Azure Deep Dive: From Beginner to Cloud Expert

Discover how cloud computing replaces on-premise setups by renting resources from providers, enabling scalable, secure services like virtual machines, databases, and analytics.

Compare cloud and on-premise infrastructure to weigh cost, control, security, provisioning, scalability, and availability for informed IT strategy decisions.

Explore cloud models—IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS—and how responsibilities shift from provider to user across facilities, networking, storage, and virtualization, with examples like AWS, Google App Engine, Gmail, and Office 365.

Explore the cloud market share across AWS, Azure, GCP, Alibaba Cloud, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and Salesforce, highlighting trends from Q4 2017 to Q1 2024.

Explore Azure's journey from project red dog to Microsoft Azure. Learn how it expanded to 160+ services, improved the portal, and grew enterprise adoption against AWS.

Navigate the Azure portal essentials—left navigation, resource creation, favorites, and customizable dashboards, and access documentation via Cloud Shell to manage Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Functions, and Azure SQL Database.

Learn how to access and manage Azure using the Azure portal, Azure CLI, PowerShell, SDKs, and REST API, plus Cloud Shell for automating provisioning of virtual machines, databases, and storage.

Explore Azure's operating hierarchy from account to subscriptions, resource groups, and resources, and how this structure supports separate billing, deployment, and role-based access controls.

Explore how Azure's physical infrastructure, including data centers and global regions, supports disaster recovery and low-latency access for applications.

Explore Azure regions, defined as geographic areas containing data centers connected by low-latency networks, and learn to select regions for proximity, data residency, availability zones, and non-regional services.

Azure region pairs enable disaster recovery by backing data and apps to a paired region across availability zones within the same geography, improving uptime during regional outages.

Explore how to create and organize management groups in Azure, assign subscriptions, and apply inherited policies and security settings for cost management and resource monitoring.

Navigate Azure core components, from the operating hierarchy of accounts and subscriptions to governance, and learn how regions, zones, and region pairs ensure availability while organizing resources and resource groups.

Explore Azure compute services for running applications from simple to large-scale deployments, including virtual machines, VM scale sets, containers, App Service, and Azure Functions.

Explore how load balancing distributes traffic across virtual machines to improve performance and reliability, handle health checks, and optimize capacity in Azure.

Explore Azure Virtual Desktop to remotely access a full Windows desktop or apps from any device over the internet, with scalable, secure, pay-as-you-go cloud hosting.

Create an Azure container instance in the portal by choosing a resource group and region, selecting a Hello World Linux image, then review and create.

Compare traditional server-based back ends with serverless computing using Azure Functions, and learn how decoupled front ends use REST APIs with API gateway and Cosmos DB.

Run small pieces of code in the cloud with Azure Functions, paying only for runtime, while supporting multiple languages, automatic scaling, docker deployment, and bindings and triggers.

Explore Azure networking services, including virtual networks, subnets, and network security groups. Connect and secure resources with VNet peering, private endpoints, ExpressRoute, dns, and a content delivery network.

Organize a network into subnets to group resources by role and security, using public subnet for load balancer and private subnet for VMs, with IP ranges and network security groups.

Enable seamless, private communication between virtual networks through virtual network peering, using Azure backbone for low-latency traffic between VNets in the same or different regions, with no downtime.

Explore public versus private endpoints in Azure, comparing access via public IPs with authentication to private endpoints that use a private IP in your VNet, backed by Azure Private Link.

Connect on-prem networks to Azure Virtual Networks with a VPN gateway, creating a secure, AES 256-bit encrypted tunnel over the internet using site-to-site or point-to-site connectivity.

Explore Azure storage services, including blob, queue, files, and tables, disk storage, Azure Migrate, file sync, and Databox, and learn to choose access tiers and redundancy for scalable cloud apps.

Explore Azure storage accounts as cloud warehouses that store structured and unstructured data, including blobs, queues, file shares, and tables, with unique namespaces and secure access.

Demonstrates managing Azure blob storage access tiers in the portal, including creating a storage account, setting the default access tier, uploading data, and switching between hot, cool, and archive.

