Deployment of Microsoft Azure Cloud Solutions: A complete guide to cloud development using Microsoft Azure

Deployment of Microsoft Azure Cloud Solutions

A complete guide to cloud development using

Microsoft Azure

Florian Klaffenbach  

Jan-Henrik Damaschke 

Oliver Michalski

Ritesh Modi

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI

Deployment of Microsoft Azure Cloud Solutions

Copyright © 2018 Packt Publishing

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First published: December 2018

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Contributors

About the authors

Florian Klaffenbach started in 2004 with his IT carrier as 1st & 2nd Level IT Support Technician and IT Salesman Trainee for a B2B online shop. After that he changed to a small company working as IT Project Manager, planning, implementing & integration from industrial plants & laundries into enterprise IT. After spending some years, he changed his path to for Dell Germany. There he started from scratch as Enterprise technical Support Analyst and later worked on a project to start Dell technical Communities and support over social Media in Europe and outside of the U.S.

Currently he is working as Technology Solutions Professional for Microsoft specialized on Hybrid Microsoft Cloud Infrastructure. Additionally, to his job engagement he is active as Microsoft Blogger and Lecturer. He blogs for example on his own page Datacenter-Flo.de or Brocade Germany Community. Together with a very good friend, he founded the Windows Server User Group Berlin to create network of Microsoft ITPros in Berlin.

Florian is maintaining a very tight network to many vendors like Cisco, Dell or Microsoft and Communities. That helps him to grow his experience and to get the best out of a solution for his customers. Since 2016 he is also Co-Chairman of the Azure Community Germany. In April 2016 Microsoft awarded Florian as Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for Cloud and Datacenter Management. In 2017 after joining Microsoft, Florian became MVP reconnect member.

Jan-Henrik Damaschke is an IT Consultant for Security, Network, and Infrastructure from Germany. He was MVP awarded in the categories of Enterprise Security, PowerShell, and AzureStack. PKI implementation and management is one of his core competencies as well as cloud-related security. He writes articles on security-related topics and is involved in many community events as a speaker as well as an organizer. He is passionate about sharing knowledge with others. For this purpose, he is member of the Microsoft Student Partner program and is engaged on forums and on other platforms. Currently, he is writing a book on Azure infrastructure solutions.

Oliver Michalski started in 1999 with his IT career as a Web Developer. Now, he is a Senior Software Engineer for Microsoft .NET and an SOA Architect. He also works as an Independent Enterprise Consultant in the field Microsoft Azure. When he started in 2011 with Microsoft Azure, there was no Azure Community on the German market. Therefore, Oliver founded the Azure Community Germany (ACD). Oliver is Chairman of the Azure Community Germany, and since April 2016 he has been a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for Microsoft Azure.

Ritesh Modi is an ex Microsoft senior technology evangelist and Microsoft regional lead. He has worked on Ethereum and Solidity, extensively helping and advising companies. Ritesh is a regular speaker on blockchain and Solidity at conferences and local meetups. He is an architect, evangelist, speaker, and a known leader for his contributions toward blockchain, data centers, Azure Bots, cognitive services, DevOps, Artificial Intelligence, and automation. He is the author of five books.

About the reviewers

Sebastian Durandeu is a senior software engineer with a primary focus on building applications and services for the Cloud using Microsoft technologies. He works at Southworks, a high-end software development company that helps businesses leverage the latest technologies. There he has worked closely with several Microsoft divisions helping the developer community adopt emerging technologies using recommended practices. Sebastian currently lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina where he is an active contributor in the developer community. 

Rafael dos Santos Christian, Geysla’s husband, Ted’s father, Entrepreneur, Developer, Cloud specialist. 10 years experience developing and architecting web based solutions.

Paul Glavich has been an ASP.NET MVP for 13 years and currently works as a principal consultant for Readify. Previously, he was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Saasu, a solution architect at Datacom, then the senior consultant for Readify, and prior to that was a technical architect for EDS Australia. He has over 20 years of industry experience ranging from PICK, C, C++, Delphi, and Visual Basic 3/4/5/6 to his current specialty in .NET with C#, ASP.NET, Azure, Cloud, and DevOps.

