Introducing microsoft azure

Microsoft Azure is Microsofts application platform for the public cloud. The goal of this article is to give you a foundation for understanding the fundamentals of Azure, even if you dont know anything about cloud computing.

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Introducing Microsoft Azure

 By rboucherLast updated: 10/01/2014

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In this article:

Microsoft Azure is Microsoft's application platform for the public cloud The goal of this article is

to give you a foundation for understanding the fundamentals of Azure, even if you don't know anything about cloud computing

How to read this article

Azure is growing all the time so it's easy to get overloaded The basic services are listed earlier inthe paper Start with just those, then go through the additional services That doesn't mean you can't use just the additional services by themselves, but the basic services make up the core of

an application running in Azure

Give feedback

Your feedback is important This article should give you an effective overview of Azure If it does not, tell us in the comments section at the bottom of the page Give some detail on what you expected to see and how to improve the article

Table of Contents

Basic Services - The Components of Azure - Management Portal - Compute - Data

Management - Networking - Developer Services

Additional Services - Identity and Access - Mobile - Backup - Messaging and

Integration - Compute Assistance - Performance - Big Compute and Data -Media - CommerceGetting Started

The Components of Azure

Azure groups services into categories in the Management Portal and on various visual aids like the What Is Windows Azure Infographic The Management Portal is what you use to manage most(but not all) services in Azure

This paper will use a different organization to talk about services based on similar function,

and to call out important sub-services that are part of larger ones

Figure: Azure provides Internet-accessible application services running in Azure datacenters.

Management Portal

Azure has a web interface called the Management Portal that allows administrators to access andadminister most, but not all Azure features Microsoft typically releases the newer UI portal in beta before retiring an older one The newer one is called the "Azure Preview Portal"

There is typically a long overlap when both portals are active While core services will appear in both portals, not all functionality may be available in both Newer services may show up in the newer portal first and older services and functionality may only exist in the older one The message here is that if you don't find something in the older portal, check the newer one and vice-versa

2 Websites offers a range of applications, frameworks, and templates for you to build large,

scalable web applications and presence websites quickly, and then efficiently manage

development, test, and operations

3 Cloud Services is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) option tuned to create highly scalable and fault resistant applications, but with more flexibility than Websites

Each of the Azure execution models has its own role to play

You can use these technologies separately or combine them as needed to create the right foundation for your application The approach you choose depends on what problems you're trying to solve

Azure Virtual Machines

Figure: Azure Virtual Machines gives you full control over virtual machine instances in the cloud.

The ability to create a virtual machine on demand, whether from a standard image or from one you supply, can be very useful This approach, commonly known as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), is what Azure Virtual Machines provides Figure 2 shows a combination of how an Virtual Machine (VM) runs and how to create one from a VHD

To create a VM, you specify which VHD to use and the VM's size You then pay for the time that the VM is running You pay by the minute and only while it's running, though there is a minimal storage charge for keeping the VHD available Azure offers a gallery of stock VHDs (called

"images") that contain a bootable operating system to start from These include Microsoft and partner options, such as Windows Server and Linux, SQL Server, Oracle and many more You're free to create VHDs and images, and then upload them yourself You can even upload VHDs that contain only data and then access them from your running VMs

Wherever the VHD comes from, you can persistently store any changes made while a VM is running The next time you create a VM from that VHD, things pick up where you left off The VHDs that back the Virtual Machines are stored in Azure Storage blobs, which we talk about later.That means you get redundancy to ensure your VMs won’t disappear due to hardware and disk failures It's also possible to copy the changed VHD out of Azure, then run it locally

Your application runs within one or more Virtual Machines, depending on how you created it before or decide to create it from scratch now

This quite general approach to cloud computing can be used to address many different problems

Virtual Machine Scenarios

1 Dev/Test - You might use them to create an inexpensive development and test platform that you

can shut down when you've finished using it You might also create and run applications that use whatever languages and libraries you like Those applications can use any of the data

management options that Azure provides, and you can also choose to use SQL Server or another DBMS running in one or more virtual machines

