Azure Fundamental – Azure Compute Services

We will discuss Azure Compute Services, the Computing options available in compute services, and the benefits of Azure compute services.

1. What is Azure Compute Services?

Azure Compute Services are the core set of cloud computing services that allow to deploy and manage workloads on Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft Azure Compute services provide the infrastructure, tools, and platforms needed to create, deploy, and manage cloud computing solutions. Compute services allow to quickly and securely deploy workloads in the cloud and provide the scalability and reliability needed for applications and services.

It’s important to choose the right computing service because the chosen computing service will increase or decrease the administrative overhead, the ability to control underlying infrastructure, and the cost of the workload.

The following are the main computing options available in Azure Compute Services:

• Azure Virtual Machines
• Azure Container Instances
• Azure App Service
• Azure Kubernetes Services
• Azure Service Fabric
• Azure Functions
• Azure Batch
• Cloud Services

1.1 Azure Virtual Machines

Azure Virtual Machines is a service where virtual machines (VMs) can be deployed and managed inside an Azure virtual network.

• Azure Virtual Machines stand as the cornerstone of Azure’s Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), offering unparalleled control over the operating systems and the application environments hosted.
• VMs are used to host websites, applications, and databases, or to provide secure storage and remote access to corporate data. Virtual machines are created using a set of pre-configured images that are stored in the Azure Marketplace. These images can be used to quickly deploy virtual machines without having to manually install the software or configure the underlying operating system.
• Azure Virtual Machines provide organizations with a secure and reliable way to host their applications and services. They are protected from malicious attacks, and organizations can use them to securely access and store corporate data in the cloud.
• Some common use cases for virtual machines include during testing and development, while running applications in the cloud, while extending the data center to the cloud, and during disaster recovery.
• VMs are ideal for migrating legacy systems to the cloud and hosting applications with specific OS dependencies.

1.2 Azure Container Instances

Azure Container Instances is a fast and simple way to run a container in Azure, offers the fastest and most straightforward way to run a container in Azure without having to provision any virtual machines and without having to adopt a high-level service.

• Azure Container Instances (ACI) is built on Azure’s open-source container orchestration system and provides a serverless experience for running containers. With Azure Container Instances, customers can quickly and easily deploy and scale their applications without having to worry about server infrastructure.
• Azure Container Instances is designed for applications that require fast startup times and a high degree of agility and flexibility.
• Azure Container Instances is a great choice for customers looking to quickly deploy and scale their applications in the cloud. It provides a cost-effective and easy-to-use environment for running containers and can help customers save time and money.
• Some key features of Azure Container Instances include Simplicity, Speed, Flexibility, Scalability, and Cost-effectiveness.

1.3 Azure App Service

Azure App Service is a managed PaaS offering for hosting web apps, mobile app backends, RESTful APIs, or automated business processes.

• Azure App Service is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering from Microsoft Azure that provides a fully managed, highly scalable, secure, and reliable cloud-based environment for creating and running modern web, mobile, and API applications.
• It supports a broad spectrum of programming languages, it facilitates seamless integration and continuous deployment from sources like GitHub, alongside live debugging tools.
• App Service provides an integrated development experience with Visual Studio, GitHub, and Azure DevOps, making it easy for developers to create and deploy applications in the cloud.
• App Service is easy to scale, offers built-in development and debugging tools, and provides multi-language support. It is perfect for rapidly deploying web and mobile back-end applications and RESTful APIs with minimal configuration.

1.4 Azure Kubernetes Services

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a managed Kubernetes service offered by Microsoft as part of the Azure cloud platform.

• Azure Kubernetes Service is a managed container orchestration service based on the open-source Kubernetes system, which is available on the Microsoft Azure public cloud. As a hosted Kubernetes service, Azure handles critical tasks, like health monitoring and maintenance.
• Benefits of AKS include Simplified cluster management, scalability, High Availability, Integrated security, Cost-Effectiveness, Monitoring and Logging, and Easy Integration with other Azure Services.
• Use Cases for Azure Kubernetes Service includes Microservices, Web Applications, Big Data and Machine Learning, DevOps, Legacy Applications, and Disaster Recovery.

1.5 Azure Service Fabric

Azure Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable microservices and containers.

