Azure Fundamentals

Welcome to the Azure Fundamentals documentation. This section provides a comprehensive overview of core Azure concepts, services, and their capabilities. Understanding these fundamentals is crucial for anyone looking to build, deploy, and manage solutions on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

What is Microsoft Azure?

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure that Microsoft built to let developers and IT professionals build, deploy, and manage applications and services through a global network of managed data centers. It provides a wide range of services, including:

Compute: Virtual machines, containers, serverless computing.
Storage: Blob storage, file storage, disk storage, archive storage.
Databases: Relational databases, NoSQL databases, data warehousing.
Networking: Virtual networks, load balancing, VPN gateways, content delivery networks.
AI + Machine Learning: Cognitive Services, Machine Learning Studio.
Internet of Things (IoT): IoT Hub, IoT Central.
Developer Tools: DevOps, SDKs, CI/CD pipelines.

Core Concepts

Before diving into specific services, it's important to grasp some fundamental concepts:

Regions and Availability Zones

Azure is deployed across a large number of physical data centers that are grouped into geographical regions. Each region consists of one or more data centers. Availability Zones are unique physical locations within an Azure region, designed to be an isolated zone of failure, providing higher availability for your applications and data.

Resource Groups

A resource group is a logical container that holds related resources for an Azure solution. You can use a resource group to deploy, manage, and monitor all the resources for your application as a single entity. When you deploy or delete the resource group, all of its resources are deployed, managed, and deleted together.

Azure Resources

An Azure resource is any manageable item that is available through Azure. Common examples include virtual machines, storage accounts, virtual networks, and Azure Active Directory (now Microsoft Entra ID) tenants.

Subscriptions

An Azure subscription provides access to Azure services. Each subscription is associated with an Azure account, and it's the basis for billing and managing Azure resources. Subscriptions can be used to organize resources, manage costs, and control access.

Note: Understanding regions and availability zones is key to designing resilient and highly available applications on Azure.

Getting Started

To begin your Azure journey, you can:

Create an Azure Account: Visit the Azure Free Account page to sign up.
Explore the Azure Portal: The Azure portal (portal.azure.com) is a web-based unified management experience.
Learn about the Azure Pricing Calculator: Plan your costs effectively using the Azure Pricing Calculator.

Important Services to Know

Azure Virtual Machines (VMs): On-demand, scalable computing resources.
Azure Blob Storage: Massively scalable object storage for unstructured data.
Azure SQL Database: Fully managed relational database service.
Azure Virtual Network (VNet): Enables Azure resources to securely communicate with each other, with users, and with on-premises resources.

Tip: Consider starting with the "Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900)" certification path to solidify your understanding of these core concepts.

Next Steps

Now that you have a grasp of the fundamentals, you can explore more specific areas of Azure: