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Azure Core Services

Data Center

  • Physical facility
  • Hosting for a group of networked servers
  • Own power, cooling & networking infrastructure

Region

  • The geographical area on the planet
  • One but usually more data centers connected with a low-latency network (<2 milliseconds)
  • Location for your services
  • Some services are available only in certain regions
  • Some services are global services, as such are not assigned/deployed in a specific region
  • Globally available with 50+ regions
  • Special government regions (US DoD Central, US Gov Virginia, etc.)
  • Special partnered regions (China East, China North)

Availability Zone

  • Regional feature
  • Grouping of physically separate facilities
  • Designed to protect from data center failures
  • If the zone goes down others continue working
  • Two service categories
    • Zonal services (Virtual Machines, Disks, etc.)
    • Zone-redundant services (SQL, Storage, etc.)
  • Not all regions are supported
  • The supported region has three or more zones
  • A zone is one or more data centers

Region Pair

  • Each region is paired with another region making it a region pair
  • Region pairs are static and cannot be chosen
  • Each pair resides within the same geography
    • The exception is Brazil South
  • Physical isolation with at least 300 miles distance (when possible)
  • Some services have platform-provided replication
  • Planned updates across the pairs
  • Data residency maintained for disaster recovery
Region Pair A Region Pair B
East US West US
UK West UK South
North Europe (Ireland) West Europe (Netherlands)
East Asia (Hong Kong) Southeast Asia (Singapore)

Geographies

  • Discrete market
  • Typically contains two or more regions
  • Ensures data residency, sovereignty, resiliency, and compliance requirements are met
  • Fault-tolerant to protect from region-wide failures
  • Broken up into areas
    • Americas,
    • Europe,
    • The Asia Pacific,
    • The Middle East and Africa
  • Each region belongs only to one Geography

Azure Resource

  • The object used to manage services in Azure
  • Represents service lifecycle
  • Saved as JSON definition

Resource Groups

  • Grouping of resources
  • Holds logically related resources
  • Typically organizing by
    • Type
    • Lifecycle (app, environment)
    • Department
    • Billing,
    • Location or
    • combination of those

Resource Manager

  • Management Layer for all resources and resource groups
  • Unified language
  • Controls access and resources

Additional Info

  • Each resource must be in one, and only one resource group
  • Resource groups have their own location assigned
  • Resources in the resource groups can reside in different locations
  • Resources can be moved between the resource groups
  • Resource groups can’t be nested
  • Organize based on your organization needs but consider
    • Billing
    • Security and access management
    • Application Lifecycle

Virtualization

  • Emulation of physical machines
  • Different virtual hardware configurations per machine/app
  • Different operating systems per machine/app
  • Total separation of environments
    • file systems,
    • services,
    • ports,
    • middleware,
    • configuration

Virtual Machines

  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
  • Total control over the operating system and the software
  • Supports marketplace and custom images
  • Best suited for
    • Custom software requiring custom system configuration
    • Lift-and-shift scenarios
  • Can run any application/scenario
    • web-apps & web services,
    • databases,
    • desktop applications,
    • jump boxes,
    • gateways, etc.

Virtual Machine Scale Sets

  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
  • Set of identical virtual machines
  • Built-in auto-scaling features
  • Designed for manual and auto-scaled workloads like web services,* batch processing, etc.

Containers

  • Use host’s operating system
  • Emulate operating system (VMs emulate hardware)
  • Lightweight (no O/S)
    • Development Effort
    • Maintenance
    • Compute & storage requirements
  • Respond quicker to demand changes
  • Designed for almost any scenario

Azure Container Instances

  • The simplest and fastest way to run a container in Azure
  • Platform as a Service
  • Serverless Containers
  • Designed for
    • Small and simple web apps/services
    • Background jobs
    • Scheduled scripts

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

  • The open-source container orchestration platform
  • Platform as a Service
  • Highly scalable and customizable
  • Designed for high scale container deployments (anything really!)

