Understand Azure Regions, Zones, and Resources

0:00<v ->Welcome to the AZ-104 introductory skill</v>

0:04that we have here.

0:05This is understanding what the Azure layout really is.

0:10In order to start working with Azure,

0:12you have to understand how all of these pieces fit together

0:15in the first place.

0:16You have to understand where the data centers are.

0:19How is resiliency and redundancy baked

0:22into these data centers?

0:24This plays a major impact on where you choose

0:27to deploy your resources.

0:28How does billing really work,

0:30and where do our identities come from

0:32when we want to log in to Azure?

0:34That's what we're introducing in this set of videos

0:37as we start to introduce the Microsoft Azure cloud.

0:40So by the end of this set of videos,

0:42you'll understand what all the different as a services are

0:46that Microsoft brings to the table.

0:48You'll understand the difference

0:49between a Azure region and an Azure availability zone

0:54and how those all piece together.

0:56It might impact your decision on what to deploy.

0:59You'll understand how to set up an account

1:02and create your first subscription,

1:04and really, what does that subscription mean

1:06at the end of the day.

1:07We'll take a look at where the billing comes into play,

1:09and we'll also peek a little bit

1:12into Azure Active Directory,

1:13although there will be a lot more Azure Active Directory

1:16coming up throughout this entire playlist.

1:19So without further ado, let's get started working

1:22with Microsoft Azure.

1:23Let's go.

0:00<v Instructor>So this is it,</v>

0:01this is the end goal for you in this set of videos,

0:04is to make it to this page.

0:06And in fact, in this video,

0:07we're gonna tackle exactly that.

0:09This is known as the Azure Portal.

0:13Let me go ahead and write it here on the screen.

0:14This is known as the portal.

0:17Now, this stands in a lot of contrast

0:19to what you might see if you're coming from the AWS world,

0:22where they call that the console.

0:25So if you are coming from the AWS world

0:28and you're trying to make this transition

0:29and understand Azure,

0:31if you're reading documentation or things like that,

0:33know this right now,

0:34that the portal is the synonym to the console.

0:38Now, let me go ahead and help you get to this point, though,

0:42because if you're trying to make your way to where I am,

0:45portal.azure.com,

0:47you might be hit with a page that says,

0:49well, it's time for you to log in.

0:51So I've gone ahead and signed out,

0:53effectively deleting the token that's in my browser

0:56that lets me log in.

0:58And when I go to portal.azure.com now,

1:00you see it redirects me to login.microsoft.com.

1:04This works great

1:05if you've already got a Microsoft Azure account.

1:09And put another way,

1:10if you have an account

1:12that's in an Azure Active Directory already,

1:15maybe because you use Microsoft 365 or Office 365,

1:19you can log in with that account

1:21and you'll find yourself in the Azure Portal.

1:24But if you're starting out from scratch,

1:26which there's an okay chance of that,

1:28we'll just go to regular old azure.com

1:30and create our Azure account for free.

1:34Now, that's a pretty cool thing, if you ask me,

1:36that it's free to create an Azure account,

1:38and there's even a bunch of free resources

1:41that'll help you get started.

1:42See, if you scroll down just a hair,

1:45you can see, take advantage of free products

1:48that you can try out,

1:49things like free virtual machines,

1:51both Windows and Linux,

1:54free Azure SQL databases,

1:56storage accounts, app services,

1:58Cosmos DB, functions, event grids.

2:02Now, there's some gotchas to this.

2:04For instance, it's only a free amount of usage

2:07for each one of these,

2:09but nonetheless,

2:10it does help you get started using these resources

2:12and understand what they do.

2:14Now, you may be thinking to yourself,

2:16well, I don't know what Blob Storage does or Cosmos DB does

2:20or an app service.

2:21Well, that's why you're here,

2:22we're gonna talk about all of these things as they come up.

2:25I just wanted to put your mind at ease a little bit

2:27that at least while you're learning,

2:29there should be enough free resources

2:32and usage available to you to spin up these things

2:36and test them out as we progress along.

2:38Now, these are also known as core resources,

2:41these are the things that really make Azure Azure,

2:44they're the staples that always are available,

2:47but Microsoft is also making a huge play

2:50into the data, machine learning, and analytics world.

2:54So you'll start to see things like AI services

2:56and machine learning studios pop up.

2:59Now, we might talk about those in this playlist,

3:02it's a good idea to mention that they exist

3:04and a little bit about how they work,

3:05but there are,

3:06Microsoft does a really good job of breaking out specialties

3:10into their own exam,

3:12like the AI-900 exam,

3:15a playlist that we have here at CBT Nuggets.

3:18Things like the DevOps side of things.

3:21Azure DevOps is a separate resource, a separate tool,

3:24all about CI/CD pipelines,

3:27which you learn about in the AZ-400 exam,

3:30again, here at CBT Nuggets.

3:32Then right above that,

3:33you see logic apps and function apps,

3:35we'll definitely talk about those in the 104,

3:38but they're heavily used in the 204

3:41because they are focused in

3:42on platform as a service offerings.

3:45Now, if you don't really understand

3:46platform as a service offerings,

3:47don't worry, we're gonna talk about that in the next video.

3:50So anyways, from here,

3:51where do we go to get started?

3:53Well, scroll on down until you see something like this

3:56where you're gonna get a $200 credit for your first month.

4:00Click this big green Start Free button,

4:02give it a click.

4:04Now, here, when you're going through getting started

4:06with azure.com,

4:08it's gonna ask you if you already have a Microsoft account

4:11if you wanna use that account to set up your Azure Portal.

4:16If you don't, you can click Use Another Account

4:18and go through the process of creating a Microsoft account.

4:22You can even sign in with GitHub

4:24if that's what you wanna do.

4:26So temporarily, I'm gonna put in a new account right here

4:30that doesn't have portal access just yet.

4:34See, it tells me like,

4:35we haven't actually signed in with this one yet,

4:37so I'm just gonna click create a new account real quick

4:39so we can get to it.

