Azure Solutions Architect Certification: The Ultimate Bundle

Discover the five cloud characteristics: on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service, and learn how they enable scalable, cost-efficient cloud solutions.

Explore public, private, and hybrid clouds, including how each is accessed and where resources reside, with private on-premises security and hybrid workload separation examples like Azure Arc and AWS Outposts.

Explore cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, and understand data centers, IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, while noting Azure's growth as the fastest growing public cloud.

Meet Microsoft Azure, the public cloud announced in 2008 and released in 2010, the second largest cloud offering vast IaaS and PaaS services and regional footprints.

Create a free azure account with a $200 credit by signing in with a microsoft account or a new email, verify via email and phone, then access the azure portal.

Clarify that a subscription is a container for resources, while an account is an identity to access them. Explain that subscriptions attach to accounts and support multiple users and clients.

Create a resource group in Azure by selecting the subscription, naming the group, choosing the region, and reviewing the deployment with a notification confirming success.

Find your resource group in the Azure portal using the search bar. Check recent resources or type the resource name to locate it under resource groups, then open it.

Resource groups are free to create and help you organize Azure resources by development, test, and production within a subscription, using naming conventions like RG to simplify management.

Explore how cloud-based architectures require infrastructure knowledge, including networking, firewall, application gateways, VPN, load balancers, and cloud-specific security. Learn to design secure, scalable cloud infrastructure with hands-on experience.

Install the C sharp extension for dotnet core and the azure tools extension pack in VSCode to boost cloud development; the C sharp dev kit offers features like solution explorer.

Install and run the catalog locally by loading the catalog folder into VSCode, building with F5, and loading books into an in-memory database for cloud migration.

Explore the project code, including the index page retrieving books from the database via context, displaying them in a table, and discuss in-memory vs Azure SQL and shopping cart integration.

Calculate the real cost of a virtual machine in Azure by adding the virtual machine, the premium disk, the public IP, and storage usage, typically around $180 per month.

Reduce Azure virtual machine costs by using auto shutdown for dev/test, reserved and spot instances for production and non-critical tasks, and disk optimization to choose appropriate disk types.

Create an Azure virtual machine in a new resource group, choose availability zone or availability set, configure disk type and auto shutdown, and download an ARM template for automation.

Show how an ARM template defines parameters, variables, and resources to deploy a VM with NIC, NSG, VNet, and public IP, plus auto-shutdown; customize parameters and deploy via Azure CLI.

Explore Azure instance metadata services, a REST API accessible only from a VM that reveals VM details like SKU, instance size, storage, networking, and scheduled events for eviction notifications.

Provision an Ubuntu Linux vm, install node, clone the weather api with git, run on port 8080, and connect to the catalog vm via private ip in the same vnet.

Design the read it web app’s architecture using azure icons and svg symbols, including a two virtual machine layout with a catalog app and a weather API.

Avoid leaving a virtual machine open to the internet due to security risks, noting that public IP and RDP access must be avoided even for learning.

Discover how app services auto scale to traffic spikes, starting with a single instance and adding instances when CPU percentage or HTTP queue length conditions are met.

Deployment slots let you test new app service versions with separate URLs, swap to production after validation, and use traffic splitting to gradually route users to the new slot.

Discover AKS, Azure Kubernetes Services, a managed Kubernetes on Azure that lets you deploy containers and manage them with Kubernetes tools, paying only for the virtual machines used.

Understand how containers, a thin packaging model, bundle software, dependencies, and configuration for predictable, fast deployments. Compare them with virtual machines and the container runtime.

Explore how container proliferation challenges—deployment, scalability, monitoring, routing, and high availability—are tackled by container management tools that replace traditional host managers and load balancers.

Learn to install Azure CLI locally, build and push a Docker image to Azure Container Registry, and deploy to AKS using the VSCode Docker extension.

Learn to create and configure an AKS cluster, integrate with an ACR, and deploy a container app using kubectl and a deployment YAML from VS Code.

Explore durable functions in Azure that manage state and retries, enabling function chaining with call activity async and a durable orchestration context.

Install Azure Functions Core Tools to run functions locally, then run http-triggered functions: process order storage and process order cosmos, and test with Postman, reviewing Cosmos DB and storage settings.

Deploy and run Azure functions by creating a function app in the consumption hosting plan, configuring dotnet 8 isolated worker model, storage, and deploying via VS Code and Postman tests.

Learn how to pick the right Azure compute type—Azure Functions, App Service, AKS with ACR, or Virtual Machines—using a practical flowchart-based decision process.

Discover additional Azure compute options beyond virtual machines, App Service, AKS, and Azure Functions. Explore Logic Apps, Azure Container Instance, and App Service container for single-container deployments.

Azure virtual networks (vnets) host resources like virtual machines, apps, and databases in a region-scoped network. By default, resources within a vnet can communicate; peering, subnets, and NSGs govern access.

Understand CIDR notation, the classless inter-domain routing method for representing an IP range as an address plus a 0–32 bit count, such as /24 (256 addresses) and /16 (65,536 addresses).

