Azure Overview

First PublishedFeb 17, 2026Last UpdatedMar 31, 2026ByAtif Alam

Microsoft Azure is the second-largest cloud platform, offering 200+ services across compute, networking, storage, databases, AI, and more. It’s especially strong in hybrid cloud and enterprise environments due to deep integration with Microsoft products (Active Directory, Office 365, Windows Server, SQL Server).

Many teams run hybrid workloads: Azure and on-premises or other clouds. Reliability practices (Kubernetes, Observability, Terraform) still apply; you standardize interfaces (APIs, identity, networking) and where observability lives.

Global Infrastructure

Azure is organized into Regions, Availability Zones, and Geographies:

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                        Azure Global
2
                            │
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          ┌─────────────────┼─────────────────┐
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          ▼                 ▼                 ▼
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      East US          West Europe       Southeast Asia
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      (Virginia)       (Netherlands)     (Singapore)
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        │                 │                 │
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     ┌──┼──┐           ┌──┼──┐          ┌──┼──┐
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     ▼  ▼  ▼           ▼  ▼  ▼          ▼  ▼  ▼
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    AZ1 AZ2 AZ3       AZ1 AZ2 AZ3      AZ1 AZ2 AZ3

Concept	What It Is
Region	A geographic area with one or more data centers (e.g. `eastus`, `westeurope`). Choose the region closest to your users.
Availability Zone (AZ)	Physically separate data centers within a region with independent power, cooling, and networking. Deploy across AZs for high availability.
Geography	A grouping of regions that respects data residency boundaries (e.g. “United States”, “Europe”, “Asia Pacific”).
Region pair	Two regions in the same geography paired for disaster recovery (e.g. East US ↔ West US). Azure prioritizes recovery for paired regions.

Choosing a Region

Factor	Consideration
Latency	Pick the region closest to your users
Compliance	Data residency laws (e.g. EU data in `westeurope` or `northeurope`)
Service availability	Not all services are available in every region
Pricing	Varies by region (US regions are often cheapest)
Paired region	Consider the pair for DR planning

Resource Organization

Azure has a unique hierarchy for organizing and billing resources:

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┌──────────────────────────────────────────┐
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│  Azure AD Tenant (Entra ID)              │
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│  (identity: users, groups, apps)         │
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│                                          │
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│  ┌────────────────────────────────────┐  │
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│  │  Management Group (optional)       │  │
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│  │                                    │  │
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│  │  ┌──────────────────────────────┐  │  │
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│  │  │  Subscription                │  │  │
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│  │  │  (billing boundary)          │  │  │
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│  │  │                              │  │  │
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│  │  │  ┌────────────────────────┐  │  │  │
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│  │  │  │  Resource Group        │  │  │  │
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│  │  │  │  (logical container)   │  │  │  │
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│  │  │  │                        │  │  │  │
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│  │  │  │  VM, DB, Storage, ...  │  │  │  │
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│  │  │  └────────────────────────┘  │  │  │
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│  │  └──────────────────────────────┘  │  │
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│  └────────────────────────────────────┘  │
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└──────────────────────────────────────────┘

Concept	What It Is
Tenant	An Azure AD (Entra ID) instance. Represents your organization. One per company.
Management group	Optional grouping of subscriptions for policy and access control at scale.
Subscription	A billing and access boundary. Many companies use separate subscriptions for dev/staging/prod.
Resource group	A logical container for related resources (e.g. all resources for one app). Every resource belongs to exactly one resource group.

Resource Groups

Resource groups are the fundamental organizational unit:

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# Create a resource group
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az group create --name myapp-prod-rg --location eastus
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# List resources in a group
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az resource list --resource-group myapp-prod-rg --output table
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# Delete an entire group (and everything in it)
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az group delete --name myapp-dev-rg --yes

Best practice: Group resources by application and environment (e.g. myapp-prod-rg, myapp-dev-rg). Deleting a resource group deletes everything inside it — useful for cleaning up dev/test environments.