4:41The cool thing about this

4:42is that you can actually sign up

4:43even using your current Gmail accounts

4:45if that's what you wanna do.

4:47So if I just make up a Gmail account real quick

4:50to kind of go through the process,

4:51we're now gonna create a password,

4:54and it sends a verification code to the email.

4:57So it's making me go through this verification.

4:59It's actually kind of tricky to get it set up.

5:01The animal has to face in the direction

5:05that the fingers are pointing.

5:07There we go.

5:09Look at that, you're already playing games to get started.

5:11Isn't that fun?

5:13Then eventually, when it gets past that screen

5:16of finding out that I'm a robot or not,

5:18we get the basic profile set up.

5:21So typing in my basic info,

5:23I'll go ahead and type in my phone right now,

5:26text myself to verify that,

5:28and then move on to the next page.

5:30Go ahead and do the same.

5:31With the phone number verified,

5:32we have some additional contact info,

5:35which is gonna be your address to reach you at,

5:38and then you can move on to the next part,

5:39which is the payment information.

5:41So let's go ahead and finish this up.

5:43Again, for my own privacy,

5:45I'm not gonna enter this on the screen.

5:47Now, after that,

5:48I went ahead and entered the payment information.

5:50Again, I hope it makes perfect sense

5:52why I didn't share that info on the screen.

5:55The final step here is to take a look at tech support.

5:58Now, you can say the default option right here,

6:01which is I don't need tech support,

6:03I'm already covered through something else

6:05like Microsoft Premier support.

6:06If you're an enterprise,

6:08it is likely that that's a chance,

6:09but if you don't want to do that,

6:12if you do want to actually pay for tech support,

6:15you can do the developer support for $29 a month.

6:18This is great for really small teams

6:20who are looking to get started.

6:22The big thing is the availability,

6:24weekdays from nine to five.

6:26Notice it doesn't say what time zone,

6:28I'm gonna guess the West Coast

6:29'cause that's where Microsoft is.

6:31And the response times are typically under eight hours.

6:34Now, if you actually have production workloads

6:37and an initial response of within one hour

6:40to one business day is necessary,

6:42then you're gonna bump this up to standard.

6:44And then Professional Direct for $1,000 a month

6:46is where you have mission-critical business workloads

6:49that you need immediate response and eyes on

6:52whenever that's the case.

6:53So the final thing to do here is click Sign Up,

6:56and it's confirming your information,

6:58getting you started in the Azure Portal.

7:01So when you finally land here on the Azure Portal,

7:03they wanna tell you to take a tour,

7:05which is good to do,

7:07but that's also kind of my job.

7:08I'm gonna show you around

7:09and show you the things that I've learned to navigate

7:12and change throughout my years.

7:13Let's click Maybe Later for right now

7:15and I'll show you kind of what the things are.

7:18Immediately, I see this and it's kind of blinding to me,

7:22and I wanna change my color theme right off the bat.

7:25That's just me personally and what I'm thinking.

7:27So right here, center stage,

7:30there's that little gear,

7:31that's the one I wanna click on

7:33to bring up the appearance and themes.

7:35So right here on the left-hand side,

7:37we are going to jump down to Appearance and Startup Views,

7:40and for my own good,

7:41I'm gonna change this to dark mode and click Apply.

7:45Ah, better already.

7:47But notice some of the other things that you can personalize

7:50and just make better for your own usage.

7:52What's your default language or your default region?

7:55More on regions coming up.

7:57Some personal contact information.

7:59And then anything you need to know

8:00about getting notifications right here on the screen,

8:04as well as what the dialogue is for signing out.

8:07We also see things like directories and subscriptions here.

8:11Now, this is gonna be a little bit bigger of a topic

8:13that we'll talk about towards the end,

8:15but the idea is you may have an enterprise,

8:19a large enterprise

8:20with maybe a bunch of different subsidiaries,

8:22and underneath this enterprise

8:24you may want to have company A's Active Directory,

8:30that's what they mean by directory here,

8:33as well as their billing info.

8:35I'm gonna put a little key right here

8:37with a dollar sign underneath it.

8:39So company A may have what seems like a sub-account

8:43with their own Active Directory,

8:45and right here you may have company B

8:49that's part of your subsidiary.

8:51Basically, your one account that you log in to right here

8:55can be kind of a hierarchical organization-wide account

9:00that manages sub-accounts with sub-directories

9:03and sub-subscriptions.

9:06Now, speaking of that whole subscription thing,

9:08let's take a moment to pause and think about this.

9:10We just put a credit card on file.

9:12Are we being billed monthly for something,

9:15like you would think of when you hear about a subscription?

9:18No.

9:19One of the interesting things about the cloud

9:21is you really only get billed for what you use,

9:24and right now we're not using anything.

9:26They just have the card on file

9:28so that after 30 days elapses,

9:30at the end of the billing period,

9:32they can charge your card

9:33for whatever you use during that period.

9:36Again, you get a $200 credit on your account,

9:39first of all,

9:40and then secondly, there are a lot of free resources

9:42that you can use to test stuff out anyways.

9:44So I did wanna kind of illustrate or illuminate

9:47what they mean by subscription there.

9:50You're not actually getting billed for something

9:52until you start using something.

9:55Now, what else are we seeing here?

9:57Right here across the top,

9:59we see this Azure Services section.

10:01This is actually your most recently used

10:05or recently visited resources.

10:08Now, down here below you will see your individual resources.

10:14For instance, if I recently navigated

10:17to the Virtual Machines section,

10:19this is gonna show up first on my diagram.

10:22The individual virtual machines

10:25that I most recently visited

10:28will all be listed down here too.

10:30So I could either quickly jump

10:32into the all-encompassing Virtual Machines section,

10:35or I could see the individual virtual machines

10:38that I wanna jump into right here.

10:40Notice you can also set favorites.

