The components of Azure

  Azure for AWS Experts

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/fundamentals-introduction-to-azure

This overview shows the basic categories and services offered by Azure.  This breakdown helps understand it in relation to AWS.

Azure Subscription Limits

Default and Maximum limits for all Azure Services.  If no Maximum limit is displayed, the defaut cannot be changed.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-subscription-service-limits

Azure Services

  •  Compute
    • Openedx.microsoft.com
    • Virtual Machines
      • AWS EC2
      • Use Cases:
        • Dev & Test
        • Move apps to Azure
        • Extend your Datacenter
    • Web Apps
      • openedx.microsoft.com
      • Managed Web Application Service.  You only need to support your website, Azure manages the OS
      • Quick support for WordPress, Joomla and Drupal
      • If hosting a static site, best to start here until you need additional features.
      • Supports .NET, PHP, Node.js, Java and Python
      • Supports SQL Database and MySQL
    • Service Fabric
    • Cloud Services
      • Legacy system available for Classic only
    • Container Service (ACS)
  • Compute Assistance
    • openedx.microsoft.com
    • Scheduler
      • AWS AutoScale / Linux Cron
      • Schedule based on time intervals or calendar
      • Requires a listening service to receive the trigger notification or monitor a storage queue
      • Use Cases:
        • Tasks that run at night
        • Daily log processing
        • Backups
        • Recurring application actions
          • Get data from twitter feed
  • Data Management
    • openedx.microsoft.com
    • DocumentDB
    • SQL Database
      • AWS Aurora/RDS, but based on SQL Server
      • Relational Database
      • Aurora for Microsoft SQL
    • Storage Blobs
      • AWS S3
      • Object Storage
    • File Service
      • AWS EFS
      • Shared storage between VMs
      • Based on Blob storage so fully redundant
      • Based on SMB protocol (Server Message Block)
      • Uses known API calls such as ReadFile and WriteFile
      • Files can be accessed at same time via REST interface.
      • Use Cases:
        • Migrating existing apps to the cloud
        • Shared application settings
        • Diagnostic share
          • Logs, metrics, crash dumps
        • Dev/Test/Debug
          • Store favorite tools on a file share and connect from any VM.
    • Storage Tables
      • AWS DynamoDB
      • NoSQL
    • Import/Export
      • AWS Import/Export
        • Ship data in, or have data shipped back out to location of your choice.
        • Large Data Migration
        • Archived Data Recovery
      • Ship Bitlocker-encrypted 3.5″ SATA hard drives directly to Azure data centers, where Microsoft will transfer the data into blob storage for you.
    • Search
      • openedx.microsoft.com
      • Provides a managed Search feature for your website/applications
      • 99.9% SLA, 56 languages supported
      • Can search SQL Dtabase, DocumentDB or Blob
      • Can be scaled for more data, more traffic, or both.
  • Networking
    • openedx.microsoft.com
    • Virtual Networks
      • AWS VPC
    • Traffic Manager
      • AWS Route 53
    • ExpressRoute
      • AWS Direct Connect
  • Developer & IT Services
    • Visual Studio Online
    • Visual Studio Team Services
      • Still requires local install of Visual Studio
      • Includes hosted source control system called “Team Foundation Service” for version tracking.
        • Can still use Git.
      • Provides a load testing service.
        • Automatically spins up required VMs needed to act as users
        • MSDN subscribers get thousands of free user-minutes for load testing.
      • Use Cases:
        • World Wide collaboration needed, can be setup in minutes.
        • May be more efficient than existing collaboration tools (sounds like probably not though)
    • Azure SDK (Software Development Kit)
      • .NET, Java, PHP, Node.js, Ruby and Python
        • General Azure SDK for ANY language, such as C++.
      • Command line tools include ability to deploy from Linux and Mac systems
    • Azure tools for Visual Studio
    • Automation
      • Sounds like AutoScaling
      • Provides a way for you to create, monitor, manage, and deploy resources in your Azure environment.
      • Uses Runbooks that can be executed without user interaction.
      • Use Cases:
        • Automate manual, long-running, error-prone and frequently repeated tasks.
    • API Management
      • AWS API Gateway
      • 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 while providing services like:
        • Caching
        • Transformation
        • Throttleing
        • Access Control
        • Analytics aggregation
      • Use Cases:
        • Example: Shipping company tracking trucks, tolls, time, speeds, etc.
    • Application Insights