• Azure Service Fabric is a platform that abstracts away the underlying infrastructure, allowing developers to focus on building applications. It provides built-in support for microservices, making it easy to deploy and scale applications composed of multiple services.
• Azure Service Fabric includes built-in service discovery and load-balancing features, making it easier for applications to discover and communicate with other services in the cluster.
• It provides built-in monitoring and diagnostics capabilities, allowing developers to easily monitor the health and performance of their applications, and comprehensive application lifecycle management capabilities, including rolling upgrades and versioning, making it easier to manage and upgrade applications.
• Azure Service Fabric is a Microsoft product and has strong integration with other Azure services, providing a consistent and unified experience for users.

1.6 Azure Functions

Azure Functions is a managed Function as a Service(FaaS).

• Azure Functions is an event-driven, serverless computing service offered by Microsoft Azure. It is a service that allows developers to quickly create and deploy small pieces of back-end code, or “functions”, without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure.
• Azure Functions can be used to create applications with multiple functions, or even entire back-end systems with multiple services. Examples of these applications and services include webhooks, image processing, automated workflows, serverless applications, and more. Azure Functions is a great choice for developing applications quickly and efficiently.
• Azure Functions can be written in a variety of languages, including C#, F#, Node.js, Python, and PowerShell. Azure Functions also supports triggers, which are the events that cause a function to execute. These triggers can be anything from a change in a data source to an HTTP request.
• Azure Functions can be used to integrate with other Azure services such as Azure Storage, Azure Event Hubs, and Azure Service Bus. This can be used to create powerful solutions that can scale up and down based on the needs of the application.

1.7 Azure Batch

Azure Batch is a service that lets to run large-scale parallel and high-performance computing (HPC) batch jobs efficiently in Azure.

• Azure Batch creates and manages a pool of compute nodes (virtual machines), installs the applications that need to run, and schedules jobs to run on the nodes. There’s no cluster or job scheduler software to install, manage, or scale.
• Developers can use Azure Batch as a platform service to build SaaS applications or client apps where large-scale execution is required. Batch works well with intrinsically parallel workloads, having applications that can run independently, with each instance completing part of the work. 
• A few examples of intrinsically parallel workloads that can be done using Azure Batch include VFX and 3D image rendering, Image analysis and processing, Media transcoding, Optical character recognition (OCR), and Software test execution.
• Azure Batch also supports large-scale rendering workloads with rendering tools including Autodesk Maya, 3ds Max, Arnold, and V-Ray.

1.8 Cloud Services

Cloud Services is a managed service for running cloud applications, that uses a PaaS hosting model.

• Azure Cloud Services is an example of a platform as a service (PaaS), is designed to support applications that are scalable, reliable, and inexpensive to operate.
• There are two types of Azure Cloud Services roles. The only difference between the two is how the role is hosted on the VMs: Web role: Automatically deploys and hosts the app through IIS. Worker role: Does not use IIS, and runs the app standalone.
• Azure Cloud Services is a highly available and massively scalable platform for applications and APIs. Accelerated application deployment. It Integrated health monitoring and load balancing with dashboards and real-time alerts. It provides autoscaling of the cloud environment to optimize costs and improve performance.

2. Benefits of Azure Compute Services

Azure compute services provide the following benefits:

• Security: Azure delivers comprehensive, multilayered security, including the largest compliance coverage of any cloud provider.
• Scalability: Azure Compute services allow to quickly and securely deploy workloads in the cloud and provide the scalability and reliability needed for applications and services.
• Cost-effective: Azure is often more cost-effective compared to other cloud providers. For instance, AWS is five times more expensive than Azure for Windows Server and SQL Server.
• Disaster recovery: Azure offers an end-to-end backup and disaster recovery solution that’s simple, secure, scalable, and cost-effective. It can be integrated with on-premises data protection solutions.
• Flexibility: Azure Compute services offer unparalleled control over the operating systems and the application environments they host. This flexibility makes Azure an excellent choice for applications that demand specific configurations or legacy software that hasn’t yet transitioned to the cloud.
• Massive data support: Azure offers many ways to host your application code. Some of the Azure Compute services include Azure Virtual Machines, Azure App Service, Azure Functions, and Azure Kubernetes Service.
• Hybrid capability: Azure hybrid solutions can extend Azure control plane operations outside of Azure data centers, or run dedicated control plane instances, to provide data plane capabilities. It provides a holistic, seamless, and more secure approach to innovate anywhere across the on-premises, multi-cloud, and edge environments.

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