A look at Azure Cloud terminology – Part 3

Azure Cloud Services Overview (Glossary Part 3)

This is the third and the last part of our three part series on Azure Cloud services. You can read the first two parts here: Part1 ,  Part2

Azure Services Glossary

Azure DocumentDB

• Azure DocumentDB is a Database-as-a-service NoSQL Document. It uses the JSON data format for storing and querying documents.
• Azure DocumentDB offers a NoSQL database using JSON documents that has the benefits of Azure and cloud.
• It does have several PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) features. DocumentDB is a fully-managed NoSQL database.
• It is easy to scale-out DocumentDB to meet your data, application, and business requirements.

Azure Fault Domain

• Azure Fault Domain describes a group of virtual machines that share a common power source and network switch. When you place your VMs in an availability set, Azure guarantees to spread them across fault and update domains.
• VMs spread over 3 fault domains. Each fault domain shares a power supply and a network switch. If the fault domain has a failure, all the resources in the fault domain will become unavailable.

Azure Image

• Azure Image is used to create multiple VMs. One managed image supports up to 20 simultaneous deployments.
• If you want to create more than 20 VMs at the same time, you may use a shared image galleries image configured within one replica.

Azure Limits

• Azure resources manager (ARM) commands limits and quotas on how many resources of each type can be provisioned per subscription.
• You can estimate your costs and limits by using the pricing calculator. Some services have adjustable limits and some don’t.
• If you want to raise the limit above the default limit, that is also possible using the online customer support.

Azure Region

• Azure service is available worldwide. So it’s a good idea to choose the best region for your needs. It depends on technical and regulatory factors: service capabilities, data residency, compliance requirements, and latency.
• Each zone in the Azure Region is a separate Datacenter.
• Each zone has a separate power source, networking, cooling, etc. There are 60+ regions in Microsoft Azure.

Azure Resource

• A resource in Azure is a manageable item available through Azure. Some examples of Resouces are Virtual Machines, storage accounts, databases, virtual networks, and web apps. A JSON file that defines one or more resources to deploy to a resource group is called Resource manager template.
• Azure Resource Manager (ARM) is the service used to provision resources in Azure subscription.

Azure Resource Group

• Azure Resource Group is a container that related resources for an Azure solution. It contains those resources that you want to manage as a group.
• All resources in a group share the same lifecycle. You can update and delete them on one go.
• Each resource can exist in only one resource group. Resources can be added or deleted anytime from a resource group.
• You can also apply tags to a resource group. Portal, PowerShell, Azure CLI, or Azure Resources Manager(ARM) can be used to create a resource group.

Azure Roles

• It’s a collection of permissions.
• A role in Azure defines lists of operations that can be performed – like read, write, and delete. Azure role-based access control (RABC) helps in managing these roles.
• You can decide who can access Azure resources, what they can do with the resources, and what areas they can access.
• Roles can be high-level like an owner or can be specific like virtual machine leader.

Azure Shared Access Signature (SAS)

• It provides secure access to resources in your storage account without discrediting the data security.
• You can control how a client can access your data with the help of SAS. It includes control over what resources clients can access, what permissions they have, and how long the SAS is valid.
• There are 3 types of SAS in Azure: User Delegation SAS, Service SAS, and Account SAS.

Azure Storage Account

• Azure Storage Account contains data objects like blobs, files, queues, tables, and disks.
• In short, it contains all of the storage data objects. Storage Account gives a unique namespace for your Azure Storage Data.
• You can access this data from anywhere using HTTP or HTTPS. Azure Storage Account offers various types.
• Some of them are general-purpose v2 accounts, general-purpose v1 accounts, BlockBlobStorage accounts, FileStorage accounts, and BlobStorage accounts.

Azure Subscription

• An Azure Subscription is linked to a single account. To take the advantage of Azure’s cloud services, it is necessary to have an Azure subscription.
• There are 3 types of Azure subscriptions: Free, Pay-as-you-go, and Members offers.
• A free account provides unlimited access to Azure services for 30 days with a $20 credit. The pay-as-you-go will let you pay for the services/resources that are used monthly. The members offers do have many further types.

Azure Tags

• Tags consist of names and values. You can use Azure tags to organize Azure resources.
• Tags can be applied to your Azure resources, resource groups, and subscriptions to logically organize them.
• Tag names are case-sensitive for operations. To apply tags to a resource, you must have access to write to Microsoft.Resources/tags.