What is Microsoft Azure?

Azure is a cloud computing platform by Microsoft that enables people to access and manage Microsoft cloud services and support. The services and resources consist of storing your data and transforming it depending on your requirements.

To obtain access to these resources and services, people need to have an active internet connection and the capacity to join the Azure portal. Things that people should know about Azure are:

Some features of Microsoft Azure

Azure was launched on February 1, 2010, significantly later than its mean competitor Amazon Web services.
It is free to begin and follows a pay per use model, which indicates that you pay only for the services you choose.
80% of the fortune 500 companies do use Azure services for their cloud computing needs.
Multiple programming languages are supported by Azure, including Java, Node JS, and C#.
Another advantage of Azure is the amount of data centers it has around the world. There are 42 data centers scattered worldwide, the largest, and Azure is planning to get 12 more data centers increasing the number of data centers to 54.

How does Microsoft Azure work?

Azure uses a technology known as virtualization. Virtualization separates the close coupling between a computer CPU or server and its operating system employing an abstraction layer called a hypervisor. The hypervisor emulates a real computer or service function and its CPU in a virtual machine. You will manage multiple virtual machines simultaneously, and each virtual machine could run any compatible operating system such as Windows or Linux.

Azure uses this virtualization-based technology and reads things on an extensive scale in Microsoft data centers worldwide. Therefore the cloud could be understood as a set of physical servers in one or several data centers that virtualize hardware on account of their clients.

For understanding this, we should take a look at the hardware architecture of the data center.

In each data center, there are several servers positioned in server racks. Each server rack comprises many blade servers and a network switch which implements network connectivity, and a power distribution unit that supplies the power. Sometimes frames are grouped into larger companies that are known as clusters.

So the question arises how does the cloud create, stop, and eliminate millions of virtualized hardware applications for millions of clients at once?

Currently, there are 54 Azure regions, and the other six are on their way. The service is accessible in more than 140 countries around the globe. Each server comprises the hypervisor for running multiple virtual machines.
Connectivity is provided to the service using a network switch. A server in each rack operates a special software called fabric controller.
In turn, each fabric controller is united with another unique piece of software known as an orchestrator.
An orchestrator is capable of managing anything that happens in Azure, including replying to user requests. At assigned services, monitor the service maintenance and the services running on it and deliver the servers to normal when an error occurs.

In the case of the fabric controller, it combines with another set of servers running orchestration software in the cloud as a front end. The front and host the web services, restful API, and the internal Azure databases required for all functions that are carried by the cloud.

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