2 Move Applications to Azure (Lift-and-shift) - "Lift-and-shift" refers to moving you application

much like you'd use a forklift to move a large object You "lift" the VHD from your local

datacenter, and "shift" it to Azure and run it there You will typically have to do some work to remove dependencies on other systems If there are too many, you may choose option 3 instead

3 Extend your Datacenter - Use Azure VMs as an extension of your on-premises datacenter,

running SharePoint or other applications To support this, it's possible to create Windows domains

in the cloud by running Active Directory in Azure VMs You can use Azure Virtual Network

(mentioned later) to tie your local network and your network in Azure together

Websites

Figure: Azure Websites runs a website application in the cloud without having to manage the underlying web server.

One of the most common things that people do in the cloud is run websites and web applications.Azure Virtual Machines allows this, but it still leaves you with the responsibility of administering one or more VMs and the underlying operating systems Cloud services web roles can do this, butdeploying and maintaining them still takes administrative work What if you just want a website where somebody else takes care of the administrative work for you?

This is exactly what Azure Websites provides This compute model offers a managed web

environment using the Azure Management portal as well as APIs You can move an existing website application into Azure Websites unchanged, or you can create a new one directly in the cloud Once a website is running, you can add or remove instances dynamically, relying on Azure Websites to load balance requests across them Azure Websites offers both a shared option, where your website runs in a virtual machine with other sites, and a standard option that allows asite to run in its own VM The standard option also lets you increase the size (computing power)

of your instances if needed

For development, Websites supports NET, PHP, Node.js, Java and Python along with SQL

Database and MySQL (from ClearDB, a Microsoft partner) for relational storage It also provides built-in support for several popular applications, including WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal The goal is to provide a low-cost, scalable, and broadly useful platform for creating websites and web applications in the public cloud

WebSite Scenarios

Websites is intended to be useful for corporations, developers, and web design agencies For corporations, it's an easy-to-manage, scalable, highly secure, and highly available solution for running presence websites When you need to set up a Website, it’s best to start with Azure Websites and proceed to Cloud Services once you need a feature that’s not available in Websites.See the end of the "Compute" section for more links that can help you to choose between the options

Cloud Services

Figure: Azure Cloud Services provides a place to run highly scalable custom code on a Platform as a Service (PaaS) environment

Suppose you want to build a cloud application that can support lots of simultaneous users, doesn't require much administration, and never goes down You might be an established

software vendor, for example, that's decided to embrace Software as a Service (SaaS) by building

a version of one of your applications in the cloud Or you might be a start-up creating a consumerapplication that you expect will grow fast If you're building on Azure, which execution model should you use?

Azure Websites allows creating this kind of web application, but there are some constraints You don't have administrative access, for example, which means that you can't install arbitrary software Azure Virtual Machines gives you lots of flexibility, including administrative access, and you certainly can use it to build a very scalable application, but you'll have to handle many aspects of reliability and administration yourself What you'd like is an option that gives you the control you need but also handles most of the work required for reliability and administration.This is exactly what's provided by Azure Cloud Services This technology is designed expressly to support scalable, reliable, and low-admin applications, and it's an example of what's commonly called Platform as a Service (PaaS) To use it, you create an application using the technology you choose, such as C#, Java, PHP, Python, Node.js, or something else Your code then executes in virtual machines (referred to as instances) running a version of Windows Server

But these VMs are distinct from the ones you create with Azure Virtual Machines For one thing, Azure itself manages them, doing things like installing operating system patches and

automatically rolling out new patched images This implies that your application shouldn't

maintain state in web or worker role instances; it should instead be kept in one of the Azure data management options described in the next section Azure also monitors these VMs, restarting any that fail You can set cloud services to automatically create more or fewer instances in response to demand This allows you to handle increased usage, and then scale back so you aren’t paying as much when there is less usage