      • Reminds me of a cross between Trusted Advisor and CloudWatch
      • Determines:
        • How well web, desktop or mobile applications are performing.
        • What users are doing with them (usage patterns)
        • Counts crashes and slow responses
        • Sends alerts if figures cross unacceptable thresholds
        • Helps diagnose issues
      • Works on apps on and off Azure
        • iOS, Android, OSX and Windows.
      • Can send data to a database
      • Use Cases:
        • Tune performance of your app after it is published or while under load testing.
        • Detects and diagnose problems in your live app.  Get alerts by email
        • Track usage ot assess the success of new features
  • Identity & Access
    • openedx.microsoft.com
    • Active Directory
      • Stores information about users and the organizations they belong to.
      • Provides logged in users with tokens that can be presented to prove their identity
      • Not recommended for extending an existing datacenter into the cloud using a VPN.  Instead, use Windows Server Active Directory in VMs.
    • Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
      • Provides the functionality for your application to verify more than one form of identification.
      • Requires the use of two out of the three methods of identification
        • Password
        • Trusted Device (such as a phone)
        • Biometrics (finger print, facial recognition, etc.)
      • Use Cases:
        • Bank Logins
  • Mobile
    • openedx.microsoft.com
    • Mobile Apps
      • Suite of applications?
        • Database queries
        • REST API
        • Notifications
        • User Authentication
          • Active Directory
          • Identity Stores such as Facebook or Google
        • Native libraries for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, etc.
    • Notification Hub
      • AWS SNS
      • Designed to push millions of notifications in minutes with a single API call
      • Use Case:
        • Notify millions of subscribers to time sensitive sale.
  • Backup
  • Messaging & Integration
    • openedx.microsoft.com
    • Storage queues and Service Bus queues – compared and contrasted
    • Queues / Storage Queues
      • AWS SQS
      • Part of the Azure storage infrastructure
      • Features a simple REST-based GET/PUT/PEEK interface, providing reliable, persistent messaging within and between services.
    • Service Bus
      • openedx.microsoft.com
      • AWS SWF
      • Overview of Service Bus
      • Part of a broader Azure messaging infrastructure that supports queuing as well as publish/subscribe, and more advanced integration patterns.
      • Service Bus queues are built on top of the broader messaging infrastructure designed to integrate applications or application components that may span multiple communication protocols, data contracts, trust domains, and/or network environments.
      • 4 Different Communications Patterns
        • Queues
          • FIFO
          • Deliver once and only once
        • Topics
        • Relays
        • Event Hubs
    • BizTalk Services
      • Same as BizTalk Server for Cloud
      • No AWS counterpart that I’m aware of
      • Converts one communication Schema to another.
    • Notification Hubs
  • Performance
    • openedx.microsoft.com
    • Cache
      • AWS ElastiCache
      • 3 Versions
        • Shared, In-Role
          • Obsolete
        • Manged
          • Similar features as Shared
        • Redis Cache
          • openedx.microsoft.com
          • Most popular, most features, Highest recommended
          • Tiers
            • Basic (Single Node)
              • This tier provides one node in multiple sizes. This tier is ideal for dev/test scenarios, and it has no service level agreement (SLA).
            • Standard (2 node – Primary/Secondary)
              • This tier provides resources for a replicated cache on two nodes in a primary/secondary configuration managed by Microsoft. This tier has a high availability SLA.
            • Premium
              • Same as Standard, but additional features
              • Data snapshots
              • Clustering
              • Deploy in VNet for security and isolation
      • Can be used by asp.NET applications to store session data with a simple configuration change.
    • Content Delivery Network
      • AWS CloudFront
      • Only used with Azure Blobs
      • Use Cases:
        • Large Media files
  • Big Data & Big Compute
    • openedx.microsoft.com
    • HDInsight
      • AWS RedShift / ElasticMapReduce
      • Hadoop Data Warehouse
    • High Performance Computing (HPC)
      • Running the same application across many instances in parallel
      • A8 & A9 class VMs with high speed, multi-core instances with large memory.
      • RDMA – Remote Direct Memory Access
  • Media
  • Commerce

 

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