Paul has been developing in .NET technologies since .NET was first in beta, and was a technical architect for one of the world's first internet banking solutions using .NET technology. Paul can be seen on various .NET-related newsgroups, has presented at the Sydney .NET user group and TechEd, and is also a member of ASPInsiders. He has also written some technical articles, which can be seen on community sites such as ASP Alliance. Paul has authored a total of three books, Beginning AJAX in ASP.NET, Beginning Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX, and the latest book on .NET Performance Testing and Optimisation. He is currently focusing on overall architecture, solution design, and Microsoft Cloud solutions. On a more personal note, Paul is married with three children, three grandkids, holds a 5thdegree black belt in Budo-Jitsu and also practices Wing Chun Kung fu.

Vikram Pendse is a Microsoft MVP for Azure and has been a distinguished speaker at various Microsoft events over the last 10 years. He is a very active member of various Microsoft communities in India. He is a cloud solutions architect and is currently working with one of the leading Microsoft Partners in Pune, where he is responsible for building the strategy for moving Amazon AWS workloads to Azure, providing cloud-centric solutions, architecture, supporting RFPs, and global deliveries.

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Deployment of Microsoft Azure Cloud Solutions

About Packt

Why Subscribe?

Packt.com

Contributors

About the authors

About the reviewers

Packt is searching for authors like you

Preface

Who This Book Is For

What This Book Covers

To Get the Most out of This Book

What You Need for This Book

Conventions

Get in Touch

Reviews

Getting Started with Azure Implementation

Service Models

Deployment Models

Cloud Characteristics

Microsoft Azure

Azure Services Overview

Azure Basics

Azure Resource Manager

Resources

Azure Regions

Azure Portal

Azure Automation

Azure Automation Tools

REST APIs

Summary

Azure Resource Manager and Tools

Understanding the Azure Resource Manager

Functionalities Provided by the Azure Resource Manager

Working with the Azure Resource Manager

Creating an Azure Resource Group

Adding a Resource to an Azure Resource Group

First Approach: Adding a Storage Account to your Azure Resource Group

Second Approach: Adding a Storage Account to your Azure Resource Group

Third Approach: Adding a Storage Account to your Azure Resource Group

Tagging in the Azure Resource Manager

Locking Azure resources

Azure Resource Locks

Working with ARM Templates

Exporting a Deployment as an ARM Template (for IT pros)

Example 1:  Exporting a Resource Group to an ARM Template

Example 2:  Exporting a Resource (from the Deployment History) to an ARM Template

Example 3:  Exporting a Resource (Classic) to an ARM Template

Modifying an ARM Template

Authoring an ARM Template

Creating your own ARM Template (for Developers)

Azure Resource Explorer

Summary

Deploying and Synchronizing Azure Active Directory

Azure Active Directory

Azure Active Directory Options

Azure AD Free

Azure AD Basic

Azure AD Premium P1

Deploying a Custom Azure AD

Adding Accounts and Groups to Azure AD

Installing Azure AD Connect: Prerequisites

Installing Basic Azure AD Connect Environment

Azure AD Connect High Available Infrastructure

Summary

Implementing Azure Networks

Azure Networking Limits

Azure Networking Components

Azure Virtual Networks (VNet)

