Chapter 12
Microsoft Azure IaaS, Storage, and Networking
Microsoft has long provided solutions that an organization can run in its own
datacenters, such as Windows Server, Exchange, SQL Server, and more. Microsoft has
also long provided public solutions such as Outlook.com (formerly Hotmail),
Windows Update, MSN, Xbox Live, Bing, and Office 365. These services are all
software-as-a service (SaaS) solutions, which means that they offer a complete service
online. Just as the private cloud gained momentum, so too did the public cloud; that
is, the idea of services and applications being available over the Internet.
Organizations could bring their own services or entire virtual machines. Microsoft’s
offering in this space is Microsoft Azure, which has constantly been evolving, with
new capabilities added regularly.
This chapter focuses on the Microsoft Azure infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offering,
which allows customers’ virtual machines to be hosted on Microsoft infrastructure in
Microsoft datacenters in a shared, multitenant environment. Additionally, we’ll
explore Microsoft Azure Storage and networking and how they can benefit
organizations in different ways.
In this chapter, you will learn to:
Explain the difference between platform as a service and infrastructure as a
service.
Connect Microsoft Azure to your on-premises network.
Move data between on-premises and Microsoft Azure.