An introduction to Microsoft Azure Portal

In this azure tutorial, we will discuss about Azure portal. Apart from this, we will also discuss on below topics

• What is Azure portal?
• Azure Portal Tutorial
• Features Of Azure Portal
• Azure Portal login
• Using Azure Portal
• How To Use Azure Portal
• Azure services
• Why choose Microsoft Azure Services
• Azure portal app
• How to install Azure portal app
• Are Multiple Azure Portal Dashboards Supported In Azure?
• What Is Azure Cloud Shell
• How to access Azure Cloud Shell
• What is Azure PowerShell
• Azure Portal System Requirements
• Azure Devops

Azure portal

Before discussing the What is Azure portal? You can get some knowledge on What is Microsoft Azure and How does Microsoft Azure Works? Now Let’s discuss the Microsoft Azure portal.

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Azure Portal Tutorial

Azure Portal is a single portal where you can access and manage all your applications in one place. You can build, manage, and monitor your simple web-apps to complex cloud applications using a single portal.

Azure Portal Login

If you want to login to azure portal, then you can use the below URL:

• https://portal.azure.com

Features Of Azure Portal

There are many features provided by Microsoft Azure portal.

Single place to manage applications

Azure portal provides a single place/environment to manage all your applications.

This is a place to manage your storage, compute, Virtual machines, etc. Azure Cloud Shell is the command-line utility that helps to manage all the different applications.

Cool Dashboard

Azure portal gives an excellent Dashboard that allows you to add your needed applications so that they can be monitored and accessed easily whenever you want to check.

We can customize this dashboard to bring the resources you use frequently into a single view at one place.

You can also create customized dashboards based on your business needs and share it with other users in your organization.

Role-Based access controls and security features

Azure portal provides the role-based access controls and security features by providing the subscription at individual and at the group level.

That means you can access to the resources if only if you have the proper subscription.

Friendly UI

Azure portal provides a very user-friendly user interface which is really easy to understand and do the operations easily. A person with very minimal knowledge in to the platform can understand the simple UI easily.

Microsoft is constantly working on the user interface part to provide the easy to use UI always.

No Downtime

The Azure portal is designed for continuous availability. The portal updates continuously so it requires no downtime for the maintenance activities.

Using Azure Portal

In order to use the Azure portal first time, you need to create an Azure account.

To create an Azure free account, you can refer to my article How to Create Azure Free Account (Step by Step tutorial).

How To Use Azure Portal

Once you have created the Azure account, you are now ready to login to the Azure portal.

Login to the Azure portal (https://portal.azure.com/)

It will ask you to provide the credentials, you can enter your Azure credentials and click on the Sign in button.

Once you login, you will see the home page of the Azure portal

1: This is the Global search area. You can use this search bar to quickly find a specific resource, a service, etc.

2: This the Global controls area. The options present here are Cloud Shell, Directory + Subscription, Notifications, Portal Settings, Help and Support, Feedback.

3: Details of your account and the other options are View information about your account, sign out, or sign in with a different account.

4: The left side highlighted portion is the Resource menu and one click access to all the services and the options.

The top portion highlighted is the search area,

Once you will click on the Dashboard, the dashboard page will open and will look like below

1: Microsoft Azure page header. It appears at the top of each page

2: My Dashboard. You can see all your customized dashboard names here.

3: The options present here are the option to create a + New dashboard, Upload, Download, Edit, Share, Fullscreen, Clone, Delete, Refresh options.

From the left side menu you will get all the below options

1: Expand or collapse the left side portal menu options.

2: Option to create a resource base on your business needs + Create a resource link.

3: Your favorites lists of all resources.

Once you will click on the + Create resource button, You can search for the resource to create

Below are the options on this page.

1: This is know as Breadcrumb. You can use the breadcrumb links to go to a level back if you want.

2: This is the command bar which has few options to perform based on your need.

3: This is the working pane area that displays all the details of the current resource you are working with.

Below are the options on the page

1: Portal settings. You can change few options here.

2: We can change the default view, default mode for the portal menu, change a theme using these options.

You can create a resource group by clicking on the resource group link from the left menu and then click on the + Create link option.

We can click on the App services link and click on the + Create link to create the App services. For more steps on this, you can refer to my article on Azure Domain name service.

You can click on the Function App link to create a function using the + Create button.

We can click on the SQL database link and click on the + Create link to create the Azure SQL database. To get the complete steps on creating an Azure SQL database, you can refer to my article How to create an Azure SQL database.

We can click on the Virtual machines link and click on the + Create link to create the Azure virtual machine. To get the complete steps on creating an Azure virtual machine, you can refer to my article How to Create Azure VM (Virtual Machine).

We can click on the Storage accounts link and click on the + Create link to create the Azure storage account. To get the complete steps on creating an Azure storage account, For more information on Azure storage account, you can refer to my article Azure storage types.

