Microsoft Azure Overview
Updated Nov 16, 2020 ·
NOTES
This is not an exhaustive documentation of all the existing Azure Services. These are summarized notes for the Azure Certifications.
To see the complete documentation, please go to: Azure documentation
Overview
Microsoft Azure is a collection of online services for application development and hosting.
- Eliminates the need for personal data centers; operates in Microsoft's global data centers.
- Pay-as-you-go model based on actual usage.
- Flexible resource scaling up and down as needed.
Compute Options
- Virtual Machines (VMs) for traditional IT infrastructure.
- Azure App Service for web and mobile applications.
- Azure Functions for serverless execution of individual functions.
- Azure Container Instances for simplified container deployment.
- Azure Kubernetes Service for managing multi-container applications.
Storage Solutions
- Blob Storage for unstructured data with hot, cool, and archive access tiers.
- Azure File Storage for hierarchical file storage.
- Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 for Hadoop-compatible storage in data analytics.
Database Services
- Azure SQL Database for relational databases.
- Azure Database for MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL for open-source databases.
- Cosmos DB for globally scalable NoSQL databases.
- Azure Cache for Redis for caching frequently requested data.
Network Services
- Virtual Networks (VNets) for VMs with IP addresses, subnets, and route definitions.
- VNet peering for communication between VMs in different VNets.
- VPN or Azure ExpressRoute for secure connections to on-premises networks.
Additional Services
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Beyond core compute, storage, and networking, Azure offers services in areas like artificial intelligence and DevOps.
Comparison of AWS and Azure Services
| TOPIC | AWS | AZURE | FUNCTIONALITY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compute | Amazon EC2 | Azure Virtual Machines | Manage your own virtual machines, IaaS, this is the services you are looking at. |
| AWS Lambda | Azure Function | Need to execute a bit of code, but you don’t need a dedicated virtual machine for that. You can go server-less and use Azure functions or Lambda. | |
| AWS Elastic Beanstalk | Azure App Services | Running applications in the cloud, without having to worry too much about the servers they are running. They will have dedicated virtual machines under the hood. | |
| Containers | AWS Fargate | Serverless container orchestration. | |
| AWS ECS Elastic container service | Azure Container Instances | PaaS fully managed container orchestration service. You will still have the virtual machine cluster. | |
| Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) | AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) | Kubernetes as a service, with the dedicated virtual machine cluster. | |
| Storage | Amazon S3 (Simple storage service) | Azure Blob Storage | To store files. This service is region-less in AWS and region-specific in Azure. |
| Amazon Elastic Filesystem (EFS) | Azure File Storage (SMB) | EFS is a filesystem while Azure Files is a SMB-storage-as-a-service. | |
| Security | IAM Roles | Azure AD | For access-control, in Azure, you would have Service Principals registered in Azure Active Directory, in AWS you will have roles configured in IAM. Both support a similar permissions model. |
| AWS Cognito | Azure AD B2C | For when you want to implement Single sign-on from external providers like Twitter, Facebook or Active Directory. | |
| AWS KMS (Key Management System) | Key vault | Add the secret and only permit the specific people. secrets managements | |
| AWS Trust Advisor | Azure Advisor | Provide recommendations for reducing costs and managing security. | |
| Logs | AWS CloudTrail | Azure Activity log | Stores the logs of what actions have been done against resources, for example when a new virtual machine is started. |
| Databases | Amazon RDS (Relational databases server) | Azure SQL Database | PaaS relational database servers |
| Amazon Dynamo DB | Azure Cosmos DB | NoSql fully managed instances by both cloud providers, both work as key-value or document stores. | |
| Amazon ElastiCache | Azure Cache for Redis | When your application could use a distributed caching layer with low latency. This is PaaS, so you don’t need to worry about maintaining the cache cluster. | |
| Amazon Redshift | Azure Synapse Analytics | Used for data warehousing | |
| Networking | Amazon VPC (Virtual private cloud) | Virtual Networks (VNet) | Azure you have the concept of VNets, the major difference is that in AWS most services can be easily added into a VNet. |
| AWS Site-to-Site VPN | Azure VPN | Connection between your VPC/VNet and your own on-premises network. | |
| AWS Direct Connect | Azure ExpressRoute | Supports connectivity between VPC/Vnet and an on-premises network | |
