As cloud adoption continues to accelerate, building and deploying cloud-native applications with .NET Core has become essential for developers and architects alike. Thanks to its cross-platform capabilities and performance optimizations, .NET Core fits perfectly into the cloud-native paradigm, allowing developers to fully leverage the scalability, resilience, and managed services of modern cloud platforms.
When working with AWS or Microsoft Azure, .NET Core offers a variety of ways to deploy applications, each suited to different project needs and scales. For example, on AWS, Elastic Beanstalk provides an easy entry point for deploying .NET Core applications. It abstracts much of the infrastructure complexity by handling server provisioning, load balancing, and auto-scaling. Developers can package their application as a Docker container or a zip file and deploy it directly through the AWS Management Console or CLI. This makes it ideal for teams looking to quickly get an app running in the cloud without managing underlying servers.
For teams embracing microservices or containerized architectures, AWS offers Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS. ECS is a fully managed container orchestration service that allows you to run Docker containers at scale, while EKS provides a managed Kubernetes environment for those who prefer Kubernetes’ rich ecosystem. Container images are typically stored in Amazon ECR, AWS’s container registry service, which integrates seamlessly with these orchestration platforms. AWS Fargate complements this by enabling serverless containers, letting you focus on your app code without worrying about server management.
If you want to build event-driven or serverless applications, AWS Lambda supports running .NET Core functions triggered by HTTP requests, database events, or messaging systems. Combining Lambda with API Gateway allows you to build lightweight APIs and background processing pipelines that scale automatically and cost-effectively.
On the Azure side, the story is similarly rich. Azure App Service remains a popular choice for deploying .NET Core apps with minimal setup. It supports both Linux and Windows environments, offers built-in scaling, monitoring, and deployment slots for zero-downtime releases. Developers can push their code via Azure DevOps pipelines, GitHub Actions, or even simple FTP uploads. For containerized workloads, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) provides a fully managed Kubernetes environment that tightly integrates with Azure Container Registry (ACR). AKS is especially suited for complex microservices architectures that require orchestration, scaling, and rolling updates.
Serverless options on Azure come in the form of Azure Functions. This event-driven platform supports .NET Core and allows you to trigger code based on HTTP calls, message queues, or timers. Functions are a great fit for microservices, workflows, and lightweight processing where managing infrastructure would be overkill.
Scaling .NET Core applications in these cloud environments is largely automated. Both AWS and Azure provide auto-scaling capabilities that adjust the number of instances based on load, resource consumption, or custom metrics. Load balancers like AWS Application Load Balancer or Azure Application Gateway distribute incoming traffic efficiently to maintain responsiveness. Caching plays an important role in improving performance; managed services such as AWS ElastiCache or Azure Cache for Redis help reduce latency and offload database workloads. Additionally, using a CDN like Amazon CloudFront or Azure CDN for static assets improves delivery speed for users worldwide.
Monitoring and observability are critical for production applications. AWS CloudWatch and Azure Monitor provide real-time metrics, logs, and alerting features to help diagnose issues quickly. For deeper insights, distributed tracing tools such as AWS X-Ray or Azure Application Insights track request flows across services, making it easier to troubleshoot and optimize performance.
For a simple example, deploying a .NET Core API to Azure App Service can be done with just a few commands. After publishing your project with dotnet publish -c Release, you can deploy it using the Azure CLI command az webapp up --name my-dotnet-api --resource-group myResourceGroup --runtime "DOTNETCORE|7.0". From there, you can configure scaling rules in the Azure Portal to automatically adjust to traffic demands.
In conclusion, building cloud-native applications with .NET Core on AWS and Azure unlocks powerful capabilities. Whether you are deploying traditional web apps, microservices, or serverless functions, each platform offers mature tools and services to build resilient, scalable, and maintainable solutions. Embracing these cloud-native patterns and managed services allows development teams to focus on delivering business value while offloading infrastructure management to the cloud providers.
Looking ahead, consider automating your infrastructure with tools like Terraform or AWS CloudFormation and implementing CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions. If you are interested, I’m happy to share a hands-on tutorial on deploying a microservices-based .NET Core app to either AWS or Azure.
