Microsoft Azure Tutorial For Beginners 2020 from Coding compiler. In this tutorial you will learn about what is Microsoft Azure, how it works, what you can do with Azure, and the complete list of Azure Services. Let’s start learning Azure.
What is Azure?
Azure is a cloud computing platform from Microsoft. Azure is a set of cloud services that is continuously expanded to help your organization meet current and future business challenges. With Azure, you have the freedom to create, manage and deploy applications across a large global network, using your favorite tools and frameworks.
How does Azure work?
Before we proceed into Azure tutorial, we provide a brief introduction of cloud computing.
What is Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing is the provision of computer services via the internet, where you pay per use . In other words, it’s a way of renting computing power and storage from a third-party data center.
Instead of maintaining CPUs and storage in your data center, rent them for as long as you need them. The cloud provider takes care of the maintenance of the underlying infrastructure.
You can manage cloud resources just like your own resources in your own data center. When you’re done, return them back. You will only be charged for the resources you have used.
All of this is great, of course, but the real added value of the cloud is that it allows you to quickly solve the biggest business challenges and offer advanced solutions to your users.
[Related Article: What is Cloud Computing?]
Why Should You Move Your Activities To The Cloud?
The cloud helps you be faster and innovate in ways that were almost impossible before.
Two trends are emerging in our ever-changing digital world:
- Teams deliver new features to their users in record time.
- End users expect an increasingly rich and immersive experience with their devices and software.
Software releases were previously planned in terms of months or even years. Today, teams release functions in smaller batches.
Releases are now often planned in terms of days or weeks. Some teams even provide software updates continuously – sometimes with multiple releases on the same day.
Think about all the things you can do with devices that weren’t possible a few years ago.
Many devices can recognize your face and respond to voice commands. Augmented reality changes the way you interact with the physical world.
Household appliances even start to respond intelligently. These are just a few examples, many of which work through the cloud.
To make your services work and deliver innovative and new user experiences faster, the cloud provides on-demand access to:
- An almost limitless pool of raw computing power, storage and network components.
- Speech recognition and other cognitive services that help distinguish your application from the crowd.
- Analysis services that help you understand telemetry data that comes back from your software and devices.
We are now going to see how Azure connects to cloud computing.
[Related Article: Microsoft Azure Cheat Sheet]
What Can You Do With Azure?
Azure offers more than 100 services that allow you to do everything from running your existing applications on virtual machines to exploring new software frameworks, such as intelligent bots and mixed reality.
The first thing many teams in the cloud do is move their existing applications to virtual machines running in Azure.
Migrating your existing apps to virtual machines is a good place to start, but the cloud is more than just another place to run your virtual machines.
For example, Azure offers AI and machine learning services that can communicate naturally with your users through sight, hearing, or speech.
Azure also provides storage solutions that can grow dynamically to store huge amounts of data. Azure services enable solutions that would be inconceivable without the cloud.
A Tour of Microsoft Azure Services
You can tackle difficult business problems using Azure. You bring your requirements, creativity and favorite software development tools.
Azure brings a huge global infrastructure, which is always available for you to build your applications.
We are going to briefly review which high-level services Azure offers.
General Overview of Microsoft Azure
Video link: Take a look to get a General Overview of Microsoft Azure
Azure services
Here’s a complete overview of the services and features available in Azure.
Let’s take a closer look at the most used categories:
- Compute
- Networking
- Storage
- Mobile phone
- Databases
- Web
- Internet of Things
- Big Data
- Artificial intelligence
- DevOps
[Related Article: Beginners Guide to Microsoft Azure]
Azure Computing Services
Computing services are often one of the main reasons companies are moving to the Azure platform.
Azure offers several options for hosting applications and services. Here are some examples of computing services in Azure:
| Service name | Service function |
| Azure Virtual Machines | Windows or Linux virtual machines (VMs) hosted in Azure |
| Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets | Scale for Windows or Linux VMs hosted in Azure |
| Azure Kubernetes Service | Management of a cluster of virtual machines running services in containers |
| Azure Service Fabric | Platform for distributed systems. Runs in Azure or on-premises |
| Azure Batch | Managed service for parallel and high-performance computing applications |
| Azure Container Instances | Run containerized apps on Azure without provisioning servers or VMs |
| Azure Functions | A serverless event-based computing service |
Azure Networking Services
One of the most important functions of Azure networks is to link computing resources and provide access to applications.
Azure network functionality includes various options for connecting the outside world to the services and functions in Microsoft Azure data centers around the world.
