Updated March 14, 2023
Introduction to Azure Fundamentals
The following article provides an outline for Azure Fundamentals. The public cloud platform offered by Microsoft for creating the applications and testing the same to deploy and manage in the same environment is called Azure. Released in February 2010, it has a wide variety of applications ranging from compute, analytics, servers, virtual machines, SQL databases and networking areas. The virtualization technology helps Azure to manage all the services, including Platform as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service and Software as a Service. In addition, Azure is a reliable platform where users can transfer from on-premise clouds to public clouds that makes any application work in a cloud platform.
Various Azure Fundamentals
Given below are the various Azure Fundamentals:
- In Azure, we can run any services ranging from simple applications to virtual machines controlling the entire computer system to perform operations. Any cloud applications like storage, creating databases, or managing the entire accounts can be done with the help of Azure. Also, it offers a new range of applications such as Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things. This flexibility makes Azure satisfying among its users as it runs our infrastructure and maintains all the applications may be even better than us. The endless resources in Azure makes any users to select the same and work on it.
- If we have an application, we can run it in Azure and manage it with the help of AI. It can interact with the users through AI and communicate through vision, hearing and speech operations. Also, if a huge amount of data is accumulated, we can store the same in Azure databases and use them whenever needed. If the data is not always used, we can make it to archival storage and reduce the same cost.
- All the applications are listed in the Azure portal that can be used without a command-line interface. Custom dashboards can be created and managed so that users can search the applications that are always in need for them and use it. Any applications can be accessed via Azure portal that helps user to manage the database and control the AI operations. Azure portal is updated always, and maintenance in data centers does not affect the portal. We can create pipelines and test it in different environments even if the data centers are shut down for maintenance.
- Azure offers an Azure marketplace where all the applications of Azure can be found. Any partners or independent vendors who offer new software publish their application in Market place that can be tried and used by Azure users. If needed, we can purchase the applications and provision the same in Azure. This flexibility of Azure makes it open to any software vendors. The marketplace is considered as a launch area for Microsoft partners and new vendors to publish their software and make it available to the public.
- The compute service of Azure offers Azure virtual machines, servers, batch service, Kubernetes, various containers and instances. Virtual network and VPN helps to compute the above-mentioned resources and use it in various applications. Azure has a load balancer to manage the loads and a high traffic manager to distribute the loads to various servers located in different regions. Security is maintained with an Azure firewall that has high availability and high scalability. Network watcher is present to monitor the networks running through Azure and DNS to provide DNS responses to the system.
- Storage is provided through blob, files, tables and queues. Blobs are containers that store any form of data, be it structured or unstructured. Tables store data with key-value pairs, and queue storage stores files in messaging format. File storage are a form of structured storage where files are categorized and stored for further usage. Azure databases are various types like Cosmos DB, SQL DB, MariaDB, Synapse Analytics and Database migration service. This helps users to choose among the various SQL databases and use it based on their requirements.
- The data size can sometimes be so huge that portal and pipelines alone cannot manage the same. In this scenario, we have Azure Databricks, which runs with a programming language to manage the data and store it in any container. This is done by creating Hadoop clusters with HDInsight and creating connection between Azure Databricks and Azure data lake storage.
- Cloud computing makes the life of users very much easier and if we are incorporating AI in cloud computing, think how comfortable life with data will be. Azure offers AI and machine learning in the Azure portal where we can wrangle the data using different pipelines and analyze the same using Azure Machine Learning Studio or Azure Databricks linked with Machine Learning. In addition, we have knowledge mapping, search engines, natural language processing, vision and hearing to manage and analyze the data in the Azure portal.
- Deployment of pipelines, machine learning tools, azure Databricks or SQL queries are made easy with Azure DevOps. It is a different page powered by the Azure portal that helps in moving the objects from one environment to another through a git repository. If we need to test the applications, we can do it in DevTest labs in a Linux environment or by creating on-demand windows in the system.
- Azure subscription is needed to create an Azure account, and it is provided for free for 12 months. The trial version is available for 1 month when we can test all the available options and check if we need to go for an Azure subscription. After 1 month, based on our usage, Azure deducts money. This is another flexibility where we are charged based on our usage of tools in the Azure portal. While using the free version, we should be careful for deleting all the resource groups and virtual machines being created by us. Cash will be deducted if it is running continuously.
Conclusion – Azure Fundamentals
Azure cannot be explained in few sentences, but it cannot be concluded with a single edition of a book as well. Different updates are done in the Azure portal that makes the life of the user easy. This flexibility and types of options make user to select Azure than other cloud options.
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