Build a Serverless API with Azure Functions and API Management

Modern application architectures increasingly rely on serverless computing for API workloads, eliminating the need to manage infrastructure while providing automatic scaling and pay-per-execution pricing. Azure Functions provides event-driven, auto-scaling compute that pairs naturally with Azure API Management - a fully managed gateway that adds security, throttling, and access control to any API backend. Together, they form a production-ready serverless API stack that scales from zero to millions of requests without provisioning a single server.

In this lab, you will create an HTTP-triggered Azure Function using Functions Core Tools, deploy it to a pre-provisioned Function App, import it as a backend API in API Management, configure rate limiting policies, and test the API using subscription keys to verify controlled access and throttling behavior.

Objectives

Upon completion of this intermediate level lab, you will be able to:

• Create and deploy an HTTP-triggered Azure Function using Functions Core Tools
• Import the Function as a backend API in API Management
• Configure rate limiting per subscription policy
• Create and manage APIM subscription keys for controlled access
• Test the serverless API through the gateway with and without subscription keys

Who is this lab for?

This lab is designed for cloud developers and Azure administrators who want to build production-ready serverless APIs. Familiarity with REST APIs, the Azure portal, and basic command-line operations is recommended.