06/04/2016 Azure in Plain English

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Microsoft Azure in
Plain English
Hey, have you heard of the new Azure services: Elasticville, StorageWart and API
Gatesian? Of course not, I just made those up.

Just like we'd previously made up but then eventually explained a bunch of
Amazon's Web Services in Plain English (/aws-in-plain-english). We're back to help
explain Microsoft's Azure ecosystem.

puts da

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Like this? We're writing free in depth guides to understanding individual
Azure services. Be the first to learn what Microsoft has renamed
'Storage' to this week:

Email Address

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Web + Apps Developer Services

If you're setting up a web app, these are mostly what you'd end up using.

Service Fabric

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Azure Microservice Have a class in your code? Make it a Microservice! AWS Lambda,
Deploy it to the Service Fabric! Ask for a raise. AWS API Gateway

App Service > Web Apps

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Azure PAAS, Used to be Run stu but don't worry about the sysadmin'ing. Heroku,
"Azure Websites" Modulus, AWS
ElasticBeanstalk,
CloudFoundry

Cloud Services

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Azure IAAS Run stu but worry a fair amount about con䐊䀀guration AWS EC2
and patching.

Virtual Machines

Should have been called Use this to It's like

You can't believe its not a Brag to your Devops friends that you'd recommend Linode,
real server baremetal if you had your way, but the new CTO says Rackspace VPS
you have to get all "cloudy"

Visual Studio Team Services

Should have been called Use this to It's like

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Source Control CI Build apps with other people: shared source control Github, Jenkins,
and continuous integration CodeShip,
BitBucket, AWS
CodeCommit

DevTest Labs

Should have been called Use this to It's like

QA Virtual Machines Spin up Virtual Machines according to a recipe you set Dockerish, Chef
for testing. or Puppetish

Application Insights

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Crash, Burn and Report Monitor performance and exceptions happening in Honeybadger,
ASP.NET or J2EE apps. Get noti䐊䀀ed of errors, get logs. Exception.io

Scheduler

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Cron the Barbarian Run small jobs that must be repeated at set intervals. Heroku
Helpful to not have to keep a VM running all the time Background Jobs,
just for scheduling recurring tasks. Cron

Storage Services
Azure has a singular service called 'Storage' that's all these services and a few that they are
depend on.

Blob Storage

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Large File Storage Put uploaded images, log 䐊䀀les, pirated bollywood 䐊䀀lms AWS S3,
or whatever your app calls for in an in䐊䀀nite hard drive. Rackspace Cloud
Files

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Table Storage

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Database Storage Somewhere in between traditional SQL and pure DynamoDB
NoSQL data storage.

Queue Storage

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Queue Connect services in a simple message queue AWS SQS,
arrangement. RabbitMQ,
Sidekiq

File Storage

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Attached File Storage Bring over apps to Azure that are dependent on a local AWS EBS
(mountable) 䐊䀀le system and you can't use Blob Storage.

StorSimple

Should have been called Use this to It's like

The more complex version It's like 'Storage' but moves 䐊䀀les up and down from AWS Storage
of 'Storage' Azure according to rules you set. It makes it seem like Gateway
Azure Storage is part of your local network.

Search

Should have been called Use this to It's like

FullText Search Do full text search of 䐊䀀le, web or whatever other text AWS
based objects you have around. CloudSearch,
ElasticSearch

Document DB

Should have been called Use this to It's like

JSON DB Store JSON NoSQL structured data - in general store DynamoDB,
more data, more simply than you would with relational MongoDB

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SQL.

SQL Database

Should have been called Use this to It's like

SQL Database Save all the app data you'll collect into tables and set Heroku Postgres
them up to have not in the biblical sense "relations".

Redis Cache

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Redis Store frequently used data in convenient structures. It's Redis2Go,
like Memcached but without the legacy of LiveJournal RedisGreen
clutched around it.

Azure Management Services

Azure gets complex, these services help tame that complexity.

Automation

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Cloud Shell Automate Azure services with Powershell - the langage AWS
of the Windows Server Gods. Cloudformation

Operational Insights

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Log Reader Collect, combine and search logs for issues or Splunk
troubleshooting.

KeyVault

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Hardware Security Module Keep encryption keys in secure storage, accessible only AWS KMS
when used.

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Security Center

Should have been called Use this to

Policy Minder Establish policies for Azure services and alert and report when they aren't
met.

Mobile App Developer Services

These are the services that only work for mobile developers.

App Service > Mobile Apps

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Baby's got Backend As A Authenticate, send messages and store network data Heroku, Urban
Service for mobile platforms. Airship, Parse

App Service > API Apps

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Azure API Proxy Build an API to Azure services and a SDK for multiple AWS API Gateway
client languages (PHP, Node, Java, ASP.NET)

API Management

Should have been called Use this to It's like

API Big Boss Control the tra c and limits of what is passed through AWS API Gateway
an API.

Noti䐊䀀cation Hubs

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Azure Push Noti䐊䀀cations Send push noti䐊䀀cations to iOS, Android, Windows and AWS SNS,
Kindle. Ok, now that even Kindle is supported, I just feel UrbanAirship
bad for making fun of Blackberry previously.

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Mobile Engagement

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Mobile Analytics (which Get real time analytics of what gets people to buy coin- AWS Mobile
unfortunately AWS scooped doubler bonuses in your mobile panda bowling game. Analytics, Flurry
up 䐊䀀rst)

Media and CDN Services

Deliver content faster, and make videos playable on di erent devices.