VNet Peering

Azure VPN Gateways

Azure Local Gateway

Azure ExpressRoute

Azure Global Points of Presence

National Azure Points of Presence

Azure Connections

Azure Routes

Azure Third-Party Network Devices

Azure Load Balancer

Hash-Based Distribution

Port Forwarding

Automatic Reconfiguration

Service Monitoring

Azure Application Gateways

Azure Traffic Manager

Azure DNS

Setting up Azure Networks

Setting up Azure VNet

Setting up Azure Virtual Network Site-to-Site VPN

Configuring Local Network Gateway

Configuring Azure Virtual Network Gateway

Configuring Connection Between Local and Virtual Network Gateways

Setting up Azure Virtual Network with MPLS and ExpressRoute

Configuring Azure Virtual Network Gateway

Configuring Azure ExpressRoute Circuit

Configuring Connection Between ExpressRoute Circuit and Azure Virtual Gateway

Setting up Azure VNet Peering

Preparing the Deployment

Configuring VNet Peering

Configuring Custom Routes

Configuring Third-Party Network Appliances

Common Azure Network Architectures

Summary

Implementing and Securing Azure Storage Accounts

Storage Accounts

General Purpose Storage Account

Blob Storage Account

Replication and Redundancy

Locally Redundant Storage

Zone-Redundant Storage

Geo-Redundant Storage

Read-Access Geo-Redundant Storage

Azure Storage Services

Blob Storage Services

Table Storage Services

Queue Storage Services

File Storage Services

Access Keys

Exploring Azure Storage with Azure Storage Explorer

Premium Storage Account

Premium Storage Requirements

Pricing

Summary

Planning and Deploying Virtual Machines in Azure

Azure Virtual Machine Types

A-series Virtual Machines

D-series and DS-series Virtual Machines

F-series and FS-series Virtual Machines

G-series and GS-series Virtual Machines

H-series Virtual Machines

NV-series and NC-series Virtual Machines

NV Virtual Machines

NC Virtual Machines

Ls-series Virtual Machines

Virtual Machine Extensions

Managed Disks

Availability Sets

Deploying a Virtual Machine in Azure

Accessing a Virtual Machine in Azure

Changing IP and DNS Settings

Common Scenarios for Virtual Machines

Optimization of Azure Related Communication Traffic

On-demand Usage for Calculations

Disaster Recovery for On-Premises Servers

Summary

Implementing Azure Cloud Services

What is an Azure Cloud Service?

Understanding the Cloud Service Architecture

Roles

The Service Endpoint

Going Deeper into the Cloud Services

Service Definition File

LoadBalancerProbes

WebRole

WorkerRole

NetworkTrafficRules

Service Configuration File

Role

NetworkConfiguration

Azure Cloud Services versus other Azure PaaS Offerings, such as Azure App Services

Selection of a Guest OS and an Update Level

Selection of an Azure Series

Series A

Series D

series F

series G

series N

Series H

In a nutshell

Creating your first Azure cloud service

Part 1

Part 2

Summary

Implementing Azure Container Service

What is an Azure Container Service?

