Chapter 6: Azure Management Tools

In Chapter 5, Core Azure Solutions, you learned about serverless computing, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, big data and analytics, and DevOps.

This chapter will outline the management tools available in Azure, including the Azure portal, Azure PowerShell, the Azure CLI, Cloud Shell, the Azure mobile app, Azure Advisor, Azure Monitor, and Azure Service Health.

This chapter aims to provide coverage of the AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals Skills Measured section called Describe management tools on Azure.

By the end of this chapter, you will have learned about various skills to be able to describe the functionality and usage of the following:

• The Azure portal, Azure PowerShell, the Azure CLI, Cloud Shell, and the Azure mobile app
• Azure Advisor
• Azure Monitor
• Azure Service Health

To support your learning with some practical skills, we will also look at a hands-on example and usage of some of the tools and resources...

Technical requirements

To carry out the hands-on labs in this chapter, you will need the following:

• An Azure subscription that has access to create and delete resources in the subscription. If you do not have an Azure subscription, you can create a free Azure account at https://azure.microsoft.com/free.
• Access to an internet browser; you will log in to the Azure portal: https://portal.azure.com.
• Alternatively, you can use the Azure desktop app: https://portal.azure.com/App/Download.
• A Windows 10 device with PowerShell 7.x or later and rights to install Azure PowerShell and the Azure CLI: https://docs.microsoft.com/powershell/scripting/install/installing-powershell-core-on-windows.

Azure portal

The Azure portal is a browser-based graphical user interface (GUI) console for interacting with Azure resources.

The portal is designed for self-service and is the most common method for creating and managing your Azure environments. It is the quickest way for anybody new to Azure to get started and carry out simple tasks; a desktop app is also available to provide the same user interface experience.

There are other ways to interact with Azure services and resources; if you want to create and manage more complex resources or perform automation tasks, you can use a command-line interface (CLI) such as PowerShell or Bourne Again Shell (Bash). Finally, you can use the Azure mobile app if you need quick visibility and must interact with your Azure resources from anywhere, anytime. In this chapter, you will learn about how to use each of these to interact with your Azure resources. You will also gain some practical skills with some of these management tools in the Exercise...

Azure PowerShell

PowerShell is a cross-platform CLI management tool for interacting with Azure resources. This tool can be used instead of the GUI of the Azure portal or desktop/mobile apps for creating and managing your Azure environments. Azure PowerShell is a module that's installed as part of Windows PowerShell; the Az PowerShell module contains a set of cmdlets (pronounced as commandlets) for PowerShell that allow you to manage resources from within PowerShell directly at the CLI without the need to access the portal.

PowerShell is a popular management tool when the focus is on Windows systems and is designed for complex automation tasks. It can be used interactively, meaning commands can be entered manually by typing them directly into the shell command prompt. Providing cross-platform support (from PowerShell Core 6.x and PowerShell 7.x) means that you can install and use the PowerShell Az module on Windows, Linux, or macOS to interact with your Azure environments.

...

The Azure CLI

The Azure CLI is a cross-platform CLI management tool for interacting with Azure resources; this can be used instead of the GUI for creating and managing your Azure environments.

Providing cross-platform support means you can install and use it on Windows, Linux, or macOS. It draws parallels to Bash shell scripting and is a popular management tool choice when the focus is on Linux systems and is designed for complex and automation tasks; it is written in Python.

Much like the PowerShell Az module, commands can be executed using interactive commands; they are directly from the shell prompt or using scripts to automate repetitive or complex tasks that have many steps and require actions to be performed against many different entities.

In this case, a series of commands can be assembled in the syntax format of the shell being used, and the script is then executed by issuing a single command at the shell prompt. This is done within the shell of the OS you have installed...

Azure Cloud Shell

Azure Cloud Shell is a cross-platform, interactive, hosted Shell and scripting environment that Microsoft provides hosted on Ubuntu containers; you can think of this as a Shell environment as a Service.

Cloud Shell enables a browser-based CLI. The benefit of using Cloud Shell means that you do not need to download, install, or update any CLI management tools in a local Shell environment on a device or machine. Being a cross-platform management tool, all you need is a browser to run shell commands and the PowerShell Az module.

Imagine that you were to move between devices; you might not have access to the necessary CLI tools and you may not have the PowerShell modules or updates. This means that your scripts may fail to run, or your interactive commands error as they are intended for a different version than you have installed locally. However, with Cloud Shell, wherever you have access to a browser, you have access to a CLI; you will always have a consistent...

Terraform on Azure

Terraform is available natively in Azure Cloud Shell and is HashiCorp's declarative-based open source Infrastructure as Code (IAC) tool.

It allows the life cycle of codified infrastructure to be managed by declaring the infrastructure components to be provisioned with cloud providers in descriptive configuration files; this allows us to automate the ability to provision, change, and tear down any infrastructure components.

This codified infrastructure defined in .tf file type text files can be controlled and governed in a manner that is repeatable and predictable, and safe for any existing environments that this defined infrastructure is to be deployed into; this can be achieved by previewing and validating any impact this will have on any infrastructure changes before they are committed as adds, changes, or removes. Since they're text-based configuration files, it is easy to integrate them with source control (version control) systems such as Git...

Azure mobile app

The Azure mobile app allows you to monitor and interact with your Azure resources via an Android or iOS device and stay connected anytime, from anywhere.

The app can be downloaded for free from the Apple App Store and Google Play; it is optimized for smartphones and works on tablets. The Azure mobile app supports iOS 11.0 and later and Android 6.0 and later.

