TechConf Registration Website

Project Overview

The TechConf website allows attendees to register for an upcoming conference. Administrators can also view the list of attendees and notify all attendees via a personalized email message.

The application is currently working but the following pain points have triggered the need for migration to Azure:

• The web application is not scalable to handle user load at peak
• When the admin sends out notifications, it's currently taking a long time because it's looping through all attendees, resulting in some HTTP timeout exceptions
• The current architecture is not cost-effective

In this project, you are tasked to do the following:

• Migrate and deploy the pre-existing web app to an Azure App Service
• Migrate a PostgreSQL database backup to an Azure Postgres database instance
• Refactor the notification logic to an Azure Function via a service bus queue message

Dependencies

You will need to install the following locally:

• Postgres
• Visual Studio Code
• Azure Function tools V3
• Azure CLI
• Azure Tools for Visual Studio Code

Project Instructions

Part 1: Create Azure Resources and Deploy Web App

1. Create a Resource group
2. Create an Azure Postgres Database single server
   • Add a new database techconfdb
   • Allow all IPs to connect to database server
   • Restore the database with the backup located in the data folder
3. Create a Service Bus resource with a notificationqueue that will be used to communicate between the web and the function
   • Open the web folder and update the following in the config.py file
     • POSTGRES_URL
     • POSTGRES_USER
     • POSTGRES_PW
     • POSTGRES_DB
     • SERVICE_BUS_CONNECTION_STRING
4. Create App Service plan
5. Create a storage account
6. Deploy the web app

Part 2: Create and Publish Azure Function

1. Create an Azure Function in the function folder that is triggered by the service bus queue created in Part 1.

   Note: Skeleton code has been provided in the README file located in the function folder. You will need to copy/paste this code into the __init.py__ file in the function folder.

   • The Azure Function should do the following:
     • Process the message which is the notification_id
     • Query the database using psycopg2 library for the given notification to retrieve the subject and message
     • Query the database to retrieve a list of attendees (email and first name)
     • Loop through each attendee and send a personalized subject message
     • After the notification, update the notification status with the total number of attendees notified

2. Publish the Azure Function

Part 3: Refactor routes.py

1. Refactor the post logic in web/app/routes.py -> notification() using servicebus queue_client:
   • The notification method on POST should save the notification object and queue the notification id for the function to pick it up
2. Re-deploy the web app to publish changes

Monthly Cost Analysis

Complete a month cost analysis of each Azure resource to give an estimate total cost using the table below:

Azure Resource	Service Tier	Monthly Cost
Azure Postgres Database	Basic Gen5 1vCore	$25.80
Azure Service Bus	Basic	$0.05 / million messages
Azure App Service Plan - Function	F1	$0.00
Azure App Service Plan - Web App	B1	$13.14

Architecture Explanation

I followed the guidance in the course mostly. I used a linux app service with github actions to deploy the flask web app frontend. This connects to an azure postgres (service) database which I checked locally with PGadmin and the app connected to using sqlalchemy. I then used a serverless function on a consumption plan which watched a service bus queue. The web app would send a message with a notification ID to the queue, which was read by the function. The function would send some emails and update the notification in the database that the emails had been sent. Overall things worked pretty well.

I did have to ugprade the web app to the next tier (F1-B1) because of the warm-up delays that kept occuring. It was still pretty inexpensive so it wasn't a big deal.