Understanding Containers

Cluster

Orchestrator

Mesosphere DC/OS

Docker Swarm

Kubernetes

Creating your First Azure Container Service

How to Work with Your Azure Container Service Cluster

Summary

Implementing Azure Security

Azure Identity Security

Azure Active Directory

Azure Active Directory Editions

Privileged Identity Management

Identity Protection

Detection of Vulnerabilities and Potential Risky Accounts

Investigation of Potential Suspicious Events

Multi-factor Authentication

Conditional Access

Resource Security

Role-Based Access Control

Resource Tags and Policies

Azure Network Security

Network Security Groups

Priority

Source

Destination

Network Virtual Appliances

Azure Storage Security

Key Management

Shared Access Signatures

Service-Level SAS

Account-Level SAS

Storage Encryption

Storage Account Encryption

Azure Disk Encryption

Logging and Monitoring

Azure Logs

Azure Security Center

Summary

Azure Design Patterns

Azure Zones and Regions

Availability of Resources

Data and Privacy Compliance

Performance of Applications

Cost of Running Applications

Virtual Network

Architectural Considerations for Virtual Networks

Benefits of Virtual Networks

Virtual Network Design

Connecting to Resources within the Same Region and Subscription

Connecting to Resources within the Same Region in Another Subscription

Connecting to Resources in Different Regions in Another Subscription

Connecting to On-Premise Data Centers

Storage

Storage Categories

Storage Types

Storage Features

Architectural Considerations for Storage Accounts

Design Patterns

Messaging Patterns

Competing Consumers

Priority Queue

Queue-Based Load Leveling Pattern

Performance and Scalability patterns

The Command and Query Responsibility Segregation (CQRS) Pattern

Throttling Pattern

Other Patterns

Retry Pattern

Circuit Breaker Pattern

Summary

Designing High Availability

High Availability

SLA

Factors Affecting High Availability

Planned Maintenance

Unplanned Maintenance

Application Deployment Architecture

High Availability versus scalability

High Availability versus Disaster Recovery

Azure High Availability

Concepts

Availability Sets

Fault Domain

Update Domain

Availability Zones

Load Balancing

Virtual Machine High Availability

Computing High Availability

Storage High Availability

PaaS High Availability

Application High Availability

Load Balancing

Azure Load Balancers

Public Load Balancing

Internal Load Balancing

Port Forwarding

Azure Application Gateways

Azure Traffic Manager

Architectural Considerations for High Availability

High Availability within Azure regions

High Availability across Azure regions

Best Practices

Application High Availability

Deployment

Data Management

Monitoring

Summary

Implementing Scalability

Scalability

Scalability versus Performance

Azure Scalability

Concepts

Scaling

Scaling Up

Scaling Down

Scaling Out

Scaling In

Auto Scaling

PaaS Scalability

PaaS Scaling Up and Down

PaaS Scaling Out and In

IaaS Scalability

Virtual Machine Scale Sets

VMSS Architecture

VMSS Scaling

Horizontal versus Vertical Scaling

Capacity

Auto Scaling

Upgrades

Application Updates

Guest Updates

Image Updates

Scaling Best Practices

Prefer Scaling Out

Bare Metal versus Dormant Instances

Configuring Maximum and Minimum Number of Instances Appropriately

Concurrency

Stateless

Caching and CDN

N+1 Design

Summary

Designing IoT Solutions

IoT

IoT Architecture

Connectivity

Identity

Capture

Ingestion

Storage

Transform

Analytics

Presentation

Azure IoT

Identity

Capture

Ingestion

Storage

Transform and Analytics

Presentation

IoT Hubs

Protocols

Device Registration

Message Management

Device to Cloud Messaging

Cloud to Device Messaging

Security

Security in IoT

Scalability

Sku Edition

Units

High Availability

Summary

Designing and Implementing Data Solutions

Azure SQL

Azure SQL Availability

Azure SQL Security

Elastic Pools

Azure SQL Scaling Out

Stream Analytics

Data Sources

Data Integration

Data Transformation

Stream Analytics Engine

Storage and Presentation

Architecture

Azure Data Factory

Data Sources

Data Transformation

Publish and Presentation

Using Data Factory

Azure Data Lake

Azure Data Lake store

Data Lake Security

Data Lake Performance

Azure Data Lake Analytics

Azure SQL Data Warehouse

Table Storage

Summary

Designing and Implementing Serverless Solutions

A Short History of Serverless

Serverless

Principles of Serverless Technology

Lower Cost

Event-Driven

Single Responsibility

Execute Quickly

Azure Functions or Functions-as-a-Service (FaaS)

Azure Functions Runtime, Bindings, and Triggers

Azure Function Runtime

Azure Function Binding and Triggers

Azure Function Proxies

Monitoring

Authentication and Authorization

Azure Function Configuration

Platform Configuration

App Services Function Settings

Azure Function Cost Plans

Azure Functions Advantages

Azure Functions Use Cases

Implementing Microservices

Integration Between Multiple Endpoints

Data Processing

Integrating Legacy Applications

Scheduled Jobs

Communication Gateways

Types of Azure Functions

Creating Your first Azure Function

Creating an Event-Driven Function

Creating a Connected Architecture with Functions

Summary

Designing Policies, Locks, and Tags

Azure Tags

Tags with PowerShell

Tags with the ARM Template

Resource Groups versus Resources

Azure Policies

Built-in Policies

Policy Language

Allowed Fields

Azure Locks

Azure RBAC

Custom Roles

How is it Different from RBAC?

Examples of Implementing Azure Governance Features

Background

Role-Based Access Control

Summary

DevOps on Azure

What is DevOps?

