Azure Compute Services Overview

Microsoft Azure offers a comprehensive suite of compute services designed to meet diverse application requirements, from traditional enterprise workloads to modern cloud-native applications. These services provide the processing power, scalability, and flexibility you need to run your applications efficiently and cost-effectively.

Virtual Machines (VMs)

Azure Virtual Machines provide on-demand, scalable computing resources. You can deploy and run custom applications with full control over your operating systems and software. Choose from a wide variety of VM types optimized for different workloads, including general-purpose, compute-optimized, memory-optimized, and storage-optimized instances.

Key Features:

Wide range of Linux and Windows operating systems.
Flexible deployment options (e.g., VM Scale Sets for auto-scaling).
High availability and disaster recovery capabilities.
Extensive networking and storage integration.

Get Started: Create your first Azure VM in minutes via the Azure portal or Azure CLI.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) simplifies deploying, managing, and automating containerized applications using Kubernetes. AKS manages the control plane, while you manage the nodes. It provides a fully managed Kubernetes experience, reducing operational overhead.


az aks create --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myAKSCluster

Use Cases:

Microservices architectures.
CI/CD pipelines.
Hybrid cloud deployments.

App Service

Azure App Service is a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web apps and APIs that connect to on-premises or cloud data. It supports popular languages like .NET, .NET Core, Java, Node.js, PHP, and Python.

Benefits:

Automatic patching and OS updates.
DevOps integration (CI/CD).
Global scale and high availability.
Secure and compliance-ready.

Azure Functions

Azure Functions is an event-driven, serverless compute platform that allows you to run small pieces of code, or "functions," in the cloud without managing infrastructure. It's ideal for processing data, integrating systems, and building simple APIs.

Pay-per-execution: You only pay for the compute time you consume.

Supported Triggers:

HTTP requests
Timers
Queue messages
Blob storage events

Container Instances (ACI)

Azure Container Instances (ACI) offer the fastest and simplest way to run a container in Azure. You can deploy a container directly without managing virtual machines or higher-level orchestration services.

                
az container create --resource-group myResourceGroup --name mycontainer --image myimage --dns-name mydnslabel

Scenarios:

Running simple containerized applications.
Container build jobs.
Processing short-lived tasks.

Azure Batch

Azure Batch is a cloud service that enables you to run large-scale, parallel high-performance computing (HPC) applications efficiently in the cloud. It provisions and manages virtual machine resources, schedules jobs, and provides monitoring.

Azure Arc

Azure Arc extends Azure management to any infrastructure, on-premises, at the edge, or in multi-cloud environments. It allows you to manage servers, Kubernetes clusters, and data services from a single pane of glass.

Key Capabilities:

Unified governance and policy management.
Consistent deployment of Azure services.
Hybrid application modernization.