The Azure network facilities provide the following features:
| Service name | Service function |
| Azure Virtual Network | Virtual machines are linked to incoming VPN connections (Virtual Private Network) |
| Azure Load Balancer | Balances inbound and outbound connections to applications or service endpoints |
| Azure Application Gateway | This optimizes the delivery of applications in the server farm and improves application security |
| Azure VPN gateway | Provides access to Azure Virtual Networks through high capacity VPN gateways |
| Azure DNS | Offers ultra-fast DNS responses and very high domain availability |
| Azure Content Delivery Network | Provide customers around the world with high bandwidth content |
| Azure DDoS Protection | Protects Azure-hosted applications from Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDOS) attacks |
| Azure Traffic Manager | This distributes network traffic across Azure global regions |
| Azure ExpressRoute | Connects to Azure via exclusive, secure high-bandwidth connections |
| Azure Network Watcher | Monitors network problems and performs diagnostics with scenario-based analysis |
| Azure Firewall | This implements powerful and always available firewalls with unlimited scalability |
| Azure Virtual WAN | This establishes a merged WAN (Wide Area Network) for connecting local and remote locations |
[Related Article: Azure Fabric Interview Questions]
Azure Storage Service
Azure offers four types of storage services. These services are:
| Service name | Service function |
| Azure Blob Storage | Storage service for very large objects, such as video files and bitmaps |
| Azure File Storage | File shares that you can use and manage as a file server |
| Azure Queue Storage | A data store for queuing and reliably delivering messages between applications |
| Azure Table Storage | A NoSQL archive that hosts unstructured data regardless of a schema |
These services have some common features:
- Durability and high availability through redundancy and replication.
- Security through automatic encryption and role-based access control.
- Scalability through virtually unlimited storage.
- Management , maintenance and solving of critical problems is taken care of for you.
- Accessibility , anywhere in the world, via HTTP and HTTPS.
Mobile phone
Azure provides developers with the ability to quickly and easily create mobile backend services for iOS, Android and Windows apps.
Features that used to take a lot of time and risk, such as adding sign-in functionality and connecting to on-premises assets like SAP, Oracle, SQL Server, and SharePoint, are now easy to implement.
Other features of this service are:
- Synchronization of offline data.
- Connectivity with on-premises data.
- Send push notifications.
- Automatically scale based on business needs.
[Related Article: Cloud Computing Glossary]
Azure Database Services
Azure offers multiple database services for storing various types of data and volumes.
Thanks to worldwide connectivity, this data is always immediately available to users.
| Service name | Service function |
| Azure Cosmos DB | Globally distributed database with support for NoSQL options |
| Azure SQL Database | Fully managed relational database with automatic scaling, integrated intelligence and powerful security |
| Azure Database for MySQL | Fully managed and scalable relational MySQL database with high availability and good security |
| Azure Database for PostgreSQL | Fully managed and scalable relational PostgreSQL database with high availability and good security |
| SQL Server on virtual machines | Host business SQL Server apps in the cloud |
| Azure SQL Data Warehouse | Fully managed data warehouse with integrated security at any scale level, at no extra cost |
| Azure Database Migration Service | This will migrate your databases to the cloud without changes to the application code |
| Azure Cache for Redis | Frequently used and static data is cached to reduce the latency of data and applications |
| Azure Database for MariaDB | Fully managed and scalable relational MariaDB database with high availability and good security |
Azure Web Services
In the modern business world, it is essential to have a great web experience.
Azure includes premium support for building and hosting web apps and HTTP web services.
The Azure services focused on web hosting include:
| Service name | Description |
| Azure App Service | Create powerful web-based cloud apps quickly |
| Azure Notification Hubs | Send push notifications to any platform, from any backend. |
| Azure API Management | Publish APIs securely and at scale for developers, partners, and employees. |
| Azure Cognitive Search | Fully managed search as a service. |
| The Azure Apps Service Web Apps feature | Create and deploy critical web apps to scale. |
| Azure SignalR service | Easily add web functionality in real time. |
Azure Internet of Things (IoT) Services
People have access to more data than ever before. It once started with PDAs, then it turned into smartphones.
Now there are intelligent watches, smart thermostats and even smart refrigerators. PCs were once the norm, but now every item with an internet connection has access to valuable information.
This ability for devices to request information and then pass it on for data analysis is referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT).
A number of services can help and drive end-to-end solutions for IoT on Azure.
| Service name | Description |
| IoT Central | A fully managed, global IoT SaaS (software as a service) solution that allows you to easily connect, monitor and manage your IoT assets at scale |
| Azure IoT Hub | Message Hub that provides secure communication messages and monitoring between millions of IoT devices |
| IoT Edge | Push your data analysis models directly to your IoT devices, so you can respond quickly to status changes without having to consult cloud-based AI models. |
Azure Big Data Services
Data appears in a variety of formats and sizes. When we talk about Big Data, we mean large amounts of data.
Data from weather systems, communication systems, genome research, imaging platforms and many other scenarios generate hundreds of gigabytes of data.
