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Microsoft Azure

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Microsoft Azure
Developer(s)Microsoft
Initial release1 February 2010; 14 years ago (2010-02-01)
Stable release
Android6.10.2 (Build 2024.10.18-23.24.24) / 18 October 2024; 18 days ago (2024-10-18)[1][2]
iOS6.10.2 / 22 October 2024; 14 days ago (2024-10-22)[3]
Operating systemMicrosoft Windows, Linux
LicenseClosed source for platform, Open source for client SDKs
Websiteazure.microsoft.com

Microsoft Azure /ˈæʒər/ is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure created by Microsoft for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.

It provides both PaaS and IaaS services and supports many different programming languages, tools and frameworks, including both Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems.

Azure was announced in October 2008 and released on 1 February 2010 as Windows Azure, before being renamed to Microsoft Azure on 25 March 2014.[4] Along with Amazon Web Services, Azure is considered a leader in the IaaS field.[5]

Services

Microsoft lists over 50 Azure services including:[6]

Azure Active Directory B2C, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory Domain Services, API Management, Application Gateway, Visual Studio Application Insights, App Service, Automation, Backup, Batch, BizTalk Services, CDN, Cloud Services, Azure Container Service, Data Catalog, Data Factory, Data Lake Analytics, Data Lake Store, Azure DevTest Labs, AzureDNS, DocumentDB, Event Hubs, ExpressRoute, HDInsight, Azure IoT Hub, Key Vault, Load Balancer, Machine Learning, Managed Cache Service, Media Services, Mobile Engagement, Mobile Services,Multi-Factor Authentication, Notification Hubs, Operational Insights, Redis Cache, RemoteApp, Scheduler, Search, Security Center, Service Bus, Service Fabric, SiteRecovery, SQL Database, SQL Data Warehouse, SQL Server Stretch Database, Storage, StorSimple, Stream Analytics, Traffic Manager, Virtual Machines, Virtual Network, Visual Studio Team Services, VPN Gateway.

The key ones are covered below.

Compute

  • App services, platform as a service (PaaS) environment letting developers easily publish and manage web sites.
  • Websites, high density hosting of websites allows developers to build sites using ASP.NET, PHP, Node.js, or Python and can be deployed using FTP, Git, Mercurial or Team Foundation Server. This feature was announced in preview form in June 2012 at the Meet Microsoft Azure event.[7] Customers can create websites in PHP, ASP.NET, Node.js, or Python, or select from several open source applications from a gallery to deploy. This comprises one aspect of the platform as a service (PaaS) offerings for the Microsoft Azure Platform. It was renamed to Web Apps in April 2015.[8]
  • WebJobs, applications which can be deployed to a Web App to implement background processing. That can be invoked on a schedule, on demand or can run continuously. The Blob, Table and Queue services can be used to communicate between Web Apps and Web Jobs and to provide state.

Mobile services

Biztalk services

Azure network and computes deployment architecture
  • Cloud services, a platform as a service (PaaS) environment and can be used to create scalable applications and services. It supports multi-tier architectures and automated deployments. Previously named "Hosted Services", the Cloud Services for Microsoft Azure comprise one aspect of the PaaS offerings from the Microsoft Azure Platform. The Cloud Services are containers of hosted applications. These applications can be Internet-facing public web applications (such as web sites and e-commerce solutions) named "Web Roles", or they can be private processing engines for other work, such as processing orders or analyzing data named "Worker Roles". Developers can write code for Cloud Services in a variety of different programming languages. There are specific software development kits (SDKs) provided by Microsoft for Python, Java, Node.js and .NET.[9] Other languages may have support through Open Source projects. Microsoft published the source code for their client libraries on GitHub.[10]
  • Virtual machines, constitute the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offering from Microsoft for their public cloud. Virtual machines enable developers to migrate applications and infrastructure without changing existing code and can run both Windows Server and Linux virtual machines. It was announced in preview form at the Meet Windows Azure event in June 2012.[7] Customers can create virtual machines, of which they have complete control, to run in Microsoft's data centers. The General Availability version of Virtual Machine was released in May 2013. As of December 2015, Azure supports Windows Server 2008 and 2012 operating systems, as well as Linux distributions including Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, openSUSE, Oracle Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), and CoreOS.[11]

