Deployment Architecture Discussion: Single ASP.NET Core Project or Multiple APP HOSTS for VM Separation?

[Asimkhan-developer]

Hey Everyone 👋,

I'm currently working on a product that needs to be deployed both stand-alone on the cloud and on my customer's private virtual machines. The customer has provided 4 Virtual Machines, with the requirement that the database should reside on a separate VM, and the application should be deployed on other VMs. Additionally, I'm looking to distribute some services on one VM, some on another, and have the CDN deployed on a separate VM.

Questions:
Single ASP.NET Core Project:

Is it possible to achieve this deployment structure with a single ASP.NET Core project, or would I need to develop different APP HOSTS with connections to different Docker containers present on different VMs?
Deployment Best Practices:

What are the best practices for deploying components of a system on different VMs while ensuring efficient communication and maintainability?
Docker Containerization:

Should I consider containerizing my services and applications to streamline deployment across different VMs?
Database Separation:

Any recommendations on how to best manage the database residing on a separate VM while maintaining smooth interactions with the application?
Looking forward to hearing your insights and experiences! 🚀

[davidfowl]

In terms of Aspire's local development, you only need a single app host with your application and the database it references.

Deploying to VMs is hard mode and aspire does nothing to help in this situation. We're optimizing to modern cloud native container-based, orchestrated environments (Azure container apps, ECS, Kubernetes based environments etc). While it would be possible to build something custom to VMs, we have no plans of doing so.