This week I went to London for a Microsoft Azure fundamentals 2-day course. We have had a few clients mention they would like to move to the ‘cloud’ so thought it would be a good opportunity to learn more about Azure.
What is Azure?
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service created by Microsoft for building, testing, deploying and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed data centres. It provides software as a service (Saas), platform as a service (Paas) and infrastructure as a service (Iaas) and supports many different programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including both Microsoft-specific and TP software/systems.
Basics 101
We started the course getting to know the basics of cloud computing. It provided a general overview of cloud computing then moved onto focusing on Azure & it’s services that organisations use most commonly. In this section, we got to grips with the Azure portal, which serves as the primary graphical user interface (GUI) for managing the services within Azure.
Once we had got to grips with the portal & locating services such as subscription management, support, billing etc we moved onto some more in-depth stuff. We covered using the different tools to manage Azure, PowerShell & Azure CLI, if you didn’t want to use the portal and then moved onto Virtual Machines.
This is the part I was keen to get more knowledge of, as although I am familiar with virtual machines on premises, I have not had much experience with ‘Cloud’ based virtual machines and their link to local networks. This module provided me with an overview of creating and configuring virtual machines, configuring virtual machine availability and configuring disks within Azure. Following this we moved onto Azure networking, which gave us the knowledge to connect the virtual machines to the Microsoft-managed data centres as well as local networks.
We then briefly went over a few other services Azure provides, such as Azure Storage, Serverless computing & Azure AD, to finish off the course.
After completing the course, I feel I have better knowledge to be able to advise our clients who are looking to move to Azure as well as help them along the way.
I would highly recommend this course if you are looking for an overview of the Microsoft Azure Cloud.
IT Manager
In 2016, Gemma joined Optima’s network team. Her main priority is to provide support to our clients and internal staff. Gemma also takes care of the day to day running of the networking team, making sure all issues are solved within SLA’s and clients are happy with the support we provide. More about Gemma.
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