Encoding

Should have been called Use this to It's like

It's a good name, but wish Encode videos into formats useful for things like AWS
they had called it 'VHS' for viewing on mobile, web, 4K HomeTheater demos, etc. ElasticTranscoder
some retro charm.

Media Player

Should have been called Use this to

RealPlayer(TM) Actually embed the videos without you having to 䐊䀀gure out which player
and encodings work for each client platform.

Media Indexer

Should have been called Use this to

Closed Captioner Auto generate text from audio and video 䐊䀀les. Search this text or use it for
auto generated captions.

Content Protection

Should have been called Use this to

Azure DRM Protect your cat videos from copyright infringers and piraters.

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Live and On Demand Streaming

Should have been called Use this to

McStreamey Handle mass live playback of video along with making sure only the right
people are watching and that they've hopefully already paid you.

Content Delivery Network

Should have been called Use this to It's like

A(zure)kami Speed delivery of your sites, 䐊䀀les, videos to the people Cloudfront,
requesting them. MaxCDN

Networking Services
Depending on what you're doing you might use these to improve performance or security.

Virtual Network

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Network Expander Make it seem like new Azure services just happened to AWS VPC
show up on your internal company network. Bring your
own IP address.

Express Route

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Pretty good Push TBs a day up to Azure without overloading your AWS Direct
mom's cable modem? Get a dedicated line into Azure. Connect

VPN Gateway

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Can't a ord Express Route Setup a VPN between your datacenter and Azure to put OpenVPN
tra c over.

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Tra c Manager

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Geo Load Balancer Improve performance by putting tra c to datacenters AWS ELB
closer to requests and smart failover when a DC
catches on 䐊䀀re.

Load Balancer

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Local Load Balancer Split tra c between multiple servers/services AWS ELB

Application Gateway

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Web Load Balancer Load balance web servers. comes packed with all the AWS ELB
HTTP optimized load balancing goodies: SSL
terminating, Cookie A ity setting a growing developer
needs.

DNS

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Yuuuuuuuup it's DNS Make a joke about a guy named John CNAMEa! DNSimple, Route
53, GoDaddy

Enterprise / Corporate Services

Services for business and networks.

RemoteApp

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Apps on Cloud Put an app on Azure and give users a RDP session to it. Citrix

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BizTalk

Should have been called Use this to

App Communicator Connect both Azure Enteprise apps (like SAS or Peoplesoft) together. That
sounds like fun.

Service Bus

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Network Message Queue Dump commands and data into queuing service that RabbitMQ, AWS
lets you connect lots of devices, servers or client SQS
together for better and smoother processing.

Backup

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Better'n Tape Keep a data center disaster from wiping out all your Glacier,
backups. Sick of swapping tapes, keeping them o site Backblaze
and accidently recording hot mixes over the
incremental accounting backups?

Site Recovery

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Plan B Keep a replicated version of your critical network apps AWS CloudCon䐊䀀g
on standby in Azure.

Active Directory

Should have been called Use this to

Hybridactive Directory Setup an Active Directory As A Service that can sync to your Enterprise AD
or replace it entirely

Big Data Services

Services to ingest, manipulate and massage data to do your will.

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Batch

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Bunch-of-VMs.bat Do lots of stu at once on a bunch of systems, but not AWS Elastic Map
all the time. Also, use the word parallel more than a Reduce
middle school geometry teacher.

App Service > Logic Apps

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Cloud Lego Flowchart Hook together di erent pieces to build a cloud IFTTT, Zapier
work䕒ow for your data.

SQL Data Warehouse

Should have been called Use this to It's like

That'll do SQL Data Load up data into the giant SQL Server of your dreams AWS Redshift
Warehouse, that'll do. and query it six ways from Sunday (which I guess would
be Saturday?)

Data Lake Analytics

Should have been called Use this to

UberSQL Data Warehouse Hold Exabytes of Data (don't worry how much that is, if you had that much
data you'd know).

Data Lake Store

Should have been called Use this to It's like

ETL Query Extract, Transform and Load all your Datawarehouse AWS ElasticMap
data with Hadoop. Reduce

HDInsight

Should have been called Use this to

Apache Apps Assure your boss that the names: Pig, Hive, HBase, Storm, Spark are not
the new Avengers Movie superhero lineup.

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Machine Learning

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Cortana AI Edition Figure out what non-gamers think of all the Cortana AWS Machine
branding: "Whatasa cortada - some kind of hot Learning
chocolate mexican drink?" Also use this to get on an
AI's good side before the Singularity.

Stream Analytics

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Real Time Analytics Collect thousands of analytics streams simultaneously. AWS Kinesis

Data Factory

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Data Pipeline Schedule when and how data is moved between AWS
services. DataPipeline

Data Catalog

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Data Sharing Let anybody in your organization get to some of the Chartio
data you put into the other Data Services. It's like a SQL
View for cross service data.

IoT Services
Lots of devices scattered around your house that need patched.

IoT Hub

Should have been called Use this to It's like

Pretty good name and it's Central system for managing how many smart egg AWS IOT
not like some SOC will know monitors are connected to your new smart-egg-
what to call it anyway. monitor.com service. Handles authorization, updates

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and communications in a central way.


Like this? We're writing free in depth guides to understanding individual
Azure services. Be the first to learn what Microsoft has renamed
'Storage' to this week:

Email Address

you@yourdomain.com

Get Started Now

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