List of Azure services

Azure Services
This reading includes details of the most commonly used categories of Azure Services:

• Compute
• Web
• Internet of Things (IoT)
• Big data
• AI
• DevOps
• Networking
• Storage
• Mobile
• Databases
Compute
Compute services are often one of the primary reasons why companies move to the Azure
platform. Azure provides a range of options for hosting applications and services. Here are some
examples of compute services in Azure.

Service name Service function

Azure Virtual Machines Windows or Linux virtual machines (VMs) hosted in Azure
Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets Scaling for Windows or Linux VMs hosted in Azure
Azure Kubernetes Service Cluster management for VMs that run containerized services
Azure Service Fabric Distributed systems platform that runs in Azure or on-premises
Azure Batch Managed service for parallel and high-performance computing applicati
Azure Container Instances Containerized apps run on Azure without provisioning servers or VMs
Azure Functions An event-driven, serverless compute service

Networking
Linking compute resources and providing access to applications is the key function of Azure
networking. Networking functionality in Azure includes a range of options to connect the outside
world to services and features in the global Azure datacenters.

Here are some examples of networking services in Azure.

Service name Service function

Azure Virtual Network Connects VMs to incoming virtual private network (VPN) connections
Azure Load Balancer Balances inbound and outbound connections to applications or service endp
Azure Application Gateway Optimizes app server farm delivery while increasing application security
Azure VPN Gateway Accesses Azure Virtual Networks through high-performance VPN gateway
Azure DNS Provides ultra-fast DNS responses and ultra-high domain availability
Azure Content Delivery Network Delivers high-bandwidth content to customers globally
Azure DDoS Protection Protects Azure-hosted applications from distributed denial of service (DDO
Azure Traffic Manager Distributes network traffic across Azure regions worldwide
Azure ExpressRoute Connects to Azure over high-bandwidth dedicated secure connections
 Service name Service function
Azure Network Watcher Monitors and diagnoses network issues by using scenario-based analysis
Azure Firewall Implements high-security, high-availability firewall with unlimited scalabil
Azure Virtual WAN Creates a unified wide area network (WAN) that connects local and remote

Storage
Azure provides four main types of storage services.

Service name Service function

Azure Blob storage Storage service for very large objects, such as video files or bitmaps
Azure File storage File shares that can be accessed and managed like a file server
Azure Queue storage A data store for queuing and reliably delivering messages between applications
Azure Table storage A NoSQL store that hosts unstructured data independent of any schema
These services all share several common characteristics:

• Durable and highly available with redundancy and replication.

• Secure through automatic encryption and role-based access control.
• Scalable with virtually unlimited storage.
• Managed, handling maintenance and any critical problems for you.
• Accessible from anywhere in the world over HTTP or HTTPS.

Mobile
With Azure, developers can create mobile back-end services for iOS, Android, and Windows
apps quickly and easily. Features that used to take time and increase project risks, such as
adding corporate sign-in and then connecting to on-premises resources such as SAP, Oracle,
SQL Server, and SharePoint, are now simple to include.

Other features of this service include:

• Offline data synchronization.

• Connectivity to on-premises data.
• Broadcasting push notifications.
• Autoscaling to match business needs.

Databases
Azure provides multiple database services to store a wide variety of data types and volumes.
And with global connectivity, this data is available to users instantly.

Service name Service function

Azure Cosmos DB Globally distributed database that supports NoSQL options
Fully managed relational database with auto-scale, integral intelligence, a
Azure SQL Database
security
Fully managed and scalable MySQL relational database with high availab
Azure Database for MySQL
security
Fully managed and scalable PostgreSQL relational database with high ava
Azure Database for PostgreSQL
and security
Service name Service function
SQL Server on Azure Virtual
Service that hosts enterprise SQL Server apps in the cloud
Machines
Fully managed data warehouse with integral security at every level of sca
Azure Synapse Analytics
extra cost
Azure Database Migration Service Service that migrates databases to the cloud with no application code chan
Fully managed service caches frequently used and static data to reduce da
Azure Cache for Redis
application latency
Fully managed and scalable MariaDB relational database with high availa
Azure Database for MariaDB
security

Web
Having a great web experience is critical in today's business world. Azure includes first-class
support to build and host web apps and HTTP-based web services. The following Azure services
are focused on web hosting.

