Azure Basics

• Azure is Microsoft's private & public cloud computing platform

• Provides developers & IT admins tools to provide, build, manage, and deploy applications.

  • on a massive global network

  • freedom to choose tools and frameworks

• More than 90% of Fortune 500 companies run on the Microsoft Cloud

Azure services

• More than 100 services..

• Compute services such as VMs and containers that can run your applications

• Database services that provide both relational and NoSQL choices

• Identity services that help you authenticate and protect your users

• Networking services that connect your datacenter to the cloud, provide high availability or host your DNS domain

• Storage solutions that can accommodate massive amounts of both structured and unstructured data

• AI and machine-learning services can analyze data, text, images, comprehend speech, and make predictions using data

How Azure works

• It uses virtualization

  • Uses an abstraction layer called hypervisor.

    • Separates tight coupling between hardware (CPU, RAM, GPU..) and its operating system

    • Emulates a real computer in a virtual machine

      • Can run multiple virtual machines in same time

      • Optimizes capacity of abstracted hardware

      • Can run any OS such as Windows, Linux & macOS

• Azure repeats virtualization in massive scale

  • Each data center has many racks filled with servers

  • Each server includes a hypervisor to run multiple virtual machines.

  • A network switch provides connectivity to all those servers

  • One server in each rack runs a special software called fabric controller

    • Each fabric controller is connected to another software called as orchestrator

      • Orchastrator manages everything in Azure, including responding user requests

        • Users requests using Azure API

          • Azure API can be reached in many ways including Azure Portal

        • Orchestrator packages everything it's needed and sends to package & request to fabric controller.

Purchasing & Licensing Options

Azure purchasing options

1. From Microsoft by signing up through Azure website Azure.com

   • 📝 Monthly billing

2. From Microsoft through a Microsoft representative

   • 📝 Monthly billing

3. From a Microsoft partner

   • CSP = Cloud Solution Provider

     • Offer a range of complete managed cloud solutions for Azure.

   • Your partner will provide you with access to Azure, manage your billing, and provide support.

Licensing

Free-trial

• Free access to some Azure products for 12 months

• $200 USD credit to spend for the first 30 days on any service.

• Sign-up from sign-up page

Pay-as-you-go

• Get billed for services as you use them

CSP (Cloud Solution Provider)

• Buy Azure services from a Microsoft Partner organization

• You will be billed by the partner organization.

• First line Azure support will be provided by the partner organization.

Azure in Open licensing

• You buy from a third party reseller using a 12 month upfront commitment

• Buy Azure Monetary Commitment credits to use in your subscription.

Enterprise Agreement (EA)

• For big enterprises

• EA Portal: enterprise overview of all the spending and budgeting for organization's Azure spend

• Discounts: E.g. up to 30% cheaper virtual machines.

• Enterprise Level Capabilities and Features: Access to enterprise-only service.

Account, Subscription, Support and Billing

• Requires: Phone number, credit card identity verification, Microsoft/GitHub account.

Subscription

• Used to create and use Azure services

• Created for you when you sign up

• 📝 Logical container used to provision resources in Azure such as virtual machines, databases and more.

• 📝 When you create an Azure resource like a VM, you identify the subscription it belongs to

  • As you use the VM, the usage of the VM is aggregated and billed monthly.

• 📝 Each subscription is a separate entity that can't be merged.

Multiple Azure Subscriptions

• You can create new subscriptions to separate e.g.

  • Environments

    • E.g. for testing, security, or to isolate data for compliance reasons.

    • 💡Useful because resource access control occurs at the subscription level.

  • Organizational structures

    • E.g. limit a team to lower-cost resources & allow IT department a full range

    • 💡Allows you to manage and control access to the resources that users provision within each subscription

  • Billing

    • Costs are first aggregated at the subscription level

      • Manage and track costs based on your needs

    • E.g. for production, development, testing

• Or due to subscription limits:

  • Subscriptions are bound to some hard limitations

    • E.g. the maximum number of Express Route circuits per subscription is 10

Billing

• You'll receive a monthly invoice with payment instructions provided

  • You also can get set up for multiple invoices.

• Customize billing

  • Allows you to e.g. have single invoice for organization but organize charges by department, team, or project.

  • Billing structure:

    • Each billing account has billing profile

      • Each billing profile has different invoice sections

        • Each invoice section can be coupled to different subscriptions.

          • Each invoice section is a line item on the invoice that shows the charges incurred that month

Support

Free

• 24/7 access to the online documentation, community support, and new Azure capabilities demo videos on YouTube

• Demo videos by Azure engineers are available on Azure Friday, Microsoft Mechanics, Azure portal how-to videos playlists

• Azure Quickstart Center: Guided experience in the portal.

• Azure Service Health: Insights on issues related to your Azure services

• Azure Advisor: Personalized recommendations on how to optimize your cost and performance.

Basic support

• Included free for everyone.

• Billing and subscription management support

• Ability to submit as many support tickets as you need

  • Either through • Help + support on top right menu or on resource level (Resource blade -> Support + troubleshooting -> New support request)

Community support

Paid

• 📝 Azure Support plans

  | | Developer | Standard | Professional Direct | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Best for | Non-critical workloads | Production workloads | Business-critical workloads | | Reactive technical support | 1 business day response | 1-hour response for critical cases | 1-hour response + priority tracking of critical cases | | Proactive technical support | Not applicable | Not applicable | Access to a pool of technical experts |

• You can also purchase Azure Premier support

  • faster response times

  • Architecture/code review

  • onsite support..