Hands-On Azure Labs: Practicing Real-World Azure Skills

In this lab, you will gain hands-on experience with Microsoft Entra ID by creating and configuring a new user account in the Microsoft Entra Admin Center. This process is fundamental for managing identities within an organization, and you will explore key features such as adding user details and configuring user properties.

In this lab, you'll manage user properties in Microsoft Entra ID by navigating to the Admin Center and accessing user-specific options. You'll select Dave Jones from the user list and update his profile by editing details like his company, department, employee ID, and office location.

You’ll also assign Joey Knish as his manager. After making these changes, you’ll save them and then update Dave’s group memberships by removing him from the AAD DC Administrators group.

Finally, you’ll return to the Overview tab to complete the lab.

In this lab, you'll assign a license to a user in Microsoft Entra ID by navigating through the Entra Admin Center and the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.

You'll start by locating the user, Chris Green, in the Entra Admin Center, then switch to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center to assign a "Microsoft Entra Suite" license.

After saving the changes, you'll return to the Entra Admin Center, refresh the page to confirm the license assignment, and complete the lab by reviewing the user's updated information. This ensures the user has access to the necessary services.

In this lab, you will configure Self-Service Password Reset (SSPR) in Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory).

Self-Service Password Reset allows users to reset their own passwords without needing to contact IT support, reducing help desk workload and improving user experience. You will explore how to enable and configure SSPR, set up authentication methods for password recovery, and test the functionality from a user perspective.

By the end of the lab, you will understand how to implement and manage SSPR to enhance the efficiency and security of your organization’s password management processes.

In this lab, you'll create a security group in Microsoft Entra ID to manage user access to shared resources such as applications and files. You'll navigate through the Entra Admin Center, select the appropriate group type, and assign a meaningful name to the group to align with organizational roles, such as "HumanResources."

You'll then manually assign members to the group, choose an owner to manage the group, and finalize the creation process by verifying that all settings are configured correctly.

Through this hands-on exercise, you will gain practical experience in managing security groups and controlling access within an organization.

In this lab, you will learn how to assign Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) roles to users in Microsoft Azure. You will be guided through the process of selecting a resource group, assigning the “Virtual Machine Contributor” role to a specific user, and verifying the role assignment.

This exercise ensures you can effectively manage access within a resource group, allowing team members to perform tasks according to their assigned roles while maintaining security and compliance.

Resource locks are a critical tool for preventing accidental or unauthorized modifications to important resources. In this lab, you’ll learn how to add and remove resource locks in Microsoft Azure.

By locking resources, you ensure that they cannot be modified or deleted unintentionally. This lab guides you through the process of applying a “Delete” lock to a virtual machine, testing the lock’s effectiveness, by attempting to delete the resource, and then removing the lock.

In this lab, you will learn how to effectively tag resources in Microsoft Azure to better organize and manage your cloud infrastructure. Tagging allows you to assign metadata to Azure resources, such as virtual machines, making it easier to track and categorize them based on specific criteria like environment, department, or cost center.

Through a step-by-step process, you will tag multiple resources, such as virtual machines, and use the tags to filter and display resources based on their assigned tags.

By the end of this lab, you will have a clear understanding of how to implement and utilize tags to improve the management and accessibility of Azure resources.

In this lab, you'll learn how to create and configure an Azure Storage Account using the Azure portal.

The lab provides step-by-step instructions, walking you through the process of setting up a storage account, selecting key configuration options, and enabling advanced features like geographic redundancy, network access controls, and blob versioning.

By the end of the lab, you'll have hands-on experience with setting up a storage account, configuring its security settings, and deploying it within a specific Azure environment.

In this lab, you will learn how to create and configure an Azure File Share within an existing Azure storage account. Azure Files allows you to set up a fully managed file share in the cloud, accessible through standard protocols like SMB and NFS.

This lab will guide you through the step-by-step process of creating a file share, selecting appropriate access tiers, and reviewing important configuration settings. By the end of this lab, you will have hands-on experience creating a file share that is optimized for frequent data access and ready to be used for storing and sharing files.

In this lab, you’ll learn how to create and configure a blob container in an Azure Storage Account. You’ll go through the steps of setting up a new container, configuring access permissions, and enabling anonymous access for blob data.

