You have an Azure subscription. The subscription contains a virtual machine named VM1 that runs Windows Server.
You build an app named App1.
You need to configure continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) of App1 to VM1.
What should you create first?
To set up continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) for your app, you need a platform that supports the workflows for building, testing, and deploying the app. An Azure DevOps organization provides the necessary tools and services, including Azure Pipelines, which can automate the entire CI/CD process. With Azure DevOps, you can create and manage pipelines that continuously build, test, and deploy your application to the virtual machine VM1. Therefore, the first step in this scenario would be to create an Azure DevOps organization.
Important to note here that the app is being deployed to VM1. If the app was being hosted in an Azure App Service, it could handle CI/CD through other methods. But DevOps is the only option here that makes sense for a VM-hosted app.
Azure DevOps (Visual Studio Team Services / Team Foundation Server) consists of a set of tools and services that help developers implement DevOps, Continuous Integration, and Continuous Deployment processes for their development projects.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/spfx/toolchain/implement-ci-cd-with-azure-devops
B. an Azure DevOps organization. Azure DevOps provides developer services to support teams to plan work, collaborate on code development, and build and deploy applications. It includes Azure Pipelines, which is a CI/CD platform that can automate your build and deployment processes. Once you have an Azure DevOps organization and a project set up, you can create a pipeline for your app and configure it to deploy to your VM. Please note that while the other options are also Azure services, they serve different purposes and are not the first thing you would need to set up for CI/CD in this scenario. An App Service Environment is a fully isolated and dedicated environment for running Azure App Service apps securely at high scale, a managed identity is a feature of Azure Active Directory, and an Azure Automation account is used to manage automation services including runbooks and configurations.