Azure has been there for a while. It is huge. I once said that I will study Azure. Then I started. Lost. There are so many materials out there, wonderful MS docs site, super Pluralsight, and many other personal blogs. “How do I start? Where do I start?” I asked.
I took a chance to read around, tried to capture some Azure concepts especially the mindset. Without a correct mindset, everything is a mess. What I read will confuse me more.
Almost everything in Azure is a resource. To manage a resource there is Resource Manager. A resource can be created, managed using templates. So there is Resource Template. As a developer, that part makes sense to me.
The design is modular, component-based. In the high level, its design is familiar with the software design principles.
A virtual machine is deployed to the cloud. Its connection is controlled by a Network Interface (NIC), a separated resource.
Let’s say we need to deploy a virtual machine in Azure. And we should be able to remote (RDP) to it. How many resources do we need? How does it look? Let’s find out.
All my resources start with ps-az300. The rest are auto generated by Azure or my mistakes while experiencing.
- Resource group: rg-az300
- Virtual network (vNet): ps-az300-vnet
- Virtual machine: ps-az300
- Network interface (NIC): ps-az300-nic
- Network security group (NSG): ps-az300-nsg
- Public IP address (PIP): ps-az300-pip
Resource Group
Resource groups are logical containers for everything. All resources used to setup our example are grouped in a resource group. Once the experience is completed, deleting the resource group will wipe out its resources.
Virtual Network
Virtual network (vNet) supplies an isolated environment where resources inside a vNet can talk to each other. It increases security.
Network Security Group (NSG)
Like firewall in Windows. Define the inbound and outbound rules. Beside the default rules generated by Azure, the inbound rule “RDP_3389” is created to allow remote desktop connection.
Network Interface (NIC)
Act as a lawyer between resources with the internet. A virtual machine should not define its firewall directly. Instead, a network interface is attached to it.
A network interface has a vNet, a NSG, and attaches to a Virtual Machine. It might have a public IP address, defined by a public IP address resource (ps-az300-pip).
This network interface allows the VM (ps-az300) communicates with other resources or over the internet. What it can communicate with depends on the NSG settings.
Its public IP address is configured under the Settings -> IP configurations
The interesting thing here is the Public IP Address. One can create a PIP easily, just remember in the Assignment section to choose the static.
Public IP Address (PIP)
As seen in the NIC section above. The public IP address for the NIC is 23.101.16.27 supplied by Azure. There are 5 reserved public IP address for a public IP address resource. That’s why I choose the static assignment.
Virtual Machine (VM)
Just go through the Azure wizard and choose settings: Resource security group, Network interface, Virtual network. There is another course regarding creating virtual machines in Azure. Hope that I can write something about it soon.
Since I am learning Virtual Network, this is the most interesting about the virtual machine setup – the Networking.
The Virtual Machine is the actual resource that hosts other business services; if we want to deploy, say a website, an internal web service.
- Use the network interface ps-az300-nic to communicate with the outside
- Run under the virtual network with the default subnet
- Have a public IP address 23.101.16.27 with a private IP (10.1.0.13) inside its virtual network
- Follow the inbound/outbound rules from the network security group ps-az300-nsg
With those setup, I can click on the Connect button and download RDP file.
There are many things in the process that I do not understand. There are many concepts in those images I paste here. That’s ok. Things make more sense to me.
The next challenge is to have 2 virtual machines in different virtual networks communicate to each other.