Additionally, you’ll adjust network settings to allow public access to the container, ensuring that it can be accessed over the internet.

By the end of this lab, you’ll understand how to configure blob containers for different access scenarios, including anonymous and public access.

In this hands-on lab, you will learn how to create a Shared Access Signature (SAS) token in Azure Storage.

A SAS token is a secure way to grant limited access to storage resources within an Azure Storage account. It allows for time-bound, controlled access to specific resources such as blobs, files, and queues, without exposing the storage account's access keys.

This lab will guide you through the steps to create a SAS token, configure its permissions, set its access scope, and restrict access based on IP addresses, dates, and other parameters.

By the end of the lab, you will have created a SAS token with read-only permissions for a blob container, ensuring secure access to the storage resources while preventing write, delete, or modify operations.

In this lab, you’ll learn how to deploy and configure an Azure Virtual Machine (VM) using the Azure portal. The lab walks you through the steps of creating a new virtual machine, configuring its settings, including availability zones, security options, and network configuration.

You'll also learn how to attach and configure disks for your VM, manage network access, and ensure that resources such as IPs and NICs are properly deleted when the VM is removed.

In this lab, you’ll learn how to resize an existing Azure Virtual Machine using the Azure portal. Resizing a VM is a critical task when you need to adjust the resources allocated to your virtual machine, such as increasing or decreasing CPU and memory to match workload requirements.

The lab will guide you through the process of selecting a different size, applying filters to find the appropriate VM size, and resizing the VM.

By the end of this lab, you’ll understand how to effectively resize a virtual machine to optimize its performance or cost.

In this lab, you’ll learn how to deploy and configure an Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set (VMSS) using the Azure portal.

A VM Scale Set is an Azure compute resource that allows you to deploy and manage a set of identical VMs. This lab walks you through the process of setting up the scale set, configuring auto-scaling based on CPU usage, and attaching storage to the VMs.

You’ll also configure network settings and management options to ensure smooth operations.

This lab is designed to guide participants through the process of relocating a virtual machine (VM) within the Azure environment.

In this lab, you’ll practice the steps required to move a VM and its associated resources to a different resource group, which is useful for organizing or restructuring resources within Azure.

Participants will gain hands-on experience with the Azure portal, learning how to navigate the interface and execute the move operation efficiently.

In this lab, you’ll learn how to create and configure a Virtual Network (vNet) and Subnet in Microsoft Azure.

Virtual networks are essential for organizing and managing network traffic within the Azure environment, and subnets allow you to segment your vNet for better control over resource communication.

This lab walks you through the process of creating a new vNet, configuring address spaces, and setting up subnets to meet the needs of different applications. You’ll also apply network security features like encryption and use tags to categorize your vNet.

In this lab, you will learn how to create and configure a Network Security Group (NSG) within the Azure portal. Network Security Groups are critical components in Azure that help you control inbound and outbound network traffic to your resources.

By setting up rules in an NSG, you can define which traffic is allowed or denied based on factors such as the source, destination, and protocol.

This hands-on lab will guide you step-by-step through the process of creating a new NSG, defining security rules, and associating the NSG with a subnet in a virtual network.

By the end of this lab, you will have a fully functional NSG that controls traffic for a specified subnet in your virtual network.

In this lab, you’ll learn how to create and configure Virtual Network (vNet) Peering in Azure. vNet Peering allows you to connect two virtual networks, enabling low-latency, high-speed communication between them as if they were part of a single network.

You’ll walk through the process of setting up bi-directional peering between two virtual networks, ensuring secure communication and resource access across the networks.

By the end of the lab, you’ll have a fully functional vNet Peering setup, allowing for efficient network connectivity between isolated virtual networks.

In this lab, you’ll learn how to deploy and configure an internal load balancer in Microsoft Azure.

An internal load balancer allows you to distribute network traffic among multiple virtual machines within a private network. This ensures high availability, fault tolerance, and scalability for your internal applications.

You’ll go through the process of configuring frontend and backend pools, setting up inbound rules, and creating health probes to monitor your virtual machines.

By the end of the lab, you will have a fully functional internal load balancer that can manage traffic across your backend servers.