You can click on the Azure Cosmos DB link to create a Cosmos DB using the + Create button.

Azure services

Azure services are in demand in the market compare to the other platforms. The demand for the Azure services has been increasing rapidly.

Most of the Fortune companies in the market are using the Azure services to drive their business. The companies are using Azure cloud services for building, deploying, and managing simple and complex applications. 

Why to choose Microsoft Azure Services

There are many reasons why you should go with Microsoft Azure Services. We will discuss few important points as below.

Security

• As we know the security of our data is an important factor while keeping the data in the cloud environment.
• Microsoft provides an excellent security facility associated with the Azure services. This is one of the main reasons companies prefer to go with the Microsoft Azure services.

Hybrid Capability

• It provides the hybrid capability like mobility and connecting through VPN with very good performance and usability.

Easy learning curve

• Microsoft Azure services provide an easy learning curve as it supports programming languages like C++, C#, etc for developing the cloud applications which is ideal for the developers and increases productivity.
• This is another important reason for the business to choose the Azure services.

Pay-As-You-Go model

• This is one of the best models in the current trend. Pay for that what you are actually using that ensures the cost-effectiveness with the use of services offered by Azure.
• Business is saving a lot of money in the form of savings in maintaining infrastructure as Microsoft is taking care of maintaining the infra and environment stuff.

Now let’s discuss the various Azure services provided by Microsoft.

Virtual Machines

• This is one of the excellent services from Microsoft. One of the most demanding Azure services. Many fortune companies are using Virtual machine service to create Linux and Windows virtual machines(VM) in a few seconds.
• You can create different types of VM like Memory-optimized VMs, and general-purpose VMs with Microsoft Azure.

Azure Active Directory

• Azure Active Directory is another popular Azure services. This is one of the universal identity platform for the management and security of identities.
• It provides single sign-on and multi-factor authentication. Single sign-on can help users to access their apps from any location.

Azure Cosmos DB

• This is another popular Azure service that provides globally distributed, fully managed NoSQL database service.
• This allows customers to independently scale throughput and storage across any number of geographical regions.

Azure Backup

• This is also one of the top Azure service that is very much popular in the current market.
• You can take a complete backup of your virtual machines and SQL database with few clicks.
• We can restore these backups with the help of few clicks again.
• It provides simple, secure, and cost-effective solutions to back up your data.

Azure DevOps

• Azure DevOps is another top most Azure service which is in demand in the market. This helps in leveraging agile tools for planning, tracking, and discussion of work among different teams.
• This is a software as services that helps in providing the end to end support from developing to the deployment of the software.
• Git is one of the most popular DevOps tools that is widely used across the software industry now in the market.

Azure Bots

• Azure Bots is also one more Azure service provided by Microsoft. This is a service that implements an interface and communicates with the Bot Framework Service to send and receive messages and events.
• This framework does not put any pressure on developers as it provides all the configurations needed to build and connect bots. So it increases the productivity as well.

Azure Site Recovery

• Azure Site Recovery is another excellent Azure service provided by Microsoft. It helps Azure Virtual Machines, physical on-prem systems, and VMWare to failover to and successfully failback once the disaster has been resolved.

Logic Apps

• This is another useful Azure service from Microsoft that helps you schedule, automate business processes and workflows when you need to integrate apps, data, systems, and services across the whole organization.

Web Apps

• Web Apps is an Azure service provided by Microsoft that helps businesses to create and deploy business-critical web applications with very little time. It supports multi-platforms like windows and Linux.
• It supports built-in load balancing support and auto-scale capability.

App service

• This is an Azure service provided by Microsoft that helps with a managed platform with built-in infrastructure maintenance, security patching to build, deploy, and scale the web apps quickly.
• You can use many languages like .NET, .NET Core, Node.js, Java, Python and PHP, etc to develop your application.

Azure SQL Database

• Azure SQL Database is a very good Azure service from Microsoft. This is the intelligent, relational database service built for the cloud.
• You can build your application without getting worried about the database part.

Azure Information Protection

• Azure Information Protection is a very good service from Microsoft that helps you to protect your sensitive information from anyplace and anytime.
• This service control and helps you to secure emails, documents, and sensitive data that you share outside your organization.

Azure Functions

• Azure Functions is one of the Azure services that helps to develop a more efficient function that helps to solve more complex problems.
• Build and debug it locally without doing any additional setup. Makes the function part simpler.

Azure Advisor

• This is another excellent service from Microsoft that analyzes your configurations and usage and guides you for the best practices.
• Recommends you the way to optimize your Azure resources for high availability after the analysis of your configurations at free of cost.

