Azure For beginners

[techie17]

Im looking at moving a few VM's from on-prem to Azure so does anyone know of some really good guides/videos to get started? Im a complete novice when it comes to azure so ive no idea on how to get started with creating the virtual networks, VPN gateways (site we can VPN in from on-prem) and how to create VMs

 

Thanks

[RobD]

I used these resources which I can recommend:

 

AZ-900:

https://www.udemy.com/course/microsoft-azure-fundamentals-training-bootcamp/

AZ-104:

https://www.udemy.com/course/70533-azure/

 

These labs using the free credit for new accounts from MS:

AZ-900:

https://github.com/MicrosoftLearning/AZ-900T0x-MicrosoftAzureFundamentals

az-104:

https://github.com/MicrosoftLearning/AZ-104-MicrosoftAzureAdministrator

 

Then these practise exams:

AZ-900:

https://www.whizlabs.com/microsoft-azure-certification-az-900/

AZ-104:

https://www.whizlabs.com/microsoft-azure-certification-az-104/

[DavR]

I'm not sure if they're still doing it, but last year I did the Azure Fundamentals AZ 900 course from Microsoft for free. It's a very broad overview, and maybe less about the nitty gritty, but I found it useful.

 

There aren't any listed at the moment, but if you attend the Azure Fundamentals seminar, you get a voucher to sit the exam as well - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/community/events/?query=fundamentals

 

 

Edit - @RobD beat me to it!

[techie17]

Cool thanks. Just out of interest, which region should i be picking when creating the VMs etc?

[DavR]

As a general rule, you'd pick the region that you are geographically in, or closest to.

 

You can farm processing off to other, cheaper, regions, but you can then run into latency problems for users running applications in this region.

[HPlum78]

I will say what I always say here, and that's you will not realise any saving by leveraging IaaS. You will be best served by looking at what you can migrate to either PaaS or SaaS. So for instance if you are running IIS on one of those VMs spin a PaaS instance up and migrate the website(s). That said you do need architect these so you are minimising any cross site dependencies.

[RobD]

Just found this on the Azure sub Reddit which is quite nice: https://blog.kononenko.tech/getting-started-with-azure

 

and these treasure maps of azure: https://cloud-skills.dev/

[grbarker83]

As DaveAshworth pointed out, you can get a free exam voucher for 'attending' a virtual training day. Its a horrendous watch, like listening to two sales guys in a pub but if you just click play/attend and carry on with your normal day, theyll send you the voucher.

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/events/training-days/?irgwc=1&OCID=AID2000142_aff_7794_1243925&tduid=%28ir__oacffhfilskfqgznkk0sohz3wu2xuomtpk26g6je00%29%287794%29%281243925%29%28hL3Qp0zRBOc-B0tzMyrrUHNIN_r7OexS2w%29%28%29&irclickid=_oacffhfilskfqgznkk0sohz3wu2xuomtpk26g6je00#microsoft-azure?ranMID=46128&ranEAID=hL3Qp0zRBOc&ranSiteID=hL3Qp0zRBOc-B0tzMyrrUHNIN_r7OexS2w&epi=hL3Qp0zRBOc-B0tzMyrrUHNIN_r7OexS2w

[IT_JB]

I've used the Microsoft learning resources previously. The assessment is pretty weak but the content is in-depth and there's loads of it. Also has labs built in so you can actually practice some of it. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/azure/

[dmj]

I did the AZ103 and use Azure daily - but to be perfectly honest if you are just starting out then give some serious consideration to AKS and GCP - there are so many things that I need in Azure that I just can't do ( with many in perpetual beta ) . So before buying a product, consider what your requirements are and then choose the product that most meets them. Where I am at the moment we did it all backwards and are really paying the price now.