Deploying Applications to Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets

This post introduces the 'Build immutable machine image' task for Azure Pipelines, which uses Packer to create custom VM images (VHDs) for Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets. It details the process of building a Node.js application with NGINX and PM2, creating an Ubuntu 16.04 VHD image, and then updating a VM Scale Set with this new image using an Azure PowerShell script. The post also outlines the build steps (npm install, Gulp, npm test, Publish Build Artifacts) and release steps (Bake Immutable image for VMSS, Azure PowerShell) required for this immutable deployment strategy.