10:42So here we have a Recent tab

10:45and here we have a Favorites tab.

10:47Now, you might also be thinking to yourself,

10:49I'm pretty sure Azure offers more services

10:52than what I'm seeing here on the screen.

10:54Well, that's what's this little,

10:55well, there are actually a few different ways

10:56you can get there.

10:57Let's start off by looking at the hamburger menu.

11:00This is another quick jump spot

11:02where you can actually get to frequently used resources.

11:05Now, it is kind of broken into two different pieces,

11:09which is kind of hard to see.

11:10This is kind of the dividing line right here

11:13where we have the most recently,

11:16or excuse me, the favorited resources

11:19that we wanna jump to right here.

11:21You can change the order of these resources

11:23by clicking the little dot, dot, dot menu

11:26and dragging them around,

11:28or you can click on the dot, dot, dot menu

11:30to actually jump into it.

11:31Actually, you can click on either one of these

11:32to jump into it if that's what you wanna do.

11:34So if I can move them around like so,

11:36that's really cool.

11:38And also notice that you can hover over these

11:40to pop up a little window.

11:42Now, when I hover over this,

11:44I can get a description about what this resource does,

11:46and if I wanna remove it from this entire pane,

11:50I can actually unmark the star here to remove it.

11:53So I'll jump down here to something like load balancers

11:56and then just undo the little star right here in the corner

11:59and then click off.

12:01Now when I come back,

12:02load balancers are gone.

12:04So you can kind of customize your navigation pane here too.

12:08Now, if you wanna see all things

12:09that Azure has available to you,

12:12let me kind of highlight this,

12:13All Services are things that you can deploy,

12:17but maybe haven't deployed yet.

12:20All Resources are things that you have deployed.

12:23So I can look at every resource across all of Azure

12:27that I've deployed

12:28or I can browse available things to deploy in All Services.

12:33So give All Services a click

12:35and then prepare to have your mind blown.

12:37Start scrolling.

12:39Notice how they're broken apart into categories.

12:43Compute, analytics, AI, containers,

12:47databases, DevOps, general,

12:51hybrid and multi-cloud,

12:53identity, IoT, integration.

12:56You get the idea.

12:57Do you see what I mean here?

12:59Azure has like hundreds of things

13:02that you can deploy and work with.

13:05Even if you go through the AZ-104

13:08and you feel like you have truly mastered this content

13:10and you know every single thing

13:12that I'm about to talk to you about,

13:14you're still on the tip of the iceberg

13:17of all the things that you could actually do in Azure,

13:20and this is why they break it apart into specialties.

13:22You are here on the AZ-104,

13:26but you might also be interested on the 800 or 801,

13:29this is the hybrid infrastructure exam.

13:33You might be interested in the data platform series,

13:36like working with SQL Server or Azure SQL Resources,

13:40or in the DP-500,

13:42it's more like working with Power BI.

13:44Like I said, there's already AI courses out there.

13:47And then if you really wanna get serious

13:49about platform as a service,

13:51which, listen to me,

13:52just listen,

13:54if you're serious about the cloud,

13:56you have to be serious about platform as a service,

13:58you just have to.

14:01It is the point of the cloud,

14:03it's where you get the biggest bang for your buck,

14:05and that's all covered in the AZ-204.

14:08I would say it would significantly help you

14:12to have the 104 under your belt

14:14and understand the cloud and the administrative processes

14:17and understand the more,

14:20dare I say, traditional way of doing things.

14:23But when you really wanna have your mind blown,

14:25you go to the 204.

14:27Okay, so at this point you now have an account set up,

14:30you're in the portal,

14:32and you're able to click around on things

14:34and even customize your layout.

14:36Now, if you're ready to get started working with it

14:38and deploying resources,

14:39we need to pause first

14:40and make sure we really understand what we're doing

14:43and the choices that we make when we start doing it.

14:46So in the next video,

14:47we're gonna talk about a few different things

14:49that you need to consider

14:51before you start racking up a bill.

14:53I hope this has been informative for you

14:54and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00<v ->Now, believe me when I say</v>

0:01that the number one thing that I wanna do

0:03is jump into the portal and start deploying stuff

0:07so that you can have fun and you can get an immediate W

0:10under your belt.

0:11That's what I want.

0:12Have faith that you will get there,

0:14and you will do a lot of cool things

0:15in this series of videos, but you first

0:18must absolutely understand the somethings as a service.

0:22I'm gonna put these each right here on the screen.

0:26That is infrastructure as a service, platform as a service,

0:30and software as a service.

0:34Now, are these the only three as a services

0:37that exist in the world?

0:38No. There are things like databases as a service.

0:43You have machine learning or AI as a service.

0:46In fact, isn't everything as a service now?

0:49Like you can find anything that you want

0:51as a service out there on the internet,

0:53and if it doesn't exist, make it up

0:54because I guarantee you it's gonna sell.

0:57Or at least it seems like that's the case

0:59that we're in right now.

1:00There's an everything as a service

1:01because everybody's trying

1:02to brand their solution as unique.

1:05But the three core ones are infrastructure as a service,

1:08platform as a service, and software as a service.

1:11Now, when you see these,

1:12you should be thinking of trade-offs, okay?

1:17Why am I saying trade-offs?

1:19Because no matter what, when we're talking about

1:21using cloud resources, it's not our hardware, is it?

1:26The very fact that it's not our hardware alone

1:29means that we have relinquished some amount of control

1:32over what goes on, on these servers.

1:36And finding the right fit for you

1:38really depends on what your comfortability is

1:41or where you wanna fit

1:43in the relinquishing control spectrum.

1:46With infrastructure as a service,

1:48you maintain the most control.

1:52Why is this? Because you still control, well, guess what?

1:57The infrastructure.

2:00Put another way, you still define the network.

2:08Now, when we say this in the Azure terms,

2:10we're usually referring to what's called a VNet,

2:13which is short for a virtual network.

