Azure Integration Guide for Business

Azure Integration Guide for Business

by Joshua Garverick, Jack Lee, Mélony Qin, Trevoir Williams
Released September 2023
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781837639144

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Book description

Leverage the cloud to optimize costs, improve security, and seamlessly scale your business operations

Key Features

  • Achieve your operational goals with Azure infrastructure
  • Optimize costs with serverless event-driven solutions through Azure cloud patterns
  • Boost productivity with Azure architecture’s flexibility and scalability
  • Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook

Book Description

Azure Integration Guide for Business is essential for decision makers planning to transform their business with Microsoft Azure. The Microsoft Azure cloud platform can improve the availability, scalability, and cost-efficiency of any business.

The guidance in this book will help decision makers gain valuable insights into proactively managing their applications and infrastructure. You'll learn to apply best practices in Azure Virtual Network and Azure Storage design, ensuring an efficient and secure cloud infrastructure. You'll also discover how to automate Azure through Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and leverage various Azure services to support OLTP applications. Next, you’ll explore how to implement Azure offerings for event-driven architectural solutions and serverless applications. Additionally, you’ll gain in-depth knowledge on how to develop an automated, secure, and scalable solutions. Core elements of the Azure ecosystem will be discussed in the final chapters of the book, such as big data solutions, cost governance, and best practices to help you optimize your business.

By the end of this book, you’ll understand what a well-architected Azure solution looks like and how to lead your organization toward a tailored Azure solution that meets your business needs.

What you will learn

  • Optimize the performance and costs with Azure
  • Select an effective, scalable, and flexible solution that aligns with your needs
  • Harness the power of containers to drive your application development and deployment
  • Create big data solutions with the best Azure tools, platforms, and resources
  • Explore the benefits of automation for enhanced productivity
  • Improve the availability and effectiveness of monitoring with Azure

Who this book is for

This book is for business decision makers looking to benefit from the flexibility, scalability, and optimized costs offered by Microsoft Azure to scale their businesses. Basic knowledge of Azure is recommended to get the most out of this book.

Table of contents

  1. Azure Integration Guide for Business
  2. Contributors
  3. About the authors
  4. About the reviewers
  5. Preface
    1. Who this book is for
    2. What this book covers
    3. To get the most out of this book
    4. Get in touch
    5. Download a free PDF copy of this book
  6. Chapter 1: Unlock New Opportunities with Azure
    1. Why many decision makers choose Azure
    2. Understanding segregation of responsibility in different Azure cloud models
      1. IaaS
      2. PaaS
      3. SaaS
    3. How to get started with Azure
      1. Step 1: Understand your business needs
      2. Step 2: Create an Azure account
      3. Step 3: Familiarize yourself with the Azure portal
      4. Step 4: Choose your services and solutions
      5. Step 5: Monitor and optimize your usage
    4. Understanding the Azure subscription models
      1. Free tier
      2. Pay-as-you-go
      3. Azure for Students
      4. Enterprise Agreement (EA)
      5. Cloud Solution Provider (CSP)
      6. Microsoft Partner Network (MPN)
    5. Summary
  7. Chapter 2: Achieve Availability, Scalability, and Monitoring with Azure
    1. Importance of achieving high availability with Azure
    2. Understanding high availability with Azure
      1. Planned maintenance
      2. Unplanned maintenance
      3. Application deployment architecture
    3. Achieving high availability on Azure
      1. Load balancing options in Azure
      2. How to choose the most suitable load balancing option in Azure
      3. Availability sets and availability zones
      4. Replica sets
    4. Why achieving scalability with Azure is important
    5. Scalability versus performance
    6. Autoscaling
    7. IaaS scalability
      1. Azure virtual machine scale sets
    8. PaaS scalability
      1. Azure App Service autoscaling
      2. Azure Functions
      3. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
      4. Azure Container Apps
      5. Azure Container Instances
      6. How to choose your IaaS and PaaS compute service
    9. Why do we need monitoring with Azure?
    10. Understanding monitoring with Azure
      1. Azure Monitor
      2. Azure Application Insights
      3. Azure Log Analytics
      4. Azure Network Watcher
      5. Azure Advisor
      6. Azure status
      7. Azure Service Health
    11. Summary
  8. Chapter 3: Cloud Architecture Design Patterns
    1. The importance of good architectural design
      1. Scalability and elasticity
      2. Resilience and high availability
      3. Security and compliance
      4. Cost efficiency and maintainability
    2. Azure Virtual Network design
      1. Architecting VNets
      2. VNet peering
      3. Site-to-site VPN
      4. Point-to-site VPN
      5. ExpressRoute
    3. Azure Application Gateway
    4. Azure Storage design
      1. Storage design patterns
    5. Azure design patterns related to messaging
      1. Messaging patterns
      2. Azure Service Bus
      3. Azure Event Grid
    6. Functions as a service
      1. Azure Functions
      2. Azure Durable Functions
    7. Azure solution design best practices
      1. Performance
      2. Security
      3. Resilience
      4. Scalability/availability
      5. Cost management
    8. Summary
  9. Chapter 4: Azure Network Infrastructure and Design
    1. Core networking patterns
      1. Public facing
      2. Virtual network isolation
      3. Peering and network protection
      4. Hub and spoke
    2. Networking components
      1. Core network connectivity
      2. Traffic routing
      3. Enterprise network security
    3. Common cloud networking scenarios
      1. Enterprise networks
      2. Micro-segmentation
      3. Virtual Network Appliances (VNAs) and security perimeters
      4. Capacity planning
      5. Failover and disaster recovery
      6. Monitoring and troubleshooting
    4. Summary
  10. Chapter 5: Automating Architecture on Azure
    1. Introduction
      1. The importance of defining infrastructure using code
    2. Why do we need to consider automating architectures on Azure using IaC?
      1. Why is it important to define infrastructure using code rather than manual processes?
    3. Understanding IaC
    4. Two approaches to implementing IaC
    5. Azure Resource Manager templates
      1. Benefits of ARM templates
      2. Automating deployments with ARM templates
    6. Bicep
      1. Benefits of Bicep
      2. Automating deployments with Bicep
    7. Terraform
      1. Benefits of Terraform
      2. Automating deployments with Terraform
    8. Comparing ARM templates, Bicep, and Terraform
    9. Creating reusable IaC modules
      1. Bicep modules
      2. Terraform modules
    10. Automating Azure landing zone provisioning with IaC
      1. Azure landing zone accelerators
      2. Azure landing zone – Bicep modules
      3. Azure landing zone – Terraform modules
    11. Why should we use IaC to build Azure landing zones?
      1. Maintaining a complete history of infrastructure changes
      2. Testing environments
      3. Catching configuration drifts
      4. Gaining higher confidence
      5. Managing multiple environments
      6. Better understanding your cloud resources
      7. Reducing effort
      8. Reducing errors
    12. Best practices for automating architectures on Azure
    13. Best practices for using IaC
    14. Summary
  11. Chapter 6: Optimize Performance with Azure OLTP Solutions
    1. OLTP applications
      1. Transactional data
      2. Traits and properties
      3. Use cases for OLTP
      4. Relational databases
    2. OLTP in Azure
      1. Azure SQL Database
      2. Azure SQL Managed Instance
      3. Azure Cosmos DB
      4. Azure Database for PostgreSQL
      5. Azure Database for MySQL
    3. Choosing the right service
    4. Scenarios for analytics
      1. Transactional querying
      2. Datamarts and data warehouses
      3. Azure Synapse Analytics
      4. Azure Databricks
    5. Cost optimization
      1. DTU-based pricing
      2. vCore-based pricing
      3. Request units (RUs)
      4. Reserved capacity
      5. How to choose the appropriate pricing model
    6. Summary
  12. Chapter 7: Designing Serverless Architecture Solutions in Azure
    1. Understanding the serverless platform in Microsoft Azure
    2. Building serverless apps with Azure Functions
      1. Use cases and scenarios
      2. Language runtime
      3. Triggers and bindings
      4. Hosting plans
      5. Performance and scale
      6. Business continuity
      7. Building stateful workloads with Durable Functions
      8. Language support
      9. Function types
      10. Storage providers
      11. Data persistence and serialization
      12. Automating workflows with Azure Logic Apps
    3. Integrating apps with Azure Event Grid
    4. Building event-driven architecture
      1. Building an event-driven serverless solution
    5. Summary
  13. Chapter 8: Deploying, Managing, and Scaling Containers with Azure Kubernetes Service
    1. Understanding containers and Kubernetes
      1. Container concepts
      2. Kubernetes concepts
      3. Upstream vanilla Kubernetes
      4. Managed Kubernetes
    2. Understanding Kubernetes cluster architecture
      1. Upstream vanilla Kubernetes architecture
      2. AKS cluster architecture
      3. Add-ons, extensions, and third-party integrations
    3. Deploying applications on AKS
      1. Kubernetes primitives
      2. Application life cycle management
      3. Helm
    4. Understanding AKS networking
      1. Kubernetes networking basics
      2. kubenet
      3. CNI
      4. Network policy
    5. Understanding AKS cluster security
      1. Build security
      2. Registry security
      3. Cluster security
      4. Node security
      5. Network security
      6. Application security
    6. Demystifying managed AKS – Azure Container Apps
      1. Dapr – Distributed Application Runtime
      2. KEDA – Kubernetes Event-Driven Autoscaling
      3. Key scenarios
    7. Simplifying container deployment with Azure Container Instances
      1. Use cases and scenarios
      2. Advantages
    8. Summary
  14. Chapter 9: Designing Big Data Solutions with Azure
    1. Why do we need big data solutions?
    2. Designing big data solutions
      1. Data warehousing
      2. Data analytics
      3. IoT and telemetry
    3. Utilizing AI for intelligent solutions
      1. Azure Machine Learning
      2. Azure Cognitive Services
      3. Azure Bot Service
      4. Designing intelligent solutions
    4. Summary
  15. Chapter 10: Architecting Secure Applications on a Trusted Platform
    1. The Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure
    2. Azure security services
      1. Azure AD
      2. Managed identities and service principals
      3. Azure Key Vault
    3. Azure security policies and locks
      1. Azure resource locks
      2. How does Azure Policy work?
      3. Why tag resources?
      4. Exploring RBAC protections
    4. Microsoft Cybersecurity Reference Architecture
      1. Microsoft Purview
    5. Azure infrastructure security
      1. Network security groups
      2. Azure Firewall
      3. Azure Monitor
      4. Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF)
      5. Azure landing zones
    6. Summary
  16. Chapter 11: Cost Governance on Azure
    1. Understanding Azure subscription plans and offers
      1. Cost optimization features
      2. Understanding Cost Management + Billing on Azure
      3. Azure cost calculators
      4. Best practices for cost optimization and governance
      5. Optimizing Platform as a Service (PaaS) costs
      6. General best practices
    2. Summary
  17. Chapter 12: Conclusion
    1. Chapter 1, Unlock New Opportunities with Azure
      1. Chapter 2, Achieve Availability, Scalability, and Monitoring with Azure
      2. Chapter 3, Cloud Architecture Design Patterns
      3. Chapter 4, Azure Network Infrastructure and Design
      4. Chapter 5, Automating Architecture on Azure
      5. Chapter 6, Optimize Performance with Azure OLTP Solutions
      6. Chapter 7, Designing Serverless Architecture Solutions in Azure
      7. Chapter 8, Deploying, Managing, and Scaling Containers with Azure Kubernetes Service
      8. Chapter 9, Designing Big Data Solutions with Azure
      9. Chapter 10, Architecting Secure Applications on a Trusted Platform
      10. Chapter 11, Cost Governance on Azure
    2. Summary
  18. Index
    1. Why subscribe?
  19. Other Books You May Enjoy
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Product information

  • Title: Azure Integration Guide for Business
  • Author(s): Joshua Garverick, Jack Lee, Mélony Qin, Trevoir Williams
  • Release date: September 2023
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781837639144