old ASP.NET 4.8 Web Forms application that uses .aspx pages and code-behind in Azure App Service (Windows), and this is the best path forward since Azure Cloud Services (Extended Support) is being retired.

You don’t need to rewrite your app or upgrade to .NET Core Azure App Service fully supports ASP.NET 4.8, so features like .aspx pages, Web.config, code-behind files, server-side controls, and classic ASP.NET libraries will work without changes.

You can deploy your app directly from Visual Studio by using the "Publish" option and selecting Azure App Service (Windows), or you can zip the build output and deploy it using the Azure CLI.

If your app uses session state and you plan to scale out to multiple instances, you may need to use something like Azure Cache for Redis or SQL Server to store sessions instead of in-memory. Make sure any hard-coded file paths (like C:\) are replaced with Server.MapPath("~/folder"), and place any custom or third-party DLLs in the /bin folder of your app.

While you won’t have full control over IIS settings in Azure App Service, most apps won’t need it.

If you use GitHub, you can set up GitHub Actions to automatically build and deploy your app to Azure App Service every time you push changes to your repository. Azure also supports deployment through Azure DevOps Pipelines, where you can create a CI/CD pipeline that builds your project using MSBuild and deploys it to the App Service — both GitHub and DevOps integrations are easy to configure in the Azure Portal. This makes it simple to manage and update your legacy app in the cloud without changing the codebase.

1 answer

Your answer

Alekhya Vaddepally 1,670 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-05-19T20:10:00.9566667+00:00

Hi dkn,
It seems that you are at a difficult place with the need to host your IIS ASP.NET 4.8 apps and encounter Cloud Services - extended. While cloud services (extended support) allows you to host heritage applications, it is important to know that it will retire on 31 March 2027.

If you are looking for a straight hosting option for your existing Asp.net applications, here are some options that you can consider:

It is a fully managed platform that supports ASP.NET applications, and if you do not want to deal with the underlying infrastructure then it is a great option. You can easily deploy your application here.

If you like more control and want to repeat your current environment, running your ASP.NET app on Azure VM can be a viable option. This will require more management, but the inheritance can offer flexibility required for the app.

If you want to live with cloud services, there is an option to migrate the existing cloud service (classic) deployment for cloud services (extended support). However, keep in mind that it only supports short -term needs until full retirement.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/overview#supported-frameworks
if you have any further concerns or queries, please feel free to reach out to us.
Alekhya Vaddepally 1,670 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-05-20T17:23:51.36+00:00

Hi dkn,
We haven’t heard from you on the last response and was just checking back to see if you have a resolution yet. In case if you have any resolution, please do share that same with the community as it can be helpful to others. Otherwise, will respond with more details and we will try to help.
dkn 0 Reputation points

2025-05-20T20:02:17.3033333+00:00

We already migrated our app from classic to extended, now extended is also dying in 2027, we have to figure out our options. Our app is very big and to change core structure could take serious investment that we lacks. What I need to understand is what is the option that Microsoft is giving us to for our app.. Are you saying hosting on VM is where we should be headed like pre azure era with data centers and us managing VMs?
Alekhya Vaddepally 1,670 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-05-20T21:54:57.1066667+00:00

Hi dkn,
It seems that you are in a difficult place, trying to find out how to host your heritage Asp.net 4.8 applications on azure, especially with imminent retirement of cloud services (extended support) in 2027.

From what I gather, you are looking for an option to ensure that your large application continues to work without a complete architectural overhaul, which can be a heavy investment in both time and resources.

This is a fully managed platform that can host your ASP.NET applications. This is very good because it removes the underlying infrastructure management, allowing you to focus completely on your code. This can be ideal if you are looking for easy deployment options.

If you prefer to maintain more control as traditional data centers, it may be a good direction to deploy your ASP.NET applications on Azure VM. This option mimics a pre-Azure environment where you manage the VM and his configuration, but you have to handle the upcoming overhead with it.

If you are not already, you have the option to migrate your application on Azure's cloud services (extended support). However, keep in mind that this is only a temporary solution as this service will retire in the near future.

Depending on how your application is structured, it may be worth discovering other Azure services such as virtual machine scale set, Azure Kubernetes Service or Azure Service Fabric. These services often provide more capabilities and can be beneficial in the long run as your application develops.

if you have any further concerns or queries, please feel free to reach out to us.
Alekhya Vaddepally 1,670 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-05-21T16:44:05.43+00:00

Hi dkn,
We haven’t heard from you on the last response and was just checking back to see if you have a resolution yet. In case if you have any resolution, please do share that same with the community as it can be helpful to others. Otherwise, will respond with more details and we will try to help.
Alekhya Vaddepally 1,670 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-05-22T16:30:04.8733333+00:00

Hi dkn,
We haven’t heard from you on the last response and was just checking back to see if you have a resolution yet. In case if you have any resolution, please do share that same with the community as it can be helpful to others. Otherwise, will respond with more details and we will try to help.
Kantamsetti Aslesha 330 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2025-05-23T05:39:55.8033333+00:00

Hi @dkn
Just checking in to see if above information was helpful. If you have any further updates on this issue, please feel free to post back.
Kantamsetti Aslesha 330 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2025-05-26T06:15:43.02+00:00

Hi @dkn

Yes, you can host your old ASP.NET 4.8 Web Forms application that uses .aspx pages and code-behind in Azure App Service (Windows), and this is the best path forward since Azure Cloud Services (Extended Support) is being retired.

