What is Microsoft Azure and How Does It Work?

Azure, the public cloud platform by Microsoft offers a collection of different services. This includes Platform as a service, Infrastructure as a service, and other capabilities of database service. If you are a newbie and seeking an answer to What is Microsoft Azure you have landed on the correct page. The below guide will help you understand Microsoft Azure and its working. Also, we have listed the advantages and drawbacks to help you make the correct decision.

Without wasting any more time, read the guide till the end to get all your queries addressed on the topic of Microsoft Azure.

What is Microsoft Azure?

Azure uses a technology called virtualization to execute virtualized hardware for millions of customers simultaneously. Azure leverages an emulation layer for each customer’s virtualized hardware, which allows the service to start, stop and delete instances at will. Essentially, Azure is a collection of physical servers in one or more data centers that act as a single unit tuned by emulation layers to support any number of virtualized servers while interacting with the same cloud applications and networks.

Azure virtual machines (VMs) are a virtualized hardware for customers to use. Customers can then use these VMs to run an application or upload their own software. Microsoft uses this concept to create, start, stop, and delete millions of instances of virtualized hardware for the multitude of customers using Azure.

The Azure fabric is a distributed system that runs on your infrastructure. Each physical machine in an Azure data center is called a host and has an agent installed. The agents talk to the fabric controller, which manages virtual machines and other services on the hosts they are assigned to. The fabric controller keeps track of the state of all instances, removing them when they fail or assigning more resources if they need more power.

Different Services Offered by Microsoft Azure:

The following are the services offered by the cloud computing platform

• Commute different services to build different cloud based applications and APIs. These also include Virtual Machines & their scale sets, various functions of computers that are serverless, and service fabrics for container orchestration and other microservices.
• A variety of tools for networking. It also provides a Virtual Network that allows connection with data centers, Application Gateway, and the DNS of Azure for hosting domains.
• Storage for files, Blob, Disk, Queue, backup, site recovery, and Data lake store, and many others.
• Create Web and Mobile apps using the various services offered to develop and deploy apps. These services makes it easier for users to develop applications for different platforms.
• Container Service that supports DC/OS, Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, and other tools to offer microservices.
• Artificial Intelligence capabilities and cognitive services. Computer vision API, Video Indexer, are some of the capabilities of Azure to develop applications.
• Internet of Things (IoT) services including Hub and Edge. These services can be clubbed with other services such as machine learning, analytics & communications, etc.
•  Various deployment tools such as Visual Studio Team, HockeyApp, etc.
• Azure Security center and services with multi factor authentication.

Advantages

Microsoft Azure is the leading cloud platform in the world. Following are some advantages of using Microsoft Azure:

• Azure offers high availability, data security, and scalability. Azure also provides various effective options for cost-saving.
• Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform that offers many services, including data storage and data analysis. The cost of these services are also competitive in comparison to other cloud service providers.
• Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform that provides a broad set of services for creating websites and mobile apps to manage big data and analytics. Microsoft Azure comprises three main components: compute (compute), storage, and network (enables the communication between users, applications, services, and devices).

Disadvantages

Azure is a popular and scalable technology but has some limitations. Following are the key disadvantages of using Microsoft Azure:

• One of the key disadvantages of using Microsoft Azure is that it requires platform expertise. Not only does it require you to have deep knowledge on the server and its operations, but also expert management skills such as maintaining patching servers, monitoring servers, and data backups.

Also read: Top 15 Must Have Software for Windows 10 in 2022

Summary

We hope that our article on Microsoft Azure helped you resolve all the related queries. Now that you know what is azure and how it works it’s time to implement these applications. Azure offers so many services and hence is a one-stop solution to all your professional setup requirement. Also, if you have any suggestions for us please write them in the comment box below.  If you need any more guidance make sure you leave them in the comments. Sign up for our blog to get all the technology guides directly in your mailbox.