Microsoft Azure
Beginner 12 min read Microsoft Azure

Azure Platform Overview

Microsoft Azure is a public cloud offering compute, storage, databases and networking services on demand. Learn regions and availability zones, subscriptions and resource groups, the management plane (Portal, Azure CLI, PowerShell, ARM), and how billing and the free account work so you can navigate any tenant.

regionsavailability zonessubscriptionresource groupMicrosoft Entra IDAzure CLIAzure PortalPowerShellbillingfree account
Introduction

What is this?

Microsoft Azure is a public cloud platform offering more than 200 services — compute, storage, databases, networking, AI and more — over the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Infrastructure is organized by regions (geographic clusters of data centers) and availability zones (isolated facilities within a region). You manage everything through scoping containers: subscriptions (billing and access boundaries) and resource groups (logical containers for related resources), all driven by a single management plane — the Azure Portal, the Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell, or ARM (Azure Resource Manager).

Motivation

Why do you need it?

  • Azure is the second-largest public cloud and the default platform for most enterprise and Microsoft-centric organizations.
  • Every other concept in this module (VMs, storage, AKS, App Service) is a specific Azure service — you need the map before the services.
  • Regions and availability zones drive latency, resilience and data-residency decisions on every Azure project.
  • The management plane (Portal, CLI, PowerShell, ARM) is how you will deploy and operate everything, so fluency with it matters.
  • Billing awareness — free account credits, SKU pricing, outbound data costs — is part of being a good DevOps engineer.
Think about it

Mental model

Imagine

A global hotel chain

Think of

Azure

Each property is a region, and the wings with independent power and water are availability zones. Your reservation (subscription) decides which hotel card you hold and which bill you pay, while the room bookings (resource groups) group related expenses per stay. The front desk (Portal, CLI, ARM) is the only interface you touch — you never walk into the boiler room.

Mechanics

How it works

  • Microsoft builds and operates data centers worldwide, grouped into regions; many regions have availability zones with independent power, cooling and networking.
  • You create resources inside a subscription and a resource group through the control plane — Portal, Azure CLI, PowerShell, or ARM/Bicep/Terraform — and Azure provisions them in minutes.
  • Every resource lives in one region and one resource group; service availability varies by region, and a few services (like Azure Front Door) are global.
  • Identity is enforced by Microsoft Entra ID: every Portal user or CLI principal is authenticated and authorized through role-based access control (RBAC).
  • Usage is metered — VM hours, storage GB, outbound bandwidth, operations — and billed monthly against the subscription; the free account gives you monthly credits and a set of free services.

How an Azure resource is requested, deployed and billed.

You authenticate
Pick a region
Choose a resource group
Control plane
Service runs
Metering and bill
Reference

Key commands

az login

Sign in to Azure and cache credentials for the CLI session.

az account show

Show the active subscription, tenant and cloud.

az account list --output table

List every subscription the signed-in identity can access.

az group list --output table

List the resource groups in the active subscription.

az account list-locations --query "[].name" --output tsv

List the regions where you can provision resources.

Hands-on

Examples

Inspect your Azure identity and available regions

Inspect your Azure identity and available regions
$ az login
A new browser window has been opened for you to sign in...
 
$ az account show --output table
Name    CloudName    SubscriptionId                        State
MySub   AzureCloud   11111111-2222-3333-4444-555555555555  Enabled
 
$ az account list-locations --query "[].name" --output tsv
eastus  westeurope  southeastasia  brazilsouth

az login opens a browser, authenticates with Microsoft Entra ID, and caches the credentials. az account show tells you exactly which subscription, tenant and cloud the CLI is acting against. az account list-locations lists the regions where you can create resources. Every Azure command follows the same pattern: az <group> <action>, authenticated by the cached login.

Real world

In production

  • Choose regions close to your users and data-residency boundaries, and spread workloads across availability zones for high availability.
  • Tag every resource (environment, owner, cost center) so the monthly bill can be split across teams.
  • Provision everything from ARM templates, Bicep or Terraform instead of clicking through the Portal.
  • Set up Cost Management budgets and alerts so surprise spend is caught in days, not months.
  • Use the free account for learning environments, but review quotas before running production-sized workloads.
Guidelines

Best practices

  • Always create resources in the region your team targets — a resource in the wrong region is invisible to deployments in another.
  • Use Microsoft Entra ID identities and managed identities over long-lived credentials where possible.
  • Adopt a consistent resource-group layout (per application and environment) from day one.
  • Enable MFA on the Microsoft account that owns the tenant and use Privileged Identity Management for admin access.
  • Prefer infrastructure as code so every environment is reproducible and reviewable.
Watch out

Common mistakes

  • Deploying resources to the wrong subscription or region, then wondering why the bill or the deployments look wrong.
  • Sharing the tenant admin account instead of creating Entra ID users and scoped service principals.
  • Forgetting that outbound data transfer and premium SKUs are billed, which surprises data-heavy workloads.
  • Leaving dev resources running 24/7 on paid SKUs when autoshutdown or serverless would cut costs.
  • Assuming every service exists in every region — some services are regional or preview-only.
Root cause analysis

Common issues

Error
Please run 'az login' to setup account
Root cause

The CLI has no cached credentials, or the token expired.

Fix

Run az login and complete the browser sign-in, then retry the command.

Error
AuthorizationFailed: The client ... does not have authorization to perform action
Root cause

The signed-in identity lacks the required RBAC role at the target scope.

Fix

Assign a least-privilege role on the subscription or resource group, or run as an identity that already has it.

Error
The subscription is not registered to use namespace 'Microsoft.Compute'
Root cause

The resource provider has not been registered for the subscription.

Fix

Register the provider with az provider register --namespace Microsoft.Compute, then retry.

When things break

Debugging tips

  • Start every debugging session with az account show to confirm which subscription and tenant you are using.
  • Check the region and resource group; many 'resource not found' errors are actually wrong-region requests.
  • Use the Azure status page and Service Health to separate platform incidents from your own configuration.
  • Inspect the actual API error code (AuthorizationFailed, ResourceNotFound, SubscriptionNotRegistered) before guessing at the cause.
  • Enable the activity log so you can see who changed what in the subscription when something changes unexpectedly.
Interviews

Interview checkpoint

Practice

Hands-on lab

Tour Your First Azure-Ready Sandbox
20 min · beginner
In progress
Objectives
  • Identify the host, OS and user as a cloud instance would
  • Verify outbound internet and DNS from the sandbox
  • Inspect environment variables and resource limits
  • Practice reading the same signals a provisioning script would

Tour Your First Azure-Ready Sandbox

20 min · beginner

0/6 steps
0%
sandbox · Linux sandbox
$
Try these commands
Test yourself

Quick quiz

0/3
1

Which Azure construct is a physically separate data center or group of facilities within a region?

2

Every Azure service is available in every region.

3

A teammate created a test VM in the 'westeurope' region while your team works in 'eastus'. What is the most likely problem you will hit?

Quick reference

Cheat sheet

Core building blocks
RegionGeographic cluster, e.g. eastus, westeurope
Availability zoneIsolated facility within a region
SubscriptionBilling and access boundary
Resource groupLogical container for related resources
Management planePortal, Azure CLI, PowerShell, ARM
Common CLI patterns
az loginAuthenticate the CLI
az account showShow the active subscription
az group listList resource groups
az account list-locationsList available regions
Go deeper

Official documentation

What Is Microsoft Azure?
docs
Azure global infrastructure
docs
What are availability zones?
docs
Azure subscriptions, governance, and management
docs
Get started with Azure CLI
docs