Azure Services Simplified: Key Tools and Their Use Cases

I’m excited to share some of what I’ve learned while preparing for the Azure Cloud Developer Certification (AZ-204). Over the past few weeks, I’ve been diving deep into the world of Azure, focusing on how to build scalable, secure, and efficient cloud applications.

In this post, I’ve organized the key Azure services I’ve explored into categories based on their use cases. This structure has helped me understand how to pick the right tools for specific challenges.

Compute Essentials

How do you deploy .NET applications in Azure?

• Azure Virtual Machines (VMs): Offers full control over the operating system and environment, making it great for hosting APIs, web apps, or databases with custom configurations.
• Azure App Service: Simplifies deployment of .NET web apps with a fully managed platform that includes built-in scaling and monitoring.
• Azure Functions: A serverless compute service that runs your code only when triggered. No servers to manage, and it scales automatically based on demand.
• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): Provides a fully managed Kubernetes environment for deploying and scaling containerized .NET applications.

Storage Essentials

How to efficiently store and manage data in Azure?

• Azure Blob Storage: Ideal for unstructured data like images, logs, and backups, with easy .NET SDK integration.
• Azure Files: Shared file storage in the cloud, perfect for applications needing shared access across servers.
• Azure SQL Database: A fully managed relational database service that feels like SQL Server without the infrastructure overhead.
• Azure Cosmos DB: A NoSQL database for globally distributed applications, with support for MongoDB, Cassandra, and other APIs.

Networking Essentials

How do you manage networking in the cloud?

• Azure Virtual Network (VNet): Enables the creation of isolated networks, giving full control over traffic routing and security.
• Azure Application Gateway: A Layer 7 load balancer that supports SSL termination and URL-based routing for secure and optimized traffic flow.

Monitoring Essentials

How do you ensure application health and performance?

• Azure Monitor: Tracks metrics, sets up alerts, and provides a complete monitoring solution for Azure resources.
• Azure Application Insights: Focuses on app-level diagnostics, helping to detect and resolve performance bottlenecks quickly.

Security Essentials

How do you secure your Azure applications?

• Azure Active Directory (AAD): Simplifies user authentication with features like single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA).
• Azure Key Vault: Safely manages secrets like connection strings and API keys, ensuring secure access to your applications.

Final Thoughts

Preparing for the Azure Cloud Developer Certification (AZ-204) has been a rewarding journey so far. Each service I’ve explored has deepened my understanding of how to build scalable and secure cloud applications.

I’ve been following Alan Rodrigues 's course and doing hands-on labs using Cloud Guru (Pluralsight). These resources have been incredibly helpful in reinforcing theoretical concepts with practical implementations.