Big compute

  • Batch helps run large parallel and high performance computing workloads in the cloud.
  • HPC Pack lets developers implement parallel processing.
  • Scheduler automatically runs previously declared recurring and one-off tasks.[12]
  • Remote App delivers Windows apps from Azure to run on a variety of devices – Windows, Mac OS X, iOS or Android. Remote applications are run on Windows Server in the Azure cloud, where they’re easier to scale and update. Application users install Remote Desktop clients on their Internet-connected laptop, tablet or phone, and can access applications as if they were running locally.[13]

Storage services

  • Storage Services provides REST and SDK APIs for storing and accessing data on the cloud.
  • Table Service lets programs store structured text in partitioned collections of entities that are accessed by partition key and primary key. It's a NoSQL non-relational database.
  • Blob Service allows programs to store unstructured text and binary data as blobs that can be accessed by a HTTP(S) path. Blob service also provides security mechanisms to control access to data.
  • Queue Service lets programs communicate asynchronously by message using queues.
  • File Service allows storing and access of data on the cloud using the SMB protocol.

Data management

Business Analytics

  • HDInsight[15] is Microsoft's cloud based Hadoop distribution[16]
  • Azure Machine Learning is cloud-based predictive analytics and publishing of APIs on the cloud.[17]
  • Stream Analytics service provides low latency, highly available, scalable complex event processing over streaming data in the cloud.[18]
  • Data Catalogue service is a system of registration and system of discovery for enterprise data sources.[19]
  • Data Factory allows developers to build data-driven workflows between their local, cloud-based and internet services with complex data processing logic and little programming.[20]

Identity

  • Azure Active Directory
  • Rights Management
  • Access Control Service
  • Multi-Factor Authentication

Messaging

Microsoft Azure Service Bus, allows applications running on azure premise or off premise devices to communicate with azure. This helps to build scalable and reliable applications in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Azure service bus supports four different types of communication mechanisms.

  • Queues, which allow one-directional communication. Sender application would send the message to the service bus queue, and receiver would read from the queue. Though there can be multiple readers for the queue only one would process a single message.
  • Topics, which provide one-directional communication using a subscriber pattern. It's similar to queue, however each subscriber will receive a copy of the message send to a Topic. Optionally the subscriber can filter down messages based on specific criteria defined by the subscriber.
  • Relays, which provide bi-directional communication. Unlike queues and topics, a relay doesn't store in-flight messages in to its own memory. Instead, it just passes them on to the destination application.
  • Event Hubs, which provide event and telemetry ingress to the cloud at massive scale, with low latency and high reliability. For example an event hub can be used to track data from cell phones such as a GPS location coordinate in real time.

Media services

A PaaS offering that can be used for encoding, content protection, streaming, and/or analytics.

CDN

A global content delivery network (CDN) for audio, video, applications, images, and other static files. Can be used to cache static assets of websites geographically closer to users to increase performance. The network can be managed by a REST based HTTP API.

Networking

  • Virtual Network, a hosted virtual private network (VPN)
  • Azure DNS, a DNS domain hosting service. It provides domain name resolution services using the cloud infrastructure of Microsoft Azure. The Azure DNS services are integrated with other Azure services in terms of APIs, billing, credentials. The Azure DNS service is built up on the highly scalable cloud infrastructure provided by Microsoft Azure. The deployment is Anycast based and the service has a high global footprint to provide faster network resolution. Azure DNS is currently open for public preview.[21]
  • Express Route allows creation of private connections between Azure datacenters and infrastructure that’s on your premises or in a colocation environment. ExpressRoute connections don't go over the public Internet (sometimes called "dark fiber") and offer more reliability, faster speeds (it's like a leased line), lower latencies (one hop to Azure), and may offer higher security than typical Internet connections. In some cases, using ExpressRoute connections to transfer data between on-premises systems and Azure can also yield significant cost benefits.
  • Azure load balancing allows balancing of load to multiple instances of same application such as a website running on same data center location.
  • Traffic Manager is used to load balance azure services such as an azure website located on different geographic locations. This is separate from load balancing done with multiple instances of same service located in same data center. Azure traffic manager works on DNS level for example by resolving a DNS query to the nearest data center location where the website is hosted.

