This article teaches the fundamentals of Microsoft Azure. It will prepare you for the AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals certification exam.

All about Azure

Terminology

• Cloud Service Provider (CSP): A company that offers you to run or hosts servers abroad (i.e. services include Azure from Microsoft, AWS from Amazon, Google Cloud from Google).
• Node: An abstract term for a physical computer, a virtual computer, or a container
• Tennants: Customers or clients that use CSP
• Virtual Machine (VM): A software that emulates of a computer system
• Scalability: The ability to increase or decrease computer resrouces for cloud usage. Unlike elasticity, it is meant to be long-term or permanent. There are two ways to measure it:
  • Horizontal Scaling: Refers to adding/removing additional machines
  • Vertical Scaling: Refers to upgrading/downgrading machines to your current machines
• Elasticity: Like scalability, but is a short-term adjustment of an increase/decrease of computer resrouces only when needed. It can be configured automatically based on various time seasons.
• Hypervisor (a.k.a virtual machine monitor (VMM)): A physical server that can run multiple VMs and regulate access to underlying hardware.

Intro about Cloud Computing

What makes up cloud... cloud?

The most important cloud computing characteristics include:

• Resource Pooling: CSP equipment are shared for computing, network, and storage use (hypervisor for VMs, database for storage, account management etc.)
• Broad Access: CSP equipments are hosted and must be accessed over a network abroad on any device
• Rapid Elasticity: Create/Fix things quickly with minimal configuration (i.e. add/remove storage, add/remove VMs through autoscaling, resize VMs through vertical scaling)
• On-Demand self service: No interactions with CSP is needed. All tennants can deploy or manage resources by themselves with readily available CSP tools.
• Metered Usage: Resource usage is tracked by the CSP for monthly charges or other financial transactions

All this involves the use of virtualization running on top of hypervisors. There are many types:

• Type 1 Virtualization: It is primarily used on enterprise servers or high-end workstations. As it runs directly on hardware, it is the best optimal solution for data centers (i.e. VMware vSphere / ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V).
  • Why not just multiboot?: Multibooting is impractical for businesses because switching to a different OS causes downtime and only one system can run at a time. By having Type 1 virtualization, it solves this by allowing multiple OSes to run simultaneously and optimizes performance close to that of a desktop computer.
• Type 2 Virtualization: It can run multiple OSes on top of a host OS. It can be used to test different OS without the need to multiboot or buying a separate computer (i.e. Oracle VBox, VMware Workstation Pro).
• Application Virtualization: Runs an application in an isolated environment without a full installation on the client. In this case, the app does not require installation on the client as it will trigger the cloud in order to access it.
• Application Containers:
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI):

Note: Virtualization does not mean "cloud". For CSPs, it is a required tool for cloud computing which helps reduce hardware costs.

Azure services: