Understanding Azure

Azure provides all the benefits of the cloud while remaining open and flexible. Azure supports a wide variety of operating systems, languages, tools, platforms, utilities, and frameworks. For example, it supports Linux and Windows, SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. It supports most of the programming languages, including C#, Python, Java, Node.js, and Bash. It supports NoSQL databases, such as MongoDB and Cosmos DB, and it also supports continuous integration tools, such as Jenkins and Azure DevOps Services (formerly Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS)). The whole idea behind this ecosystem is to enable customers to have the freedom to choose their own language, platform, operating system, database, storage, and tools and utilities. Customers should not be constrained from a technology perspective; instead, they should be able to build and focus on their business solution, and Azure provides them with a world-class technology stack that they can use.

Azure is very much compatible with the customer's choice of technology stack. For example, Azure supports all popular (open-source and commercial) database environments. Azure provides Azure SQL, MySQL, and Postgres PaaS services. It provides the Hadoop ecosystem and offers HDInsight, a 100% Apache Hadoop–based PaaS. It also provides a Hadoop on Linux virtual machine (VM) implementation for customers who prefer the IaaS approach. Azure also provides the Redis Cache service and supports other popular database environments, such as Cassandra, Couchbase, and Oracle as an IaaS implementation.

The number of services is increasing by the day in Azure and the most up-to-date list of services can be found at https://azure.microsoft.com/services.

Azure also provides a unique cloud computing paradigm known as the hybrid cloud. The hybrid cloud refers to a deployment strategy in which a subset of services is deployed on a public cloud, while other services are deployed on an on-premises private cloud or datacenter. There is a virtual private network (VPN) connection between the public and private clouds. Azure offers customers the flexibility to divide and deploy their workload on both the public cloud and an on-premises datacenter.

Azure has datacenters across the globe and combines these datacenters into regions. Each region has multiple datacenters to ensure that recovery from disasters is quick and efficient. At the time of writing, there are 58 regions across the globe. This provides customers with the flexibility to deploy their services in their choice of location. They can also combine these regions to deploy a solution that is disaster-resistant and deployed near their customer base.

Note

In China and Germany, the Azure Cloud Services are separate for general use and for governmental use. This means that the cloud services are maintained in separate datacenters.