In January, Microsoft released Cloud Services (extended support) in the form of a public preview. The new Azure Resource Manager (ARM)-based deployment arrived as a replacement for the Azure Service Manager (ASM)-based Cloud Services - which has since then been referred to as Cloud Services (classic).
Today, Cloud Services (extended support) has been announced to have been made generally available. Alongside this, a platform-supported tool to help users migrate their cloud services to this new model is also being showcased in preview.
With the newer variant, key changes that are introduced include Azure Key Vault being used for certificate management, resources being necessarily deployed while being presenting inside a virtual network, and more. Underlying process updates in terms of how upgrades proceed, rollback, and undergo similar functions will still remain the same as in the former variant. The Azure GuestOS releases are also going to be aligned with Cloud Services (classic). Similarly, the same two types of roles - web and worker - will be available, without any changes to their design or architecture.
With the release of the preview in January, the regional resiliency capability for the new ARM-based model was specifically highlighted, with feature parity being observed otherwise with the ASM-based Cloud Services. ARM capabilities such as role-based access and control (RBAC), tags, policy, private link support, and support for deployment templates are provided as well.
Two migration paths from ASM to ARM are available: re-deploy, and in-place migration. The former will deploy a new cloud service directly in ARM, deleting the old cloud service in ASM once validation has been performed. The latter, meanwhile, will make use of the migration tool that is in preview right now. Migration can be invoked through virtual network migration, which will migrate all previous deployments that are inside a customer-configured explicit virtual network. The other possible route is cloud service deployment migration, for which only deployments that are not inside a virtual network qualify.
With regards to pricing, the structure is similar to the one for the classic variant and can be viewed here. For those interested in learning more about Cloud Services (extended support), its detailed documentation is available here, and an overview for in-place migration is available as well.