This amount of data makes it difficult to analyze and make decisions. The volume is often so large that traditional forms of processing and analysis are no longer suitable.
Open-source cluster technologies have been developed to handle these large data sets. Microsoft Azure supports a wide range of technologies and services for big data and analytical solutions.
| Service name | Description |
| Azure SQL Data Warehouse | Perform massive scale analysis using a cloud-based EDW (Enterprise Data Warehouse) that uses MPP (Massively Parallel Processing) to quickly run complex queries in petabytes of data |
| Azure HDInsight | Process huge amounts of data with managed Hadoop clusters in the cloud |
| Azure Databricks | Collaborative analysis service based on Apache Spark that integrates with other Big Data services in Azure. |
Azure Artificial Intelligence Services
In the context of cloud computing, artificial intelligence is based on a wide range of services, the core of which is Machine Learning.
Machine learning is a data science technique that enables computers to predict future behavior, results, and trends based on existing data. Machine learning allows computers to learn without being explicitly programmed.
Forecasts or predictions based on machine learning can make apps and devices smarter.
For example, when shopping online, machine learning based on what you have previously purchased will help recommend other products that you may be interested in Or when your credit card is read, machine learning compares the transaction to a database of transactions so that fraud can be detected.
And when your robot vacuum cleaner is vacuuming a room, machine learning helps you decide when the job is done.
Some of the most common artificial intelligence and machine learning service types in Azure are:
| Service name | Description |
| Azure Machine Learning service | A cloud environment that you can use to develop, train, test, deploy, manage, and track Machine Learning models. This allows a model to be generated and tuned for you automatically. This allows you to start training on your local machine and then scale up to the cloud |
| Azure Machine Learning Studio | A drag-and-drop visual workspace where you can build, test and deploy Machine Learning solutions using Machine Learning algorithms and data processing modules |
A closely related range of products are the Cognitive Services .
These are pre-made APIs that you can use in your applications to solve complex problems.
| Service name | Description |
| Vision | Image processing algorithms to intelligently identify, capture, index and moderate your photos and videos. |
| Speech | Convert speech to text, use speech for verification or add speaker recognition to your app. |
| Allocation of knowledge | Assign complex information and data to perform tasks such as intelligent recommendations and semantic search. |
| Bing Search | Add Bing Search APIs to your apps and utilize the ability to search billions of web pages, images, videos and news items with a single API call. |
| Natural language processing | Let your apps handle natural language with pre-developed scripts, evaluate sentiment and learn to recognize what users want. |
Azure DevOps Services
DevOps (Development and Operations) brings people, processes and technology together by automating the delivery of software and adding value to your users.
Azure DevOps Services can create pipelines, build and release that ensure continuous integration, delivery and implementation of your applications.
You can integrate repositories and application tests, monitor applications and work with build artifacts. You can also work with overdue items to keep track of them, automate infrastructure deployment, and integrate numerous third-party tools and services like Jenkins and Chef.
All of these features (and much more) are tightly integrated with Azure to enable consistent and repeatable implementations for your applications, ensuring streamlined development and release processes.
Some of the major DevOps services available in Azure are Azure DevOps Services and Azure DevTest Labs.
| Service name | Description |
| Azure DevOps | Azure DevOps Services (formerly known as Visual Studio Team Services or VSTS) offers collaboration developers including powerful pipelines, free Git personal repositories, configurable kanban boards, and comprehensive automated and cloud-based load testing |
| Azure DevTest Labs | Quickly create Windows and Linux environments on demand that you can use to test or demonstrate your applications directly from your implementation pipelines |
What is an Azure App Service?
Azure App Service is an HTTP-based service that allows you to build and host many types of web-based solutions without having to manage infrastructure.
For example, you can host web apps, mobile backends, and RESTful APIs in a variety of supported programming languages. Applications developed in .NET, .NET Core, Java, Ruby, Node.js, PHP or Python can be easily run in both Windows and Linux environments and easily scaled on them.
We want to create a website in less time than we would over lunch. Therefore we are not going to write code; instead, we deploy a predefined application from the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.
What is the Microsoft Azure Marketplace?
The Microsoft Azure Marketplace is an online store that hosts applications that are certified and optimized to run in Azure. Many types of applications are available, from AI and Machine Learning to web applications.
As you will see in a few minutes, deployments from the store are performed through the Azure portal using a wizard user interface. Thanks to this user interface, various solutions can be easily evaluated.
What is Azure Cloud Shell?
Azure Cloud Shell is a browser-based command line interface for managing and developing Azure resources. You can think of Cloud Shell as an interactive console running in the cloud.
For Cloud Shell, you can choose from two experiences: Bash and PowerShell. Both provide access to Azure CLI, the command line interface for Azure, and to Azure PowerShell.
You can manage Azure resources with any Azure management interface, including Azure Portal, Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell.