Easily deploy .NET apps to Azure Container Apps with default configuration for data protection

The Azure Container Apps and .NET teams have made it easier than ever to deploy .NET applications by supporting automatic configuration for data protection. This support is now available as an opt-in feature in Container Apps API version 2024-02-02-preview.

This blog post explains the feature, what it enables you to do, how to ensure your application is configured correctly, and how to enable data protection configuration in different .NET versions.

What is data protection?

Many ASP.NET Core apps rely on a feature called Data Protection, a cryptographic API that protects data using methods like key management and rotation. By default, it requires additional configuration both in Azure and in your application code to work correctly when hosted in a container app.

If data protection is not configured, the application appears to work normally, but bugs occur when the application is scaled to multiple replicas.

For more information about our data protection features, see: Read it here.

Configuring data protection for .NET applications

The process for configuring data protection features varies depending on the version of .NET you are using.

.NET Aspire

Aspire applications deployed using the Azure Developer CLI (azd) have data protection configured by default.

.NET 8 or higher

If you are using ASP.NET Core v9.0.0-preview.2.24128.4 or later and ASP.NET Core v8.0.4 or laterData protection can be configured using ARM and Bicep.

You can do this by turning on the new one. `Auto-configuration data protection` property allows the platform to automatically manage ASP.NET Core data protection keys.

.NET 7 and below

If you are using a lower version of ASP.NET Core than previously described, you will need to configure data protection manually. We recommend upgrading to one of the supported .NET versions. Do it using ARM.

next stage

Congratulations, your .NET application’s data protection is now properly configured and can scale to multiple replicas without any issues!

Want to know more? You can…