Azure Overview & Core Services

Why Azure?

Enterprise Focus:

• 23% market share (second largest)
• Tight integration with Microsoft products (Office 365, Active Directory)
• Popular in regulated industries (banking, healthcare)
• Strong hybrid cloud capabilities
• Excellent for .NET/Windows workloads

Azure Global Infrastructure

Regions

60+ regions worldwide (more than AWS/GCP)

• Multiple regions in every continent
• Close to local customers for compliance

Availability Zones

Each region has 3 physically isolated data centers

Availability Sets

For high availability without zones

Azure Terminology

Resource: Any Azure object (VM, storage, network, etc.) Resource Group: Container for related resources Subscription: Billing boundary Tenant: Your organization

# Create resource group
az group create --name myResourceGroup --location eastus
 
# List all resources
az resource list --resource-group myResourceGroup

Core Azure Services

Compute

Virtual Machines - IaaS

az vm create --resource-group myRG --name myVM --image UbuntuLTS --size Standard_B1s

App Service - PaaS (like Heroku)

az appservice plan create --name myPlan --resource-group myRG --sku FREE
az webapp create --name myApp --plan myPlan --resource-group myRG

Azure Functions - Serverless

az functionapp create --resource-group myRG --consumption-plan-location eastus --name myFunction --runtime python

Container Instances - Run containers

az container create --resource-group myRG --name myContainer --image nginx

Storage

Blob Storage - Object storage (like S3)

az storage account create --name mystorageaccount --resource-group myRG
az storage container create --name mycontainer --account-name mystorageaccount

File Shares - SMB/NFS file sharing

az storage share create --name myshare --account-name mystorageaccount

Disk Storage - Persistent block storage

az disk create --name myDisk --resource-group myRG --size-gb 50

Database

Azure SQL Database - Managed SQL Server

az sql server create --name myserver --resource-group myRG --admin-user AdminUser --admin-password P@ssw0rd!

Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Managed PostgreSQL

az postgres server create --resource-group myRG --name myserver --admin-user AdminUser --admin-password P@ssw0rd!

Azure Cosmos DB - NoSQL, globally distributed

az cosmosdb create --name myaccount --resource-group myRG

Networking

Virtual Network - Your private network

az network vnet create --resource-group myRG --name myVnet --address-prefix 10.0.0.0/16

Load Balancer - Distribute traffic

az network lb create --resource-group myRG --name myLB

Application Gateway - Web app firewall + load balancing

az network application-gateway create --name myAppGW --resource-group myRG

Pricing

Pay-As-You-Go (like AWS) Reserved Instances - 1 or 3 year commitments Spot VMs - Up to 90% discount (interruptible) Free Tier - $200 credit for 30 days

Azure vs AWS