[MODULE - 4]
Describe the core architectural
components of Azure
01-Introduction
In this module, you’ll be introduced to the core architectural components of
Azure. You’ll learn about the physical organization of Azure: datacenters,
availability zones, and regions; and you’ll learn about the organizational
structure of Azure: resources and resource groups, subscriptions, and
management groups.
Learning objectives
After completing this module, you’ll be able to:
Describe Azure regions, region pairs, and sovereign regions.
Describe Availability Zones.
Describe Azure datacenters.
Describe Azure resources and Resource Groups.
Describe subscriptions.
Describe management groups.
Describe the hierarchy of resource groups, subscriptions, and
management groups.
02-What is Microsoft Azure
Azure is a continually expanding set of cloud services that help you meet
current and future business challenges. Azure gives you the freedom to
build, manage, and deploy applications on a massive global network using
your favorite tools and frameworks.
What does Azure offer?
Limitless innovation. Build intelligent apps and solutions with advanced
technology, tools, and services to take your business to the next level.
Seamlessly unify your technology to simplify platform management and to
deliver innovations efficiently and securely on a trusted cloud.
Bring ideas to life: Build on a trusted platform to advance your
organization with industry-leading AI and cloud services.
Seamlessly unify: Efficiently manage all your infrastructure, data,
analytics, and AI solutions across an integrated platform.
Innovate on trust: Rely on trusted technology from a partner who's
dedicated to security and responsibility.
What can I do with Azure?
Azure provides more than 100 services that enable you to do everything
from running your existing applications on virtual machines to exploring new
software paradigms, such as intelligent bots and mixed reality.
Many teams start exploring the cloud by moving their existing applications to
virtual machines (VMs) that run in Azure. Migrating your existing apps to
VMs is a good start, but the cloud is much more than a different place to run
your VMs.
For example, Azure provides artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning
(ML) services that can naturally communicate with your users through
vision, hearing, and speech. It also provides storage solutions that
dynamically grow to accommodate massive amounts of data. Azure services
enable solutions that aren't feasible without the power of the cloud.
03-Get started with Azure accounts
To create and use Azure services, you need an Azure subscription. When
you're completing Learn modules, most of the time a temporary subscription
is created for you, which runs in an environment called the Learn sandbox.
When you're working with your own applications and business needs, you
need to create an Azure account, and a subscription will be created for you.
After you've created an Azure account, you're free to create additional
subscriptions. For example, your company might use a single Azure account
for your business and separate subscriptions for development, marketing,
and sales departments. After you've created an Azure subscription, you can
start creating Azure resources within each subscription.
If you're new to Azure, you can sign up for a free account on the Azure
website to start exploring at no cost to you. When you're ready, you can
choose to upgrade your free account. You can also create a new
subscription that enables you to start paying for Azure services you need
beyond the limits of a free account.
Create an Azure account
You can purchase Azure access directly from Microsoft by signing up on the
Azure website or through a Microsoft representative. You can also purchase
Azure access through a Microsoft partner. Cloud Solution Provider partners
offer a range of complete managed-cloud solutions for Azure.
What is the Azure free account?
The Azure free account includes:
Free access to popular Azure products for 12 months.
A credit to use for the first 30 days.
Access to more than 25 products that are always free.
The Azure free account is an excellent way for new users to get started and
explore. To sign up, you need a phone number, a credit card, and a
Microsoft or GitHub account. The credit card information is used for identity
verification only. You won't be charged for any services until you upgrade to
a paid subscription.
What is the Azure free student account?
The Azure free student account offer includes:
Free access to certain Azure services for 12 months.
A credit to use in the first 12 months.
Free access to certain software developer tools.
The Azure free student account is an offer for students that gives $100 credit
and free developer tools. Also, you can sign up without a credit card.
What is the Microsoft Learn sandbox?
Many of the Learn exercises use a technology called the sandbox, which
creates a temporary subscription that's added to your Azure account. This
temporary subscription allows you to create Azure resources during a Learn
module. Learn automatically cleans up the temporary resources for you after
you've completed the module.
When you're completing a Learn module, you're welcome to use your
personal subscription to complete the exercises in a module. However, the
sandbox is the preferred method to use because it allows you to create and
test Azure resources at no cost to you.