Azure Migrate

• This Azure service helps you to migrate your  applications, infrastructure and data to Azure,

Azure Database Migration Service

• This service helps you to automate to migrate your database from the on-premise environment to the cloud environment in an easy way.

Xamarin with Azure

• Xamarin with Azure is an Azure service that helps you to build powerful mobile apps with .Net and Azure which is trendy now.
• This is a free, open-source, and supports cross-platform mobile-app platform for building Android and iOS apps.

Load Balancer

• This service helps your applications with high performance and high availability and provides instant scalability.
• This is really a helpful service for the Organization in terms of the performance and scalability of their applications.

Azure portal app

• Azure portal app is a new application introduced by Microsoft that helps you to access and manage all your Azure resources in a different way.
• This is currently supported by Windows operating system.
• This is a desktop application for the Azure portal. The performance of this application is really good.

How to install Azure portal app

To start with the installation, First step is open the below site to download the app

https://portal.azure.com/App/Download

Once the above web site will open, click on the Download the Azure Portal app button to download the AzurePortalInstaller.exe file.

Run the AzurePortalInstaller.exe file to install the Azure portal App, once the app will successfully installed, you can search for that from your Start menu.

Click on that, it will ask you to enter the Azure credentials. Enter the credentials and click on Sign in button.

After the login, you can able to see the Azure Portal App. It will be similar to the Azure Portal web. Now you can explore all the options in the Azure Portal App.

You can able to view and manage all the applications in this Azure portal app including web apps, databases, virtual machines, virtual networks, storage, etc.

This is a right option to go with your daily activities in Azure Portal. It will be a quick option for you with high performance.

Are Multiple Azure Portal Dashboards Supported In Azure?

Yes, you can able to create multiple dashboards in the Azure Portal. This is supported in Azure. You can keep different tiles from multiple Azure Resources across different subscriptions and resource groups in each dashboard.

What Is Azure Cloud Shell

Azure Cloud Shell is an excellent, interactive Shell for managing many Azure resources. You can also access the Azure Cloud Shell with the help of the Browser. It also provides you the opportunity to access the Azure cloud shell based on your Area where you are working.

How to access Azure Cloud Shell

There are two ways to access the Azure Cloud Shell

With the help of Browser

You can able to access the Azure Cloud Shell with the help of your favorite Browser. To access the Azure Cloud Shell via browser, you can access the below URL.

https://shell.azure.com/

Via Azure Portal

One more easy option to access the Azure Cloud Shell is via the Azure Portal. You can follow the below steps to access the Azure Cloud Shell using the Azure Portal.

• Log in to the Azure Portal (https://portal.azure.com/)
• Once you have logged in to the Azure Portal, You can click on the Cloud Shell button which is present at the top right as highlighted below.

• Now, as the next step, it will ask you to select the Bash or PowerShell option. You can choose the option based on your requirement.

• Note that, if you are using the Cloud Shell for the first time, if you will choose Bash or PowerShell, it will ask to create a storage. You can click on the Create Storage button to create the storage.

• Now, it will take a few seconds to create the storage and then you can able to see It is showing that Requesting a cloud shell. Succeeded and connected to the terminal successfully. Now you can enter the different commands to manage different Azure resources.

What is Azure PowerShell

Azure PowerShell contains different sets of modules that actually provide you sets of PowerShell cmdlets to manage the Azure resources along with Windows PowerShell.

For more information, check out the Azure PowerShell now.

Azure Portal System Requirements

Azure Portal is a Web/Browser based application. You can use most of the browser to access the Azure Portal in your modern desktop and tablet devices but an important point to remember here is your browser must have JavaScript enabled.

You can also use the Azure mobile app to access the Azure Portal in your mobile device. You can check out the above section for installing the Azure Portal App.

Browsers that are Recommended

Below are a few lists of Browsers that are recommended from Microsoft to use in order to access the Azure Portal.

• Microsoft Edge (Make sure to use the latest version)
• Chrome (Make sure to use the latest version)
• Firefox (Make sure to use the latest version)
• Safari (Make sure to use the latest version, This is for Mac only)

Azure Devops

You can check out a complete tutorial on What is Azure DevOps? now.

You may like following Azure tutorials:

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• How To Move Azure VM To A Different Resource Group PowerShell?
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Conclusion

In this tutorial, we learned the below things:

• What is Azure portal?
• Azure Portal Tutorial
• Features Of Azure Portal
• Azure Portal login
• Using Azure Portal
• How To Use Azure Portal
• Azure services
• Why choose Microsoft Azure Services
• Azure portal app
• How to install Azure portal app
• Are Multiple Azure Portal Dashboards Supported In Azure?
• What Is Azure Cloud Shell
• How to access Azure Cloud Shell
• What is Azure PowerShell
• Azure Portal System Requirements
• Azure Devops

Hop, you have enjoyed this article !!!