Integration

  • Backup
  • Site Recovery

Developer

Management

  • Azure Automation, provides a way for users to automate the manual, long-running, error-prone, and frequently repeated tasks that are commonly performed in a cloud and enterprise environment. It saves time and increases the reliability of regular administrative tasks and even schedules them to be automatically performed at regular intervals. You can automate processes using runbooks or automate configuration management using Desired State Configuration.[1]
  • Microsoft SMA (software)

Design

Microsoft Azure uses a specialized operating system, called Microsoft Azure, to run its "fabric layer":[citation needed] a cluster hosted at Microsoft's data centers that manages computing and storage resources of the computers and provisions the resources (or a subset of them) to applications running on top of Microsoft Azure. Microsoft Azure has been described as a "cloud layer" on top of a number of Windows Server systems, which use Windows Server 2008 and a customized version of Hyper-V, known as the Microsoft Azure Hypervisor to provide virtualization of services.

Scaling and reliability are controlled by the Microsoft Azure Fabric Controller[citation needed] so the services and environment do not crash if one of the servers crashes within the Microsoft data center and provides the management of the user's web application like memory resources and load balancing.

Azure provides an API built on REST, HTTP, and XML that allows a developer to interact with the services provided by Microsoft Azure. Microsoft also provides a client-side managed class library which encapsulates the functions of interacting with the services. It also integrates with Microsoft Visual Studio, Git, and Eclipse.

In addition to interacting with services via API, users can manage Azure services using the web-based Azure Portal, which reached General Availability in December 2015.[22] The portal allows users to browse active resources, modify settings, launch new resources, and view basic monitoring data from active virtual machines and services.

Timeline

File:Ray Ozzie PDC2008.jpg
Ray Ozzie announcing Windows Azure at PDC 2008, October 27
  • October 2008 – (PDC LA), Announced the Windows Azure Platform
  • March 2009 – Announced SQL Azure Relational Database
  • November 2009 – Updated Windows Azure CTP, Enabled full trust, PHP, Java, CDN CTP and more
  • February 2010 – Windows Azure Platform commercially available
  • June 2010 – Windows Azure Update, .NET Framework 4, OS Versioning, CDN, SQL Azure Update[23]
  • October 2010 (PDC) – Platform enhancements, Windows Azure Connect, Improved Dev / IT Pro Experience
  • December 2011 – Traffic manager, SQL Azure reporting, HPC scheduler
  • June 2012 – Websites, Virtual machines for Windows and Linux, Python SDK, New portal, Locally redundant storage
Former Windows Azure logo, 2012-2014
  • April 2014 – Windows Azure renamed to Microsoft Azure
  • July 2014 – Azure Machine Learning public preview[24]
  • November 2014 – Outage affecting major websites including MSN.com.[25]
  • September 2015 – Azure Cloud Switch introduced as a cross-platform Linux distribution.[26]

Data center regions

Pricing, terms and conditions may differ between regions, and servers running in some locations are limited to only some customers.[27][28]

The current data centers are:[29][30]

Template:Start multicol

North America
  • Central US: Iowa
  • North-central US: Chicago, IL
  • South-central US: San Antonio, TX
  • West US: California
  • East US: Boydton, VA[31]
  • East Canada: Toronto and Quebec City (2016)[32]
South America
  • Brazil: São Paulo State
Europe

Template:Multicol break

Asia
  • China (North): Beijing
  • China (East): Shanghai
  • East Asia: Hong Kong
  • South East Asia: Singapore
  • South Asia: Chennai, Mumbai, Pune
Japan
  • Japan East: Saitama
  • Japan West: Osaka
Oceania[35][36]
  • Sydney, New South Wales
  • Melbourne, Victoria

