Question: Best Practice for Updating a Language Model in a Live App

[jeannotdamoiseaux]

How can I best update the language model for an app that is already live without taking down all resources using azd down? The goal is to perform this update with minimal downtime or disruption to users. What is the recommended approach or best practice for handling this type of update in a live environment?

[pamelafox]

You have two options:

1. Go directly into the Portal and change the environment variables there. Restart the App Service.
2. Run the appropriate azd env set commands locally, and then run azd provision (but not azd up/azd deploy). I think that also restarts the app service, though I'm not positive. I would go for this approach since you can test the new model locally before syncing the values to your prod App Service.

The necessary env variables are described here:
https://github.com/Azure-Samples/azure-search-openai-demo/blob/main/docs/deploy_features.md#using-gpt-4