The Azure mobile app is great when you cannot access a computer; maybe you only have a mobile or a tablet. Still, you need visibility to resources to be able to check their status, health, and the ability to diagnose and fix issues quickly, as well as being able to access Azure Cloud Shell. You will always have a portable way to access a Shell environment and a CLI. The following screenshot shows some of the Azure mobile app screens:

Figure 6.7 – Azure mobile app interface

The preceding screenshot shows the Mobile App experience. More information on the Azure mobile app can...

Azure Advisor

Azure Advisor is an included, no-cost service that provides advice on optimizing your Azure resources. It provides personalized and actionable best practice recommendations based on usage analysis and can be accessed directly within the portal.

There is a great deal of emphasis placed on using Azure Advisor and taking actions based on the recommendations. As such, Azure Advisor will be displayed when you log in to the Azure portal, as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 6.8 – Azure Advisor prompt

Azure Advisor recommendations are available across the following categories; the URLs point to the complete list of recommendations available for each category:

• Cost: Recommendations provided for optimizing and reducing costs: https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/advisor/advisor-cost-recommendations.
• Security: Recommendations provided to protect against vulnerabilities and threats: https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/advisor/advisor...

Azure Monitor

You can't control what you can't see.

Azure Monitor is an included service that provides actionable insights into the health, availability, and performance of Azure and on-premises environments by collecting and analyzing logs and metrics (telemetry). It allows you to find and fix problems faster, optimize your workload's performance, and then provide actions to remediate and alert; it provides all these insights from within the portal.

Azure Monitor collects resources and platform data from the following data sources:

• PaaS resources such as applications and databases
• IaaS resources, such as VMs, containers, virtual desktops, databases, storage, and many more
• On-premises resources

With Azure Monitor, you can create alerts that notify somebody, such as an administrator or resource owner, when certain conditions are triggered. This could be when a resource exceeds a set threshold, when a resource is stopped, such as a VM, or when...

Azure Service Health

Azure Service Health is an included, no-cost service that provides a personalized view of the health of all your Azure resources; it provides guidance and notifications, such as planned maintenance and other advisories, on resource health that are specific to you.

These actionable insights are provided directly within the portal as a subset of the Azure Monitor service; this allows you to be alerted on notifications or a health status change so that you can evaluate the situation and take any actions you deem necessary. In addition, you can download reports and root cause analyses (RCAs).

The difference between Azure Service Health and the Azure status page is that the status page is a public-facing website that requires no login. It has a global view of all the services across all regions; it is useful to get a quicker and bigger picture of incidents that have a widespread impact. The Azure status page can be accessed at https://status.azure.com/status.

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Thought exercise

In this exercise, we will look at our fictitious company, MilesBetter Pizza.

Due to the success of the online pizza delivery service and app, they now need to look at the management tools and understand when to choose one tool over another.

As we have learned, there are two approaches to management tools: GUI and CLI. Which one you choose is horses for courses; that is, better tasks are better suited to different tools.

Whether you use the browser-based portal, the desktop, or the Azure mobile app, the GUI approach is the most common way to interact with Azure resources. It's simple, intuitive, and has the quickest time to value and the least skill level entry to be productive in creating and managing resources.

The GUI approach does not provide any way to automate repetitive tasks. For example, to set up 15 or 150 VMs, you need to create them one by one by clicking through and completing the wizard each time; this can be time-consuming and error...

Hands-on exercise

To support your learning with some practical skills, we will look at some of the tools that were covered in this chapter by completing some hands-on exercises.

The following exercises will be carried out:

• Exercise 1 – installing Azure PowerShell
• Exercise 2 – installing the Azure CLI
• Exercise 3 – creating resources using PowerShell from Cloud Shell
• Exercise 4 – creating resources using the Azure CLI from Cloud Shell
• Exercise 5 – exploring Azure Service Health

Getting started

To get started with these hands-on exercises, you can use an existing account that you have created as part of the exercises for any chapter in this book. Alternatively, you can create a free Azure account by going to https://azure.microsoft.com/free.

This free Azure account provides the following:

• 12 months of free services
• $200 credit to explore Azure for 30 days
• 25+ services that are always free

...

Summary

This chapter provided complete coverage of the AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals exam skills section called Describing management tools on Azure.

In this chapter, you learned about various skills that will provide you with the confidence to explain and discuss the functionality and usage of the following aspects with a business or technical audience: the Azure portal, Azure PowerShell, the Azure CLI, Cloud Shell, the Azure mobile app, Azure Advisor, Azure Monitor, and Azure Service Health.

Further knowledge beyond the exam objectives was provided to help you prepare for a real-world, day-to-day, Azure-focused role.

We concluded this chapter with a hands-on exercise section that brought together some of the skills areas that were covered in this chapter.

The next chapter will outline the general security features that are available in Azure, including Azure Security Center, Azure Sentinel and Defender, Azure Key Vault, Azure Dedicated Host, and Azure Network Security...

Further reading

This section provides links to additional exam information and study references:

• Exam AZ-900: Microsoft Azure fundamentals: https://docs.microsoft.com/learn/certifications/exams/az-900
• Exam AZ-900: Skills outline: https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE3VwUY
• Microsoft Learn: Azure Fundamentals – Describe core solutions on Azure: https://docs.microsoft.com/learn/paths/az-900-describe-core-solutions-management-tools-azure

Skill check

Challenge yourself with what you have learned in this chapter by answering the following questions:

1. Explain the Azure portal and how it can be accessed.
2. How is governance implemented and access controlled within the portal?
3. What is Azure PowerShell, and when can it be used?
4. What is the Azure CLI, and when can it be used?
5. How does the Azure CLI differ from PowerShell?
6. What is Azure Cloud Shell, and how does it relate to PowerShell and the Azure CLI?
7. What is the Azure mobile app, and what devices does it support?
8. What is Azure Advisor? Are the recommendations mandatory to implement?
9. What is Azure Monitor?
10. What is Azure Health Service and how does it relate to the Azure Status page?