| Amazon Route 53 | Azure Traffic manager | Service for setting routes at DNS level. | |
| Amazon API Gateway | API Management | Concept of API gateways, rather than having one client having to know about many backend services, you can add an API Gateway layer | |
| Amazon CloudFront | Azure CDN | Content delivery networks are important when performance is key for your web applications. Rather than leaving your static files in your application virtual machines, we can use a dedicated resource for handling content distribution and caching. | |
| Integration | AWS SQS | Azure Service Bus | When you have a simple queue, one publisher and one consumer. |
| AWS SNS | Azure Event Grid | SNS works in the publisher/subscriber pattern, so you could argue that is also equivalent to Azure Service Bus, because you could have multiple subscribers with their own SQS queue. | |
| AWS Step Functions | Azure Logic Apps | Serverless orchestration tool to build and manage cloud-based multistep application workflows using a visual interface for business-critical processes | |
| AWS Kinesis | Azure Event hub | You are dealing with a high throughput queue. | |
| Devops | AWS DevOps | Azure DevOps | Host your code with GIT or TFS. AWS has CodeCommit for this. |
| AWS CloudFormation | ARM Templates/blueprints | Creating your resources in the cloud for test purposes is fine | |
| AWS Cloud 9 | Azure console | In Azure you have the option to have a bash/Powershell for writing commands, I found that AWS Cloud 9 provides you with a full own mini IDE environment | |
| Monitoring | Cloud Watch | Azure Monitor | Services need to report metrics, for example, the CPU percentage of the running virtual machines |
| X-Ray | App Insights | what is going on your application, being able to see called requests, response times, success rates and dependency calls. |
Subscriptions and Billing
When you sign up for Azure, Microsoft creates a billing account and a subscription. These are easily confused, as both are related to billing.
Subscription
- A subscription is a collection of Azure resources and are charged in the same monthly bill.
- It serves as the basis for billing, allowing Microsoft to charge for the resources used in Azure.
- Each resource created in Azure is linked to a subscription, and it's possible to have multiple subscriptions.
- However, each resource can only belong to one subscription.
Billing Account
- To facilitate billing, a billing account is needed, containing payment details like credit card information.
- Each subscription must be linked to one billing account, but multiple subscriptions can be linked to a single billing account, making it easier to manage costs.
Reasons for having both:
- Multiple subscriptions within a billing account for departmental invoicing.
- Isolation of resources in different subscriptions for security or compliance.
Subscription Types
1. Free Trial Subscription
- Offers limited free usage of certain Azure services each month.
- Provides a $200 credit for other Azure services.
- The credit is valid for 30 days, and after that, an upgrade to pay-as-you-go is required.
- Only one free trial per customer is allowed.
- After 12 months, the monthly allotment of free services ends.
2. Pay-As-You-Go Subscription
- Allows payment for Azure resources as they are used.
- No long-term commitment or contract is required.
- Offers flexibility with consumption-based-billing.
3. Member Offers Subscription
- Provides reduced rates for Azure services for certain groups (e.g., MSDN Platform subscribers).
- Offers discounts and benefits for eligible members.
4. Reservations
- Committing to one-year or three-year plans.
- Significantly reduce costs and ensure resource availability.
- Reservations can cut costs by up to 72% compared to pay-as-you-go pricing.
- Ideal for consistent, long-term resource usage.
- Similar to booking a hotel room in advance, it secures resources at a lower rate for a set period.
Purchasing Options
1. Web Direct
- Directly purchase Azure subscriptions through the Azure website.
2. Enterprise Agreement (EA)
- Suitable for organizations purchasing a significant amount of Microsoft products and services.
- Involves a negotiated agreement with substantial discounts.
- Requires a long-term commitment (minimum three years) to use Microsoft products and services.
3. Cloud Solution Provider (CSP)
- An option for running custom third-party solutions on Azure.
- Purchased through Microsoft partners known as Cloud Solution Providers.
- Partners bill for both Azure services and their own solutions, providing technical support.
Purchasing Third-Party Solutions
- For custom third-party solutions: Consider purchasing through a Cloud Solution Provider.
- For off-the-shelf third-party solutions: Access the Azure Marketplace after obtaining an Azure subscription.
- Azure Marketplace offers virtual machine images from various vendors that can be quickly deployed.