04-Exercise - Explore the Learn sandbox
In this exercise, you explore the Learn sandbox. You can interact with the
Learn sandbox in three different ways. During exercises, you'll be provided
for instructions for at least one of the methods below.
You start by activating the Learn sandbox. Then, you’ll investigate each of
the methods to work in the Learn sandbox.
Activate the Learn Sandbox
If you haven’t already, use the Activate sandbox button above to activate the
Learn sandbox.
If you receive a notice saying Microsoft Learn needs your permission to
create Azure resource, use the Review permission button to review and
accept the permissions. Once you approve the permissions, it may take a
few minutes for the sandbox to activate.
Task 1: Use the PowerShell CLI
Once the sandbox launches, half the screen will be in PowerShell command
line interface (CLI) mode. If you’re familiar with PowerShell, you can
manage your Azure environment using PowerShell commands.
Tip : You can tell you're in PowerShell mode by the PS before your directory
on the command line.
Use the PowerShell Get-date command to get the current date and time.
Get-date
Most Azure specific commands will start with the letters az. The Get-date
command you just ran is a PowerShell specific command. Let's try an Azure
command to check what version of the CLI you're using right now.
az version
Task 2: Use the BASH CLI
If you’re more familiar with BASH, you can use BASH command instead by
shifting to the BASH CLI.
Enter bash to switch to the BASH CLI.
bash
Tip : You can tell you're in BASH mode by the username displayed on the
command line. It will be your username@azure.
Again, use the Get-date command to get the current date and time.
Get-date
You received an error because Get-date is a PowerShell specific command.
Use the date command to get the current date and time.
date
Just like in the PowerShell mode of the CLI, you can use the letters az to
start an Azure command in the BASH mode. Try to run an update to the CLI
with az upgrade.
az upgrade
You can change back to PowerShell mode by entering pwsh on the BASH
command line.
Task 3: Use Azure CLI interactive mode
Another way to interact is using the Azure CLI interactive mode. This
changes CLI behavior to more closely resemble an integrated development
environment (IDE). Interactive mode provides autocompletion, command
descriptions, and even examples. If you’re unfamiliar with BASH and
PowerShell, but want to use the command line, interactive mode may help
you.
Enter az interactive to enter interactive mode.
az interactive
Decide whether you wish to send telemetry data and enter YES or NO.
You may have to wait a minute or two to allow the interactive mode to fully
initialize. Then, enter the letter “a” and auto-completion should start to work.
If auto-completion isn’t working, erase what you’ve entered, wait a bit longer,
and try again.
Once initialized, you can use the arrow keys or tab to help complete your
commands. Interactive mode is set up specifically for Azure, so you don't
need to enter az to start a command (but you can if you want to or are used
to it). Try the upgrade or version commands again, but this time without az in
front.
version
upgrade
The commands should have worked the same as before, and given you the
same results. Use the exit command to leave interactive mode.
exit
Task 4: Use the Azure portal
You’ll also have the option of using the Azure portal during sandbox
exercises. You need to use the link provided in the exercise to access the
Azure portal. Using the provided link, instead of opening the portal yourself,
ensures the correct subscription is used and the exercise remains free for
you to complete.
Sign in to the Azure portal to check out the Azure web interface. Once in the
portal, you can see all the services Azure has to offer as well as look around
at resource groups and so on.
05-Describe Azure physical
infrastructure
Throughout your journey with Microsoft Azure, you’ll hear and use terms like
Regions, Availability Zones, Resources, Subscriptions, and more. This
module focuses on the core architectural components of Azure. The core
architectural components of Azure may be broken down into two main
groupings: the physical infrastructure, and the management infrastructure.
Physical infrastructure
The physical infrastructure for Azure starts with datacenters. Conceptually,
the datacenters are the same as large corporate datacenters. They’re
facilities with resources arranged in racks, with dedicated power, cooling,
and networking infrastructure.
As a global cloud provider, Azure has datacenters around the world.
However, these individual datacenters aren’t directly accessible.
