Learn Microsoft Azure

Build, manage, and scale cloud applications using the Azure ecosystem

Mohamed Wali

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781789618433
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Cloud Computing
• Index: Computer Science

Explore various Azure services to build solutions that leverage effective design patterns

Key Features

• Create, deploy, and host cloud applications on Azure
• Understand various Azure services that help you host serverless applications
• Explore practical examples to help you secure and troubleshoot your cloud environment

Book Description

Azure is one of the leading public cloud service providers. Thanks to a number of Azure service updates, it continues to make advances in the realm of cloud computing.

Learn Microsoft Azure starts with the fundamentals of cloud computing. You will learn to configure and set up the Azure infrastructure. As you make your way through the book, you'll explore Azure services, along with working on virtual memory systems (VMS) and deployment models. You will understand various services in the Azure ecosystem, such as Azure IoT and Azure Analytics, among others. An easy-to-follow introduction to various cloud design patterns will also add to your efficiency in designing cloud solutions. In the concluding chapters, you'll secure your virtual networks using Network security groups and configure Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to set a custom domain name and company profile.

By the end of this book, you will have learned to secure and troubleshoot your Azure cloud environment and be fully aware of best practices for Azure cloud administration.

What you will learn

• Understand the cloud services offered by Azure
• Design storage and networks in Azure for your Azure VM
• Work with web apps and Azure SQL databases
• Build your identity management solutions on Azure using Azure AD
• Monitor, protect, and automate your Azure services using Operation Management Suite (OMS)
• Implement OMS for Azure services

Who this book is for

Learn Microsoft Azure is for administrators, cloud engineers, and developers who want to get started with using Azure as their cloud platform and build cloud-based applications for their enterprises.

Understanding Azure Virtual Machines

In this chapter, we will cover one of the most popular Azure services: Azure virtual machines. We will introduce you to Azure VMs and their types. You will learn how to create Azure VMs, and how they relate to Azure Storage and networks.

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

• Introducing Azure virtual machines
• Creating an Azure virtual machine
• Azure virtual machine storage
• Azure virtual machine networking

Introducing Azure virtual machines

Azure virtual machines (VMs) comprise the most well-known and usable service available in Azure, as well as the oldest. Azure virtual machines provides deployment of different flavors of Windows and Linux VMs.

Azure VMs provide you with full control over the configuration and management of the VM. Management refers to installing software, patching, and even maintaining the VM.

Azure VM statuses

Fortunately, Microsoft bills VMs per minute, not per hour; therefore, when you use a VM for 30 minutes, you will only be charged for 30 minutes. Also, when the VM is not running, you will not be charged for the computing resources (CPU and memory); however, you will be charged for the VM storage. Let's discuss the VM states in more detail:

State	Description
Running	The VM is running, and you will get charged for the usage, as usual
Stopped	The VM has been shut down from inside the OS, but you can still get charged for the VM, as it is still deployed to the same physical host, and the resources are still reserved for it
Stopped (deallocated)	The VM was stopped by the stop button on the VM blade, via the Azure portal

You can make use of the Reserved Instances payment model for Azure VMs. This model enables you to reserve a VM for one, two, or three years, and that provides a high cost reduction, as compared to the pay as you go model. The cost savings can be up to 82%. For more information about Reserved Instances, browse to https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/reserved-vm-instances/.

Azure VM service level agreements

At the time of writing this book, Microsoft had three service level agreements (SLAs) for Azure VMs, as follows:

• Two or more VMs within the same Availability Set have 99.95% availability
• Using a single VM that uses premium storage will provide at least 99.9% availability
• Two or more VMs within the same Availability Zone have 99.99% availability

In order to understand the difference between Availability Sets and Availability Zones, you will have to understand the following terminologies:

• Fault domain: A group of resources that could fail at the same time. For example, if all of the resources are all running on a single rack, sharing the same power source and physical network switch then, they could fail.
• Update domain: A group of resources that can be updated simultaneously during system upgrades. For example, when Microsoft decides to update/upgrade the hosts on which the VMs run in groups of hosts and not for all of the hosts at the same time, each group is considered an update domain.

Now, you will be able to understand the difference between Availability Set and Availability Zone:

• Availability Set: This provides high availability for the VMs by setting VMs within different update and fault domains in the same data center.
• Availability Zone: This does the same thing as an Availability Set, except that it spans across multiple data centers in the same region. Therefore, if one of the data centers faces an outage, you will still have at least one VM running on another data center in the same region.

To keep up to date with Microsoft SLAs for Azure VMs, keep your eye on https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/sla/virtual-machines/v1_8/.

Azure VM series

Azure VMs have multiple series, in order to fit into different cases and scenarios, as follows:

• A-Series: This series is most commonly used in dev/test scenarios, and it has been around since the early days of Azure VMs
• B-Series: This series provides the lowest cost of any existing size with flexible CPU usage; it mainly targets web servers, small databases, and dev/test environments
• D-Series: This series has fast CPU and SSD disks, and it is most commonly used in general purpose computing, such as relational databases and every application that requires high IOPS
• E-Series: This series is meant for heavy in-memory applications that require high memory-to-core ratios, such as the relational database servers that need medium to large caches
• F-Series: This series targets the applications that require intensive computing power, such as web servers
• G-Series: This series targets applications that require high memory and fast storage, such as ERP and SAP solutions
• H-Series: This series has very high computing capabilities, and it might fit scenarios that require t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright and Credits
• About Packt
• Contributors
• Preface
• Microsoft Azure 101
• Understanding Azure Storage
• Getting Familiar with Azure Virtual Networks
• Understanding Azure Virtual Machines
• Azure Web Apps Basics
• Managing Azure Web Apps
• Basics of Azure SQL Database
• Managing Azure SQL Database
• Understanding Azure Active Directory
• Monitoring and Automating Azure Services Using OMS
• Data Protection and Business Continuity Using OMS
• Assessments
• Other Books You May Enjoy