App Service

  • Designed as enterprise-grade web application service
  • Platform as a Service
  • Supports multiple programming languages and containers

Azure Functions (Function Apps)

  • Platform as a Service
  • Serverless
  • Two hosting/pricing models
    • Consumption-based plan
    • Dedicated plan
  • Designed for micro/nano-services

Summary

  • Virtual Machines (IaaS) - Custom software, custom requirements, very specialized, high degree of control
  • VM Scale Sets (IaaS) - Auto-scaled workloads for VMs
  • Container Instances (PaaS) - Simple container hosting, easy to start
  • Kubernetes Service (PaaS) - Highly scalable and customizable * container hosting platform
  • App Services (PaaS) - Web applications, a lot of enterprise web * hosting features, easy to start
  • Functions (PaaS) (Function as a Service) (Serverless) - micro/nano-services, excellent consumption-based pricing, easy to start

Azure Networking

  • Connect cloud and on-premises
  • On-premise networking functionality

Azure Virtual Network

  • Logically isolated networking components
  • Segmented into one or more subnets
  • Subnets are discrete sections
  • Enable communication of resources with each other, internet and on-premises
  • Scoped to a single region
  • VNet peering allows cross-region communication
  • Isolation, Segmentation, Communication, Filtering, Routing

Azure Load Balancer

  • Even traffic distribution
  • Supports both inbound and outbound scenarios
  • High-availability scenarios
  • Both TCP (transmission control protocol) and UDP (user datagram protocol) applications
  • Internal and External traffic
  • Port Forwarding
  • High scale with up to millions of flows

VPN Gateway

  • The specific type of virtual network gateway for on-premises to azure traffic over the public internet

Application Gateway

  • Web traffic load balancer
  • Web application firewall
  • Redirection
  • Session affinity
  • URL Routing
  • SSL termination

Content Delivery Network

  • Define content
  • Minimize latency
  • POP (points of presence) with many locations

Data Types

  • Structured - Data that can be represented using tables with very strict schema. Each row must follow a defined schema. Some tables have defined relationships between them. Typically used in relational databases.
  • Semi-structured - Data that can be represented using tables but without a strictly defined schema. Rows must only have a unique key identifier.
  • Unstructured - Any files in any format. Like binary files, application files, images, movies, etc.

Storage Account

  • Group of services which include
    • blob storage,
    • queue storage,
    • table storage, and
    • file storage
  • Used to store
    • files,
    • messages, and
    • semi-structured data
  • Highly scalable (up to petabytes of data)
  • Highly durable (99.999999999% - 11 nines, up to 16 nines)
  • Cheapest per GB storage

Blob Storage

  • BLOB – binary large object – file
  • Designed for storage of files of any kind
  • Three storage tiers
    • Hot – frequently accessed data
    • Cool – infrequently accessed data (lower availability, high durability)
    • Archive – rarely (if ever) accessed data

Queue Storage

  • Storage for small pieces of data (messages)
  • Designed for scalable asynchronous processing

Table Storage

  • Storage for semi-structured data (NoSQL)
    • No need for foreign joins, foreign keys, relationships, or strict schema
    • Designed for fast access
  • Many programming interfaces and SDKs

File Storage

  • Storage for files accessed via shared drive protocols
  • Designed to extend on-premise file shares or implement lift-and-shift scenarios

Disk Storage

  • Disk emulation in the cloud
  • Persistent storage for Virtual Machines
  • Different
    • sizes,
    • types (SSD, HDD)
    • performance tiers
  • The disk can be unmanaged or managed

Data Types

  • Structured - Data that can be represented using tables with very strict schema. Each row must follow a defined schema. Some tables have defined relationships between them. Typically used in relational databases.
  • Semi-structured - Data that can be represented using tables but without a strictly defined schema. Rows must only have a unique key identifier.
  • Unstructured - Any files in any format. Like binary files, application files, images, movies, etc.