Service name Description

Azure App Service Quickly create powerful cloud web-based apps.
Azure Notification Hubs Send push notifications to any platform from any back end.
Azure API Management Publish APIs to developers, partners, and employees securely and
Azure Cognitive Search Deploy this fully managed search as a service.
Web Apps feature of Azure App Service Create and deploy mission-critical web apps at scale.
Azure SignalR Service Add real-time web functionalities easily.

IoT
People are able to access more information than ever before. Personal digital assistants led to
smartphones, and now there are smart watches, smart thermostats, and even smart
refrigerators. Personal computers used to be the norm. Now the internet allows any item that's
online-capable to access valuable information. This ability for devices to garner and then relay
information for data analysis is referred to as IoT.

Many services can assist and drive end-to-end solutions for IoT on Azure.

Service
Description
name
IoT Fully managed global IoT software as a service (SaaS) solution that makes it easy to connect, mo
Central manage IoT assets at scale
Azure IoT
Messaging hub that provides secure communications between and monitoring of millions of IoT
Hub
Fully managed service that allows data analysis models to be pushed directly onto IoT devices, w
IoT Edge
allows them to react quickly to state changes without needing to consult cloud-based AI models

Big data
Data comes in all formats and sizes. When we talk about big data, we're referring to large
volumes of data. Data from weather systems, communications systems, genomic research,
imaging platforms, and many other scenarios generate hundreds of gigabytes of data. This
amount of data makes it hard to analyze and make decisions. It's often so large that traditional
forms of processing and analysis are no longer appropriate.

Open-source cluster technologies have been developed to deal with these large data sets. Azure
supports a broad range of technologies and services to provide big data and analytic solutions.

Service name Description

Azure Synapse Run analytics at a massive scale by using a cloud-based enterprise data warehouse that take
Analytics advantage of massively parallel processing to run complex queries quickly across petabyte
Azure HDInsight Process massive amounts of data with managed clusters of Hadoop clusters in the cloud.
Integrate this collaborative Apache Spark-based analytics service with other big data servic
Azure Databricks
Azure.

AI
AI, in the context of cloud computing, is based around a broad range of services, the core of
which is machine learning. Machine learning is a data science technique that allows computers
to use existing data to forecast future behaviors, outcomes, and trends. Using machine learning,
computers learn without being explicitly programmed.

Forecasts or predictions from machine learning can make apps and devices smarter. For
example, when you shop online, machine learning helps recommend other products you might
like based on what you've purchased. Or when your credit card is swiped, machine learning
compares the transaction to a database of transactions and helps detect fraud. And when your
robot vacuum cleaner vacuums a room, machine learning helps it decide whether the job is
done.

Here are some of the most common AI and machine learning service types in Azure.

Service name Description

Cloud-based environment you can use to develop, train, test, deploy, manage, and track ma
Azure Machine
learning models. It can auto-generate a model and auto-tune it for you. It will let you start t
Learning Service
your local machine, and then scale out to the cloud.
Azure Machine Collaborative visual workspace where you can build, test, and deploy machine learning sol
Learning Studio using prebuilt machine learning algorithms and data-handling modules.
A closely related set of products are the cognitive services. You can use these prebuilt APIs in
your applications to solve complex problems.

Service name Description

Use image-processing algorithms to smartly identify, caption, index, and moderate yo
Vision
and videos.
Convert spoken audio into text, use voice for verification, or add speaker recognition
Speech
app.
Map complex information and data to solve tasks such as intelligent recommendation
Knowledge mapping
semantic search.
Add Bing Search APIs to your apps and harness the ability to comb billions of webpa
Bing Search
images, videos, and news with a single API call.
Natural Language Allow your apps to process natural language with pre-built scripts, evaluate sentiment
processing how to recognize what users want.
DevOps
DevOps brings together people, processes, and technology by automating software delivery to
provide continuous value to your users. With Azure DevOps, you can
create build and release pipelines that provide continuous integration, delivery, and deployment
for your applications. You can integrate repositories and application tests, perform application
monitoring, and work with build artifacts. You can also work with and backlog items for tracking,
automate infrastructure deployment and integrate a range of third-party tools and services such
as Jenkins and Chef. All of these functions and many more are closely integrated with Azure to
allow for consistent, repeatable deployments for your applications to provide streamlined build
and release processes.

Service
Description
name
Use development collaboration tools such as high-performance pipelines, free private Git repos
Azure
configurable Kanban boards, and extensive automated and cloud-based load testing. Formerly k
DevOps
Visual Studio Team Services.
Azure
Quickly create on-demand Windows and Linux environments to test or demo applications direc
DevTest
deployment pipelines.
Labs