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Azure Fundamentals

Core Azure services, pricing, and the shared responsibility model.

6

Modules

23

Lessons

0

Hands-on Labs

0

Module Assessments

Curriculum

Cloud Computing Fundamentals · Lesson

What Is Cloud Computing?

The five characteristics of cloud computing

1

On-Demand Self-Service

Provision resources yourself, instantly

2

Broad Network Access

Available from anywhere, any device

3

Resource Pooling

Shared infrastructure, dynamically assigned

4

Rapid Elasticity

Scale up or down to match demand

5

Measured Service

Pay only for what you use

Press play to walk through the process.

Objective

Explain what "the cloud" actually is, and the shift from owning infrastructure to renting it.

Renting instead of owning

Cloud computing means using computing resources - servers, storage, databases, networking - that live in someone else's datacenter (like Microsoft's) and that you access and pay for over the internet, instead of buying and running the physical hardware yourself.

What you get in return

  • On-demand access - spin up a server in minutes instead of ordering and racking hardware.
  • Pay only for what you use - no upfront hardware purchase, and you can scale down when demand drops.
  • Someone else handles the physical building - power, cooling, security, and hardware replacement are the cloud provider's job, not yours.

Azure is one cloud among several

Azure is Microsoft's public cloud platform - the same idea as AWS or Google Cloud, run by a different company, with its own set of services and its own names for familiar concepts.