List of Top Microsoft Azure Services

Introduction

In the present world, companies and employees consistently seek new methods of optimizing functions and efficiency, along with reducing costs and increasing productivity. That is where Microsoft Azure comes of great importance. Microsoft Azure is proven to be a stable and comprehensive cloud system with different services and solutions for every sized company and business. Ranging from IaaS to SaaS and PaaS, Azure is a package of an extensive variety of tools and services necessary to satisfy all customers’ needs. These Azure services are aimed at businesses and other professionals and can provide comprehensive substitutions to the most conventional means of handling the organization’s processes.

The objective of this blog post is going to focus on a list of the most trending Azure services that have offered critical impacts on the business world. To fully understand and use these services of azure, you can consider enrolling in a Microsoft Azure Combo training. This training combines foundational knowledge with practical skills development, specifically targeting the AZ-900 and AZ-104 certifications.

That being said, it is time to discuss the most popular list of Azure services.

Top 10 Microsoft Azure Services

Microsoft Azure introduced a number of services, and some of them are unique in their function, easily configurable, and revolutionary for organizations. Below is a list of Azure services that can be beneficial to organizations.

Azure DevOps

Azure DevOps is a software development and deployment solution that forms a single integrated solution in order to manage the entire software development life cycle. It offers a suite of integrated tools and services to address issues regarding how teams may share projects, i.e., collaboration, version control, how to build the application, and continuous delivery. Key features include:

• Azure Repos: Offers code hosting facilities called repositories where the team members are able to share, store, and manage the source code and track changes.
• Azure Pipelines: Enforces automated build and release pipeline; helps to build, test, and release applications across different environments efficiently.
• Azure Boards: Enhances the ability to implement the agile software development framework by way of supporting the identification of tasks, bugs, and, the planning of sprints.
• Azure Test Plans: Provides a rich set of tools for test management for planning and performing the software testing processes.
• Azure Artifacts: Offers a secure package repository that allows a team to store and share reusable items and other artifacts with other teams.

Azure VM

Need a powerful computer to run your applications? The answer is Azure Virtual Machines (VMs). This is more or less like leasing your own personal server in the cloud where you have full administrative rights for controlling the OS and other applications. Azure VM is an IaaS service that helps create virtualized servers in the cloud environment.

Thus, VMs offer management capabilities and portability of operating systems and applications, which enable organizations to transfer old applications or develop new ones swiftly. Key features include:

• Wide OS support: Azure VMs support a broad range of operating systems, including Windows Server, Linux, and various distributions.
• Customizable configurations: Users can tailor VM configurations, such as processor cores, memory, and storage, to match specific application requirements.
• Development and Test: Azure VM allows developers to create, test, and deploy applications quickly and cost-effectively, with easy setup, flexible scaling, and reduced infrastructure costs.

Azure Blob Storage

The Azure Blob Storage is a storage service that is hosted in the Cloud, through it, enterprise firms store massive data that may not organized. This is a perfect place to store files such as videos, images, and any form of data, such as audio files. Some use Azure Blob Storage for constructing data lakes and data warehouses.

Azure Blob Storage enables you to get your data at any time and from any location with ease and also expands your storage capacity. Hot, Cool, and Archive storage types are available to assist in raising cost efficiency depending on the data’s level of activity. Some of the applications of Azure Blob Storage are:

• Media streaming: The use of cloud storage and delivery of video and audio content intended for streaming services.
• Data archiving: Preserving massive data for storage that ranges from medium to long term.
• Backup and recovery: Protecting copies of this information by making duplicates in other facilities so that the firm may continue operation in case of a disaster.
• Content delivery networks (CDNs): Content distribution worldwide for quick and enhanced service provisioning to the users.
• Big data analytics: Preserving and processing big data relating to company operations and outcomes.

Azure Backup

Azure Backup is a trustworthy Azure service for backing and restoring data and supporting both on-premises and the cloud. It offers flexible options for backups, including file-level, application-aware, and full system backups, and it can support various data sources such as Azure VMs, SQL Server, SAP HANA, and many more. It has a simple and user-friendly graphical user interface which will enable anyone to backup and restore data with ease. Its features include:

• Multi-platform support: Cross-platform compatibility for data backup is enabled by Azure Backup from Windows and Linux servers, SQL, Azure VM, and more applications.
• Data recovery options: It offers various options of recovery, namely recovering specific files, recovering the entire databases, and recovering entire VMs.
• Recovery Services Vaults: Safely retains the backup data in Recovery Services Vaults which are owned by Azure and come with the feature of inherent resilience and data persistence.

Azure Cosmos DB

Interested in the results of diverse data to create the most efficient database that will correspond to your demand? Azure Cosmos DB is a managed NoSQL service with worldwide distribution that can handle large amounts of data and traffic. It supports different types of data models such as Document, Key value, Graph, and Column family which would make it feasible to take almost any type of data and query over them.

There are many specific application areas, such as IoT, gaming, web applications, and mobile apps. Among them, the most important one is the ability to scale the data structure and respond to numerous users simultaneously. Key features include:

• Global distribution: This means it makes it possible for information to be stored at different locations where delay will not be occasioned and where speedy access can be gained.
• Integration with other Azure services: Integrates seamlessly with other Azure services, such as Azure Functions, Azure Logic Apps, and Azure Stream Analytics.

Azure Key Vault

Azure Key Vault is a cloud solution used to securely store keys, secrets, and certificates used to encrypt software, databases, and services. It presents the provision of managing, storing as well as regulating access to data, for instance, API key credentials, database logins, and certificates. It has only one primary objective; to ensure that your private information never falls into the wrong hands. Key features include:

• Secret Management: Provides a way to store and retrieve other sensitive information like connection strings, and API keys.
• Certificate Management: In matters of management digital certificates involve issues like generation, update, and cancellation.
• Access Control and Auditing: It provides the option to control access at a finer level and fully dictate who has the right to see the information that is secured.

Azure Active Directory

Another service among the Azure Services is the Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), which is an identity and access management service that delivers identity as a service for your applications across the enterprise, both in the cloud and on-premises. It works seamlessly with other Microsoft products as well as solutions from other reputable companies to enhance user administration and make use of the simplified measures associated with cloud solutions.

• Single Sign-On (SSO): Allows users to login into multiple applications with username and password.
• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Improving security by insisting the user to complete a number of forms of identification to make the access.
• Conditional Access: It enables filtering of the utilization of applications and resources based on geographical location, kind of equipment, and others.
• User Management: Contains features used for account management, group management, and permissions.

Azure Site Recovery

The Azure Site Recovery is a disaster recovery and business continuity service, the service allows customers to replicate and recover applications and data to Azure or an additional site on the customer’s on-premises location. It supplies an overall system that may help in the prevention of any disaster affecting business operations. Key features include:

• Replication and Recovery: Guarantees applications and data replication and recovery as part of disaster recovery at the Azure level or at an additional site.
• Disaster Recovery Orchestration: Ensures the organizations’ computers can easily facilitate the failover and failback processes with little downtime.
• Multi-Cloud Support: Can mirror and restore originated applications and information to various clouds, such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

Azure Functions

Azure Functions is a computer service that allows the execution of code on demand in response to events or a schedule without worrying about the underlying supporting infrastructure. It forms the basis of a flexible and concurrent model for developing applications that initiate whenever an event is triggered. Key features include:

• Serverless Execution: This enables a developer to execute code without having to deal with servers.
• Event-Driven Triggers: Supports multiple triggers such as HTTP requests, timer schedules, and incoming messages of other Azure services.
• Language Support: Supports different types of programming languages like C#, Node, js, Python, and PHP.

Azure API Management

The last one in the list of Azure Services is Azure API Management, which is an offering that is used for creating RESTful APIs and managing & securing the APIs. It delivers a full-fledged platform for generating, safeguarding, and reporting APIs irrespective of the application or device type. Key features include:

• API Gateway: This includes acting as a single means of controlling and safeguarding API traffic.
• API Publishing and Discovery: Enables developers to post APIs for access and use as well as find APIs that they need to use for their applications.
• API Security: Allows in defining the security policies to be implemented for APIs, including access control, rate limiting, and many others.
• API Analytics: Gives information about the rate at which APIs are being used, called volume, and the challenges of API safety.
• API Monetization: Helps in API monetization by providing for developer portals and billing.

These are some of the top Microsoft Azure Services.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1 – What services are in Azure?

Microsoft offers a list of Azure services including Compute (VMs, Functions), Storage (Blobs, Files), Database (SQL, Cosmos DB), Security (Azure AD, Key Vault), AI & Machine Learning, IoT, DevOps, and many more.

Q2 – How many services are on Azure?

Azure has over 200 services to meet compute, storage, networking, database, security, AI, ML, IoT, and many more by offering capabilities ranging from developing applications to workloads.

Q3 – What are the three services running on Azure?

Azure offers three main services: IaaS for VMs and storage, PaaS for application development and deployment, and SaaS for on-your-demand software application availability.

Q4 – Which Azure services are PaaS?

The Azure Platform as a Service PaaS is as follows; Azure app service for Web and mobile applications Azure Database services for managed databases, Azure Kubernetes Service AKS for containerized applications, and Azure Functions for serverless applications.

Conclusion

Microsoft Azure has made available a list of Azure services that business people and users need. For infrastructure and platform services and for software, servers, and serverless options, Azure offers comprehensive solutions for optimizations and for advancing organizational processes. Thus, having identified the most critical list of Azure services discussed in this blog post, you can drive the most value out of cloud computing.