- Cloud Computing
- The on-demand delivery of IT resources like compute, storage, and networking over the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing.
- IaaS
- Infrastructure as a Service; a cloud model providing virtualized compute, storage, and networking while the customer manages the OS and above.
- PaaS
- Platform as a Service; a cloud model where the provider manages the runtime environment so customers can focus only on their application code.
- SaaS
- Software as a Service; a cloud model delivering a complete, ready-to-use application managed entirely by the provider.
- Shared Responsibility Model
- The framework describing which security and operational tasks are handled by the cloud provider versus the customer, varying by service type.
- Availability Zone
- A physically separate location within an Azure region with independent power and networking, used to protect against datacenter failures.
- Region Pair
- Two Azure regions in the same geography linked together so that one can serve as a disaster-recovery target for the other.
- Resource Group
- A logical container in Azure used to group related resources for unified management, deployment, and billing.
- Management Group
- A container that sits above subscriptions in the Azure hierarchy, used to apply governance controls across multiple subscriptions at once.
- Virtual Machine (VM)
- An emulated, software-based computer running an operating system and applications, provisioned on Azure's IaaS compute service.
- Virtual Machine Scale Set
- An Azure service that manages a group of identical, load-balanced VMs that automatically scale in or out based on demand.
- App Service
- A fully managed PaaS platform for building and hosting web apps and APIs without managing servers.
- Azure Functions
- A serverless compute service that executes small units of code in response to events, billed only for actual execution time.
- Container
- A lightweight, portable package of an application and its dependencies that shares the host operating system kernel.
- Virtual Network (VNet)
- The core Azure networking construct that lets resources communicate securely with each other, the internet, and on-premises networks.
- VPN Gateway
- An Azure service that establishes an encrypted connection over the public internet between an Azure VNet and another network.
- ExpressRoute
- An Azure service that provides a private, dedicated network connection between on-premises infrastructure and Azure, bypassing the public internet.
- Network Security Group (NSG)
- A set of rules that filter inbound and outbound network traffic to and from Azure resources within a virtual network.
- Blob Storage
- An Azure storage service optimized for storing massive amounts of unstructured object data such as documents and media files.
- Azure Files
- A managed cloud file-share service accessible via the SMB protocol, mountable like a traditional network drive.
- Redundancy (LRS/GRS)
- Data replication strategies in Azure Storage; LRS copies data within one datacenter, while GRS also copies it to a distant secondary region for disaster protection.
- Microsoft Entra ID (Azure Active Directory)
- Microsoft's cloud-based identity and access management service used to authenticate users and control access to resources.
- Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
- An Azure authorization model that grants permissions to users, groups, or applications by assigning roles scoped to specific resources.