Cosmos DB

  • Globally distributed NoSQL (semi-structured data) Database service
  • Schema-less
  • Multiple APIs (SQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Gremlin, Table Storage)
  • Designed for
    • Highly responsive (real-time) applications with super-low latency responses <10ms
    • Multi-regional applications

SQL Database

  • Relational database service in the cloud (PaaS) (DBaaS - Database as a Service)
  • Structured data service defined using schema and relationships
  • Rich Query Capabilities (SQL)
  • High-performance, reliable, fully managed, and secure database for building - applications

Azure SQL product family

  • Azure SQL Database – Reliable relational database based on SQL Server
  • Azure Database for MySQL – Azure SQL version for MySQL database engine
  • Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Azure SQL version for PostgreSQL database engine
  • Azure SQL Managed Instance – Fully-fledged SQL Server managed by the cloud provider
  • Azure SQL on VM – Fully-fledged SQL Server on IaaS
  • Azure SQL DW (Synapse) – Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) version of SQL Server

Azure Marketplace

  • Think of it like an “Azure Shop” where you purchase services and solutions for the Azure platform
  • Each product is a template that contains one or multiple services
  • Products are delivered by first and third-party vendors
  • Solutions can leverage all service categories like IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS

Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of internet-connected devices (IoT Devices) embedded in everyday objects enabling sending and receiving data such as settings and telemetry.

Azure IoT Hub

  • Managed service for bi-directional communication
  • Platform as a Service (PaaS)
  • Highly secure, scalable, and reliable
  • Integrates with a lot of Azure Services
  • Programmable SDKs for popular languages (C, C##, Java, Python, Node.js)
  • Multiple protocols (HTTPS, AMQP, MQTT)

Azure IoT Central

  • IoT App Platform - Software as a Service (SaaS)
  • Industry-specific app templates
  • No deep technical knowledge required
  • Service for connecting, management, and monitoring IoT devices
  • Highly secure, scalable, and reliable
  • Built on top of the IoT Hub service and 30+ other services

Azure Sphere

  • Secure end-2-end IoT Solutions
    • Azure Sphere certified chips (microcontroller units - MCUs)
    • Azure Sphere OS based on Linux
    • Azure Security Service trusted device-to-cloud communication

Big Data

Big Data is a field of technology that helps with the extraction, processing and analysis of information that is too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional software.

The three V’s rule

Big data typically has one of the following characteristics

  • Velocity - how fast the data is coming in or how fast we are processing it
    • Batch
    • Periodic
    • Near Real-Time
    • Real-Time
  • Volume - how much data we are processing
    • Megabytes
    • Gigabyte
    • Terabytes
    • Petabytes
  • Variety - how structured/complex the data is
    • Tables
    • Databases
    • Photo, Audio
    • Video, Social Media

Azure Synapse Analytics

  • Big data analytics platform (PaaS)
  • Multiple components
    • Spark
    • Synapse SQL
      • SQL pools (dedicated – pay for provisioned performance)
      • SQL on-demand (ad-hoc – pay for TB processed)
    • Synapse Pipelines (Data Factory – ETL)
    • Studio (unified experience)

Azure HDInsight

  • Flexible multi-purpose big data platform (PaaS)
  • Multiple technologies supported (Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, HBase, Hive, Storm, Machine Learning)

Azure Databricks

  • Big data collaboration platform (PaaS)
  • Unified workspace for notebook, cluster, data, access management, and collaboration
  • Based on Apache Spark
  • Integrates very well with common Azure data services

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the simulation of human intelligence & capabilities by computer software.

Machine Learning

Machine Learning is a subcategory of AI where computer software is “taught” to draw conclusions and make predictions from data.

