Table of Contents
Introduction
Cloud computing is known for utilizing technological resources to store, retrieve, and process data online to boost speed, availability, scalability, and cut costs. Cloud service providers are businesses that offer the tools needed to perform tasks. One such cloud service provider is Azure, which Microsoft runs. Microsoft introduced Azure on February 1st, 2010, using a pay-per-use business model that allows customers to only pay for the services they choose.
80% of Fortune 500 firms currently rely on Azure to host their apps, resources, or other computing needs. Azure has developed into a leading service provider. Azure offers more than 200 services for cloud computing and supports many programming languages, including Java, C#, NodeJS, etc. This article covers detailed knowledge of Microsoft Azure.
What is Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure is a platform and architecture for cloud computing developed by the company to develop, deploy, and manage applications and services via a network of data centers they control across the world. Since it offers various services, such as computing, storage, databases, and analytics, it frees developers from worrying about the infrastructure as they design excellent applications. Azure supports many programming languages, tools, and frameworks and can be integrated with various third-party services.
Importance of Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure is important because it provides businesses and organizations with a scalable and flexible cloud computing platform for their IT needs. Some of the key benefits of using Azure include the following:
- Scalability
Azure allows organizations to quickly and easily scale their computing resources as needed without investing in expensive hardware or making significant infrastructure changes.
- Reliability
Azure provides a highly available and resilient infrastructure with multiple levels of redundancy to ensure that applications and services stay up and running even in the event of failures.
- Security
To assist businesses in protecting their data and fulfilling legal obligations, Azure comes with several security features and certifications.
- Integration
Azure integrates with a variety of other Microsoft and third-party services, making it easy to build and manage complex, multi-faceted solutions.
FAQs
- What do you understand about cloud computing?
To store, manage, analyze, and process data, cloud computing refers to the use of computational resources (servers) over the internet (sometimes referred to as the “cloud”). Here, we use infrastructure offered and maintained by third-party suppliers like Microsoft, AWS, etc., and pay them based on the time the servers are used.
The benefits of cloud computing include increased execution speed, resource flexibility, and simpler scaling.
High fault tolerance and high system availability can be attained with cloud computing, which can be done dynamically depending on the application’s infrastructure needs.
- Define IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
- Infrastructure as a Service, or IaaS, allows you to order hardware from a provider in exchange for a configurable service.
- Platform as a Service, also known as PaaS, allows you to obtain a platform without explicitly authorizing the OS software.
- Software as a Service (SaaS), which does not require a direct purchase, is platform infrastructure software.
- What is Azure Cloud Service?
Azure Cloud Service is a prime example of a Platform as a Service (PaaS). This was created to assist applications that need high scalability, stability, and availability while operating at a low cost.
Azure cloud services are used to deploy multi-tier web-based applications on Azure by setting up a cloud service instance. For distributed processing, it is also feasible to specify numerous roles, such as web roles, worker roles, etc. Azure cloud services aid in the application’s more straightforward and adaptable scalability.
- What is Availability Zone?
Availability Zones (AZ) are locations within an Azure region that are physically separate. An availability zone comprises one or more independently operating systems and a network of data centers. Each region has a minimum of three zones.
Availability zones allow clients to run high-availability and low-latency mission-critical applications.
- What is a role instance in Azure?
A role instance is a virtual computer where application code is run in conjunction with running role specifications. By the specification in the cloud service configuration files, a role may have more than one instance.
- How many cloud service roles are provided by Azure?
A collection of application and configuration files make up cloud service roles. Azure offers two different categories of roles:
- Web role: This offers an Internet Information Services (IIS) dedicated web server for hosting and automatically deploying front-end websites.
- Employee role: These roles often do not require IIS and assist the applications hosted within them in the running asynchronously for longer periods while remaining independent of user interactions. They are also perfect for running background operations. The programs are administered independently of one another.
- What is Azure Subscription?
