Get Started with Azure Compute

Welcome to the Azure Compute documentation! This section provides a comprehensive guide to understanding and utilizing Azure's robust compute services to deploy, manage, and scale your applications.

Azure Compute offers a wide range of services that allow you to run your applications, from simple web apps to complex, high-performance computing workloads. Whether you need virtual machines for full control, containers for portability, or serverless functions for event-driven processing, Azure has a solution for you.

Key Azure Compute Services

Virtual Machines (VMs)

Azure Virtual Machines provide on-demand, scalable computing resources. You can deploy Windows and Linux VMs in seconds and use them for development, testing, running applications, and extending your datacenter.

Key features include:

Flexible deployment options (IaaS)
Choice of operating systems and configurations
High availability and disaster recovery
Integration with other Azure services

Learn more about Azure Virtual Machines.

Containers

Azure offers excellent support for containerized applications. You can run your containers on Azure using services like Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Container Instances (ACI), and Azure Container Registry.

Leverage containers for:

Consistent development and deployment environments
Microservices architectures
Portability and scalability

Explore Azure Container Services.

App Services

Azure App Service is a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web apps, mobile backends, and RESTful APIs. It supports popular languages like .NET, Java, Node.js, Python, and PHP.

Benefits include:

Automatic patching and OS updates
Scalability and load balancing
DevOps integration
Custom domains and SSL certificates

Discover Azure App Service.

Functions

Azure Functions is a serverless compute service that lets you run event-driven code without explicitly provisioning or managing infrastructure. You pay only for the time your code runs.

Ideal for:

Event-driven applications
APIs and microservices
Real-time stream processing
Scheduled tasks

Dive into Azure Functions.

Pro Tip: When choosing a compute service, consider your application's architecture, scalability needs, management overhead, and cost constraints. Azure provides flexible options to match your specific requirements.

Getting Started

To begin your journey with Azure Compute, we recommend the following steps:

Sign up for an Azure Account: If you don't have one, get started with a free trial.
Explore Tutorials: Follow step-by-step guides for deploying your first VM, container, or web app.
Understand Core Concepts: Learn about resource groups, regions, availability zones, and other fundamental Azure concepts.

This documentation will guide you through each service, providing conceptual overviews, quickstarts, how-to guides, and reference materials.


# Example: Deploying a simple Linux VM using Azure CLI
az vm create \
  --resource-group MyResourceGroup \
  --name MyVM \
  --image UbuntuLTS \
  --admin-username azureuser \
  --generate-ssh-keys