Datacenters are grouped into Azure Regions or Azure Availability Zones that
are designed to help you achieve resiliency and reliability for your business-
critical workloads.
The Global infrastructure site gives you a chance to interactively explore the
underlying Azure infrastructure.
Regions
A region is a geographical area on the planet that contains at least one, but
potentially multiple datacenters that are nearby and networked together with
a low-latency network. Azure intelligently assigns and controls the resources
within each region to ensure workloads are appropriately balanced.
When you deploy a resource in Azure, you'll often need to choose the region
where you want your resource deployed.
Note : Some services or virtual machine (VM) features are only available in
certain regions, such as specific VM sizes or storage types. There are also
some global Azure services that don't require you to select a particular
region, such as Microsoft Entra ID, Azure Traffic Manager, and Azure DNS.
Availability Zones
Availability zones are physically separate datacenters within an Azure
region. Each availability zone is made up of one or more datacenters
equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking. An availability
zone is set up to be an isolation boundary. If one zone goes down, the other
continues working. Availability zones are connected through high-speed,
private fiber-optic networks.
Important : To ensure resiliency, a minimum of three separate availability
zones are present in all availability zone-enabled regions. However, not all
Azure Regions currently support availability zones.
Use availability zones in your apps
You want to ensure your services and data are redundant so you can protect
your information in case of failure. When you host your infrastructure, setting
up your own redundancy requires that you create duplicate hardware
environments. Azure can help make your app highly available through
availability zones.
You can use availability zones to run mission-critical applications and build
high-availability into your application architecture by co-locating your
compute, storage, networking, and data resources within an availability zone
and replicating in other availability zones. Keep in mind that there could be a
cost to duplicating your services and transferring data between availability
zones.
Availability zones are primarily for VMs, managed disks, load balancers, and
SQL databases. Azure services that support availability zones fall into three
categories:
Zonal services: You pin the resource to a specific zone (for example,
VMs, managed disks, IP addresses).
Zone-redundant services: The platform replicates automatically across
zones (for example, zone-redundant storage, SQL Database).
Non-regional services: Services are always available from Azure
geographies and are resilient to zone-wide outages as well as region-
wide outages.
Even with the additional resiliency that availability zones provide, it’s
possible that an event could be so large that it impacts multiple availability
zones in a single region. To provide even further resilience, Azure has
Region Pairs.
Region pairs
Most Azure regions are paired with another region within the same
geography (such as US, Europe, or Asia) at least 300 miles away. This
approach allows for the replication of resources across a geography that
helps reduce the likelihood of interruptions because of events such as
natural disasters, civil unrest, power outages, or physical network outages
that affect an entire region. For example, if a region in a pair was affected by
a natural disaster, services would automatically fail over to the other region
in its region pair.
Important : Not all Azure services automatically replicate data or
automatically fall back from a failed region to cross-replicate to another
enabled region. In these scenarios, recovery and replication must be
configured by the customer.
Examples of region pairs in Azure are West US paired with East US and
South-East Asia paired with East Asia. Because the pair of regions are
directly connected and far enough apart to be isolated from regional
disasters, you can use them to provide reliable services and data
redundancy.
Additional advantages of region pairs:
If an extensive Azure outage occurs, one region out of every pair is
prioritized to make sure at least one is restored as quickly as possible for
applications hosted in that region pair.
Planned Azure updates are rolled out to paired regions one region at a
time to minimize downtime and risk of application outage.
Data continues to reside within the same geography as its pair (except
for Brazil South) for tax- and law-enforcement jurisdiction purposes.
Important : Most regions are paired in two directions, meaning they are the
backup for the region that provides a backup for them (West US and East
US back each other up). However, some regions, such as West India and
Brazil South, are paired in only one direction. In a one-direction pairing, the
Primary region does not provide backup for its secondary region. So, even
though West India’s secondary region is South India, South India does not
rely on West India. West India's secondary region is South India, but South
India's secondary region is Central India. Brazil South is unique because it's
paired with a region outside of its geography. Brazil South's secondary
region is South Central US. The secondary region of South Central US isn't
Brazil South.
Sovereign Regions
In addition to regular regions, Azure also has sovereign regions. Sovereign
regions are instances of Azure that are isolated from the main instance of
Azure. You may need to use a sovereign region for compliance or legal
purposes.