You have two roles to choose from when you create an instance, both based on Windows Server The main difference between the two is that an instance of a web role runs IIS, while an instance

of a worker role does not Both are managed in the same way, however, and it's common for an application to use both For example, a web role instance might accept requests from users, thenpass them to a worker role instance for processing To scale your application up or down, you canrequest that Azure create more instances of either role or shut down existing instances And similar to Azure Virtual Machines, you're charged only for the time that each web or worker role instance is running

Cloud Services Scenarios

Cloud Services are ideal to support massive scale out when you need more control over the platform than provided by Azure Websites but don’t need control over the underlying operating system

Choosing a Compute Model

The page Azure Websites, Cloud Services and Virtual Machines comparison

(http://azure.microsoft.com/documentation/articles/choose-web-site-cloud-service-vm/ ) provides more detailed information on how to choose a Compute model

Data Management

Applications need data, and different kinds of applications need different kinds of data Because

of this, Azure provides several different ways to store and manage data Azure provides many storage options, but all are designed for very durable storage With any of these options, there are always 3 copies of your data kept in sync across and Azure datacenter 6 if you allow Azure

to use geo-redundancy to back up to another datacenter at least 300 miles away

In Virtual Machines

The ability to run SQL Server or another DBMS in a VM created with Azure Virtual Machines has already been mentioned Realize that this option isn't limited to relational systems; you're also free to run NoSQL technologies such as MongoDB and Cassandra Running your own database system is straightforward-it replicates what we're used to in our own datacenters-but it also requires handling the administration of that DBMS In other options, Azure handles more or all of the administration for you

Again, the state of the Virtual Machine and any additional data disk you create or upload are backed by blob storage (which we talk about later)

Azure SQL Database

Figure: Azure SQL Database provides a managed relational database service in the cloud.

For relational storage, Azure provides the feature SQL Database Don't let the naming fool you This is different than a typical SQL Database provided by SQL Server running on top of Windows Server

Formerly called SQL Azure, Azure SQL Database provides all of the key features of a relational database management system, including atomic transactions, concurrent data access by

multiple users with data integrity, ANSI SQL queries, and a familiar programming model Like SQLServer, SQL Database can be accessed using Entity Framework, ADO.NET, JDBC, and other familiar data access technologies It also supports most of the T-SQL language, along with SQL Server tools such as SQL Server Management Studio For anybody familiar with SQL Server (or another relational database), using SQL Database is straightforward

But SQL Database isn't just a DBMS in the cloud-it's a PaaS service You still control your data andwho can access it, but SQL Database takes care of the administrative grunt work, such as

managing the hardware infrastructure and automatically keeping the database and operating system software up to date SQL Database also provides high availability, automatic backups, point-in-time restore capabilities, and can replicate copies across geographical regions

There is also a Premium option that you can pay a little more for so you can have your own dedicated server underneath With the Standard option, the database runs on shared hardware, which can throttle your database queries if you happen to be on a particularly busy server

Scenarios for SQL Database

If you're creating an Azure application (using any of the compute models) that needs relational storage, SQL Database can be a good option Applications running outside the cloud can also use this service, though, so there are plenty of other scenarios For instance, data stored in SQL Database can be accessed from different client systems, including desktops, laptops, tablets, andphones And because it provides built-in high availability through replication, using SQL Databasecan help minimize downtime

Tables

Figure: Azure Tables provides a flat NoSQL way to store data.

