There are too many options to chose from in Microsoft Azure when planning application design. Azure itself not stands still, looks like many options added recently. I'm a pretty nooby solo developer so I need some entry points to choose architecture.
The application consists of next parts:
1. Database
Classic SQL database is already implemented with Azure
SQL database.
2. Server-side application. (architecture refactor needed)
For now application is a .NET C#/WPF desktop application hosted on classic Azure
Virtual Machine with Windows Server onboard. This is an always-running scheduler that performs kind of tasks one by one. Tasks are mainly long-running works getting some data from Web, CPU-bound proccessing with recieved data, working with the
DB.
It feels like its kind of ancient and wrong design (having in mind amount of azure features):
a) The application really don't need a GUI, just ability to control scheduler's status required.
b) Logically some kind of tasks can be performed simultaneously, and some of them must wait others to finish before start. Now all of tasks performed one by one, that caused by virtual machine performance limit. I think there must be a way to achieve parallel working and control results on higher level of abstaction than inside desktop app. I wanna somehow move scheduling logic to level up. (Maybe IaaS->Paas goes here?)
3. Client applications.
Client applications. Registered users work with the DB.
Here questions:
Which server-side application design should be chosen in this case, what Azure features required?
Is there an Azure built-it abilities to manage registered users accounts, or only way is to implement it as a part of application?