2:16Again, if you're coming from the AWS world,

2:18this is the synonym for a VPC,

2:21the VPC standing for virtual private cloud.

2:24But the long story short of it is,

2:26is you're defining things like subnets and routes

2:32and ACLs/firewall rules.

2:37You're 99% of the time also deploying virtual machines.

2:42Now, while they're responsible, they being Azure,

2:46is responsible for hosting this virtual machine

2:49physically on a server,

2:50you're responsible for every single thing

2:53that goes on, on the virtual machine.

2:55Things like operating system patches

2:57and software installations and dependencies.

3:02So it's the exact same as running a virtual machine

3:05on-premises, except for you don't manage

3:07the physical hardware that it runs on,

3:09you just manage the virtual machines.

3:11So when they spin up a virtual machine,

3:13you're basically given an SSH endpoint or an RDP endpoint,

3:18and you get in either over a private tunnel into Azure

3:23or over the public internet.

3:25And what you do on that virtual machine from there

3:27is up to you.

3:29Virtual machines, again, are kind of like a toolbox.

3:34You have all the tools available to you,

3:37but it's up to you to build something.

3:39And then it's gonna be up to you

3:40to maintain something on top of that.

3:43Now, when we move this direction right here

3:46towards platform as a service,

3:48as I shift back to my yellow here for a second,

3:50we're starting to relinquish some of that control.

3:53On platform as a service, we have some control,

3:59but 99% of the time we don't manage

4:05the network or VNets.

4:08In fact, you might not see VNets at all

4:10as part of the process.

4:12You're still responsible for building your own solution,

4:21but there are no, I repeat, no OSs in the mix.

4:28Wait, what do you mean by that, no OSs in the mix?

4:30It's gotta be running

4:31on some type of operating system, right?

4:33Correct. But you'll never touch it.

4:36For instance, if I want a Azure SQL Database,

4:41the Azure SQL Database basically means

4:44I want Azure to deploy their own SQL Server

4:49and create a database on that server that I connect to.

4:54On my local computer,

4:55I'll use something like SSMS or Azure Data Studio,

5:01and I'll connect in directly to that database.

5:04I never have to administer anything about that SQL Server,

5:08or at least almost anything about that SQL Server.

5:11I'm not responsible for installing the SQL Server.

5:14I'm not responsible for actually configuring

5:17the physical backups of it or any replication.

5:21There are some parameters that I can define,

5:23but it's ultimately on Azure to make them happen.

5:26Instead, with platform as a service,

5:28I just needed this platform, the SQL Server to be deployed,

5:33and then I can just ship my own code

5:35or my own database schemas to it.

5:38My application that's going

5:40to eventually write data into that SQL Server,

5:44all it needs is the connection string.

5:48The idea with platform as a service

5:51oftentimes referred to as serverless,

5:55effectively means you don't manage the servers.

5:58You just get to focus in on deploying your code

6:01or your resources to that service.

6:04You don't have to worry about the operating systems.

6:07You usually don't even have to worry about scaling it.

6:09It usually just reacts to it.

6:12It's also more affordable

6:16and it's more affordable on a bunch of different fronts,

6:18not just that the hourly rate is less.

6:21It's also that it requires less overhead

6:23to manage platform as a service resources.

6:26But again, you are relinquishing some of that control.

6:31Now, the last item here is software as a service.

6:35And this is where the solution

6:38is already built

6:43and it's already hosted in the cloud.

6:46You're just using it in the cloud.

6:48You should think about this as something like Excel online

6:52or even Outlook online.

6:55The application itself is just in your web browser,

6:58and all the data that you're generating or changing

7:01or whatever is actually being saved

7:03somewhere in a cloud resource behind the scenes.

7:06But you as an end user never know that.

7:08You know you just log in to this particular website

7:11and there's the Excel application in your web browser.

7:15So you don't actually build the software,

7:17nor do you manage the backend resources.

7:20You just use the software

7:22and typically pay something like a monthly fee for it.

7:25Now, I'll tell you this right now upfront,

7:27just gonna kinda change the colors here for my own notes.

7:30The AZ-104 is IaaS heavy with a splash of PaaS.

7:36The AZ-204 is almost exclusively PaaS.

7:42And then when you start getting into the niche programs

7:45like the DP-300 or the AI-900,

7:50you kind of straddle the line between PaaS and SaaS.

7:55So this is really just to kind of give you a roadmap.

7:58You know, currently you are here

8:02and you're gonna learn a lot about virtual networking

8:05and virtual machines,

8:07but you're also gonna learn a lot about,

8:09or at least be introduced to platform as a service offerings

8:12like Functions apps and Cosmos DB.

8:15And like I said, kind of in the previous video,

8:18I hope that starts to, you know, create an itch for you

8:21that you wanna scratch and you wanna move on

8:24and check out some of the other content

8:25that we have here at CBT Nuggets,

8:28because while this is the AZ-104 is a pretty big iceberg,

8:34it's still a tip of an iceberg.

8:36And you shouldn't think that if I get my 104,

8:39I'm done with Azure and I know everything.

8:41There's still so much more to be learned.

8:43So with that being said, now we understand

8:46the somethings as a service.

8:48You'll wanna keep this in mind no matter what,

8:51when we're introducing a new resource to understand,

8:55you gotta be thinking to yourself,

8:56"This is definitely IaaS, this is definitely PaaS,

8:59and I understand the trade-offs

9:01as I move from one to the next."

9:02I hope this has been informative for you,

9:04and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00<v Narrator>Okay, here's what I want you to do.</v>

0:01Follow along with this.

0:02I promise, it's gonna be worth your time.

0:04From Google, search for Azure regions, just like this.

0:08And the first thing that comes up,

0:09you see here is Choose the Right Azure Region for You.

0:12So give that a click.

0:14Now, scroll down just a hair

0:16and you see this globe looking thing,

0:18click Explore the globe.

0:19It's gonna take you to a different website.