You don’t need to rewrite your app or upgrade to .NET Core Azure App Service fully supports ASP.NET 4.8, so features like .aspx pages, Web.config, code-behind files, server-side controls, and classic ASP.NET libraries will work without changes.

You can deploy your app directly from Visual Studio by using the "Publish" option and selecting Azure App Service (Windows), or you can zip the build output and deploy it using the Azure CLI.

If your app uses session state and you plan to scale out to multiple instances, you may need to use something like Azure Cache for Redis or SQL Server to store sessions instead of in-memory. Make sure any hard-coded file paths (like C:\) are replaced with Server.MapPath("~/folder"), and place any custom or third-party DLLs in the /bin folder of your app.

While you won’t have full control over IIS settings in Azure App Service, most apps won’t need it.

If you use GitHub, you can set up GitHub Actions to automatically build and deploy your app to Azure App Service every time you push changes to your repository. Azure also supports deployment through Azure DevOps Pipelines, where you can create a CI/CD pipeline that builds your project using MSBuild and deploys it to the App Service — both GitHub and DevOps integrations are easy to configure in the Azure Portal. This makes it simple to manage and update your legacy app in the cloud without changing the codebase.

Answer 1

Hi @dkn

Yes, you can host your ASP. NET 4.8 applications on Azure App Service (Windows), which supports the .NET Framework 4.8.

Hosting ASP .NET 4.8 App on Azure App Service you have below features.

Managed Platform: Azure App Service is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering where Azure takes care of server maintenance, updates, and load balancing, so you don’t have to manage the underlying infrastructure.
Scalability: You can quickly increase or decrease the resources your app uses, depending on how much traffic you're getting.
Easy Integration: It works with tools like Visual Studio and Azure DevOps, so you can build, test, and deploy your apps easily.

To deploy your ASP. NET 4.8 app to Azure App Service, you have following options:

Visual Studio: you can publish your directly from visual studio by publish option.

Right-click project -> Publish -> Azure as target -> Azure App Service and follow the widgets.

2025-05-26 17_43_37-Inbox - v-kaslesha@microsoft.com - Outlook

zip deploy: For Zip deployment build app locally and zip files and in Azure Cli run the below command.


az webapp deploy --resource-group <rg> --name <app-name> --src-path "<your-zip-file-path>"

GitHub: Another option to publish your app to Azure App Service is by using GitHub Actions. This allows you to automatically build and deploy your app every time you push changes to your repository.

DevOps: Azure also supports deployment through Azure DevOps Pipelines, where you can create a CI/CD pipeline that builds your project using MSBuild and deploys it to the App Service.

2025-05-26 18_03_33-

Both GitHub and DevOps integrations are easy to configure in the Azure Portal. This makes it simple to manage and update your legacy app in the cloud without changing the codebase.

Refer this MS Documentation1 and Documentation2 for more information.

Apart from Azure App Service, you have other options like Azure Virtual Machines (VM), Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and Azure Container Apps.

Azure VM: You can use a Virtual Machine (VM) with IIS installed. While this allows you to fall back to classic VM hosting, it also means you’ll have more control over the infrastructure including responsibilities like patching, scaling, and monitoring.

You can choose this option when your app relies heavily on OS-level dependencies that Azure App Service doesn't support, such as GAC-registered DLLs, COM components, and similar features.

Refer to this MS Doc to know more about Azure VM.

Azure Container Apps Or AKS: Your app needs custom IIS or OS setup, but is web-only you can use Azure container Apps Simplified hosting, no infra to manage.

Your app is complex (web + background) or needs full control use AKS it is has full flexibility, supports anything.

Refer these AKS and Azure Container Apps documents.

Migrate ASP. NET apps hosted on Cloud Services (extended support) to Azure App Service, AKS, or Virtual Machines, depending on your needs, application complexity, and hosting model.

Hope this helps.

If the answer is helpful, please click Accept Answer and kindly upvote it. If you have any further questions about this answer, please click Comment.

Kantamsetti Aslesha 330 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2025-05-27T06:32:04.14+00:00

Hi @dkn
Just checking in to see if above information was helpful. If you have any further updates on this issue, please feel free to post back.
Kantamsetti Aslesha 330 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2025-05-28T04:51:51.9133333+00:00

Hi @dkn
Just checking in to see if above information was helpful. If you have any further updates on this issue, please feel free to post back.

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Cloud Service - Extended

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