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Cloud Computing: What It Is
Cloud computing enables access to various computing resources via the internet, connecting your mobile or computer directly with hybrid cloud providers who offer various computing resources like virtual machines, serverless computing and storage once connected.
Cloud migration service providers are large data centers containing hundreds of servers and storage systems used by many industries and essential components vital to many types of businesses. Users connect to these data centers to access large volumes of stored information in secure areas; they use that data directly when needed.
Cloud vendors services allow users to take advantage of various services; for instance, notifications every time new messages or emails arrive are one such feature of these platforms that make life much simpler; your costs only accrue as needed without an upfront commitment payment fee being assessed against what services you use directly or need upfront costs like other platforms would require upfront payments or commitment fees from providers, unlike their counterparts which require upfront payments upfront for whatever it needs in this economy!
Cloud technology computing can be applied in many different areas: machine learning, data analytics, backup/storage of media content for streaming over the internet (like Netflix movies and shows), testing new applications or creating applications from scratch, automating software delivery processes or hosting blogs - to name but a few examples.
Cloud Computing: Why Is It Important?
Imagine having an innovative concept for an application or service that provides users with an exceptional experience while being highly profitable, yet no one knows about it.
In such circumstances, making it available on the internet becomes essential so people can locate it easily, use and share its benefits - but that process doesn't happen as easily as one might assume! To be effective online app release. Your solution requires multiple components to operate effectively, including servers, storage devices and developers - each can present different challenges that need addressing.
Individually purchasing each component can be risky and expensive; you would require significant amounts of capital investment to ensure your app runs correctly.
If it proves unsuccessful, then much of that capital may go wasted; otherwise, if it becomes popular, more storage and servers might need to be purchased to accommodate additional users, increasing expenses further. Cloud computing offers many benefits, including secure data storage services that offer peace of mind when managing infrastructure costs.
What Is Microsoft Azure?
Azure is Microsoft's cloud platform, an online portal that enables users to manage and access cloud applications resources and services.
Users can store or convert their data using these resources; all they require to gain access is internet connectivity and the Azure portal.
What You Should Know about Azure
- It was launched on February 1, 2010 - significantly later than AWS (its primary competitor).
- Pay-as-you-use is free and lets users only pay for services they utilize.
- Azure is utilized by more than eighty percent of Fortune 500 companies for cloud computing purposes.
- Azure supports multiple programming languages such as Java, Node.js and C#.
- Azure data centers span the globe. At present, Azure operates 42 worldwide data centers - more than any other cloud platform - with plans to add 12 additional centers, bringing its total up to 54.
Microsoft Azure (formerly Windows Azure) is Microsoft's cloud computing platform designed specifically for public use.
Offering analytics, computing, storage and networking services along with its other offerings - Microsoft Azure allows people to build applications or run already existing apps more efficiently than ever.
Azure Cloud offers four types of cloud computing: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Serverless Functions.
Azure is designed as Pay as You Go (PAYG), meaning subscribers only pay for what they've used in terms of fees.
How Does Microsoft Azure Work?
Customers of Azure gain full access to its portal once they become subscribers and can create cloud resources like databases and virtual machines (VMs) within minutes of subscribing.
All these services and resources combined form running environments capable of hosting data storage needs and workload hosting capabilities.
Microsoft Azure portal offers many services, as well as software from third-party vendors who sell software through it.
Costs associated with third-party apps vary considerably and typically consist of subscription fees for using its infrastructure and usage fees associated with running them on Azure servers.
Microsoft Azure offers five distinct customer support solutions:
- The Basics
- The Developer
- Standard
- Professional Direct
- Enterprise (Premier)
Microsoft provides various customer support plans with varying prices depending on which support option a customer wants.
Basic support for Azure users is free, while developer support costs $29 monthly and standard/professional Direct support costs $100; there has yet to be no mention of Enterprise pricing from them.
Microsoft Azure Is Used For What?
Microsoft Azure can be used for various tasks and resources. With such an expansive selection of resources and services available to its users, its uses are seemingly limitless.
Virtual machines and containers run in virtualized servers on Microsoft Azure, while compute resources can host infrastructure components like DNS servers, Windows Server Services (such as Internet Information Services ), networking services like firewalls or even third-party apps - this platform even supports third-party OSs like Linux!
Azure can also host databases on the cloud. Microsoft offers serverless databases like Azure SQL and non-relational ones like NoSQL on this platform, which also serves to backup and disaster recovery data for many organizations that store archived material to meet long-term retention or disaster recovery obligations.