0:21Give it just a second to load.

0:23So this page pops up

0:25and it tells you a lot more about the data centers

0:27themselves and the types of initiatives

0:30that they have going on at the data centers.

0:31But you see over here, the Azure Global Infrastructure.

0:35Click Learn more on that one more time.

0:38And I promise you, this is where it starts to get fun.

0:41You see, the reason why I'm bringing us here

0:43to this interactive planet that you can click

0:45and drag around all you want

0:47and even zoom up and down a little bit.

0:49You can see there's a little plus sign right here.

0:51You can zoom in on it, like so.

0:53The reason why I'm telling you this

0:55is because when you choose to deploy

0:57or run your resources in Azure, I mean, think about it,

1:00it's a virtual machine, right?

1:02You can't just say, "Give me a virtual machine anywhere."

1:06No, you have to say, "I have a virtual machine that I need

1:10"and I want it to run on infrastructure, physical servers

1:13"that live maybe down here in Texas or over here in Virginia

1:19"or over here in Iowa, maybe up here in Washington

1:23"or down here in California."

1:25All of these are options to you.

1:27And these are known as the Azure regions.

1:32Now, this is where it starts to get tricky.

1:33Follow me on this one here.

1:35An Azure region is not,

1:37I repeat, an Azure region is not a data center.

1:42What do you mean an Azure region is not a data center, not?

1:45An Azure region are multiple data centers

1:49in a single region.

1:50Check this out.

1:51If I hover over East US right here and I give it a click,

1:55it tells you that the East US region is located in Virginia.

2:00It tells you things like it was open in 2014.

2:03But the big thing here is with availability zones,

2:08and specifically, I see it's available with three zones.

2:11You should think about this as three data centers,

2:16all pretty close geographically together.

2:19So if I were to kind of zoom in, like so,

2:23this one region,

2:24I'll kind of put like a little dotted box right here,

2:27might actually be Availability Zone 1,

2:32Availability Zone 2, and Availability Zone 3,

2:37three separate data centers located relatively close

2:41to each other within Virginia.

2:44Now, they don't give you the addresses

2:45for obvious security reasons,

2:47but they're connected all together

2:51by very, very, very fast dark fiber.

2:54Now, why does this matter?

2:56Because when you deploy resources,

2:58I want you to start thinking one step way ahead

3:01of where we actually are right now.

3:02But this is an important thing to plan for.

3:05When you're designing things to actually run in Azure,

3:09you should design with redundancy

3:13and resiliency in mind.

3:17Look, there's no other way to put it.

3:20At some point in this data center,

3:22they will go through maintenance.

3:26They might even experience an outage,

3:29even though the likelihood of that is minimal

3:31as they do bolster 99% availability everywhere.

3:35The point is, is I know my workload,

3:38keyword there is workload, not specific resource,

3:41but my entire workload I know needs to run in the East US.

3:47So what I might do, since this is connected

3:50by such incredibly fast fiber,

3:52I might deploy a resource in Availability Zone 1,

3:56and then replicate that resource to Availability Zone 2.

4:00That way, if something happens to Availability Zone 1,

4:03my workload maintains operation in the East US,

4:08but fails over to Availability Zone 2.

4:11Now, does that happen automatically?

4:13Does it happen manually?

4:14It's really gonna be up to you

4:16and the solutions that you build.

4:18My point is, so I want you to wrap your head

4:20around right now that a region is not a data center.

4:24A region contains data centers

4:26and those are known as Availability Zones.

4:30Now, also notice some of the other cool things

4:32they have going on, like solar energy farms,

4:36or you kind of see little fans over here, wind farms.

4:40You also see things like edge locations right here.

4:43These are points of presence, network points of presence.

4:46These play a big,

4:47a big factor when you're doing things like caching

4:51or content delivery networks.

4:53Now, we've just been poking at the US.

4:56Thumb on down here and see that resources

4:59and regions are coming in places like Chile,

5:02but here it is in Brazil, thumb on over here to Africa.

5:05We see South Africa is up and running.

5:07Lots of presences here in the EU and UK.

5:13We also see some Middle East, India and Asia

5:16and Asia Pacific regions and Australia down here.

5:21Another one of the cool things that you can do

5:23that's just kind of fun to play with,

5:24like click on West US 2 over here

5:26and you see it was year open, 2007.

5:29If you actually give that a click,

5:30it takes you way back in time to the press release from 2007

5:34where they talked about this data center opening.

5:36I don't know why I thought that was just so cool.

5:38So before we jumped into the portal,

5:40I wanted you to really wrap your head

5:42around understanding you're gonna have to pick your region

5:45that you want to deploy your resources in,

5:48and that's gonna be determined by a lot of factors,

5:50like where the traffic is coming from,

5:53where the data needs to reside,

5:55and how does replication from one data center

5:58to the next need to occur.

6:00Every single resource or just about every single resource

6:04that you deploy in Azure requires you

6:06to select a region upfront.

6:08So now that you understand the region

6:10and potentially the complexity that comes along with it,

6:13with Availability Zones, we can move on to the next topic,

6:16which are resource groups.

6:17I hope this has been informative for you,

6:19and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00<v Instructor>Okay, so in reality,</v>

0:02there are actually three things

0:04that you have to have to deploy a resource,

0:06any resource in Azure.

0:08The first thing that you have to specify is

0:12your subscription,

0:13basically which credit card are we gonna charge for this.

0:16Again, a cool thing about this is that

0:18I can have one account that manages multiple subscriptions.

0:22In fact, right now, what I'm gonna do to prove that is

0:24I'm actually gonna sign out

0:26and sign in with my dare I say corporate account.

0:29And this is the account

0:31that I'm gonna be using moving forward.

0:33Of course, I have multi-factor authentication on this.

0:35Yes, we'll be showing you

0:36how to set that up when the time comes.

0:38In fact, we'll be showing you how to set that up

0:40really at the end of this particular skill.

