what is equivalent of a windows service on azure?

Question

what is the way to have an always running process on azure? on windows it is windows service, but do i have to get a virtual machine just to have a single running process? I

Answer 1

You should look at continuously-running web jobs. See Running Background tasks with WebJobs on Microsoft Azure.

Other choices are PaaS cloud services worker roles and Azure Service Fabric reliable services - but these are likely overkill if you just want a basic service.