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:

Project Instructions

Part 1: Create Azure Resources and Deploy Web App

Create a Resource group
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
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
Create App Service plan
Create a storage account
Deploy the web app

Part 2: Create and Publish Azure Function

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
Publish the Azure Function

Part 3: Refactor `routes.py`

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
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 compute gen5 & basic storage	$1.45
Azure Service Bus	--	< $0.01
SendGrid for Azure	Free Tier	$0
Azure Storage Account	bandwidth & tables & tiered block blob	< $0.01
Azure App Service	Free Tier	$0
Azure App Service Plan	Basic Tier	< $0.0.1
Azure Cache for Redi	Basic tier	$0.22

Architecture Explanation

For this app, which is not so big we choose to deploy it in Azure because the SaaS service for Web Apps and Serveless Apps. In Azure, for Web and Function Apps we can use the free tier and also scale up or down basead on the trafic of our app. Given that we have decoupled the app into frontend and functions also we enable the ability to do separate releases and scales which is better for the cost-effectiveness.

pilalouis/TechConferenceWebsite