What is Azure Service Fabric?
Azure Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy and manage scalable and reliable microservices and containers. The platform addresses the core challenges of developing and operating cloud-native applications: lifecycle management, availability, orchestration, health monitoring and autoscaling. As Microsoft’s container orchestrator, Service Fabric distributes applications across a cluster of machines and deploys them in seconds, at high density with hundreds or thousands of applications or containers per machine.
The key differentiator of Azure Service Fabric is its strong support for stateful services. You can build stateful services either with the built-in programming models (Reliable Services, Reliable Actors) or as containerized stateful services written in any language. The platform powers many Microsoft services today, including Azure SQL Database, Azure Cosmos DB, Microsoft Intune, Azure Event Hubs, Azure IoT Hub and Dynamics 365. This demonstrates its proven reliability at hyperscale.
Core Features
- Container orchestration: Deploy and manage microservices across a cluster, at high density, with the option to mix services in processes and services in containers within the same application.
- Stateful and stateless services: Lightweight runtime for stateless and stateful microservices, using built-in programming models (Reliable Services, Reliable Actors) or containerized stateful services.
- Application lifecycle management: Support for the full application lifecycle and CI/CD, from development through deployment, monitoring and maintenance to decommissioning, with integration for Azure Pipelines, Jenkins and Octopus Deploy.
- Any OS, any cloud: Clusters in Azure, on premises or on other public clouds, on Windows Server and Linux. The SDK development environment is identical to production, with no emulators.
- Managed clusters: Azure Service Fabric managed clusters reduce operational overhead, as Microsoft automatically provisions and maintains the underlying cluster resources (VM scale sets, networking, load balancer).
Typical Use Cases
High-density microservices: Run many microservices or containers on a single cluster, mixing services in processes and services in containers within the same application.
Stateful services: Build stateful services that keep data directly inside the cluster, using Reliable Services and Reliable Actors or containerized stateful services in any language.
Hybrid and portable deployments: Deploy identical applications in Azure, in your own data center or on other clouds, on Windows Server and Linux, with no application changes.
Benefits
- First-class support for stateful services, which many orchestrators lack
- Proven hyperscale operation: powers core Microsoft services such as Azure SQL Database and Azure Cosmos DB
- No service fee: you pay only for underlying resources such as compute, storage and networking
Integration with innFactory
As a Microsoft Solutions Partner, innFactory supports you with the adoption and operation of this service.
Typical Use Cases
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Azure Service Fabric?
Azure Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy and manage scalable and reliable microservices and containers. A key differentiator is its first-class support for stateful services. You can run clusters in Azure, on premises and in other public clouds.
When should I use Azure Service Fabric?
Service Fabric fits microservices architectures that need high density, stateful services that keep data inside the cluster, and workloads that should run identically in Azure, on premises or on other clouds. It powers many Microsoft services such as Azure SQL Database and Azure Cosmos DB.
How much does Azure Service Fabric cost?
The Service Fabric service itself is free. You pay only for the underlying resources that the cluster uses: the compute (VMs or virtual machine scale sets), storage, networking and IP addresses.
Is Azure Service Fabric available and compliant in the EU?
The Azure Service Fabric Resource Provider is available in all Azure regions, including the EU regions. The service is compliant with all Azure compliance certifications, which supports workloads with EU data residency requirements.
Note: All product information on this page has been compiled with care, but is provided without guarantee and may be outdated or incomplete. Cloud services evolve rapidly — features, pricing, SLAs, and availability change frequently. Authoritative and up-to-date information can only be found on the official product page of Azure (official documentation). This page does not represent an offer by Azure.