DevOps Practices

Configuration Management

Desired State Configuration

Chef, Puppet, and Ansible

Azure Resource Manager Templates

Continuous Integration

Build Automation

Test Automation

Packaging

Continuous Deployment

Test Environment Deployment

Test Automation

Staging Environment Deployment

Acceptance Tests

Deployment to Production

Continuous Delivery

Continuous Learning

Visual Studio Team Services

Team Foundation Version Control

GIT

Preparing for DevOps

Provision VSTS Account

Provision Azure Key Vault

Provisioning a Configuration Management Server

Provisioning Log Analytics

Azure Storage Account

Images

Monitoring Tools

Management tools

DevOps for PaaS Solutions

Azure App Services

Deployment Slots

Azure SQL

Build and Release Pipeline

DevOps for Virtual Machine (IaaS) Based Solutions

Azure Virtual Machine

Azure Public Load Balancer

Build Pipeline

Release Pipeline

DevOps for Container Based (IaaS) Solutions

Containers

Docker

DockerFile

Build Pipeline

Release Pipeline

Azure Automation

Provision Azure Automation Account

Author DSC Configuration

Importing DSC Configuration

Compiling DSC Configuration

Assigning Configuration to Nodes

Browse the Server

Azure for DevOps

Summary

Other Books You May Enjoy

Leave a Review - Let Other Readers Know What You Think

Preface

This learning path will guide you through all the important and tough decision-making aspects involved in architecturing a Azure public cloud for your organization. The book starts with an extensive introduction to all the categories of designs available with Azure. These design patterns focus on different aspects of cloud such as high availability, data management, and so on.

You will move on to various aspects such as building your cloud structure and architecture. It will also include a brief description about different types of services provided by Azure, such as Azure functions and Azure Analytics, which can prove beneficial for an organization. This book will cover each and every aspect and function required to develop an Azure cloud based on your organizational requirements.

By the end, you will be able to develop a full-fledged Azure cloud as well as implement Azure solutions such as networking, storage, and cloud effectively.

Who This Book Is For

This book focuses on providing essential information about the implementation of Azure solutions to software architects, developers, and IT professionals. The technical information will be offered to you in an intermediate and expert level. Basic knowledge is not necessary, but it is useful for a better understanding of the text. Therefore, some knowledge of programming languages is recommended.

What This Book Covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Azure Implementation, provides an overview of cloud service models, cloud deployment models, cloud characteristics, and Azure services.

Chapter 2, Azure Resource Manager and Tools, explains all about the Azure Resource Manager and its concepts (Azure Resource Groups, Azure Resource Tags, and Locks). You will also get an introduction to working with the ARM Templates area.

Chapter 3, Deploying and Synchronizing Azure Active Directory, gives you an overview of the deployment, management, and functionalities of Azure Active Directory and its relation to a Microsoft Azure subscription.

Chapter 4, Implementing Azure Networks, explains how networking in Azure works, how to plan Azure network components, and how to deploy different network components within Azure.

Chapter 5, Implementing and Securing Azure Storage Accounts, explains all about Azure Storage Management and its concepts (BLOBs, tables, queues, and files). You will also get some basic storage configurations.

Chapter 6, Planning and Deploying Virtual Machines in Azure, demonstrates the difference between the Azure virtual machine types, the common use cases for the different types, and how to deploy virtual machines.

Chapter 7, Implementing Azure Cloud Services, explains all about Azure Cloud Services, the Cloud Service architecture, Azure Cloud Services versus Azure App Services, and how to create your first Cloud Service.

Chapter 8, Implementing Azure Container Service, provides basic knowledge about the Azure Container Service area and how to create your first container service. You will also learn the necessary steps to work with the service afterward.

Chapter 9, Implementing Azure Security, explains all about Azure security concepts (identity management with Azure AD, Role-based Access Control (RBAC), and Azure Storage security) and the Azure Security Center.

Chapter 10, Azure Design Patterns, talks about Azure cloud patterns related to virtual networks, storage accounts, regions, and availability sets. It also briefly discusses cloud patterns that help in implementing scalability and performance. Messaging patterns help with the building of reliable solutions. Messaging patterns will also be focused in this chapter.

Chapter 11, Designing High Availability, focuses on describing the high availability features available on Azure. Enterprises need high availability for their deployments. This chapter will build a solid foundation on high availability concepts and help the user make informed decisions related to IaaS and PaaS deployment strategies.