This feature is sometimes called different terms as it's part of a larger feature called "Azure Storage" If you see "tables", "Azure tables" or "storage tables", it's all the same thing

And don't be confused by the name: this technology doesn't provide relational storage In fact, it's an example of a NoSQL approach called a key/value store Azure Tables let an application store properties of various types, such as strings, integers, and dates An application can then retrieve a group of properties by providing a unique key for that group While complex operationslike joins aren't supported, tables offer fast access to typed data They're also very scalable, with

a single table able to hold as much as a terabyte of data And matching their simplicity, tables are usually less expensive to use than SQL Database's relational storage

Scenarios for Tables

Suppose you want to create an Azure application that needs fast access to typed data, maybe lots of it, but doesn't need to perform complex SQL queries on this data For example, imagine you're creating a consumer application that needs to store customer profile information for each user Your app is going to be very popular, so you need to allow for lots of data, but you won't do much with this data beyond storing it, then retrieving it in simple ways This is exactly the kind ofscenario where Azure Tables makes sense

Blobs

Figure: Azure Blobs provides unstructured binary data.

Azure Blobs (again "Blob Storage" and just "Storage Blobs" are the same thing) is designed to store unstructured binary data Like Tables, Blobs provides inexpensive storage, and a single blob can be as large as 1TB (one terabyte) Azure applications can also use Azure drives, which let blobs provide persistent storage for a Windows file system mounted in an Azure instance The application sees ordinary Windows files, but the contents are actually stored in a blob

Blob storage is used by many other Azure features (including Virtual Machines), so it can

certainly handle your workloads too

Scenarios for Blobs

An application that stores video, massive files, or other binary information can use blobs for simple, cheap storage Blobs are also commonly used in conjunction with other services like Content Delivery Network, which we will talk about later

Import / Export

Figure: Azure Import / Export provides the ability to ship a physical hard drive to or from Azure for faster and cheaper bulk data import or export.

Sometimes you want to move a lot of data into Azure That would take a long time, perhaps days,and use a lot of bandwidth In these cases you can use Azure Import/Export, which allows you to ship Bitlocker-encrypted 3.5" SATA hard drives directly to Azure data centers, where Microsoft will transfer the data into blob storage for you After the upload is completed, Microsoft ships the drives back to you You can also request that large amounts of data from Blob Storage be

exported onto hard drives and sent back to you via mail

Scenarios for Import / Export

 Large Data Migration - Anytime you have large amounts of data (Terabytes) that you want to

upload to Azure, the Import/Export service is often much faster and perhaps cheaper than

transferring it over the internet Once the data is in blobs, you can process it into other forms such as Table storage or an SQL Database

 Archived Data Recovery - You can use Import/Export to have Microsoft transfer large amounts

of data stored in Azure Blob Storage to a storage device that you send and then have that device delivered back to a location you desire Because this will take some time, it's not a good option for disaster recovery It's best for archived data that you don't need quick access to

Azure File Service

Figure: Azure File Services provides SMB \\server\share paths for applications running

in the cloud.

On-premises, it’s common to have large amounts of file storage accessible through the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol using a \\Server\share format Azure now has a service that allows you to use this protocol in the cloud Applications running in Azure can use it to share files between VMs using familiar file system APIs like ReadFile and WriteFile In addition, the files can also be accessed at the same time via a REST interface, which allows you to access the shares from on-premises when you also set up a virtual network Azure Files is built on top of the blob service, so it inherits the same availability, durability, scalability, and geo-redundancy built into Azure Storage

Scenarios for Azure Files

 Migrating existing apps to the cloud - Its easier to migrate on-premises applications to the

cloud that use file shares to share data between parts of the application Each VM connects to the file share and then it can read and write files just like it would against an on-premises file share

 Shared Application Settings - A common pattern for distributed applications is to have

configuration files in a centralized location where they can be accessed from many different virtual machines These configuration files can be stored in an Azure File share, and read by all application instances The settings can also be managed via the REST interface, which allows worldwide access to the configuration files

 Diagnostic Share - You can save and share diagnostic files like logs, metrics, and crash dumps

Having these files available through both the SMB and REST interface allows applications to use avariety of analysis tools for processing and analyzing the diagnostic data

 Dev/Test/Debug - When developers or administrators are working on virtual machines in the

cloud, they often need a set of tools or utilities Installing and distributing these utilities on each virtual machine is time consuming With Azure Files, a developer or administrator can store their favorite tools on a file share and connect to them from any virtual machine

Networking

Azure runs today in many datacenters spread across the world When you run an application or store data, you can select one or more of these datacenters to use You can also connect to thesedatacenters in various ways using the services below

Virtual Network

Figure: Virtual Networks provides a private network in the cloud so different services can talk to each other, or to on-premises resources if you set up a VPN connection.a cross-premises connection.