Azure Machine Learning

  • Cloud-based platform for creating, managing, and publishing machine learning models
  • Platform as a Service (PaaS)
  • Machine Learning Workspace – top-level resource
  • Machine Learning Studio – web portal for end-2-end development
  • Features
    • Notebooks – using Python and R
    • Automated ML – run multiple algorithms/parameters combinations, choose the best model
    • Designer – graphical interface for no-code development
    • Data & Compute – management of storage and compute resources
    • Pipelines – orchestrate model training, deployment, and management tasks

Serverless

Serverless computing is a cloud-hosted execution environment that allows customers to run their applications in the cloud while completely abstracting underlying infrastructure.

Azure Functions

  • Serverless coding platform (Functions as a Service, FaaS)
  • Designed for nano-service architectures and event-based applications
  • Scales up and down very quickly
  • Highly scalable
  • Supports popular languages and frameworks (.NET & .NET Core, Java, Node.js, Python, PowerShell, etc.)

Azure Logic Apps

  • Serverless enterprise integration service (PaaS)
  • 200+ connectors for popular services
  • Designed for orchestration of
    • business processes,
    • integration workflows for applications, data, systems, and services
  • No-code solution

Azure Event Grid

  • Fully managed serverless event routing service
  • Uses publish-subscribe model
  • Designed for event-based and near-real-time applications
  • Supports dozen of built-in events from most common Azure services

DevOps

DevOps is a set of practices that combine both development (Dev) and operations (Ops).

DevOps aims to shorten the development life cycle by providing continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) capabilities while ensuring high quality of deliverables.

Azure DevOps

  • Collection of services for building solutions using DevOps practices
  • Services included
    • Boards – tracking work
    • Pipelines – building CI/CD workflows (build, test and deploy apps)
    • Repos – code collaboration and versioning with Git
    • Test Plans – manual and exploratory testing
    • Artifacts – manage project deliverables
  • Extensible with Marketplace – over 1000 available apps
  • Evolved from TFS (Team Foundation Server), through VSTS (Visual Studio Team Services)

Azure DevTest Labs

  • Service for creation of sandbox environments for developers/testers (PaaS)
  • Quick setup of self-managed virtual machines
  • Preconfigured templates for VMs
  • Plenty of additional artifacts (tools, apps, custom actions)
  • Lab policies (quotas, sizes, auto-shutdowns)
  • Share and automate labs via custom images
  • Premade plugins/API/tools for CI/CD pipeline automation

Azure Portal

  • Public web-based interface for management of Azure platform
  • Designed for self-service
  • Customizable
  • Simple tasks

Azure PowerShell

  • PowerShell and module
  • Designed for automation
  • Multi-platform with PowerShell Core
  • Simple to use
    • Connect-AzAccount – log into Azure
    • Get-AzResourceGroup – list resource groups
    • New-AzResourceGroup – create a new resource group
    • New-AzVm – create a virtual machine

Azure CLI

  • Command Line Interface for Azure
  • Designed for automation
  • Multi-platform (Python)
  • Simple to use
    • az login – log into Azure
    • az group list – list resource groups
    • az group create – create a new resource group
    • az vm create – create a virtual machine
  • Native OS terminal scripting

Azure Cloud Shell

  • Cloud-based scripting environment
  • Completely free
  • Supports both Azure PowerShell and Azure CLI
  • Dozen of additional tools
  • Multiple client interfaces
    • Azure Portal integration (portal.azure.com)
    • Shell Portal (shell.azure.com)
    • Visual Studio Code Extension
    • Windows Terminal
    • Azure Mobile App
    • Microsoft Docs integration

Azure Advisor

  • Personalized consultant service
  • Designed to provide recommendations and best practices for
    • Cost (SKU sizes, idle services, reserved instances, etc.)
    • Security (MFA settings, vulnerability settings, agent installations, etc.)
    • Reliability (redundancy settings, soft delete on blobs, etc.)
    • Performance (SKU sizes, SDK versions, IO throttling, etc.)
    • Operational Excellence (service health, subscription limits, etc.)
  • Actionable recommendations
  • Free!