Azure Portal and CLI

Azure Portal

The web UI at portal.azure.com. Provides a visual dashboard, resource creation wizards, and monitoring views. Good for exploration and one-off tasks.

Azure CLI

Command-line interface for scripting and automation:

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# Install (macOS)
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brew install azure-cli
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# Login
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az login
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# Set default subscription
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az account set --subscription "My Subscription"
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# Common commands
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az vm list --output table                    # list VMs
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az storage account list --output table       # list storage accounts
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az group list --output table                 # list resource groups

Azure PowerShell

Alternative to the CLI for Windows/PowerShell users:

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Connect-AzAccount
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Get-AzVM | Format-Table Name, ResourceGroupName, Location

Azure Cloud Shell

A browser-based shell (Bash or PowerShell) with the CLI, PowerShell, Terraform, kubectl, and other tools pre-installed. No local setup needed — access from the portal.

Key Terminology

Term	Meaning
Entra ID (Azure AD)	Identity and access management (users, groups, apps, SSO)
Subscription	Billing boundary — all resources belong to a subscription
Resource group	Logical container for related resources
ARM	Azure Resource Manager — the API layer for all Azure operations
ARM template / Bicep	Azure-native Infrastructure as Code (JSON templates or Bicep DSL)
VNet	Virtual Network — your isolated network in Azure
NSG	Network Security Group — firewall rules
AKS	Azure Kubernetes Service — managed Kubernetes
App Service	Managed PaaS for web apps (like Elastic Beanstalk)
Tags	Key-value labels on resources for organization and cost tracking

Azure vs AWS — Service Mapping

Category	AWS	Azure
Compute (VMs)	EC2	Virtual Machines
Serverless	Lambda	Azure Functions
Containers	ECS / EKS	ACI / AKS
Object storage	S3	Blob Storage
Block storage	EBS	Managed Disks
Relational DB	RDS	Azure SQL / Azure Database for PostgreSQL
NoSQL	DynamoDB	Cosmos DB
Identity	IAM	Entra ID (Azure AD) + RBAC
Networking	VPC	VNet
Load balancer	ALB / NLB	Application Gateway / Azure Load Balancer
CDN	CloudFront	Azure CDN / Front Door
DNS	Route 53	Azure DNS
Monitoring	CloudWatch	Azure Monitor / Log Analytics
IaC	CloudFormation	ARM templates / Bicep
CI/CD	CodePipeline	Azure DevOps Pipelines
Secrets	Secrets Manager	Key Vault
Message queue	SQS	Azure Queue Storage / Service Bus

Topics in This Section

Start with Identity (Entra ID and RBAC), then core infrastructure (compute, networking, storage), followed by databases, monitoring, and DevOps tooling.

Identity and Access — Entra ID (Azure AD), RBAC, managed identities, and service principals.
Compute — Virtual Machines, AKS (managed Kubernetes), and Azure Functions (serverless).
Networking — VNets, subnets, NSGs, load balancers, Application Gateway, DNS, and peering.
Storage — Blob storage, Azure Disk, Azure Files, and storage accounts.
Databases — Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, and Azure Database for PostgreSQL/MySQL.
Monitoring — Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Application Insights, and alerts.
DevOps on Azure — Azure DevOps (Repos, Pipelines, Boards) and GitHub integration.
Service Bus and Event Grid — Service Bus queues and topics for enterprise messaging, and Event Grid for event-driven routing.
Azure Policy and Governance — Azure Policy, management groups, Blueprints, resource locks, and compliance enforcement.
Security Services — Defender for Cloud, Azure Firewall, DDoS Protection, WAF, Key Vault, and Sentinel.
Cost Management — Cost Analysis, budgets, Azure Advisor, reservations, and optimization strategies.
Event Hubs — High-throughput event streaming for telemetry, logs, and real-time analytics.
API Management — API gateway, developer portal, rate limiting, authentication, policies, and versioning.
Azure Cache for Redis — Managed Redis for caching, session storage, leaderboards, and rate limiting.