One useful way to use a public cloud is to treat it as an extension of your own datacenter

Because you can create VMs on demand, then remove them (and stop paying) when they're no longer needed, you can have computing power only when you want it And since Azure Virtual Machines lets you create VMs running SharePoint, Active Directory, and other familiar on-

premises software, this approach can work with the applications you already have

To make this really useful, though, your users ought to be able to treat these applications as if they were running in your own datacenter This is exactly what Azure Virtual Network allows Using a VPN gateway device, an administrator can set up a virtual private network (VPN) betweenyour local network and your VMs that are deployed to a virtual network in Azure Because you assign your own IP v4 addresses to the cloud VMs, they appear to be on your own network Users

in your organization can access the applications those VMs contain as if they were running locally

For more information about planning and creating a virtual network that works for you,

see Virtual Network

Express Route

Figure: ExpressRoute uses an Azure Virtual Network, but routes connections through faster dedicated lines instead of the public Internet.

If you need more bandwidth or security than an Azure Virtual Network connection can provide, you can look into ExpressRoute In some cases, ExpressRoute can also save you money You’ll still need a virtual network in Azure, but the link between Azure and your site uses a dedicated connection that does not go over the public Internet In order to use this service, you’ll need to have an agreement with either a network service provider, or an exchange provider

Setting it up an ExpressRoute connection requires more time and planning, so you might want to start with a site-to-site VPN, then migrate to an ExpressRoute connection

For more information about ExpressRoute, see ExpressRoute Technical Overview

Traffic Manager

Figure : Azure Traffic Manager allows you to route global traffic to your service based

on intelligent rules.

If your Azure application is running in multiple datacenters, you can use Azure Traffic Manager to route requests from users intelligently across instances of the application You can also route traffic to services not running in Azure as long as they are accessible from the internet

An Azure application with users in just a single part of the world might run in only one Azure datacenter An application with users scattered around the world, however, is more likely to run

in multiple datacenters, maybe even all of them In this second situation, you face a problem: How do you intelligently direct users to application instances? Most of the time, you probably want each user to access the datacenter closest to her, since it will likely give her the best response time But what if that instance of the application is overloaded or unavailable? In this case, it would be nice to direct her request automatically to another datacenter This is exactly what's done by Azure Traffic Manager

The owner of an application defines rules that specify how requests from users should be

directed to datacenters, then relies on Traffic Manager to carry out these rules For example, users might normally be directed to the closest Azure datacenter, but get sent to another one when the response time from their default datacenter exceeds the response time from other datacenters For globally distributed applications with many users, having a built-in service to handle problems like these is useful

Traffic manager uses Directory Name Service (DNS) to route users to service endpoints, but further traffic does not go through Traffic Manager once that connection is made This keeps Traffic Manager from being a bottleneck that might slow down your service communications

Developer Services

Azure offers a number of tools to help developers and IT Professional create and maintain

applications in the cloud

Azure SDK

Back in 2008, the very first pre-release version of Azure supported only NET development Today, however, you can create Azure applications in pretty much any language Microsoft currently provides language-specific SDKs for NET, Java, PHP, Node.js, Ruby, and Python There'salso a general Azure SDK that provides basic support for any language, such as C++

These SDKs help you build, deploy, and manage Azure applications They're available either from www.microsoftazure.com or GitHub, and they can be used with Visual Studio and Eclipse Azure also offers command line tools that developers can use with any editor or development environment, including tools for deploying applications to Azure from Linux and Macintosh systems