Azure sovereign regions include:
US DoD Central, US Gov Virginia, US Gov Iowa and more: These
regions are physical and logical network-isolated instances of Azure for
U.S. government agencies and partners. These datacenters are
operated by screened U.S. personnel and include additional compliance
certifications.
China East, China North, and more: These regions are available through
a unique partnership between Microsoft and 21Vianet, whereby
Microsoft doesn't directly maintain the datacenters.
06-Describe Azure management
infrastructure
The management infrastructure includes Azure resources and resource
groups, subscriptions, and accounts. Understanding the hierarchical
organization will help you plan your projects and products within Azure.
Azure resources and resource groups
A resource is the basic building block of Azure. Anything you create,
provision, deploy, etc. is a resource. Virtual Machines (VMs), virtual
networks, databases, cognitive services, etc. are all considered resources
within Azure.
Resource groups are simply groupings of resources. When you create a
resource, you’re required to place it into a resource group. While a resource
group can contain many resources, a single resource can only be in one
resource group at a time. Some resources may be moved between resource
groups, but when you move a resource to a new group, it will no longer be
associated with the former group. Additionally, resource groups can't be
nested, meaning you can’t put resource group B inside of resource group A.
Resource groups provide a convenient way to group resources together.
When you apply an action to a resource group, that action will apply to all
the resources within the resource group. If you delete a resource group, all
the resources will be deleted. If you grant or deny access to a resource
group, you’ve granted or denied access to all the resources within the
resource group.
When you’re provisioning resources, it’s good to think about the resource
group structure that best suits your needs.
For example, if you’re setting up a temporary dev environment, grouping all
the resources together means you can deprovision all of the associated
resources at once by deleting the resource group. If you’re provisioning
compute resources that will need three different access schemas, it may be
best to group resources based on the access schema, and then assign
access at the resource group level.
There aren’t hard rules about how you use resource groups, so consider
how to set up your resource groups to maximize their usefulness for you.
Azure subscriptions
In Azure, subscriptions are a unit of management, billing, and scale. Similar
to how resource groups are a way to logically organize resources,
subscriptions allow you to logically organize your resource groups and
facilitate billing.
Using Azure requires an Azure subscription. A subscription provides you with
authenticated and authorized access to Azure products and services. It also
allows you to provision resources. An Azure subscription links to an Azure
account, which is an identity in Microsoft Entra ID or in a directory that
Microsoft Entra ID trusts.
An account can have multiple subscriptions, but it’s only required to have
one. In a multi-subscription account, you can use the subscriptions to
configure different billing models and apply different access-management
policies. You can use Azure subscriptions to define boundaries around Azure
products, services, and resources. There are two types of subscription
boundaries that you can use:
Billing boundary: This subscription type determines how an Azure
account is billed for using Azure. You can create multiple subscriptions
for different types of billing requirements. Azure generates separate
billing reports and invoices for each subscription so that you can
organize and manage costs.
Access control boundary: Azure applies access-management policies
at the subscription level, and you can create separate subscriptions to
reflect different organizational structures. An example is that within a
business, you have different departments to which you apply distinct
Azure subscription policies. This billing model allows you to manage and
control access to the resources that users provision with specific
subscriptions.
Create additional Azure subscriptions
Similar to using resource groups to separate resources by function or
access, you might want to create additional subscriptions for resource or
billing management purposes. For example, you might choose to create
additional subscriptions to separate:
Environments: You can choose to create subscriptions to set up
separate environments for development and testing, security, or to
isolate data for compliance reasons. This design is particularly useful
because resource access control occurs at the subscription level.
Organizational structures: You can create subscriptions to reflect
different organizational structures. For example, you could limit one team
to lower-cost resources, while allowing the IT department a full range.
This design allows you to manage and control access to the resources
that users provision within each subscription.
Billing: You can create additional subscriptions for billing purposes.
Because costs are first aggregated at the subscription level, you might
want to create subscriptions to manage and track costs based on your
needs. For instance, you might want to create one subscription for your
production workloads and another subscription for your development
and testing workloads.
