How to Deploy to App Service Slots and Swap in Azure Pipelines

Deploy to a staging slot, verify it, then use AzureAppServiceManage@0 to swap slots for a near-zero-downtime release.

Set deployToSlotOrASE: true and a slotName on AzureWebApp@1 to deploy to staging, then run AzureAppServiceManage@0 with action: Swap Slots.

Steps

• Create a staging deployment slot on the App Service.
• Deploy to the slot with AzureWebApp@1 and deployToSlotOrASE: true.
• Run smoke checks against the slot URL.
• Swap with AzureAppServiceManage@0 and action: Swap Slots.

azure-pipelines.yml

pool:
  vmImage: ubuntu-latest
steps:
  - task: AzureWebApp@1
    inputs:
      azureSubscription: 'my-azure-rm'
      appName: 'my-web-app'
      deployToSlotOrASE: true
      resourceGroupName: 'prod-rg'
      slotName: 'staging'
      package: '$(Pipeline.Workspace)/drop/app.zip'
  - task: AzureAppServiceManage@0
    inputs:
      azureSubscription: 'my-azure-rm'
      action: 'Swap Slots'
      WebAppName: 'my-web-app'
      ResourceGroupName: 'prod-rg'
      SourceSlot: 'staging'

Gotchas

• Slot settings marked as deployment slot settings stay with the slot and do not swap.
• Warm the staging slot before swapping or the first production requests hit a cold start.

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