Chapter 12, Implementing Scalability, focuses on designing solutions that can automatically increase and decrease the available resources based on its current consumption to maintain its performance levels. Azure provides virtual machine scale sets (VMSS) for deploying highly scalable solutions. This chapter focuses on VMSS-based architecture and deployment. It will also describe PaaS-based scalability and its strategies.

Chapter 13, Designing IoT Solutions, provides in-depth information about implementing an IoT solution using the Azure cloud. The Azure cloud provides a complete IoT platform for developing device-based solutions. This chapter will show how to architect IoT-based solutions using the Azure cloud. It will also describe architectural concerns that every architect should keep in mind while creating a solution. This chapter will discuss topics related to IoT hubs, event hubs, registering devices, a device to platform conversation, and logging and routing them to appropriate destinations.

Chapter 14, Designing and Implementing Data Solutions, dedicates itself to data storage and services. Azure provides multiple features related to data services. This chapter will focus on providing insights about which features and resources to use for different types of solutions, and their pros, cons, and advantages. A complete architecture for ingesting data, cleaning and filtering data, and storing it in appropriate data stores, such as Data Lake and Cosmos DB, and then pushing data to Power BI for visualizing will be part of this chapter.

Chapter 15, Designing and Implementing Serverless Solutions, focuses on serverless computing. Azure functions are a versatile platform for hosting small business functionalities as functions and help in weaving solutions together. This chapter will focus on understanding the serverless paradigm, Azure functions, its capabilities, creating solutions by combining multiple functions, understanding triggers and parameters, and different sources of inputs and outputs.

Chapter 16, Designing Policies, Locks, and Tags, focuses on using the management features provided by Azure to implement better manage deployments. Tags help by adding additional metadata information to Azure resources. They also help by providing information architecture regarding Azure resources. This chapter provides design guidelines for defining tags for deployments. It also provides details about policies and locks to restrict and control Azure resources regarding their location, usage, size, accessibility, permissions, and so on. It is an important concept, providing management control over Azure resources.

Chapter 17, DevOps on Azure, dedicates itself to DevOps. The Azure cloud provides rich tools, utilities, and scripting support to enable automation for DevOps. Azure supports Azure Resource Manager templates, desired state configuration, PowerShell, Rest API, and open source technologies such as Chef, Python, and Linux to devise end-to-end automation of continuous integration, delivery, and deployment. Infrastructure as Code and configuration management is also supported inherently using Azure features such as Azure automation. This chapter will focus on building CI/CD pipelines and configuration management for Azure resources using VSTS.

To Get the Most out of This Book

This book is essentially intended for cloud architects, developers, consultants, and DevOps engineers who are using Azure to provide their services to end customers and employers. If you are also willing to architect complete solutions on Azure, then this book is ideal for you. If you already have some experience with a architecture on Azure, this book can help you to speed up with it in a fast-paced way.

What You Need for This Book

Learning from a book only works if you have the opportunity to implement what you have learned in practice. That's why you need an Azure subscription. To do this without any cost, you can use a free Azure trial from https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/. To understand parts of the book, you also need an installation of Visual Studio. You can use any edition of Visual Studio. To avoid unnecessary costs, it is recommend using the free Visual Studio Community Edition from https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/. If you think you do not possess that knowledge, it is always possible to catch up on the basic requirements by quickly reading up on the major components from the Azure documentation at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/. 

This book assumes a basic level of knowledge on cloud computing and Azure. All you need is a valid Azure subscription and internet connectivity to use this book. A Windows 10 operating system having 4 GB of RAM is sufficient for using Powershell and executing ARM templates.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: The current project consists of three artifacts in two solution folders, Templates and Scripts.

A block of code is set as follows:

parameters: {

    storageAccountName: {

    type: string,

    metadata: {

    description: Storage Account Name

        }

    }

}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

  description: Storage Account Name"

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "Notice how the white dress price was used to pad the missing values."

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.

Get in Touch

Feedback from our readers is always welcome.

General feedback: Email [email protected] and mention the book title in the subject of your message. If you have questions about any aspect of this book, please email us at [email protected].

Errata: Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you have found a mistake in this book, we would be grateful if you would report this to us. Please visit www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details.

