App Service on Azure Stack Hub update 8 release notes

Article
06/14/2022

These release notes describe new features, fixes, and known issues in Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub update 8. Known issues are divided into two sections: issues related to the upgrade process and issues with the build (post-installation).

Important

Apply the 1910 update to your Azure Stack integrated system or deploy the latest Azure Stack Development Kit (ASDK) before deploying Azure App Service 1.8.

Build reference

The App Service on Azure Stack Hub update 8 build number is 86.0.2.13.

Prerequisites

See Prerequisites for deploying App Service on Azure Stack Hub before you begin deployment.

Before you begin the upgrade of Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub to 1.8:

Ensure all roles are ready in Azure App Service administration in the Azure Stack Hub administrator portal.
Backup App Service Secrets using the App Service Administration in the Azure Stack Hub Admin Portal
Back up the App Service and master Databases:
- AppService_Hosting;
- AppService_Metering;
- master
Back up the tenant app content file share.

Important

Cloud operators are responsible for the maintenance and operation of the File Server and SQL Server. The resource provider does not manage these resources. The cloud operator is responsible for backing up the App Service databases and tenant content file share.
Syndicate the Custom Script Extension version 1.9.3 from the Azure Stack Hub Marketplace

New features and fixes

Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub update 8 includes the following improvements and fixes:

Updates to App Service tenant, admin, functions portals, and Kudu tools. Consistent with Azure Stack portal SDK version.
Updates Azure functions runtime to v1.0.12615.
Updates to core service to improve reliability and error messaging, which enables easier diagnosis of common issues.
Updates to the following app frameworks and tools:
- ASP.NET Core 3.1.0
- ASP.NET Core 3.0.1
- ASP.NET Core 2.2.8
- ASP.NET Core Module v2 13.1.19331.0
- Azul OpenJDK 8.38.0.13
- Tomcat 7.0.94
- Tomcat 8.5.42
- Tomcat 9.0.21
- PHP 7.1.32
- PHP 7.2.22
- PHP 7.3.9
- Updated Kudu to 85.11024.4154
- MSDeploy 3.5.80916.15
- NodeJS 10.16.3
- NPM 6.9.0
- Git for Windows 2.19.1.0
Updates to underlying operating system of all roles:
- 2019-12 Cumulative Update for Windows Server 2016 for x64-based Systems (KB4530689)
Managed disk support for new deployments

All new deployments of Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub will make use of managed disks for all virtual machines and virtual machine scale sets. All existing deployments will continue to use unmanaged disks.

TLS 1.2 enforced by front-end load balancers

TLS 1.2 is now enforced for all apps.

Known issues (upgrade)

Upgrade fails if SQL Server Always On Cluster has failed over to secondary node.

During upgrade, there's a call to check database existence using the master connection string that fails because the login was on the previous control plane node.

Take one of the following actions and select retry within the installer.

Copy the appservice_hostingAdmin login from the now secondary SQL node;

OR
Fail over the SQL Cluster to the previous active node.

Post-deployment steps

Important

If you've provided the App Service resource provider with a SQL Always On Instance you MUST add the appservice_hosting and appservice_metering databases to an availability group and synchronize the databases to prevent any loss of service in the event of a database failover.

Known issues (post-installation)

Workers are unable to reach file server when App Service is deployed in an existing virtual network and the file server is only available on the private network, as called out in the Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub deployment documentation.

If you chose to deploy into an existing virtual network and an internal IP address to connect to your file server, you must add an outbound security rule, enabling SMB traffic between the worker subnet and the file server. Go to the WorkersNsg in the administrator portal and add an outbound security rule with the following properties:
- Source: Any
- Source port range: *
- Destination: IP addresses
- Destination IP address range: Range of IPs for your file server
- Destination port range: 445
- Protocol: TCP
- Action: Allow
- Priority: 700
- Name: Outbound_Allow_SMB445

New deployments of Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub 1.8 require databases to be converted to contained databases.

Due to a regression in this release, both App Service databases (appservice_hosting and appservice_metering) must be converted to contained databases when newly deployed. This DOES NOT impact upgraded deployments.

Important

This procedure takes approximately 5-10 minutes. This procedure involves killing the existing database login sessions. Plan for downtime to migrate and validate Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub post migration.

Add AppService databases (appservice_hosting and appservice_metering) to an Availability group.

Enable contained database.


sp_configure 'contained database authentication', 1;
GO
RECONFIGURE;
    GO

Convert the database to partially contained. This step incurs downtime as all active sessions need to be killed.

/******** [appservice_metering] Migration Start********/
    USE [master];

    -- kill all active sessions
    DECLARE @kill varchar(8000) = '';  
    SELECT @kill = @kill + 'kill ' + CONVERT(varchar(5), session_id) + ';'  
    FROM sys.dm_exec_sessions
    WHERE database_id  = db_id('appservice_metering')

    EXEC(@kill);

    USE [master]  
    GO  
    ALTER DATABASE [appservice_metering] SET CONTAINMENT = PARTIAL  
    GO  

/********[appservice_metering] Migration End********/

/********[appservice_hosting] Migration Start********/

    -- kill all active sessions
    USE [master];

    DECLARE @kill varchar(8000) = '';  
    SELECT @kill = @kill + 'kill ' + CONVERT(varchar(5), session_id) + ';'  
    FROM sys.dm_exec_sessions
    WHERE database_id  = db_id('appservice_hosting')

    EXEC(@kill);

    -- Convert database to contained
    USE [master]  
    GO  
    ALTER DATABASE [appservice_hosting] SET CONTAINMENT = PARTIAL  
    GO  

    /********[appservice_hosting] Migration End********/

Migrate logins to contained database users.

