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I'm working on a project that includes an ASP.NET Web API site to be consumed by an Android and iOS app. The API is connected to a SQL Server database. I'm at a point where I want to publish my project to the Azure Cloud, but am trying to figure out what would be the best configuration.

The configuration needs to be scalable and reliable as the plans for this product will be accessed by many at the consumer level.

API Hosting What do I use within Azure to host the API? Do I go with the Azure Web Site service? Or the Cloud service? or something else? I know I don't want to go Virtual Machine as I don't want to have a lot of maintenance.

One thing I should add here, I plan on having a Test/Qual environment as well as a Production environment in Azure.

SQL Database This one seems easy for me, I will need to utilize the SQL Database service through Azure.

Scheduler I have one final need of various jobs that need to run at night on some form of schedule. Would you agree that utilizing the Azure Scheduler service would be much cheaper than having either a Cloud service or Virtual Machine running scheduled tasks? Instead I could use Scheduler to utilize various web services at set times?

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While Azure Web sites and Azure Web roles (cloud services) are very similar, the below are the most notable differences in my opinion:

  1. Web Roles are cheaper than Web sites. There is a free offering for websites, but it has significant drawbacks.
  2. Web sites are easier to manage and operate
  3. You can deploy web sites from git.
  4. You can use remote desktop to connect to Web roles.
  5. You can use Worker Roles for background tasks from Web roles. Recently Websites introduced web roles which lessens the need for worker roles, note that this is as of today still in beta.
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Web roles are not exactly cheaper than Websites, Websites has a free offering and also other cheaper offering also you can use Worker roles for Websites the same way you would for Web roles but you also have the option for WebJobs which can reduce the need for a WorkerRole for some scenarios.
@AmitApple both valid arguments. However, the free offering of Websites is not good for scaling scenarios at all or for sites with a significant traffic, so I tend to ignore them alltogether (maybe wrongfully). I will update my answer to reflect those.
There is also the basic plan which can be scaled and is still cheaper than WebRole. and even without WebJobs, a website can use a worker role it is not something only a web role can do.

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