0:42So just bear with me for one second as I get signed in.

0:45Okay, so now this happens

0:47whenever I switch accounts where it's like,

0:48wait a minute, your cache with your tokens blew up.

0:51If you just hit Try again

0:53it'll clear the cache out

0:54and request what's known as a refresh token.

0:57You may have to do it a couple times,

0:58but it will come in eventually once you hit Try again.

1:01Okay, so I had to click it one more time

1:02and then it finally just let me in.

1:05So as you can see here,

1:06I'm gonna go to Subscriptions

1:07and you'll see I have two subscriptions right here.

1:10This is for two separate credit cards that are on file.

1:12Some things that I want to be charged on credit card one

1:15and some things that I want to be charged

1:17on credit card two.

1:19This makes a lot of sense,

1:20especially if you have like

1:21different cost centers in your business.

1:24Maybe an HR credit card is on file,

1:26an IT credit card is on file, and so on and so on.

1:29Anyways, we land here, so what did I say?

1:31We have to have a subscription, right?

1:35We then have to know a region.

1:39But one other thing that all Azure resources have to have is

1:43they have to belong to a resource group.

1:49Now at the most fundamental level,

1:51this is just a way of logically grouping resources together.

1:55If you've ever worked with Active Directory before,

1:57it's kind of the exact same thing as a security group.

2:00It's just a logical way to group users together, right?

2:05The security group allows you to put,

2:06you know, this user in, this user in, this user in.

2:10Then we can assign permission to this security group

2:15and it automatically hits those users, right?

2:18Now of course, that's a little simplified,

2:20but that's really the gist of it.

2:22Resource groups are kind of the same thing.

2:25Resource groups allow us to group resources

2:28like resources together.

2:30For instance, my solution that I may have here

2:34might be a function app,

2:36and that function app might query a Redis cache.

2:41And if that data's not in the Redis cache,

2:44it might query a backend Cosmos database.

2:47Then loads the data into the cache for the next time.

2:50This is known as lazy loading by the way.

2:53Now what I just described here is a primarily AZ 204 topic,

2:57but it's one of the most common deployment patterns you see

3:00in all of cloud resources.

3:03Since my particular workload

3:04relies on these three resources,

3:07I'm gonna group them into a similar resource group

3:10or in the same resource group.

3:12Then what's really cool is

3:13I can delegate permissions to this resource group

3:16to a specific user or a group of users.

3:20Do you see how kind of where we're going here,

3:22we're trying to get users connected to resources.

3:26So a clean way to do that is

3:27to group users and group resources.

3:31So the resource group is mandatory

3:33for absolutely everything that you create.

3:36So in order to get started,

3:37what you really wanna do is

3:39you wanna create a resource group first.

3:42So if I come up here to the search bar,

3:44I'll just search for resource

3:45and we see Resource groups pops up right here on the spot.

3:49Now give it a click.

3:50You'll see I got a bunch of resource groups here

3:51in my environment,

3:52but don't worry about that.

3:54You will too by the time it's all said and done.

3:57Let's say I wanna create a resource group

3:59for that specific instance

4:01or that specific example that I was talking about

4:03where I may have a function app that queries a Redis cache

4:06and then queries a Cosmos DB if the cache is empty.

4:09So I'll start my entire process

4:11by creating a resource group to logically group these.

4:14Now look here.

4:15See, we have to choose a subscription.

4:18Yeah, remember I said,

4:19you're gonna have to have three things.

4:20We're gonna choose the resource group name.

4:23I'll call this something like cosmoscache,

4:27very simple like that.

4:29It double checks.

4:30You see this, it was kind of spinning there for a second,

4:32and now I've got a green check mark.

4:33It just make sure that

4:34I don't have an overlapping one already.

4:37Now this is interesting because right here you see a region.

4:40And you might be thinking to yourself, wait,

4:42if I choose something like South Central US right now,

4:46does that mean all of the resources

4:49that I put in this resource group

4:51will be constrained to the South Central US?

4:55No.

4:56This is more or less an indicator of

5:00where this resource group and their resources should live,

5:05but it's not by any means constraining

5:08where I actually end up putting those resources.

5:10It is definitely a best practice to keep them all together,

5:14so even though my resource group is gonna say

5:17South Central US,

5:19the underlying resources might not actually be there.

5:23Although it's a best practice to keep it that way.

5:26Now let's hit the next page here for a second.

5:28Tags, these are arbitrary key value pairs.

5:32Basically, we give the key a name like mytag

5:37and then we give it a value like myvalue.

5:40And this is really helpful later,

5:42whenever we need to actually mass deploy code to resources.

5:46We can say, ship this to everything that has a tag of this.

5:51We can also run billing reports.

5:53Show me all of my billing reports

5:56or all of my billing across all resources that I have

6:00that meet this tag value.

6:02Again, this is completely arbitrary

6:04and doesn't impact anything of

6:06the underlying resource deployment itself,

6:09the code that you ship to it, or your billing.

6:12Now the last thing is I choose review and create.

6:15It validates and we click Create.

6:18It instantly creates the resource

6:20and right here I see cosmoscache.

6:24Now all of the underlying resources

6:26that would be part of cosmoscache will be listed here

6:29whenever I actually create them,

6:31but I also can control access to cosmoscache

6:34right here in Access Control IAM,

6:37which is identity and access management.

6:40Now we're not ready to talk about IAM

6:42or access management just yet.

6:45But we'll introduce the concept of it

6:48towards the end of this set of videos.

6:50For now, I wanted you to understand resource groups

6:52and that it's absolutely required

6:55to bring any resource that you want to deploy to life,

6:58along with a subscription and a region.

7:01Now that we have that under our belt,

7:03we can move on to the last couple things

7:05that I want you to know about Azure

7:07before we start talking about specific resources.

7:10I hope this has been informative for you

7:11and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00<v Instructor>So before you get started,</v>

0:01you need to understand

0:03at least at a very fundamental high level

0:06what Azure Active Directory is,

0:08and importantly, what it's not.