USE appservice_hosting
IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM sys.databases WHERE Name=DB_NAME() AND containment = 1)
BEGIN
DECLARE @username sysname ;  
DECLARE user_cursor CURSOR  
FOR
    SELECT dp.name
    FROM sys.database_principals AS dp  
    JOIN sys.server_principals AS sp
        ON dp.sid = sp.sid  
        WHERE dp.authentication_type = 1 AND dp.name NOT IN ('dbo','sys','guest','INFORMATION_SCHEMA');
    OPEN user_cursor  
    FETCH NEXT FROM user_cursor INTO @username  
        WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0  
        BEGIN  
            EXECUTE sp_migrate_user_to_contained
            @username = @username,  
            @rename = N'copy_login_name',  
            @disablelogin = N'do_not_disable_login';  
        FETCH NEXT FROM user_cursor INTO @username  
    END  
    CLOSE user_cursor ;  
    DEALLOCATE user_cursor ;
    END
GO

USE appservice_metering
IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM sys.databases WHERE Name=DB_NAME() AND containment = 1)
BEGIN
DECLARE @username sysname ;  
DECLARE user_cursor CURSOR  
FOR
    SELECT dp.name
    FROM sys.database_principals AS dp  
    JOIN sys.server_principals AS sp
        ON dp.sid = sp.sid  
        WHERE dp.authentication_type = 1 AND dp.name NOT IN ('dbo','sys','guest','INFORMATION_SCHEMA');
    OPEN user_cursor  
    FETCH NEXT FROM user_cursor INTO @username  
        WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0  
        BEGIN  
            EXECUTE sp_migrate_user_to_contained
            @username = @username,  
            @rename = N'copy_login_name',  
            @disablelogin = N'do_not_disable_login';  
        FETCH NEXT FROM user_cursor INTO @username  
    END  
    CLOSE user_cursor ;  
    DEALLOCATE user_cursor ;
    END
GO

Validate

Check if SQL Server has containment enabled.

sp_configure  @configname='contained database authentication'

Check existing contained behavior.

SELECT containment FROM sys.databases WHERE NAME LIKE (SELECT DB_NAME())

Unable to scale out workers

New workers are unable to acquire the required database connection string. To remedy this situation, connect to one of your controller instances (for example, CN0-VM) and run the following PowerShell script:


[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.Web.Hosting")
$siteManager = New-Object Microsoft.Web.Hosting.SiteManager

$builder = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnectionStringBuilder -ArgumentList (Get-AppServiceConnectionString -Type Hosting)
$conn = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection -ArgumentList $builder.ToString()

$siteManager.RoleServers | Where-Object {$_.IsWorker} | ForEach-Object {
    $worker = $_
    $dbUserName = "WebWorker_" + $worker.Name

    if (!$siteManager.ConnectionContexts[$dbUserName]) {
        $dbUserPassword = [Microsoft.Web.Hosting.Common.Security.PasswordHelper]::GenerateDatabasePassword()

        $conn.Open()
        $command = $conn.CreateCommand()
        $command.CommandText = "CREATE USER [$dbUserName] WITH PASSWORD = '$dbUserPassword'"
        $command.ExecuteNonQuery()
        $conn.Close()

        $conn.Open()
        $command = $conn.CreateCommand()
        $command.CommandText = "ALTER ROLE [WebWorkerRole] ADD MEMBER [$dbUserName]"
        $command.ExecuteNonQuery()
        $conn.Close()

        $builder.Password = $dbUserPassword
        $builder["User ID"] = $dbUserName

        $siteManager.ConnectionContexts.Add($dbUserName, $builder.ToString())
    }
}

$siteManager.CommitChanges()

Known issues for cloud admins operating Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub

Refer to the documentation in the Azure Stack Hub 1907 release notes.

Tenants unable to create App Service Plan using new on App Service Plan view in tenant portal

When creating a new application, tenants can create App Service Plans during the create app workflow, or when changing the App Service Plan for a current app, or via the App Service Plan marketplace item

Custom domains are not supported in disconnected environments

App Service performs domain ownership verification against public DNS endpoints, as a result custom domains are not supported in disconnected scenarios.

In some cases workers fail to satisfy health checks (insufficient disk space)

In some cases, where a high number of sites are allocated to a worker or a site is handling a large number of requests, the worker will generate a large number of runtime log files in C:\DWAS\LogFiles. This is due to a bug in the clean-up logic for these log files.

To mitigate this issue remote to the individual worker and clear out the contents of the folder.

This issue has been fixed in App Service on Azure Stack Hub 2020 Q3, we encourage customers to upgrade to the 2020 Q3 release as soon as possible.

Important

In order to update to Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub 2020 Q3 you must upgrade to Azure Stack Hub 2008

Next steps

For an overview of Azure App Service, see Azure App Service and Azure Functions on Azure Stack Hub overview.
For more information about how to prepare to deploy App Service on Azure Stack Hub, see Prerequisites for deploying App Service on Azure Stack Hub.

App Service on Azure Stack Hub update 8 release notes

Build reference

Prerequisites

New features and fixes

Known issues (upgrade)

Post-deployment steps

Known issues (post-installation)

Known issues for cloud admins operating Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub

Next steps

Feedback

Additional resources

Additional resources