What are the Azure essentials?
Microsoft Azure provides the familiar cloud primitives — Virtual Machines, Blob Storage, Virtual Networks, and Entra ID for identity — organized around resource groups and subscriptions. It is especially common in enterprises already invested in Microsoft tooling.
Why it matters
Azure has large enterprise market share, so many DevOps roles, especially in big or regulated companies, require it. Knowing its organizing concepts and how they map to AWS and GCP completes a well-rounded cloud foundation and widens the jobs you can take.
What to learn
- Subscriptions and resource groups
- Virtual Machines and scale sets
- Blob Storage
- Virtual Networks and network security groups
- Entra ID and role-based access control
- AKS as managed Kubernetes
- Mapping Azure concepts to AWS and GCP
Common pitfall
Ignoring resource groups and scattering resources with no organization. In Azure the resource group is how you manage lifecycle, access, and cleanup together — neglecting it leaves you with sprawl you cannot tear down cleanly. Group related resources from the start so they can be managed and deleted as a unit.
Resources
Primary (free):
- Microsoft — Azure fundamentals · docs
- Microsoft Learn — Azure paths · docs
- Azure — Free account · tool
Practice
In a free Azure account, create a resource group, deploy a small VM into a virtual network with a network security group scoped to your IP, and create a storage account. Delete the resource group to clean up everything at once. Done when one delete removes all of it.
Outcomes
- Organize resources with subscriptions and resource groups.
- Deploy compute and storage on Azure.
- Scope access with Entra ID and RBAC.
- Map Azure services to AWS and GCP equivalents.