Explore how subnets segment a virtual network and allocate a subset of the VNet IP range to group resources; learn default cross-subnet communication and address space considerations.

Create two virtual machines in a single VNet with front and back subnets and test private IP connectivity. Then add a second VNet to show isolation and peering options.

Learn how to configure the catalog VM's network security group (NSG), attach it to a network interface, and manage inbound rules including RDP and 8080 access.

Move the weather api to a new VNet by reusing the weather disk, creating a nonoverlapping IPv4 space, and launching a new VM, then test cross-VNet access requiring VNet peering.

Configure two vnet peerings for cross-virtual network access, then enforce NSG rules: deny port 8080 traffic and allow TCP from the catalog VM’s private IP to the weather API.

Learn to secure virtual machine access and minimize exposure of public IPs by implementing just-in-time git access, VPN, jump box, and bastion across Azure resources.

Discover how VNet integration lets App Service access resources inside a VNet without internet exposure, and compare it with service endpoint and Privatelink.

Learn how app service access restrictions gate inbound traffic by ip addresses, vnets, and service tags, enabling exposure behind a load balancer or gateway while the default rule becomes deny.

Configure an Azure application gateway and estimate its cost with the pricing calculator. Deploy a standard v2 gateway in a new VNet and set up backend pools and routing rules.

Discover connecting application gateway to AKS with AGIC, but AKS has its own gateway, AGIC is in preview and buggy, so use third-party gateway solutions for AKS routing and protection.

Examine the current Reddit architecture: the app gateway connects to the app service via a service endpoint and peers with the catalog VNet, while an NSG blocks direct catalog access.

Shows how the application gateway routes to the app service and how cookies rely on the app service domain, risking drops when domains mismatch; fix: set a custom domain.

Learn about data in Azure through fully managed cloud services like relational databases, NoSQL databases, and object stores, compare pricing models, and understand why managed services avoid patching and maintenance.

Explore major database features including security with network isolation and encryption, backup type and retention, and availability through SLA replication and Docker, with notes on Azure storage.

Explore Azure SQL pricing across managed instance and Azure SQL database, detailing flavors, service tiers, and vcore or dtu models. Understand practical examples, reservations, and price ranges for different configurations.

Create an Azure SQL database and its server, enable SQL authentication for development, enable geo-redundant backups, and connect via the SQL server extension in VSCode with firewall access.

Secure the database connection by using a private endpoint and private DNS zone in the VNet, removing the public firewall rule to ensure access via private IP.

Connect the inventory app to Azure SQL, via VS Code deployment and configuring app service connection strings, with VNet integration and a private endpoint to share catalog and inventory data.

Explore Cosmos DB, a fully managed NoSQL service with global distribution, multiple APIs, and partitioned containers that enable high availability, automatic management, regional replication, and robust security.

Create an Azure Cosmos DB account using the SQL API for NoSQL data, provision throughput, configure networking and backups, then build a database, container, and query items with SQL.

Explore Azure MySQL pricing by tier and compute power, covering basic, general purpose, and memory optimized options, reservations, and example costs.

Create an Azure MySQL flexible server in a new resource group for development, with burstable tier, 20 GB storage, seven-day backups, and locally redundant storage.

Explore Azure storage, a massively scalable object store with blobs as the primary storage and six redundancy options, plus hot, cool, and archive tiers.

Delete the old resource group, then create a new reddit app storage account in west europe with the standard tier and a private container named new orders for app orders.

Sign in to Azure to manage storage accounts with the Azure Storage Explorer desktop app, view containers, and upload, download, and delete blobs.

Explore Azure Redis, a managed in-memory distributed cache compatible with OSS Redis and Redis Enterprise, with security features and tier options from basic to enterprise flash.

Connect the shopping cart to Redis and readings to fetch book details and place orders through the order function, storing results in Cosmos DB.

Analyze the current Azure-based architecture with Azure SQL, Redis, and Cosmos DB across catalog, inventory, cart, and orders, and plan for security, monitoring, and regional redundancy.

Apply the decision flow to choose the right Azure data store based on data type. Relational and structured data map to Azure SQL, MySQL, or PostgreSQL; NoSQL with Cosmos DB; graph data to Cosmos DB with Gremlin API; blob data to Azure Blob Storage.

Learn how to create and configure an Azure storage queue within a new resource group, send and pull messages using JSON, and run a simple queue demo in VSCode.

Event grid pricing is based solely on operations, with the first 100,000 free per month and no tiles, instance size, or region factors; 1 million operations cost $0.54.

Discover Event Hubs, a managed Kafka-based big data streaming platform that handles millions of events per second, with producers, partitions, and consumer groups, TEU throughput, and SLA.

Explore how to deploy and configure Azure Event Hubs, create a namespace and an event hub, set up a simple consumer in code, and stream test events with Data Explorer.

Choose the right Azure messaging service by comparing storage queue, service bus, event grid, and event hubs, considering use cases, features like duplicate detection and dead-letter queues, and message size.

Explore the current architecture of the Reddit web app, featuring an Event Grid topic that connects the storage account and the function app, enabling a secure, asynchronous trigger.