0:10What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna search

0:11for Active Directory right here at the top

0:14and when I get to active dir, you can see I see

0:17Azure Active Directory here on the screen.

0:19It's at this little pyramid as it symbol

0:21and we're gonna give that a click.

0:23Now, at the end of the day, first of all,

0:26Azure Active Directory is becoming Entra ID,

0:29so the name is gonna change.

0:31So make sure you know

0:32that by the time you're watching this content,

0:35it may have already changed,

0:36so I apologize if the name has gotten switched on you.

0:40The second thing to understand is this is not the same

0:43as your on-premises Active Directory.

0:46At the end of the day, this is really nothing much more

0:50than an identity store.

0:53See, you might be thinking

0:54of Active Directory Domain Services,

0:58which really leads to group policy, doesn't it, GPOs.

1:02That's not really a thing In Azure.

1:05There is something called Azure

1:06Active Directory Domain Services.

1:09We will talk about that,

1:10but it's not something you need to worry about right now.

1:14What Azure Active Directory is all about

1:17is about having users, which includes a username

1:22and a password, as well as groups

1:28to group our users together,

1:30just like we kind of fundamentally talked about.

1:32It's just an easier way to understand what a logical group

1:35of people are doing and what their permissions are,

1:38but the other things that we see in Azure Active Directory,

1:40kind of follow me down here,

1:42are app registrations or applications

1:45and then there's something I'm gonna write over here

1:48called Managed Identities.

1:52Now if you're coming from the Active Directory world,

1:56you might remember something called Managed Service Accounts

1:59or Group Managed Service Accounts.

2:02What were those about?

2:03Well, whenever I had an application running

2:06on my on-premises resources, something like a SQL Server,

2:10and that SQL Server needed to reach out over the network

2:14to something like my file share, let's say FS Nug,

2:18to write backups, SQL Server backups to it,

2:22the SQL Server application itself needed to have an identity

2:28to get permissions to this file share, this directory,

2:31so for the longest time,

2:33we manually went into Active Directory,

2:35created a username and password,

2:38promptly forgot anything about those credentials,

2:41and that's how it lived for the rest of its life.

2:43We never changed the passwords

2:45or updated it, we just knew don't mess with it

2:48because it's working right now.

2:50So along came Group Managed Service Accounts,

2:53and with this Microsoft basically said,

2:56you'll give your SQL Server a name, an identity,

3:00and we'll manage the rotation of passwords for you

3:03and keep it nice and secure

3:05so you can then delegate the permissions on your file share

3:09to this service account and we'll manage it for you.

3:12Managed identities are effectively

3:14the exact same thing in Azure.

3:17When I create a resource, like a function app

3:21or even a virtual machine,

3:23and these resources have to talk

3:26to other Azure resources, like a SQL database,

3:31we can give our resources a managed identity

3:34and grant them permissions to that managed identity

3:38and Microsoft just handles all of that for us

3:40behind the scenes.

3:42It's actually a really elegant solution.

3:45Now, here's the kicker.

3:48Managed identities are only for Azure resources.

3:53So if I have an Azure VM talking internally

3:56to an Azure SQL database,

3:58this is managed identities all day long,

4:01but what happens if I have, say, an intranet site

4:06that runs on-prem

4:09and the backend of this intranet site might be something

4:13like an Azure SQL database or a Cosmos DB.

4:17Well, in this case, my virtual machine

4:21or my server here is not an Azure resource,

4:24therefore I can't give it a managed identity.

4:27This is what app registrations do.

4:30With app registrations right here,

4:32we'll put this in Azure AD,

4:35we've effectively registered our application

4:38to talk to Azure AD.

4:40So when an end user comes along

4:43and connects to our intranet site,

4:45they'll immediately get prompted

4:47with the Microsoft login page.

4:52The user will go through the login process via Azure AD

4:56and their browser will get handed back a token

4:59that they can then use

5:00to access these resources on the backend.

5:04Now, don't stress too much

5:06about app registrations right now.

5:09Building an app registration in that login process

5:12is an AZ 204 topic,

5:15but you do need to know the difference

5:17between an app registration and a managed identity.

5:21A managed identity, again is an Azure resource

5:24connecting directly to another Azure resource.

5:27An app registration is usually a resource that lives outside

5:32of Azure being used by an end user

5:35and that end user's credentials,

5:37once they get logged into Azure,

5:39are going to be used to get passed back

5:41to that backend resource.

5:43Now you do also see the ability

5:45to hook into external identity providers.

5:48These are especially gonna be useful

5:50for your social accounts like Google or Facebook

5:54or Twitter, which is now known as X

5:56and setting these up again

5:58is far outside the scope of this video.

6:00I just wanted you to be aware

6:01of what Azure Active Directory is all about.

6:04Now click on users right here for a second.

6:06If you're not already using Office 365

6:10or synchronizing your on premises active directory,

6:13you can manually add your users right here

6:16by just creating a new user.

6:18You can also invite an external user,

6:21maybe someone who already has a Microsoft account

6:24or an Azure Active Directory account

6:27but just isn't in your active directory.

6:30You can invite them to collaborate on your resources

6:33right here by choosing invite external user.

6:36I also wanna point out, this is where you go

6:38to set up multi-factor authentication.

6:40This is a big deal.

6:41You see right over here per user MFA.

6:44This actually takes you to a separate portal to set this up.

6:48If you're the administrator of your account,

6:50AKA you control everything

6:52that goes on in your subscription,

6:53I highly recommend you get this done.

6:56For instance, here's my account right here, the admin user.

7:01I can see right now it's currently set to disabled.

7:04What I could do to turn it on

7:06is just simply put enable, like this.

7:09Now it tells you you can enable multifactor authentication

7:12and we'll click enable multifactor authentication

7:15and then click close

7:16and now I see my account is enabled,

7:18but here's the kicker,

7:19that doesn't mean I'm forced to use it.

