Short, honest write-ups of the ideas that come up in interviews and on the job. Each one teaches the concept properly, cites the Microsoft documentation, and points back to the class that drills it until it sticks.
One reference for crossing between clouds: a section per service family, the traps named — no native resource group on AWS, three genuinely different identity models, and the networking defaults that differ. Every table checked in September 2026.
Azure CLI is the az command tool you install and run anywhere. Azure Cloud Shell is a browser-based, pre-authenticated shell in the portal that already has the CLI installed. They aren't competitors — here's how they fit together, with a comparison table.
Service models as decisions rather than definitions: who owns which layer, the VM-vs-App-Service call and when a VM really is right, the managed services worth knowing by name, and the migration map for the VMs you already have.
Free vs paid, and the most cost-effective path: Microsoft Learn and a free account cover the content; paid mainly buys structure, mentorship, and a deadline.
The three exam domains, a 14-day study plan, and the real tactic: drill timed practice tests to the mid-80s before you book. Confirm live specifics on Microsoft Learn.
Backup restores the data; Site Recovery moves the whole workload. RPO and RTO, why serious estates run both, and when a third-party platform is worth its licence over native immutable vaults.
A datacenter losing power and a whole geography going offline are two different disasters. A zone protects you from one, a second region from the other — here is which insurance your workload actually needs.
Three services move data between components, and picking wrong makes a system lose things it needed or over-engineer things it didn't. It gets easy once you learn one distinction: an event is not a message.
You pick one in every create dialog and never think about it again. But the subscription is three boundaries wearing one name — management, billing, and scale — and where you draw it shapes everything inside.
Not a folder, not a billing bucket, not a security boundary — although it touches all three. A resource group is a lifecycle boundary, and once that clicks, half of Azure's organizational rules stop feeling arbitrary.
One short, honest Azure note at a time — plus the occasional hiring signal. No spam, no card, unsubscribe in one click.