Azure Products And Services
Microsoft categorizes Azure cloud services into nearly 20 categories. Each can include many distinct instances that fall under their purview; here are the more frequently seen categories:
- Azure Computing: Azure's services allow users to manage VMs and containers, run batch jobs and provide remote access for applications. Azure compute resources may have either public or private IPs, depending on whether or not they need to be accessible publicly.
- Mobile: This product assists developers with building cloud-based apps on mobile devices by offering notifications, backend support APIs and tools needed to construct them.
- Web Application: Development services support web app creation with features like search, API management/delivery/notification/reporting and notification services.
- Cloud Storage: This category of services provides secure cloud-based storage for structured and unstructured data, supporting big data projects and persistent storage needs.
- Analysis: This service offers distributed analytics and storage, featuring features like real-time analysis, big data lakes, and machine learning capabilities, as well as real-time business intelligence/IoT streams.
- The Networking: Group encompasses virtual networks, dedicated connections and gateways, traffic management, diagnostics and load balancing services, DNS hosting, and DDoS protection against distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS).
- CDN: Stands for Content Delivery Network; services provided include digital rights protection, encoding, and on-demand streaming.
- Integrating services: For site backup, recovery and connecting public and private clouds.
- Identity services: Azure Identity helps ensure only authorized users can access Azure Services and protect sensitive data stored in the cloud. They offer Active Directory integration as well as multi-factor authentication support.
- Services: Provided through IoT enable users to collect, monitor, and analyze IoT information collected by devices and sensors. Services may include notification, analytics, monitoring or assistance with coding/execution of IoT applications.
- DevOps: Provides project management and collaboration tools, such as Azure DevOps (formerly Visual Studio Team Services). These help streamline DevOps processes for software development. In addition, this group offers application diagnostics, DevOps integrations and testing labs designed to test build processes and experiment with designs.
- Tools: Azure Development Services allows developers to collaborate more easily in sharing code, testing applications and identifying any potential problems with applications built with various programming languages, including JavaScript, Python.NET and Node.js for application creation. Furthermore, Azure provides tools that support DevOps and software development kits (SDK) and Blockchain integrations for software development kits (SDK).
- Security Tools: These tools can effectively secure sensitive assets such as encryption keys and cloud threats.
- AI and Machine Learning: Developers can utilize various services to integrate artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), cognitive computing and neuroethical computing into their applications and data sets.
- Containers: This service assists an enterprise in creating, registering, and managing numerous containers on Azure cloud using popular container platforms such as Docker or Kubernetes for orchestration purposes.
- Database Services: In this category, you'll find services designed specifically to support SQL or NoSQL database queries as well as services designed for other databases like Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL and Azure Database (including its flagship feature Azure SQL Data Warehouse with caching features and hybrid migration/migration and integration features), among many others. Azure SQL serves as its showcase database by offering its capability without needing an actual server (think SQL Azure!).
- Migrating: Our migration tools enable organizations to accurately estimate costs associated with migrations before shifting workloads from local data centers directly into Azure cloud environments.
- Governance and management: This service offers backup, recovery and compliance tools, as well as automation and scheduling features and monitoring capabilities.
- Windows Mixed Reality: This service aims to assist developers with creating content for Windows Mixed Reality.
- Azure Blockchain: The service allows you to join or create your blockchain consortium.
- Microsoft Intune: Allows users to enroll their devices and push mobile applications onto them securely without fear of their being deleted by users or groups of people. Tracking tools help identify which applications are utilized. At the same time, remote wiping enables companies to safely erase company-related data without impacting users or mobile apps.
Azure Backup And DR
Some organizations utilize Azure for disaster recovery and data backup purposes. Azure is an affordable alternative to data centers; the public cloud provides excellent services requiring high volumes and short-duration tasks like analytics.
Organizations using it for storage purposes often store large datasets before performing analysis. Once complete, they can delete old or obsolete information before moving their storage elsewhere. Utility computing has long been seen as the driving force of public cloud adoption.
Azure is increasingly becoming the go-to option for organizations seeking an alternative to local storage and servers, such as SharePoint Server.
Microsoft Azure utilizes data centers around the globe to ensure its constant availability; it is currently available in 140 countries and 55 regions as of January 2020 -; however, certain services may not be offered everywhere -; therefore, users of Azure should ensure their chosen location complies with any regulatory compliance issues or laws applicable to their workloads and data storage needs.
Privacy
Privacy can be an ongoing source of worry among cloud users due to data security regulations and compliance obligations.
