Is an Azure App Service IP Address considered a static IP for DNS purposes?

Question

I can't find any information about whether or not the IP address that Azure App Services gives you to add to your DNS A record for custom domains is a truly fixed IP address.

As far as I can tell you can't use Reserved IP's for App Services.

According to the official documentation here and some of the comments, the IP Address we get is a Virtual IP. Does that mean there is a chance we may need to change the A DNS record in the future to a different IP address, even if we never change the App Service? If so, when might this happen?

Lazulite

Answer 1

from the page you linked to

Note:
The IP address may change if you delete and recreate your web app, or change the web app mode back to free.

This means that as long as you're not on the free tier you will get a static IP, which you will keep unless you change to the free tier or delete your app. - which used to be on the Portal, but I can't seem to find it at the moment! - All of my deployment scripts just ping the *.azurewebsites.net address though, and then add that to DNS

Bettyebettzel

Thank you. I read that as well, it just didn't sound completely... convincing in a way. As if there might be other situations in which it could change. It seems like from a practical point of view that should not be the case though and I wanted confirmation of that. Thanks! The deployment script idea is a good one as well, but infeasible in our situation (multiple DNS records over multiple companies and countries all with different parties being responsible for DNS need to link to the same IP). – Lazulite

@Lazulite You could have a traffic manager / load balancer out front - that would have a properly static IP address and you would have much more control of what it connected to at the backend – Bettyebettzel

Looking into that traffic manager solution atm, but unfortunately Azure's traffic manager also doesn't support a static IP address... – Lazulite

@Lazulite Traffic manager solves a different problem, its purpose is to create global routing solutions for traffic, it works purely at the DNS level and has no awareness of IP addresses – Bettyebettzel

Answer 2

App Service Environment (ASE) is the dedicated environment that provides such capability (reference for ASE). That was asked as well on the UserVoice - and answer was to use ASE if you need static IP.

I think that is the only way to achieve what you need. Another way could be to see the outbound IPs in the Resource Manager for your WebApp, but it is a pool so not applicable.

Stare

Thank you for your answer. I found that as well, but it mainly focused on static outbound IP addresses the way I understood it. We do not need that capability atm, but we would need to be sure that our Virtual IP Address (inbound) will not change, such that when we add the A record, it will not suddenly point to a no-longer-existing IP. – Lazulite

@Lazulite that uservoice page is about outbound IP addresses, this answer is incorrect, you can have a static inbound IP address (without ASE) - see my answer. – Bettyebettzel

Answer 3

if you want to be sure that your IP will never change, you can configure a cloud service instance with a reserved IP; in this way you do not have to worry about any IP change. In this link https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/documentation/articles/virtual-networks-reserved-public-ip/ you will find How and When you can use a reserved IP, hope it helps!!

Nonchalance

The OP is talking about App Service (Web App), not Cloud Service. Completely different. – Brumbaugh

I still thinks this answer is applicable. The Cloud Service is another option he could choose due to the web apps not having a static ip address – Inwrap