You can get authenticated and authorized access to Azure services with an Azure subscription. It also enables you to allocate resources. An Azure account, which is an Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) or a directory that Azure AD trusts identity in, is a logical unit of Azure services connected to an Azure subscription.
- What is Azure Service Level Agreement (SLA)?
The Azure SLA is a contract that ensures or guarantees that access to a cloud service is provided for at least 99.95% of the time when two or more role instances of a role are deployed on Azure.
Additionally, it adds that 99.9% of the time, such processes will be detected, and corrective action will be performed for them if the role instance process is not operating.
Depending on the pricing structure of the relevant Azure services, Azure credits us a portion of our monthly expenses if the assurances above are not met at any time.
- What is Azure Resource Manager?
A service offered by Azure for administration and application deployment in Azure is called Azure Resource Manager.
The resource manager offers the management layer that aids in the developer’s creation, modification, or deletion of resources in the Azure subscription account. This function is quite helpful when we manage access restrictions and locks, ensure the security of the resources after deployment, and organize those resources.
- What is NSG?
Network Security Group, or NSG, is a collection of ACL (Access Control List) rules that either permit or prohibit network traffic from reaching subnets, Network Interface Cards (NICs) connected to a subnet, or both. The ACL rules are applied to all the Virtual Machines in the subnet when NSG is attached to it.
- VM creation is possible using Azure Resource Manager in a Virtual Network, which was created using classic deployment. True or False?
False. Azure does not support this.
- What is Azure Redis Cache?
It is an in-memory, open-source Redis caching solution that Azure offers and supports. By retrieving data from the backend database and temporarily storing it in the Redis cache for the initial request and then retrieving data from the Redis cache for all subsequent requests, it helps web applications run better. Using the Azure cloud; Azure Redis Cache offers robust and secure caching technologies.
- What do you need to do when drive failure occurs?
When the drive fails, you must do the following actions:
- We must ensure the drive is not mounted for Azure Storage to operate flawlessly.
- For the drive to be remounted and formatted, swap out the drive.
- Define Azure storage key.
The Azure storage key is used to authenticate access to the Azure storage service to limit data access based on the project’s needs.
2 types of storage keys are given for the authentication purpose:
- Primary Access Key
- Secondary Access Key
The main purpose of the secondary access key is to avoid downtime of the website or application.
- What is CSPack in Azure?
It is a program for creating service package files that run from the command line. Additionally, the tool aids in setting up the application for deployment in Microsoft Azure or a computing emulator.
- Why is Azure Diagnostics API needed?
Using the Azure Diagnostics API, we may gather diagnostic information from apps operating on Azure, such as performance monitoring, system event logs, etc.
The cloud service roles must have Azure Diagnostics to observe the data verbosely.
The diagnostics data can be utilized to generate performance metric warnings and visual chart representations for improved monitoring.
- What Azure feature would be ideal for creating a shared file-sharing network amongst numerous virtual machines?
Azure offers a service called Azure File System that serves as a central repository for data exchange among Virtual Machines set up using protocols like SMB, FTPS, NFS, etc.
- What would happen when the maximum number of failed attempts is reached during Azure ID Authentication?
The protocol that analyses the entered password and the IP addresses of the login requests determines the mechanism of locking when there have been a maximum number of unsuccessful login attempts.
- Why is Azure Active Directory (AAD) used?
A mechanism for managing identities and access is called Azure Active Directory. It is employed to give your employees access to particular goods and services within your network. For instance, Twitter, Salesforce.com, etc. There is some built-in support for applications in the gallery of Azure AD that can be added immediately.
- What is Virtual Network (VNet)?
A VNet is a cloud-based representation of your personal network. It logically separates the rest of your resources from the instances you have launched in the cloud.
Conclusion
A complete cloud computing platform, Microsoft Azure offers several services for creating, deploying, and managing applications and services. Common questions about Azure include its benefits, capabilities, security features, and integration with other services. Understanding these key concepts and benefits can help organizations make informed decisions about their cloud computing strategy and how Azure can help meet their IT needs.