Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon providing on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis.
Key Term Definition The Cloud A collection of servers on the internet that store and manage data, run apps, and deliver content such as email or videos.
Cloud Computing Cloud Computing The delivery of software and storage over the Internet (i.e. the cloud).
Public Cloud Public CloudCloud computing resources shared amongst multiple customers, with applications and data still separate.
Private Cloud Private Cloud Cloud computing resources that are dedicated to only one entity. This is most similar to how on-premises resources operate, but with the resources still hosted off-site by a third party.
Hybrid Cloud Hybrid Cloud Utilizing a mix of public and private cloud resources.
Cloud Developer Developers who build cloud applications or utilize other cloud resources in their applications. They are responsible for ensuring applications run efficiently in the cloud, requiring appropriate authentication to access, and identifying appropriate
resources to use.
Microsoft Azure A public computing platform provided by Microsoft, with many products spanning many categories, such as Compute, Analytics, Databases, A.I. and Machine Learning.
Azure Portal The browser-based and GUI version of working with Azure resources.
Elasticity The ability to scale up or down resources to match demand.
On-Premises The non-cloud option where companies host all their necessary compute, storage and other resources on-site.
Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) Removes the expense of up-front costs of hardware, software and test environments, as the cloud provider is instead responsible for providing physical hardware.
Platform as a Service (Paas) Handles networking, provides middleware and development & database tools, in addition to the physical hardware provided at the IaaS level.
Software as a Service (Saas) Provides end-users access to online cloud solutions, without the need to build or support the underlying applications themselves.
Key Term Definition Subscription Multiple of these can exist within a single Azure account; often used for billing and other management purposes.
Resource Group Help to organize resources you use, such as Virtual Machines, App Services or storage, in order to make resource management easier. Groups are often set up for different projects or regions.
Region Locations of Azure data centers around the world. The closer the region of app resources is to the end user, the lower the latency experienced.
ARM Templates Created within Azure Resource Manager to more easily spin up a set of given resources multiple times.
Virtual Machines An Azure IaaS option giving you full access to the underlying operating system of a compute resource. These can be either Windows or Linux machines, with great availability, scalability and redundancy. These require more on-going maintenance and up-keep by cloud developers.
App Service An Azure PaaS option allowing developers to focus more on their apps than the underlying infrastructure. It is an HTTP-based service for hosting web applications, REST APIs, and mobile back ends. It supports multiple languages and continuous deployment. While they are good for scaling, there is also a limit of up to 14 GB or 4 CPU cores on the highest tier.
App Service Plan Contains certain settings of an App Service, such as region, number of VM instances (App Services still run on VMs, but the developer does not have control of the underlying VM, and the app may share the VM with other apps), size of those instances, and pricing tier.
Azure Batch Used for running large-scale and high-performance compute applications beyond the capabilities of an App Service.
Azure Functions A serverless, event-driven, compute-on-demand platform (covered in a later course).
Container Instances A platform for deploying serverless docker containers (covered in a later course), without the container orchestration provided by AKS (see below). Service Fabric Microsoft's own distributed systems platform, similar to Kubernetes. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Microsoft's own platform for hosting and managing Kubernetes, including deploying docker containers into clusters (covered in a later course).