Azure management groups
The final piece is the management group. Resources are gathered into
resource groups, and resource groups are gathered into subscriptions. If
you’re just starting in Azure that might seem like enough hierarchy to keep
things organized. But imagine if you’re dealing with multiple applications,
multiple development teams, in multiple geographies.
If you have many subscriptions, you might need a way to efficiently manage
access, policies, and compliance for those subscriptions. Azure
management groups provide a level of scope above subscriptions. You
organize subscriptions into containers called management groups and apply
governance conditions to the management groups. All subscriptions within a
management group automatically inherit the conditions applied to the
management group, the same way that resource groups inherit settings from
subscriptions and resources inherit from resource groups. Management
groups give you enterprise-grade management at a large scale, no matter
what type of subscriptions you might have. Management groups can be
nested.
Management group, subscriptions, and
resource group hierarchy
You can build a flexible structure of management groups and subscriptions
to organize your resources into a hierarchy for unified policy and access
management. The following diagram shows an example of creating a
hierarchy for governance by using management groups.
Some examples of how you could use management groups might be:
Create a hierarchy that applies a policy. You could limit VM locations
to the US West Region in a group called Production. This policy will
inherit onto all the subscriptions that are descendants of that
management group and will apply to all VMs under those subscriptions.
This security policy can't be altered by the resource or subscription
owner, which allows for improved governance.
Provide user access to multiple subscriptions. By moving multiple
subscriptions under a management group, you can create one Azure
role-based access control (Azure RBAC) assignment on the
management group. Assigning Azure RBAC at the management group
level means that all sub-management groups, subscriptions, resource
groups, and resources underneath that management group would also
inherit those permissions. One assignment on the management group
can enable users to have access to everything they need instead of
scripting Azure RBAC over different subscriptions.
Important facts about management groups:
10,000 management groups can be supported in a single directory.
A management group tree can support up to six levels of depth. This
limit doesn't include the root level or the subscription level.
Each management group and subscription can support only one parent.
07-Exercise - Create an Azure resource
In this exercise, you’ll use the Azure portal to create a resource. The focus of
the exercise is observing how Azure resource groups populate with created
resources.
Important : The sandbox should already be activated, but if the sandbox
closed, reactivate the sandbox before continuing.
Task 1: Create a virtual machine
In this task, you’ll create a virtual machine using the Azure portal.
1. Sign in to the Azure portal.
2. Select Create a resource > Virtual Machine > Create.
3. The Create a virtual machine pane opens to the basics tab.
4. Verify or enter the following values for each setting. If a setting isn’t
specified, leave the default value.
Basics tab
Setting Value
Subscription Concierge Subscription
Resource group Select the resource group name that
begins with learn.
Virtual machine name my-VM
Region Leave default
Availability options Leave default
Security type Leave default
Image Leave default
Setting Value
VM architecture Leave default
Run with Azure Spot Unchecked
discount
Size Leave default
Authentication type Password
Username azureuser
Password Enter a custom password
Confirm password Reenter the custom password
Public inbound ports None
5. Select Review and Create.
Important : Product details will include a cost associated with creating the
virtual machine. This is a system function. If you’re creating the VM in the
Learn sandbox, you won’t actually incur any costs.
6. Select Create
Wait while the VM is provisioned. Deployment is in progress will change to
Deployment is complete when the VM is ready.
Task 2: Verify resources created
Once the deployment is created, you can verify that Azure created not only a
VM, but all of the associated resources the VM needs.
1. Select Home.
2. Select Resource groups.
3. Select the [sandbox resource group name] resource group.
You should see a list of resources in the resource group. The storage
account and virtual network are associated with the Learn sandbox.
However, the rest of the resources were created when you created the
virtual machine. By default, Azure gave them all a similar name to help with
association and grouped them in the same resource group.
Congratulations! You've created a resource in Azure and had a chance to
see how resources get grouped on creation.
Clean up
The sandbox automatically cleans up your resources when you're finished
with this module.
When you're working in your own subscription, it's a good idea at the end of
a project to identify whether you still need the resources you created.
Resources that you leave running can cost you money. You can delete
resources individually or delete the resource group to delete the entire set of
resources.
