Siili Solutions Deploys Sitecore on Azure PaaS

IT consultancy Siili Solutions has announced the successful production deployment of the Sitecore web platform on Microsoft's Azure PaaS (Platform as a Service) cloud environment. This move represents a significant step in the company's cloud infrastructure and client solutions.

The project specifically concentrated on establishing CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) pipelines using Azure DevOps Services (VSTS). These pipelines automate software development and deployment processes, enabling faster and more reliable releases. Siili Solutions shared insights and best practices gained from integrating Sitecore Helix solutions with the Azure PaaS environment.

A key challenge encountered during the project related to website performance and session handling under high user loads within the Azure PaaS setup. Initial load tests revealed issues with session timeouts. While Sitecore had published guidance on optimizing session handling, the problems persisted. Extensive testing and collaboration with Sitecore support were undertaken to diagnose the root causes.

It was ultimately determined that Azure Web Apps on the Standard pricing tier were not adequate for demanding production use, with performance degrading significantly around 150-200 concurrent users. The solution involved migrating production App Services to the Azure Premium V2 pricing tier, which provided the necessary performance. Furthermore, Sitecore's session handling was optimized by adjusting the threshold values for WORKER and IOCP threads in the StackExchange.Redis library, ensuring website stability under loads of thousands of concurrent users.