Azure Cloud: An Overview of the Core Services

Cloud computing is gaining prominence in the business world in recent times with rapid digitalization and the need for achieving business resiliency to beat pandemic-like situations. Organizations are moving their operations to the cloud for many reasons which include innovation, cost reduction, improved security, improved efficiency, and to gain competitive advantage. Through cloud computing, businesses can rent different types of IT infrastructure services through the internet.

Azure cloud platform from Microsoft has over 200 products and services. It is the second largest cloud service provider in the world in terms of market share. Azure cloud offers services catering to the needs of healthcare, manufacturing, retail, financial services, and other sectors. According to its corporate website, over 95% percent of Fortune 500 companies are using the Azure cloud platform and the company’s services are helping businesses of all sizes meet their day-to-day challenges.

In this write-up, you are introduced to the core resources that make up the Azure cloud platform. You can also learn about Microsoft Azure training programs which gives an overview of Azure services and helps learners understand how to subscribe and manage operations in the cloud.

Azure is a public cloud platform which can be accessed through the internet. The cloud platform allows companies to purchase IT resources on a pay-per-use basis. Azure is quite popular among enterprise customers, and it is one of the preferred platforms in hybrid deployments cases because of the flexibility it offers. Azure has 67 available regions across the globe and more than 160 data centers with several availability zones. Azure has its regions spread in North Europe, Africa, West Europe, and various other parts of the world. 

Azure offers several products and services to its customers. Among them there are core Azure services which you must be aware of as a customer before working on the platform. Azure core resources or Azure services are broadly classified into four categories which are compute, networking, storage, and database. 

• Azure Compute Services 

Azure computing services provide your organization the computing power on-demand for a period you need it. The computing power can be for memory, networking, operating systems or even processors for that matter. The computing service can be availed within few minutes or even seconds. It can help your organization with development, testing and running applications and performing other functions. There are many types of Azure Compute Services and the popular ones include Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Container Instances, Azure App Service and Azure Functions 

• Azure Networking Services 

Networking is crucial for your cloud deployment to be successful. The various resources in the cloud and on-premises need to be connected to one another through strong networks which can enhance the performance of the IT infrastructure. To ensure better functionality, Azure services offers tools and services that enable cloud engineers to build networks. Some of the popular networking services in Azure include VNet, Virtual WAN, VPN Gateway, Virtual Network NAT Gateway, Azure DNS and more. 

• Azure Storage Services 

Azure Storage is one of the core Azure services  where cloud storage solutions are offered to customers on-demand. The storage service is scalable and is useful for data objects, disk storage in VMs, messaging store, NoSQL store and more. The storage service from Azure is durable, secure, scalable, accessible and is managed by the company. Some of the notable Azure Storage services include Azure Blobs, Azure Files, Azure Queues, Azure Tables and Azure Disks. 

• Azure Database Services 

Azure has a wide range of database solutions to suit the need of app developers. The Azure services include both relational and non-relational database. Some of the very well-known database services in Azure are Azure Cosmos DB, Azure SQL Database, Azure Database for MySQL, Azure Databricks, Azure SQL Managed Instance and more. 

• Azure Virtual Machines

Virtual machines are virtual computers that can be used to run custom apps. The virtual machines can have its own operating system, processor, memory, storage etc. just like a physical computer. It is normally used by organizations to run software. It is easy for the developer to create and scale virtual machines based on the needs of the organization.

• Azure App Services

Microsoft has made it easier for organizations to build, deploy and manage mobile apps on the Azure platform. The Azure App Service supports organizations in gaining the expected performance and scalability results through the service. The Azure App Service also helps in the easy maintenance of the IT infrastructure.

• Azure Container Instances and Kubernetes Services

Both the services are container-based services on the Azure platform. The services help organizations to create virtualized app environments on the cloud platform. It is easy for cloud teams to create and scale containers on the Azure platform.

Microsoft Azure offers a variety of networking services that can be used separately or be combined to gain better outcomes.

• Connectivity Services

Connectivity services on Azure are used to establish a connection within Azure resources, between Azure and on-prem resources, or resources within the Azure branches.

• Application protection services

These services are designed to help protect network resources. The organization can use one or a combination of app protection services such as DDoS protection, Private Link, Firewall etc.

• App delivery services

App delivery services are designed to improve performance, availability, and responsiveness of the apps. Some of the App delivery services are Azure Front Door Service, Traffic Manager, Load Balancer etc.

• Network monitoring services

Microsoft offers a few network monitoring services that support diagnosis of issues, log reading, telemetry processing, and other functions. The services improve availability and performance of the cloud. Some of the examples are Azure Network Watcher, Azure Monitor, ExpressRoute Monitor, etc.

There are a few types of Azure storage services, depending on the type of the object stored and the features.

• Azure Blobs

Azure Blobs storage is used for massive amounts of unstructured data. It can be images, documents, files that need distributed access, video and audio streaming etc. Blob storage provides access to data from anywhere in the world.

• Azure Files

The Azure storage service is used to save network files that need to be accessed from anywhere in the world. The files can be shared with both read and write access. The service is preferred when there are many on-prem devices using the file share option, resource logs, metrics and crash dumps that need to be written on file share, and other types of files which are simultaneously accessed and altered from time to time.

• Azure Elastic SAN

Azure Elastic SAN is a solution that is widely used for optimizing workloads and integrating databases and performance-driven critical apps. The SAN is easy to deploy, scale and manage.

A professional or any team that is moving its operations to the Azure cloud can work with higher confidence when they are exposed to the Azure core services. Microsoft Azure Fundamentals or AZ-900T00 is a 1-day authorized Azure cloud training program which has a separate section for learning core services. Participants get a chance to explore Azure database and analytics services, Azure compute services, Azure networking services and more. Through the course, they can also learn about core solutions such as AI service, monitoring service, serverless technology etc. 

The course can be taken up by any IT professional who wish to learn the basics of Azure. On completion of the course, they can take up the AZ-900: Microsoft Fundamentals examination to get certification from Microsoft. 

Get an overview on all Microsoft role-based certifications in this Microsoft Azure Certification Guide.