Discover Azure Queue storage as a scalable messaging service enabling asynchronous communication between application components, with decoupling, 64 kilobyte messages, TTL, and secure HTTP or HTTPS transmission.

Discover Azure Tables, a schema-less NoSQL store using key-value pairs that scale cost-effectively for large structured and semi-structured data, with use cases like user data and IoT logs.

Explore how Azure disks provide persistent storage for virtual machines, detailing managed disks, OS, data, and temporary disks, and the range from standard HDD to ultra disks.

Install and connect Azure Storage Explorer, a cross-platform app, to manage storage accounts across subscriptions, navigating blob containers, file shares, queues, and tables with drag-and-drop uploads and downloads.

Copy data efficiently between Azure storage accounts and regions using AzCopy, a CLI tool that avoids local downloads and reduces bandwidth costs, with automation via Azure Cloud Shell.

Explore the Azure storage account as the hub for unstructured data, file shares, queues, and tables, and compare locally redundant storage, zone redundant storage, geo-redundant storage, and GeoZone Redundant Storage.

Discover Azure Key Vault as a secure, centralized vault for secrets, keys, and certificates; configure management and data planes with RBAC and access policies to protect sensitive data.

Collect data from firewalls, servers, endpoints, cloud services, and on-premise infrastructure with Microsoft Sentinel to detect threats using AI-powered analytics, investigate incidents, and automate responses via playbooks.

Learn how Azure Firewall provides stateful network and application protection for cloud workloads in Azure, with built-in high availability and SKUs offering threat intelligence, IDPS, and scalable centralized traffic rules.

Learn how DDoS attacks work, from botnets and Mirai to volume, protocol, and application-layer floods, and how Azure DDoS protection mitigates them at network and IP levels.

Learn about Microsoft Intra-ID licenses—free, premium P1, and premium P2—and how each level adds features like dynamic groups, identity protection, PIM, and just-in-time access.

Manage users with groups in Entra ID to assign group level roles and permissions, create security or Microsoft 365 groups, add members, and apply expiration policies for Azure resources.

Explore Azure authentication services built on the Intra-ID backbone, enabling authentication, authorization, and management of users, devices, and applications in cloud environments. Discover single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, and passwordless authentication.

Enable MFA to strengthen security by requiring at least two factors—something you know, something you have, or something you are—so password breaches are harder.

Admin enables per-user multi-factor authentication in Microsoft IntraID, then user A registers MFA with the Microsoft Authenticator app and options like Windows Hello for Business, security keys, SMS, or calls.

Explore passwordless authentication with Azure passwordless solution, including Windows Hello, Microsoft Authenticator, and security keys. Experience device-based, biometric verification that eliminates passwords and reduces phishing risks.

Navigate Intra-IDB2B for business-to-business collaboration, securely sharing applications with external guest users. Control access with roles and permissions, invitations or self-signup, and delegate guest management.

Master B2C as a white-label identity service for external customers across apps. Customize login experiences with social logins, MFA, and self-service password resets.

Explore how authentication and authorization work together in Azure via role-based access control, assigning roles to a security principle, groups, or service principals with scope from subscription to resource.

Explore what a managed identity is, why it's useful, and how to implement it in Azure, with system-assigned and user-assigned identities in action.

Explore the differences between relational and NoSQL databases, including schemas, tables, SQL queries, and data models, and learn when to use Azure SQL Database or Azure Cosmos DB.

Explore Azure Cosmos DB, a fully managed, globally distributed multi-model NoSQL database with low-latency region replication and provisioned throughput priced per second via MongoDB and Cassandra.

Explore Azure Cosmos DB's multi-API models—from NoSQL and MongoDB to Gremlin and Cassandra—uncovering global distribution, elastic scaling, and flexible, high-performance data access.

Azure SQL Database provides a managed, cloud-native relational database with automatic scaling, high availability, built-in intelligence, automated backups, and security features, plus intelligent performance tuning and seamless Azure service integration.