Template:Multicol end

CDN nodes are located in 24 countries.[37][37][38]

Privacy

Microsoft has stated that, per the USA Patriot Act, the US government can have access to the data even if the hosted company is not American and the data resides outside the USA.[39] However, Microsoft Azure is compliant with the E.U. Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC)[40][41][contradictory]. To manage privacy and security related concerns, Microsoft has created a Microsoft Azure Trust Center,[42] and Microsoft Azure has several of its services compliant with several compliance programs including ISO 27001:2005 and HIPAA. A full and current listing can be found on the Microsoft Azure Trust Center Compliance page.[43] Of special note, Microsoft Azure has been granted JAB Provisional Authority to Operate (P-ATO) from the U.S. government in accordance with guidelines spelled out under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), a U.S. government program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud services used by the federal government.[44]

Significant outages

Documented Microsoft Azure outages and service disruptions.

Date Cause Notes
2012-02-29 Incorrect code for calculating leap day dates[45]
2012-07-26 Misconfigured network device[46][47]
2013-02-22 Expiry of an SSL certificate[48] Xbox Live, Xbox Music and Video also affected[49]
2013-10-30 Worldwide partial compute outage[50]
2014-11-18 Azure storage upgrade caused reduced capacity across several regions[51] Xbox Live, Windows Store, MSN, Search, Visual Studio Online among others were affected.[52]

As of December 4, 2015, Azure has been available for 99.9936% of the past year.[53]

