In the previous post What is Microsoft Azure? we introduced azure and cloud computing in general, we also explained how can we signup for an account using either the free trial or MS Dev Essentials.

In this post, I will explain the different parts and services in Azure.

How are services grouped in Azure?

Azure has different services for different needs, it can be organized in many ways as below

Services

1. Compute
2. Storage
3. Networking
4. Integration

Layers

1. Application
2. Data
3. Integration

We can also divide it according to the consumption model (IAAS, PAAS, or SAAS), but we will stick to the above categorization for now

In this post, we will only explain the services part

Compute

This category has many wonderful services, like Virtual machines, Cloud Services which is a type of a virtual machine but more manageable by Azure and it has 2 types, web role used to host web sites and a worker role to host other code that runs on any windows machine.

Compute also has App service which as a developer you will be always using it as it offers everything you can wish for, starting from databases to DevOps, App Service has the following features

1. Web App, similar to cloud service but it is more PAAS and lightweight, the same web app can be used to host both a web application and a timer job using Web Jobs, note that it has been always called Azure web sites, so if you heard that name, don’t be confused, it is the same
2. Mobile App, as the name implies, it is a backend as a service for your mobile application, it offers a lot of features like a storage for your data, authentication, offline sync and push notification, it has also been known by Azure Mobile Services for long time
3. Logic App, used to build a workflow applications to handle different business logic scenarios, ex: receive a message, post an order to the inventory service, sends an email, assign a task to shipping employee …, the logic app is based on BizTalk services which is an online version from BizTalk server
4. API App, used to host REST APIs with a lot of features like throttling, payment for usage, reports …

Storage

This is one of the most important services in Azure and without it, you can nearly do nothing, this is used for storing anything starting from simple files, VM VHD files to databases.

Storage is divided into storage accounts, each account can hold upto 500 TB, with some limits on the number of operations per second, to know more about Azure services limits you can read more from this link

You can create more than one account and use it for different services, ex: you can have an account for your databases and another for virtual machines , but you have to take care of the limits to avoid any issues

Networking

Azure enables you to create VPN  just like on-premise and only virtual machines, web apps or any other services joined to the VPN can see each other, not only this, but you can join the VPN to on-premise VPN in any of the following ways

1. Site to Site: this will join a whole VPN on-premise to Azure VPN, think of it as if you are expanding your datacenter
2. Point to Site: this will join a single machine on-premise to Azure VPN

Integration

This feature allows you to integrate applications deployed on Azure with other applications running on-premise or even on Azure using BizTalk services.

There are a lot of other services like Azure Active Directory, SQL Database, DocumentDB, Search, I will write about these services in next post, then I will start a series where we will build an application and utilize most of azure services in one place.

If you have any suggestions about it, please leave a comment.