asp.net - How to prevent an Azure website from going to sleep?

Question

I deployed an ASP.NET 5, MVC 6 web application to Azure. It seems that if I don't hit the site for 10-15 minutes, it goes to sleep and it takes a good 10-15 seconds for it to wake up.

I am not sure whether its the website that's falling asleep, or the database that it's connecting to.

So 2 questions.

1. How do I prevent the site from going to sleep so soon.
2. Is there a way to have visibility into what's going on in Azure with the website and the database. Are they kicked out of memory?

Answer 1

Azure Web Apps have an 'Always on' option (with basic/standard tiers) which keep your app (and associated web jobs) loaded.

Look under Settings, and you'll see 'Application settings':

Then look for the 'Always on' setting (which will be disabled for Free tier):