Microsoft created its online Trust Center as an answer, which offers information about their privacy, security and compliance efforts - this site notes how customer data will only ever be used when necessary for providing agreed services; no government disclosure will occur without seeking consent from customers first.
Azure provides users with various security services - firewalls, identity management and access control, among others - designed to set up a safe environment and monitor for intrusions.
Azure security services are integral to adopting public clouds as they help users protect sensitive data and critical workloads from intrusions and outages.
Pricing And Costs For Azure
Azure follows similar cloud service provider practices by charging per usage. If multiple applications utilize one Azure service, each pricing tier might increase accordingly - using subsets from another service could further add to costs for that one service.
For instance, an application running in a virtual machine (VM) could incur costs. Furthermore, your storage instance associated with your workload could incur further fees; networking services or reporting tools might also incur extra charges.
Azure Functions provide free computing power & resources needed for function execution, but users must still pay to access them.
Microsoft also offers discounted rates to users who commit to certain services for an extended period, like computer instances.
Azure Reserved Virtual Machine instances claim users could save up to 80 percent in cost savings on these VM instances alone!
Cloud services and resources can be interwoven in even basic applications, requiring organizations to review their cloud usage to reduce costs.
Azure cost management offers tools to monitor, visualize and optimize cloud expenditure. In contrast, third-party tools like Cloudability or RightScale may be combined with FinOps to monitor resource costs and usage on Azure resources.
Significant Outages
Microsoft Azure's history of outages goes back to 2012. Here are a few notable incidents from over time.
On February 29, 2012, it was discovered that an incorrect date calculation caused leap-day disruptions.
West Europe experienced an outage that lasted about 2 1/2 hours on July 26, 2012.
On February 22, 2013, an outage prevented users in all regions from accessing Windows Azure Storage Tables and Queues via HTTPS.
On October 30, 2013, an eight-hour outage was caused by issues surrounding virtual IP address swapping that affected users across Europe and North America.
Storage connectivity issues resulted in an outage lasting nearly 10 hours, as reported on November 18, 2014.
On December 3, 2015, many European customers could not access Office 365 for approximately four hours.
On September 15, 2016, an issue with DNS caused Azure-related difficulties worldwide for several hours.
On March 15, 2017, an issue at one of Microsoft's data centers caused worldwide outages that lasted approximately seven hours.
An accidental fire suppression system discharge resulted in a seven-hour power outage across northern Europe on September 29, 2017.
On June 20, 2018, due to an issue at one of our data centers, customers in Northern Europe experienced an 11-hour outage.
On September 4, 2018, lightning caused an increase in voltage at a data center in South Central United States, resulting in cooling issues, which negatively impacted ten different regions across America due to service dependency issues.
Customers in 10 different areas were negatively impacted.
Azure services were taken offline for nearly three hours due to a DNS outage on Tuesday afternoon, May 2, 2019.
On March 15, 2021, Azure Active Directory experienced issues that resulted in a 14-hour outage across various Microsoft services such as Azure, Office Teams, Dynamics 365 and Xbox Live.
A smaller DNS outage occurred on April 1, 2021.
On Wednesday, September 13, 2021, Azure virtual machines and services were unavailable for approximately eight hours due to a maintenance outage.
Microsoft maintains an exhaustive record of outages and issues dating back five years on its Azure Status History page, providing users with an in-depth investigation of issues and their implications and causes.
Azure Competition
Microsoft Azure is among the premier global cloud providers, as are Google Cloud, AWS Oracle Cloud and IBM Cloud.
Cloud capabilities and services remain underdeveloped; cloud providers offer similar offerings, but none provide the same ones. Cloud providers utilize APIs and integrations to offer services and provisioning programmatically.
Users must accommodate differences among cloud providers because each uses its unique API. Migration between cloud providers can require extensive modifications of both applications and cloud environments; to accommodate for these differences, it can often involve having to recode applications and re architect cloud environments accordingly, making multi-cloud strategy implementation tricky when dealing with more than one provider of public clouds; however, these issues may be mitigated with third-party management software solutions.
Also Read: What If Microsoft Had Created Android, The Tech World Would Be Very Different Today?
Azure History
Microsoft first unveiled plans to create Windows Azure as a cloud computing platform in 2008. Following its first preview version being made available in 2008 and subsequent development efforts over time, its commercial launch took place in 2010.
Early Azure versions lagged behind other more established offerings like AWS; however, its portfolio continues to expand over time, supporting an array of operating systems and programming languages.
