So what is Azure?
Azure, first released in February of 2010, is Microsoft's cloud platform.
So much like all of the pieces of cloud computing we talked about, Azure
is going to enable you to have
a lights-on, lights-off capability of looking at computing.
It supports all of the different type of
services you would expect in a cloud computing environment.
So infrastructure as a service, or IS, will
allow you to use virtual machines in the cloud.
You can bring them up instantly, or shut them off and
install any type of software that you want to run on them.
It also offers services called Platform as a service or PaaS.
This is where you can take advantage of managed services
from Microsoft and Microsoft will handle the patching and maintenance
of all of that computing power for you.
Azure is also cross platform This is both from an operating system
standpoint so you can use virtual machines for both Windows and Linux.
As well as a programming language choice.
So we have the capability to do things
in Javascript, C Sharp, Java, PHP, and Python.
Programming becomes just a choice of how you want to connect with the cloud.
So let's take a look at all the different type of services that Azure has.
First, we'll break it down into compute.
Compute is going to offer a couple of different capabilities.
The first is PaaS type of service to set up and run a website.
You don't have to actually worry about the underlying servers for
that website, what version of IIS, has everything been patched and installed?
You simply want a website out
there on the internet that users can access and
can scale up to hundreds of thousands of requests.
It also offers the ability to run virtual machines.
These virtual machines are Iaas, or infrastructure as a
service, and they run using the hyper V format.
Hyper V runs both in the Windows server environment.
As well as in the Windows 8 client environment.
So, you can create machines locally,
and then deploy them back and forth to the cloud as you see fit.
Azure also offers mobile services.
Mobile Services are a way to tie your mobile applications into the cloud.
It gives you the ability to authenticate and create types of identity for
your apps as well as the ability to store data in a structured way.
Last, Compute offers cloud services.
Cloud services gives you the ability to create and
manage a cloud application in a PaaS type of environment.
So, maybe I have a web site with a back end worker
process that's going to put information back, and forth on a queue.
All of that will run as a cloud service.
I'm going to show you later in this course how you
can create your own cloud service that does just that.
Azure also offers data services.
So we have the ability to run a SQL server database
in the cloud as well as storage such as queue, table and blob storage.
I can also run SQL recording service.
So I have the ability to do reports right from the cloud.
And then we have, third party services, and data,
like you saw before with clear DV from my sequel.
I can easily integrate through Azure store.
I'll also have app services.
So I have the ability to stream media, and stream media in
different formats.
So, whether that is a tablet type device, such
as an iPad, an Android tablet, or a surface.
Or a phone.
Such as a Window's phone, or an iPhone, or Android device.
I can switch immediately on the fly and
stream those type of videos to those devices.
I can also run service buses and have a
access control as well as my own identity provider.
Azure also offers the ability to create my own virtual network.
So if you are running different types of services
on premise in your own environment and you want
to securely connect them with Microsoft's cloud, you have
the ability to do that through a virtual network.
Azure's hosted in global data centers across the globe.
Currently, there are four data centers in North America, and you'll see
these listed in the portal as North Central, South Central, East, and West.
There are also two data centers in Asia, East,
and Southeast as well as Europe with North and West.
We've also announced recently.
As your data centers in Australia.
These data centers will give you geographic fail over within your
own services and applications as your data centers are highly automated.
Each center includes large shipping containers, that are completely
self contained with their own temperature regulation and AC systems.
These containers can be easily swapped out
and more containers added to each data center.
Azure is quickly becoming one of the most used cloud capability services on the web.
It's already used by over 2.9 million government bodies and schools.
It has processed over 265 billion authenticated requests.
And it's done that while maintaining 99.97% or better monthly availability.
How does that compare to your own data center?
Azure has grown so fast it now has more server
computer power than the entire world used to have in 1999.