Azure Spring Cloud Debuts for Managed Java-Based Microservices -- Visual Studio Magazine

Azure Spring Cloud Debuts for Managed Java-Based Microservices

By David Ramel
10/09/2019

Seeking to ease the development of Spring-based microservices written in Java on the Azure cloud, Microsoft and Pivotal announced a private preview of a fully managed service called Azure Spring Cloud.

It caters to Java developers using Pivotal's Spring Boot and Spring Cloud, based on its enterprise Java development framework called Spring. Spring Boot is an opinionated onramp for creating Spring-based applications, while Spring Cloud obviously targets cloud development and distributed environments.

Microsoft said the fully managed service is meant to help developers focus on building applications and relieve them from the drudgery of mundane tasks like infrastructure configuration, installing and managing components and so on.

While Microsoft used the moniker Azure Spring Cloud, a Pivotal site for Spring Cloud Azure says: "The Spring Cloud for Microsoft Azure is designed to provide seamless Spring integration with Azure managed services. Developers can adopt a Spring-idiomatic way to take advantage of managed services on Azure, with only few lines of configuration and minimal code changes."

Microsoft's post, meanwhile, says: "Azure Spring Cloud abstracts away the complexity of infrastructure management and Spring Cloud middleware management, so you can focus on building your business logic and let Azure take care of dynamic scaling, security patches, compliance standards, and high availability."

Furthermore, Microsoft said developers can leverage the service with familiar tools, via extensions for Visual Studio code and a Maven plugin.

The VS Code Spring Boot Application Development Extension Pack includes:

Spring Boot Support extension
Cloud Foundry Manifest YML Support extension
Concourse CI Pipeline Editor Spring Initializr Java Support extension
Spring Initializr Java Support extension
Spring Boot Dashboard extension

The new offering, in setting up a foundation to create cloud-native Spring applications, will let Azure developers leverage other cloud services, such as Azure SQL Database, MySQL, PostgreSQL, or Cosmos DB data services, Azure Active Directory Azure Key Vault and more.

The onramp is made easier with Spring Boot Starters for Azure. That's featured on a Spring on Azure site that also includes getting started guides for Azure Storage, Kafka and Event Hubs, Application Insights and others.

Interested developers can submit contact details to apply for the private preview, which is expected to convert to a public preview by year's end.

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.

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