Azure

Microsoft's cloud platform — dominant in enterprise environments, especially organizations already running Windows Server, Active Directory, and Microsoft 365.

Microsoft Azure is the second-largest cloud platform by market share and the default choice for most enterprise companies with existing Microsoft infrastructure. Azure spans compute (VMs, AKS), storage, databases, AI services (OpenAI API is hosted here), identity (Azure Active Directory), and DevOps (Azure DevOps pipelines). Many large-enterprise DevOps and backend engineering roles require Azure familiarity even if AWS is the primary cloud.

Typical time to job-readiness: ~3 months.

Learning Azure

Beginner

Learn the Azure portal, core services (VMs, Blob Storage, Azure SQL, Azure Active Directory), and deploy a basic application to App Service.

Intermediate

Azure DevOps pipelines for CI/CD, Azure AD authentication integration, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and infrastructure-as-code with Bicep or ARM templates.

Advanced

Landing zone design for enterprise Azure adoption, Azure Policy and governance, and the AZ-104 or AZ-305 certification. Enterprise roles assess security and governance as much as technical skills.

Key concepts

  • Azure Active Directory (Entra ID) — identity and access management platform, central to most enterprise Azure setups
  • Resource groups — containers that organize related Azure resources for management and billing
  • App Service for web apps, AKS for Kubernetes, Azure Functions for serverless
  • Azure DevOps — Microsoft's CI/CD and project management platform, separate from the cloud services
  • VNets, NSGs, and subnets — Azure's networking model for isolating and securing resources
  • The AZ-900 is for foundational awareness; AZ-104 (Admin) and AZ-305 (Architect) are for practitioners

Common interview topics

  • How does Azure Active Directory differ from on-premises Active Directory
  • Explain the role of resource groups in Azure
  • How would you architect a secure, highly available application on Azure
  • What is the difference between Azure App Service and Azure Functions
  • How do you manage access control in Azure using RBAC

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