Along with helping you build Azure applications, these SDKs also provide client libraries that help you create software that uses Azure services For example, you might build an application that reads and writes Azure blobs, or create a tool that deploys Azure applications through the Azure management interface

Visual Studio Online

Visual Studio Online is an marketing name covering a number services which help to develop applications in the Azure

To avoid confusion - It does not provide a hosted or Web-based version of Visual Studio You still need your local running copy of Visual Studio But it provides many other tools which can be veryhelpful

It does include a hosted source control system called Team Foundation Service, which offers version control and work item tracking You can even use Git for version control if you prefer that.And you can vary the source control system you use by project You can create unlimited private team projects accessible from anywhere in the world

Visual Studio Online provides a load testing service You can execute load tests created in Visual Studio on VMs in the cloud You specify the total number of users you want to load test with, and Visual Studio Online will automatically determine how many agents are needed, spin up the required virtual machines and execute your load tests If you're an MSDN subscriber, you get thousands of free user-minutes of load testing each month

Visual Studio Online also offers a service called Application Insights, which gives you an analysis

of your entire application It provides stats on performance and how your application is being used If you are already using System Center Operations Manager, it can also hook to it and raise alerts when issues arise

Additionally, there is support for agile development with features like continuous integration builds, Kanban boards and virtual team rooms

Visual Studio Online Scenarios

Visual Studio Online is a good option for companies that need to collaborate worldwide and don't already have the infrastructure in place to do so You can get setup in minutes, choose a source control system and start writing code and building that day The team tools provide a place for coordination and collaboration and the additional tools provide the analysis needed to test and tune your application quickly

But organizations that already have an on-premises system can test new projects on Visual Studio Online to see if it's more efficient

Automation

No one likes to waste time doing the same manual processes over and over Azure Automation provides a way for you to create, monitor, manage, and deploy resources in your Azure

environment

Automation uses "runbooks", which uses Windows PowerShell workflows (vs just regular

PowerShell) under the covers Runbooks are meant to be executed without user interaction PowerShell workflows allows the state of a script to be saved at checkpoints along the way Then

if a failure occurs, you don't have to start a script from the beginning You can restart it at the last checkpoint This saves you a lot of work trying to make the script handle every possible failure

Automation Scenarios

Azure Automation is a good choice to automate the manual, long-running, error-prone, and frequently repeated tasks in Azure.

API Management

Creating and publishing Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs) on the internet is a common way to provide services to applications If those services are resellable (for example, weather data), an organization can allow other third parties to access those same services for a fee As you scale to more partners, you'll usually need to optimize and control access Some partners may even need the data in a different format

Azure API Management makes it easy for organizations to publish APIs to partners, employees and third-party developers securely and at scale It provides a different API endpoint and acts as

a proxy to call the actual endpoint whild providing services like caching, transformation,

throttling, access control, and analytics aggregation

API Management Scenarios

Let's say your company has a set of devices that all need to call back to a central service to get data for example, a shipping company that has devices in every truck on the road Certainly the company will want to set up a system to track it's own trucks so it can reliably predict and update delivery times It can know how many trucks it has and plan appropriately Each truck willneed a device that calls back to a central location with it's positioning and speed data, and perhaps more

A customer of the shipping company would probably also benefit from getting this positioning data The customer could use it to know how far products have to travel, where they get stuck, how much they paying along certain routes (if combined with what they paid to ship) If the shipping company aggregates this data already, many customers might pay for it But then the shipping company needs to provide a way to give customers the data Once they provide access

to customers, they may not have control over how often the data is queried They will have to provide rules about who can access what data All of these rules would have to be built into their external API This is where API Management can help

Identity and Access

Working with identity is part of most applications Knowing who a user is lets an application decide how it should interact with that user Azure provides services to help track identity as well

as integrate it with identity stores you may already be using