Microsoft recently announced the public preview of the Logic Apps Hybrid Deployment Model, which allows organizations to have additional flexibility and control over running their Logic Apps on-premises.
With the hybrid deployment model, users can build and deploy workflows that run on their own managed infrastructure, allowing them to run Logic Apps Standard workflows on-premises, in a private cloud, or even in a third-party public cloud. The workflows run in the Azure Logic App runtime hosted in an Azure Container Apps extension. Moreover, the Hybrid deployment for Standard logic apps is available and supported only in the same regions as Azure Container Apps on Azure Arc-enabled AKS. However, when the offering reaches GA, more regions will be supported.
Principal PM for Logic Apps at Microsoft Kent Weare writes:
The Hybrid Deployment Model supports a semi-connected architecture. This means that you get local processing of workflows, and the data processed by the workflows remains in your local SQL Server. It also provides you the ability to connect to local networks. Since the Hybrid Deployment Model is based upon Logic Apps Standard, the built-in connectors will execute on your local compute, giving you access to local data sources and higher throughput.
(Source: Tech Community Blog Post)
Use cases for the hybrid deployment model are threefold, according to the company:
- Local processing: BizTalk Migration, Regulatory and Compliance, and Edge computing
- Azure Hybrid: Azure First Deployments, Selective Workloads on-premises, and Unified Management
- Multi-Cloud: Multi-Cloud Strategies, ISVs, and Proximity of Line of Business systems.
The company’s new billing model supports the Hybrid Deployment Model, where customers manage their Kubernetes infrastructure (e.g., AKS or AKS-HCI) and provide their own SQL Server license for data storage. There’s a $0.18 (USD) charge per vCPU/hour for Logic Apps workloads, allowing customers to pay only for what they need and scale resources dynamically.
InfoQ spoke with Kent Weare about the Logic App Hybrid Deployment Model.
InfoQ: Which industries benefit the most from the hybrid deployment model?
Kent Weare: Having completed our private preview, we have seen interest from various industries, including Government, Manufacturing, Retail, Energy, and Healthcare, to name a few. The motivation of these companies varies a bit from use case to use case. Some organizations have regulatory and compliance needs. Others may have workloads running on the edge, and they want more control over how that infrastructure is managed while reducing dependencies on external factors like connectivity to the internet.
We also have customers interested in deploying some workloads to the cloud and then deploying some workloads on a case-by-case basis to on-premises. The fundamental value proposition from our perspective is that we give you the same tooling and capabilities and can then choose a deployment model that works best for you.
InfoQ: What are the potential performance trade-offs when using the Hybrid Deployment Model compared to fully cloud-based Logic Apps?
Kent Weare: Because we are leveraging Logic Apps Standard as the underlying runtime, there are many similar experiences. The most significant difference will be in the co-location of your integration resources near the systems they are servicing. Historically, if you had inventory and ERP applications on-premises and needed to integrate those systems, you had to route through the cloud to talk to the other system.
With the Hybrid Deployment Model, you can now host the Logic Apps workflows closer to these workloads and reduce the communication latency across these systems. The other opportunity introduced in the hybrid deployment model is taking advantage of more granular scaling, which may allow customers to scale only the parts of their solution that need it.