In this lab, you will learn how to manually deploy and configure Azure Bastion to securely connect to a virtual machine in a virtual network without exposing the machine to the public internet.

Azure Bastion provides secure and seamless RDP/SSH connectivity to your VMs directly from the Azure portal over SSL, without requiring a public IP address on the virtual machine.

Throughout the lab, you will deploy a Bastion service, configure it to work with an existing virtual network, and test your configuration by securely connecting to a virtual machine.

In this lab, you will learn how to create and configure a Backup Vault in Microsoft Azure.

Backup Vaults are critical components for ensuring data protection, long-term retention, and disaster recovery within Azure environments.

By completing this lab, you will deploy a Backup Vault, configure redundancy and cross-region restore options, and ensure that your data is securely replicated and recoverable in the event of an outage or failure.

This hands-on exercise is essential for IT professionals looking to enhance their skills in managing backup solutions within Azure. It will help you understand the process of creating and configuring a Backup Vault, which serves as a centralized repository for managing all backup data, ensuring business continuity and data integrity.

In this lab, you’ll learn how to create and configure a Recovery Services Vault in Microsoft Azure.

A Recovery Services Vault is a critical resource for managing backup and disaster recovery services in Azure.

You’ll be guided through the process of deploying the vault, configuring storage redundancy, and setting up private endpoints for secure access.

In this lab, you will learn how to configure and apply an Azure Backup Policy to protect virtual machines (VMs) in Azure.

Azure Backup provides a flexible, secure, and cost-effective way to safeguard your virtual machines by creating automated backup policies. During the lab, you will set up a Recovery Services Vault, configure a backup policy, and assign that policy to selected virtual machines.

This hands-on experience will help you understand how to establish a comprehensive backup strategy for critical VMs, ensuring their data and system state are preserved for both short-term and long-term retention.

By the end of this lab, you will have implemented a backup policy for virtual machines that ensures their continuous protection, even in the event of failures or accidental deletions.

In this lab, you will learn how to restore a virtual machine (VM) using Azure Backup, a crucial process for ensuring business continuity and recovering from data loss or system issues.

You will step through the process of selecting a recovery point and performing a full VM restoration to recover the VM to a previous stable state. This lab provides hands-on experience with Azure's robust backup and restore functionality, enabling you to manage and restore VMs efficiently in case of failures or errors.

By the end of this exercise, you will be able to restore a VM to a previous point in time using Azure Backup and ensure that it is fully operational, which is essential for any IT professional working with Azure infrastructure.

In this lab, you’ll create a storage account and configure basic security and networking settings. In doing so, you’ll build out the foundational environment for the training and testing activities for the SurfCity Boats IT department.

The HANDS-ON LAB will take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete.

As you work through his lab, you’ll create a storage account with high availability, ensuring that it has anonymous public access. Once you’ve created the highly available storage account, you’ll provision a blob storage container to hold website documents. With the container created, you’ll then enable soft delete to restore files easily. You’ll wrap up by configuring blob versioning.

The HANDS-ON LAB will take approximately 15-20 minutes to complete.

In this lab, the SurfCity Boats organization requires private storage to securely house internal documents for its offices and departments. This content is strictly private and should not be shared without explicit consent. The storage solution that you deploy must provide high availability to ensure access in the event of a regional outage. Additionally, the company intends to use this storage as a backup for its public website.

The HANDS-ON LAB will take approximately 12-17 minutes to complete.

In this lab, you’ll provision shared file storage for the company offices of SurfCity Boats. Because the company is geographically dispersed, with offices located in different regions, the offices require a reliable and efficient way to share files and disseminate information. The solution should ensure that file shares are easy to access, load quickly without delay, and meet specific security requirements. Certain content should only be accessible from designated corporate virtual networks to enhance security.

The HANDS-ON LAB will take approximately 15-20 minutes to complete.

In this lab, Surf City Boats is in the process of designing and developing a new application. For this application, the development team needs storage, which can only be accessed using keys and managed identities. They have also expressed a desire to implement role-based access control to better manage resource permissions. Additionally, for testing purposes, the app requires protected immutable storage to safeguard data from unauthorized modifications.

The HANDS-ON LAB will take approximately 20-30 minutes to complete.