As you dive into Microsoft Azure, you’ll encounter various technical terms and concepts that are crucial to understanding how the platform works. Whether you're new to cloud computing or transitioning from another platform, familiarizing yourself with these common Azure terminologies is a great first step.
In this guide, we’ll break down some of the most commonly used Azure terms that every beginner should know.
1. Azure Subscription
An Azure Subscription is essentially the billing account for your Azure services. It allows you to manage and monitor your resources, access Azure services, and keep track of your usage and costs. Every Azure subscription is tied to a single billing account but can have multiple users or resources within it.
2. Azure Resource Group
A Resource Group is a container that holds related Azure resources. It allows you to manage, deploy, and monitor resources collectively. Resource groups help organize your Azure resources based on their lifecycle, permissions, and management. You can group resources like virtual machines, databases, and networks that share the same purpose.
3. Azure Resource
An Azure Resource is any individual service or instance that you create and manage in Azure. This includes virtual machines, databases, web apps, storage accounts, networking components, etc. Resources are deployed in a specific region and managed through a resource group.
4. Azure Virtual Machine (VM)
An Azure Virtual Machine (VM) is an on-demand, scalable computing resource that functions like a physical computer. VMs allow you to run applications, services, or websites in the cloud without the need for physical hardware. Azure provides various types of VMs with different CPU, memory, and storage configurations to suit your needs.
5. Azure Blob Storage
Azure Blob Storage is a cloud storage service designed to store unstructured data such as text, images, videos, and backups. It is widely used for storing large amounts of data that may need to be accessed over HTTP/HTTPS. Blob storage is highly scalable and secure.
6. Azure App Service
Azure App Service is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering that enables you to build and host web applications, APIs, and mobile backends without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. It provides automatic scaling, security, and integration with DevOps tools.
7. Azure Active Directory (AAD)
Azure Active Directory (AAD) is a cloud-based identity and access management service that helps you manage users and groups, control access to resources, and secure applications. AAD supports single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) for enhanced security.
8. Azure Network Security Group (NSG)
A Network Security Group (NSG) is used to control inbound and outbound network traffic to Azure resources. It acts as a virtual firewall that allows or denies traffic based on rules you define. NSGs are commonly applied to virtual machines and network interfaces to control their traffic.
9. Azure Load Balancer
An Azure Load Balancer is a highly available, scalable service that distributes incoming network traffic across multiple Azure resources such as virtual machines or web apps. This ensures that no single resource is overwhelmed with traffic, thereby improving performance and availability.
10. Azure Key Vault
Azure Key Vault is a cloud service for securely storing and managing secrets, such as API keys, passwords, certificates, and cryptographic keys. It helps safeguard sensitive information and allows developers to access them securely from their applications.
11. Azure DevOps
Azure DevOps is a set of development tools and services that support the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC), including planning, coding, building, testing, and deploying applications. It provides version control, continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD), and project management features.
12. Azure Firewall
Azure Firewall is a fully-managed, stateful firewall service designed to protect your Azure Virtual Network (VNet). It provides built-in high availability, threat intelligence, and network traffic filtering to help protect your resources from unauthorized access.
13. Azure Functions
Azure Functions is a serverless compute service that lets you run small pieces of code (called functions) in response to events, such as HTTP requests or changes in data. It allows you to execute code without worrying about server management, and you only pay for the resources consumed during execution.
14. Azure Virtual Network (VNet)
An Azure Virtual Network (VNet) is a private, isolated network that allows you to securely connect Azure resources to each other, to on-premises resources, and to the internet. VNets enable you to control the traffic flow, subnets, and security between different resources within your Azure environment.
15. Azure Container Instances (ACI)
Azure Container Instances (ACI) is a service that allows you to quickly run containers in the cloud without managing any infrastructure. You can deploy Docker containers with the required CPU, memory, and networking configuration in just a few minutes.
16. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a fully-managed service that simplifies the process of deploying, managing, and scaling containerized applications using Kubernetes. It abstracts much of the complexity of running Kubernetes and provides built-in scaling, load balancing, and monitoring.
17. Azure Site Recovery
Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is a disaster recovery service that ensures your critical applications remain available by replicating them to Azure. In case of an on-premises failure, ASR enables automatic failover to Azure, ensuring business continuity.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the many Azure terminologies that you’ll encounter as you explore Microsoft Azure. Whether you’re just starting or are already using Azure, understanding these key terms is essential for building and managing your cloud infrastructure efficiently.
As you continue to use Azure, you’ll come across more specialized concepts, but getting a grasp on these basics will lay a solid foundation for your cloud journey.
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