Module 7: Microsoft Azure
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Microsoft Azure is the second-largest cloud provider by market share and the dominant platform for enterprises running Microsoft workloads. This module introduces Azure’s core services, identity and security model, and its unique hybrid-cloud capabilities.
We begin with Azure Core Services, covering the compute, storage, and networking offerings that map to familiar AWS concepts — VMs (EC2), VM Scale Sets (Auto Scaling Groups), App Service (Elastic Beanstalk), AKS (EKS), Functions (Lambda), Blob Storage (S3), VNet (VPC), and Load Balancer (ALB/NLB). You will learn the Azure portal, Azure CLI, and ARM templates as the primary management surfaces.
Next, Azure Identity & Security dives into Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory), Azure’s identity backbone. You will configure RBAC roles, apply governance with Azure Policy, harden workloads with Defender for Cloud, store secrets in Key Vault, and use managed identities to avoid hard-coded credentials.
The Azure vs AWS section maps services side-by-side, explores Azure Stack for hybrid cloud, and discusses when Azure’s enterprise integration (Microsoft 365, Active Directory, SQL Server) gives it an edge.
The module concludes with a capstone project where you deploy a multi-tier application on Azure using VMs, a load balancer, and Azure SQL Database.
Prerequisites
Completion of Module 1 (Cloud Fundamentals) and Module 2 (AWS Core Services) is recommended. Familiarity with Windows Server and Active Directory is helpful but not required.
By the end of this module you will be able to navigate the Azure portal, provision core services via CLI, apply RBAC and policy guardrails, compare Azure and AWS service models, and deploy a multi-tier architecture on Azure.