Microsoft Azure

Common Services

I'd recommend taking a look at Microsoft's tour of Azure services

Azure Command-Line Interface (CLI)

The Azure Command-Line Interface documentation is pretty solid, definitely check it out. They keep a list of Azure services the Azure CLI can manage, a handy reference to be aware of. I'm going to follow along in the docs, and write notes here. Goal number one, time to get started with Azure CLI.

Basic Notes

Some of these are taken from learning to work with the Azure CLI

The Azure CLI

Azure's CLI, az, is a great way to turn repetitive tasks into a one-liner from your command line. Their documentation walks you through installing the Azure CLI very well, so follow along their and come back when you have az set up.

File Shares

Virtual Machines

Functions

Virtual Network

SQL Database

Provisioning Storage

You can provision storage using either the az CLI or the python SDK

Azure Cost Management

Below you'll find notes from a time I needed to learn how to control spending and manage bills for a team project in Microsoft Azure. Both the Azure Advisor and Azure Cost Management services provide ways to reduce the amount of money that is spent, and prevent it from being spent in the first place.

Before the project gets started, it may be a good idea to learn to estimate costs with the Azure pricing calculator.

Subscriptions

Interestingly, you can't create a subscription from the command line. You'll have to go to the Azure Portal and set one up manually. Once you have, however, continue along below:

Configurations

Check out the documentation for az configure

Resource Groups

Providers

Storage

Azure Storage for File Shares

Before you go crazy, be sure to check out the pricing page before following along below. If this is a new topic for you, check out the intro page for Azure Files as well.

  1. Create a storage account

    az storage account create \
        --name ACCOUNT_NAME \
        --resource-group GROUP_NAME \
        --location 'westus' \
        --kind StorageV2 \
        --sku Standard_LRS
    
  2. Create a file share

    az storage share-rm create \
        --resource-group GROUP_NAME \
        --storage-account ACCOUNT_NAME \
        --name SHARE_NAME
        --access-tier TIER
    

    Where TIER is one of cool, hot, or TransactionOptimized

After you've done these two steps, make sure you secure the environment before you continue on to create a directory and upload a file.

You can remove the storage account and its contents whenever you'd like with the following command:

The next step is for me to create an Azure website using the CLI but one could just as easily create a web app in the Azure portal if that's less intimidating.

Azure App Service

If you need a web server to render content, use Azure's App Service. If, per chance, you find you don't actually need a web server, use their Static Web App service instead.

An App Service plan defines the resources that run an App Service app. Every App Service app must have a corresponding App Service plan in order to run it.

A single App Service plan can host multiple App Service apps.

Azure Web Apps

Microsoft's documentation has a great article about the steps to configure a Node.js app for Azure App Service

You won't be able to do much else using the command-line interface past this point. Follow along in the Azure documentation to learn how to create a search index