Overview of Azure Services

Compute

Azure Virtual Machines

Runs VMs for Windows & Linux. If we currently have VMs, the easiest way to migrate is to “lift and shift”. Take our VMs on premise and migrate to the cloud.

Azure VMs are known as Infrastructure as a service.

Azure App Service

Platform as a service. We can host applications here like Heroku without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.

If we have an application that is not a web or mobile app we have to use VMs.

Azure Container Instance

Let’s us host containers. Microsoft provides a variety of ways to run containers. THe simplest way is Azure container services.

If we have a more complex setup we might want to use Azure Kubernetes service.

Azure Functions

Microsoft’s main serverless functionality. The consumption plan is better as we only pay for when a function is running.

Storage

Blob Storage

Object storage, collection of files. Flat structure, used for unstructured data.

One of the great things is that it has multiple access tiers.

  • Hot: frequently accessed
  • Cool: infrequently accessed
  • Archive: rarely accessed. Also takes several hours to get files out.

Azure File Storage

Typical SMB storage. Can mount in Windows. Is hierarchical.

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2

Hadoop compatible storage for use with data analytics software.

Relational Databases

  • Azure SQL Database
  • MySql, MariaDB and PostgreSQL for open source DBs.

Azure Synapse Analytics

For data warehouses.

NoSQL

  • Azure Cosmos DB
  • Azure Cache for Redis

Netowkring

Virtual Network (VNet)

  • Virtual Network

Subnets

  • Routes that define how traffic shifts between thing By default all outbound traffic is allowed, for income we need an IP address assigned.

VVNet peering

Can get VNets to talk to eachother.

Azure VPN

Sends encrypted traffic over the internet.

ExpressRoute

Private dedicated connection between us and Azure. Provides higher speed & reliability.

Miigration

Azure Migrates

Help migrates on-premise to the cloud.

Azure Active Directory

Syncs on-premise with Azure directory through Windows Active Directory.

DevOps

Azure DevOps

Family of other things in this category.

Azure Pipelines

Creates automated workflows (CI).

Azure DevTest Labs

Spin up non-production environments easily.

Azure CDN

Is a CDN, uses edge server and caching to serve content faster.

IoT

Azure IoT Central

Fully managed SAAS that lets us create IoT applications.

Azure IoT Hub

More customised, handles communications with millions of IoT devices. It’s what IoT central uses behind the scenes.

Azure Sphere

Make IoT devices more secure.

Analytics

Azure HDInsight

Big data frameworks such as Hadoop.

Azure Databricks

More user friendly than Spark

Azure Synapse Analytics

Combines data warehouse functionality with support for Spark.

AI

Cognitive Services

Used for prebuilt AI tools. Don’t need to know machine learning to use. Grouped into 5 categories.

  1. Decision
  2. Language
  3. Speech
  4. Vision (classify images)
  5. Web search

Azure Bot Service

Create chatbots.

Azure Machine Learning Studio

Lets us train and deploy machine learning models with a drag & drop interface.

Machine Learning Services

Full control overy stage of the ML process.

Integration

Logic Apps#

Detect events that happen and notifies us or something else.

Event Grid

We’d normally need to use Event Grid to notify our logic app of particular events.