Microsoft implemented and added multiple services by early 2014, such as Azure SQL, Windows Azure CTP (CTP), Connect (Connect), Traffic Manager and HPC Scheduler.
Realizing cloud computing had far-reaching ramifications beyond Windows alone, Microsoft decided to rebrand its cloud offering as Microsoft Azure while previewing Machine Learning Services for use with Azure.
Azure quickly emerged as one of the leading commercial cloud providers with their launch of SONiC (a Linux cross-platform distribution), the Azure ARM Portal, Service Fabric Mesh Fabric Fabric Mesh, Service Fabric and IoT Central cloud offerings.
Azure quickly rose through the ranks.
Azure Quick Facts
Microsoft's Azure is widely considered one of the leading public cloud offerings available today due to its competitive prices, flexibility, and features that help it meet business requirements.
We will explore why this cloud could work for your needs.
Improve And Implement Backup And Disaster Recovery
Azure is the premier disaster recovery system due to its flexibility, advanced site recovery features and built-in integration features.
Azure as a cloud solution offers versatile backup capabilities: You can securely store any language or operating system data from anywhere around the globe and schedule backups (weekly, daily, monthly, etc.). Ultimately, you control how often they occur (for instance, weekly, daily, monthly, etc.).
Tape backup solutions have their place but cannot be independent backup and disaster recovery systems. Azure Site Recovery complements tape backup by offering off-site replication with minimal on-site maintenance requirements and up to ninety years of data storage, all at minimal or zero capital investment costs and low operational expenses.
In addition, it stores your information three times across various data centers plus three more in remote Azure data centers - perfect for disaster recovery purposes!
Azure provides an effective and straightforward backup solution if you work within a Windows Virtual Environment, seamlessly integrating with System Center architectures and HyperV for robust cohesion between Azure, System Center and HyperV.
Web And Mobile App Development On Azure
Azure provides the ideal environment to host, develop, and manage web or mobile apps - from hosting through development with Auto Scaling capabilities for apps running locally to integration services to maintain uptime for apps hosted elsewhere on-premises.
Automatic Patch Management from Azure allows you to spend more time developing applications. Continuous deployment streamlines updates with code updates occurring over time.
AutoScale allows you to automatically adapt Azure Web Apps resources based on customer traffic levels - providing all resources when there's heavy demand but saving money during low traffic periods.
Azure makes it simple and seamless to seamlessly link a web application and an on-premises app, giving employees and partners secure access to resources otherwise difficult to reach outside your firewall.
Distribute And Expand Active Directory
Azure offers advanced identity management capabilities for improved identity management and security. Azure allows setting up an Active Directory that supports direct connections globally.
As the only cloud service provider extending domain controller reach while consolidating AD Management, it offers unbeatable efficiency when setting up global Active Directory support.
Active Directory Integration with Azure is the key to overseeing access to these apps and maintaining access. Azure allows you to easily protect data and apps with multi-factor authentication without burdening users with cumbersome single sign-on setup for Windows, Mac OS, Android and iOS cloud apps.
IoT Industry Solutions: Transform And Reinvent Industry Solutions
Microsoft Azure provides an ideal resource for businesses looking to move toward IoT: its scalability and flexibility are unsurpassed.
Connect devices directly into Azure using solutions designed to fit seamlessly with existing infrastructure; this will allow your devices to share data from across your entire company while giving access to valuable new insights into your industry solutions. Within the Microsoft Azure IoT hub, you can manage and monitor billions of Internet of Things devices to gain insight that will enhance business, enhance customer experiences, reduce costs and complexity, and accelerate development processes.
Azure's superior security makes a significant, impactful statement about its commitment to IoT solutions, given its history of vulnerabilities hackers exploit.
Remote monitoring, predictive maintenance and analytics are benefits when designing IoT devices. Microsoft Accelerators for IoT Solution makes starting quickly easy, offering preconfigured templates tailored to your individual requirements.
The Conclusion Of The Article
Microsoft technologies stands out among cloud computing platforms due to its 200+ services and benefits; businesses are rapidly adopting it, with over $19 billion projected revenue for 2020 alone! Companies using it create numerous IT jobs due to this rapid adoption.
This rapidly rising cloud platform presents IT professionals with new career opportunities as businesses embrace it quickly.
Are You Looking Toward Azure as a Profession? Now is an excellent time to jumpstart your Azure career by enrolling in certification training or attending online Azure courses to master Azure and pass its certification exam.