See also

References

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  2. ^ "Microsoft Azure 6.10.1.2024.10.14-21.02.52". APKMirror. 14 October 2024. Retrieved 24 October 2024.
  3. ^ "Microsoft Azure". App Store. Retrieved 24 October 2024.
  4. ^ "Windows Azure General Availability". The Official Microsoft Blog. Microsoft. 1 February 2010. Retrieved 28 May 2013.
  5. ^ "How to monitor Microsoft Azure VMs". Datadog. Retrieved 25 January 2016.
  6. ^ "Directoru of Azure Cloud Services", Microsoft.com
  7. ^ a b "Meet Windows Azure event June 2012". Weblogs.asp.net. 7 June 2012. Retrieved 27 June 2013.
  8. ^ "Web App Service - Microsoft Azure". Microsoft.
  9. ^ "Windows Azure Documentation: Get started building cloud applications". Windowsazure.com. Retrieved 28 May 2013.
  10. ^ "Azure (Windows Azure) on GitHub". Github.com. Retrieved 28 May 2013.
  11. ^ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-linux-create-upload-vhd/
  12. ^ "What is Scheduler - Microsoft Azure". Microsoft Azure. Microsoft. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
  13. ^ "RemoteApp - Microsoft Azure". Microsoft Azure. Microsoft. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
  14. ^ http://www.connx.com/products/azure.html Azure and CONNX
  15. ^ "HDInsight". Microsoft.
  16. ^ "HDInsight - Microsoft Azure". Microsoft Azure HDInsight. Microsoft. Retrieved 12 May 2015.
  17. ^ "Machine Learning - Microsoft Azure". Microsoft Azure. Microsoft. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
  18. ^ "Stream Analytics - Microsoft Azure". Microsoft Azure. Microsoft. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
  19. ^ "Data Catalog Search syntax reference - Microsoft Azure". Microsoft Azure. Microsoft. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
  20. ^ "Data Factory Developer Reference- Microsoft Azure". Microsoft Azure. Microsoft. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
  21. ^ "DNS | Microsoft Azure". Azure.microsoft.com. Retrieved 19 May 2015.
  22. ^ Welicki, Leon. "Announcing Azure Portal general availability". Microsoft. Retrieved 23 December 2015.
  23. ^ "SQL Azure SU3 is Now Live and Available in 6 Datacenters Worldwide". SQL Azure Team Blog. Microsoft. Retrieved 28 May 2013.
  24. ^ "Microsoft Azure Machine Learning combines power of comprehensive machine learning with benefits of cloud". blogs.microsoft.com. 16 June 2014.
  25. ^ "Human Error Caused Microsoft Azure Outage". Cloudwards.net. 20 December 2014.
  26. ^ "Microsoft demonstrates its Linux-based Azure Cloud Switch operating system". ZDNet.com. 18 September 2015.
  27. ^ "21Vianet Announces General Availability of Microsoft Azure Services in China". 21Vianet. 21Vianet. 26 March 2014. Retrieved 14 October 2014.
  28. ^ "Locations". Microsoft. Microsoft. 27 October 2014. Retrieved 27 October 2014.
  29. ^ "Microsoft Azure Data Center Locations World Wide | Joran Markx". Joranmarkx.wordpress.com. 15 September 2014. Retrieved 17 November 2014.
  30. ^ "Privacy". Microsoft Azure Trust Center. Windowsazure.com. 15 September 2011. Retrieved 28 May 2013.
  31. ^ "Microsoft Datacenters - Microsoft".
  32. ^ "Microsoft Canada | Microsoft Cloud Touches Down in Canada". reimagine.microsoft.ca. Retrieved 18 September 2015.
  33. ^ a b Sunday Business Post Archived 2010-10-28 at the Wayback Machine
  34. ^ "Microsoft's new Dublin Data Centre to support demand for online services for business and consumers".
  35. ^ Bowers, Toby. "Microsoft Azure expands Downunder". Microsoft Australia Blog. Microsoft.
  36. ^ "Microsoft Azure in Australia Goes Live Today". CloudWedge.com.
  37. ^ a b "UPDATED: 24 Nodes Available Globally for the Microsoft Azure CDN Including New Node in Doha, QT". MSDN Blogs. Microsoft. 24 February 2011. Retrieved 28 May 2013.
  38. ^ "Two New Nodes for the Windows Azure CDN Enhance Service Across Asia". MSDN Blogs. Microsoft. 2 September 2010. Retrieved 28 May 2013.
  39. ^ Toor, Amar (30 June 2011). "Microsoft: European cloud data may not be immune to the Patriot Act". Engadget.com. Retrieved 27 June 2013.
  40. ^ "EU data privacy authorities approve Microsoft Azure", 15 Apr 2014, ComputerWeekly.com
  41. ^ "The collapse of the US-EU Safe Harbor", October 20, 2015, Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer, Microsoft.com
  42. ^ "Microsoft Azure Trust Center". Windowsazure.com. Retrieved 27 June 2013.
  43. ^ "Microsoft Azure Trust Center Compliance". Windowsazure.com. Retrieved 27 June 2013.
  44. ^ "FedRAMP Compliant Cloud Systems". cloud.cio.gov. Retrieved 15 October 2014.
  45. ^ "Summary of Windows Azure Service Disruption on Feb 29th, 2012". Blogs.msdn.com. 9 March 2012. Retrieved 27 June 2013.
  46. ^ "Windows Azure outage hits Europe". Gigaom.com. 26 July 2012. Retrieved 27 June 2013.
  47. ^ "Microsoft pins Azure outage on network miscue". Gigaom.com. 27 July 2012. Retrieved 27 June 2013.
  48. ^ Microsoft’s Azure storage service goes down, locking out corporate customers from their data Archived 2011-07-26 at the Wayback Machine
  49. ^ Bishop, Bryan. "Xbox Live and Windows Azure suffering from extended outages". Theverge.com. Retrieved 27 June 2013.
  50. ^ "Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud hit by worldwide management interuption [sic]". www.pcworld.com. 31 October 2013. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
  51. ^ Zander, Jason. "Update on Azure Storage Service Interruption". Microsoft. Retrieved 5 December 2014.
  52. ^ Foley, Mary J. "Microsoft says Storage service performance update brought Azure down". ZD.NET. Retrieved 5 December 2014.
  53. ^ "Service Status - CloudHarmony".

Further reading

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