Azure is designed to support applications that require high scalability, reliability, and availability at lower costs. Mostly hosted on virtual VMs, Azure provides more control over them by controlling the services remotely. Azure cloud services are primarily used for deploying multi-tier web-based applications. It is also possible to define multiple roles with Azure, like web roles, worker roles, and other critical roles of an organization.

Scaling is one of the important advantages that Azure offers. These are of the following two types

· Vertical Scaling: It is used when the configuration yield to increase the capacity of a machine. For example, expanding the size of the RAM from 4GB to 32 GB.

· Horizontal Scaling: When the physical aspect is increased by putting multiple machines at work instead of replacing the existing machine.

Some of the most important applications of Microsoft Azure can be listed as:

· Clod Services

· Mobile Applications

· Web Applications

· Infrastructure Services

· Storage

· Data Management

· Media Services

Azure DevOps is a SaaS solution that is hosted on the Microsoft Azure cloud. It is quite helpful for team-building apps and services. Azure DevOps equips teams with the following tools to support the overall process.

· Azure Boards: This is a project management tool to eliminate, track, and discuss tasks and collaborate with other team members of a company.

· Azure Pipelines: It is a continuous integration and continuous delivery enabler that integrates with version control tools like GitHub.

· Azure Repos: This cloud-hosted repository provides unlimited space to store code blocks and help participate in collaborative coding.

· Azure Test Plans: These are a set of testing tools and frameworks allowing developers to conduct quality assurance assessments ensuring not to move away from the Azure environment.

· Azure Artifacts: It is a package management tool enabling the DevOps team to help create and share code packages.

Azure basically offers two deployment environments:

· Staging environment: Here you can test your deployment before promoting it to the production environment.

· Production Environment: Here the URL is based on the friendlier DNS prefix to be later assigned to a cloud service like myservice.cloudapp.net

There are the following deployment models for the cloud:

· Private Cloud Deployment Model: Here you own the infrastructure while the cloud provider enables you to use the services exclusively.

· Public Cloud Deployment Model: Under this model, you get the multi-tenant infrastructure from the service provider exclusively.

· Hybrid Cloud Deployment Model: This is a set of intermixed public and private data where the confidential data will be served in-house, while the public-directed website is for addressing the public.

These are:

· It is designed to host the running application and simultaneously manage the background running application.

· The application of web processing is known as the ‘web role’; while the background processing is termed as the ‘worker role’.

Yes. Some of these are:

· Cloud computing is impossible in the absence of an internet connection or when it is not available.

· Azure is a web-based app and needs a lot of bandwidth to download, especially in case of large documents

· Web-based applications tend to slow when compared to similar software programs on your desktop computer

Three important components of the Window Azure platform are:

· Compute

· Storage

· AppFabric

Microsoft Azure Certification Cost

Microsoft Azure Certification Cost depends largely on the learning method and the training institute you want to go with. Institutes like Knowlathon, offer a self-paced learning program, and an online classroom Flexi-pass program and charge their fee accordingly. There are five Azure certifications which are grouped into three levels known as Fundamental, Associate, and Expert Levels. You can choose a course of your liking and as per your skills and pay accordingly.