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Getting Started with Azure Implementation

Cloud services have come a long way in the last 5 to 10 years. Cloud was and still is one of the biggest trends in Information Technology (IT), with new topics still to be discovered.

In the early 2000s, cloud computing wasn't a widely used phrase, but the concept as well as data centers with massive computing power were already existent and used. Later in that decade, the word cloud became a buzzword for nearly anything that was not tangible or online. But the real rise of cloud computing with all its different service models happened before, when the big IT companies started their cloud offers. That was Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in particular. As the cloud offers developed, they enabled companies from startups to Fortune 500s to use cloud services, from web services to virtual machines with billing exact to the minute.

In this chapter, we'll explore the following topics:

Cloud service models

Cloud deployment models

Cloud characteristics

Azure services overview

Service Models

Cloud computing the new trend model for enabling workloads, that use resources from a a normally extreme huge resource pool, that is operated by a cloud service provider. These resources include servers, storage, network resources, applications, services or even functions. These can be rapidly deployed, operated and automated with a low effort and the prices are calculated on a minute base. This cloud model is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.

Cloud offers are mainly categorized into the following service models:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Infrastructure as a Service describes a model in which the cloud provider gives the consumer the possibility to create and configure resources from the computing layer upwards. This includes virtual machines, networks, appliances, and many other infrastructure-related resources:

The most popular IaaS resources in Azure contain virtual machines, virtual networks (internal and external), container services and storage.

Platform as a Service (PaaS): Platform as a Service gives the consumer an environment from the operating system upwards. So, the consumer is not responsible for the underlying IaaS infrastructure. Examples are operating systems, databases, or development frameworks:

Microsoft Azure contains many PaaS resources such as SQL databases, Azure app services, or cloud services.

Software as a Service (SaaS): Software as a Service is the model with the lowest levels of control and required management. A SaaS application is reachable from multiple clients and consumers, and the owning consumer doesn't have any control over the backend, except for some application related management tasks.

Examples of SaaS applications are Office 365, Visual Studio Online, Outlook website, OneDrive, and even the Amazon website itself is a SaaS app with Amazon as its own consumer.

A comparison of service model responsibilities is as follows:

Cloud service models

Deployment Models

Furthermore, there are a number of deployment models for cloud computing that need to be discussed. These deployment models cover nearly all common cloud computing provider scenarios. They describe the group of consumers that are able to use the services of the cloud service, rather than the institution or the underlying infrastructure:

Public Cloud: A Public Cloud describes a cloud computing offer that can be accessed by the public. This includes individuals as well as companies.

Examples of a Public Cloud are Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS.

Community Cloud: A Community Cloud is only accessible by a specified group. These are, for example, connected by location, an organization membership, or by reasons of compliance.

Examples of a Community Cloud are Microsoft Azure Germany (location) or Microsoft Azure Government (organization and compliance) for US Government authorities.

Private Cloud: Private Cloud describes an environment/infrastructure built and operated by a single organization for internal use. These offers are specifically designed for the different units in the organization.

Examples are Microsoft Windows Azure Pack (WAP) or Microsoft Azure Stack, as well as OpenStack, if they are used for internal deployments.

Hybrid Cloud: The Hybrid Cloud combines the Private and Public Clouds. It is defined as a Private Cloud environment at the consumer's premises as well as Public Cloud infrastructure that the consumer uses. These structures are generally connected by site-to-site VPNs or Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS). A Hybrid Cloud could also exist as combination of any other models such as Community and Public Clouds.

Examples are Azure VMs connected to an on-premises infrastructure via ExpressRoute or site-to-site VPN.

Below is a comparison between a related example, in this case between Azure (Public Cloud) and Azure Pack (Private Cloud):

Comparison of Microsoft Azure (Stack) to Azure Pack

With Summer 2017 Microsoft will release the new version of the private cloud adoption from Azure Resource Manager. The new version will be named Azure Stack and will sooner or later be equal to the Azure Resource Manager Framework.

Cloud Characteristics

Microsoft Azure is one of the biggest cloud service providers worldwide, offering a wide range of services from IaaS to PaaS to SaaS. It fulfills all the characteristics that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) describes for cloud computing. These are as follows:

On-demand self-service: An automated deployment of resources