7:22Enable just means it's optional.

7:24If I want to make my admin users use it,

7:28we have to then set this to be enforced.

7:31So I'll say enforce multifactor authentication

7:34and now it's done.

7:36The next time I sign out and try and sign back in,

7:39it's gonna make me set up multifactor authentication.

7:42So anyone who is getting set up

7:44with multifactor authentication

7:46can simply just go to the Microsoft login page

7:49and they'll be forced to do it,

7:50but if for whatever reason they lose that setup page,

7:53it's aka.ms/mfasetup.

8:00I cannot tell you how many times

8:03I typed that in when I was a consultant.

8:07It was a lot.

8:08I mean a lot, but it's a lifesaver

8:13and anyone who has the ability

8:14to change the billing of any sort,

8:17whether that's add a resource

8:19that costs the bill to go up or delete resources

8:22or change billing or admin settings,

8:24they really need to have this going.

8:27So like I said, I really just wanted

8:29to introduce Azure Active Directory to you

8:32and make sure you understood what some of the capabilities,

8:35not all of the capabilities,

8:36but some of the capabilities were.

8:38Now that you know how to poke around

8:40and at least get new users added to your Azure environment,

8:44we can start digging into some more

8:45interesting things in Azure.

8:47But there's one last thing

8:49that I wanna make sure you fully understand

8:51before we start deploying resources

8:53and that's billing.

8:54For now, I hope this has been informative for you

8:56and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00<v ->Now, there's really a few different places</v>

0:03you need to go when it comes to exploring

0:05and understanding your bill.

0:06Ideally you're thinking, "Oh,

0:08well it's under my subscriptions, right?"

0:10Eh, sort of.

0:11Under your subscriptions,

0:13you do get some pretty great things,

0:15like spending forecasts for the month,

0:17and understanding what specific resources

0:21are actually racking up your bill the most.

0:23That is very, very useful,

0:25and this is really for the most part,

0:27coming from the cost management section.

0:30This is just a sub feature of the subscription right now,

0:33but if you wanna get a full blown understanding

0:36of what's going on in your entire environment,

0:39you really wanna find cost management and billing.

0:42The overview is a great place in cost management

0:46and billing to really understand

0:47what it is that is going on in your account.

0:50In fact, immediately seeing this, I'm like, "API management.

0:53Did I leave an API management up and running,

0:55or I need to go delete that real quick."

0:57You can also scroll up a hair, and see what your invoices

1:00have been trending like over time,

1:02and understanding what this month's forecast

1:04is looking like to be.

1:06In fact, I see my next invoice

1:07is gonna be available tomorrow,

1:09so I'll be keeping my eyes on that pretty closely.

1:12We can see a cost analysis,

1:13which I think is really, really cool.

1:15It's an ability to generate queries,

1:17and actually dig in to where our costs are going.

1:20What are the services that are being deployed?

1:22Where are they being deployed?

1:24What subscription is making up the bulk of my billing?

1:27We could even set up alerts or importantly budgets.

1:31Budgets can be applied at subscriptions

1:34or resource group levels,

1:36so a billing administrator can actually control

1:39those trigger happy devs by setting budgets

1:43on their subscription or their resource groups,

1:45but also understand things like payment methods

1:48and payment history are also part of the billing,

1:51and your invoices are a pretty important thing too, right?

1:55Procurement and accounting

1:56are really gonna want a copy of these,

1:58and you can even set this up to send an automatic copy

2:01of these invoices over to them.

2:04Now, for the most part, your card on file

2:06is gonna get automatically charged

2:08at the end of the billing cycle,

2:10so you'll never have to go in and manually type in,

2:13and click charge card or anything like that,

2:15unless your card has expired,

2:17or you know was stolen or something,

2:19but before you got started actually deploying resources,

2:24I wanted to make sure you're 100% familiar

2:26with the cost management and billing section.

2:30That way you can really understand

2:32where your costs are coming from,

2:34and monitor them as you go along.

2:36At the end of the day, you only pay for what you use,

2:43and luckily for us, most of those things

2:45are billed either by the minute or by the hour.

2:49Some of those things are longer,

2:51just keep an eye out for that,

2:53but ultimately, you will want to log in,

2:56and the first place you should go, especially as a learner,

2:59every day, is cost management and billing,

3:02and just make sure that you haven't left a resource running,

3:06or that you have properly cleaned up everything.

3:09At the end of the day, if I tell you something like,

3:12"Let's deploy a virtual machine," I want you to remember

3:15to delete that virtual machine when you're done,

3:18so that you don't rack up that bill.

3:21So please, please, please, please keep in mind

3:23that as we progress through these videos,

3:25you'll need to go back and clean up these resources

3:28by deleting them so that they stop running,

3:31so that they are stopped being used,

3:33and you don't end up racking up a huge bill.

3:36So, with that being said, this is just introducing

3:38at a high level, the cost management and billing section,

3:41and very quickly exploring things like cost analysis.

3:44I hope this has been informative for you,

3:46and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00<v Narrator>There's not a whole lot</v>

0:01that you can do right now because we were just focusing in

0:04on core concepts of working with the cloud.

0:07But there is one thing

0:08that you could absolutely do right now,

0:10and that's prep a resource group to be used

0:13for any of the resources that you want to deploy.

0:16Here's what we're gonna do.

0:17I'm gonna jump into resource groups

0:18and we'll create a resource group real quick.

0:21I'm gonna put this in my main pay-as-you-go subscription,

0:24and I'm gonna name this resource group az-104-demo.

0:30I'm gonna put this closest to me in the South Central US

0:34and I'll just choose review and create,

0:36and then create to get this resource group created.

0:39So at least now when you start building resources,

0:43deploying things like storage accounts,

0:45SQL databases, virtual machines,

0:47you have a resource group that you can put them in.

0:49I hope this has been informative for you,

0:51and I'd like to thank you for viewing.