Why a Quick Reference Helps
Azure has well over 200 services, and no working engineer memorizes them all — what actually matters day to day is fluency with a core set (compute, storage, networking, identity) plus knowing exactly where to look things up fast when you're outside that core. A good quick reference isn't a replacement for understanding the underlying concepts (covered in the other topics in this course); it's a fast-recall layer for command syntax, service names, and default limits that you don't want to re-derive from first principles every time — the kind of thing you'd otherwise re-search in the docs mid-task and lose ten minutes to. Treat this as a living document you personalize: the commands and facts that matter most are the ones specific to the services you actually touch regularly.
Cricket analogy: It's like a wicketkeeper's laminated card of each bowler's field settings taped inside their glove — not a substitute for understanding the bowling plan, but a fast-recall aid so they don't have to re-derive the field from memory mid-over.
Compute and Storage Quick Facts
For compute: App Service is PaaS web hosting (no OS management); Azure Functions is serverless, billed per execution on the Consumption plan or with reserved capacity on Premium/Dedicated plans; Container Apps runs containers with built-in autoscaling and scale-to-zero; AKS gives you a full managed Kubernetes control plane when you need real orchestration; and Virtual Machines are full IaaS, giving OS-level control at the cost of managing patching yourself. For storage: Blob Storage holds unstructured data (files, images, backups) across Hot, Cool, Cold, and Archive access tiers with different costs and retrieval latencies; Azure Files gives you an SMB/NFS file share mountable like a network drive; Disk Storage backs VM disks (Standard HDD, Standard SSD, Premium SSD, Ultra Disk, tiered by IOPS/throughput); and Azure Table Storage/Cosmos DB Table API handle simple NoSQL key-value data at massive scale.
Cricket analogy: The Blob Storage access tiers are like a cricket board's archive of match footage: Hot tier is like this season's matches kept on instantly-accessible servers, while Archive tier is like footage from decades-old Test matches stored on tape in a warehouse — cheap to keep, slow to retrieve.
# Handy az CLI commands worth memorizing
az login # authenticate
az account set --subscription "<name-or-id>" # switch active subscription
az group list --output table # list resource groups
az resource list --resource-group rg-demo --output table
az vm list-sizes --location eastus --output table
az storage account list --output table
az webapp list --query "[].{name:name, state:state}" --output table
az role assignment list --assignee <user-or-sp-id> --output table
az monitor metrics list --resource <resource-id> --metric "Percentage CPU"Networking and Identity Quick Facts
Networking core: a Virtual Network (VNet) is your isolated network space, subdivided into subnets; NSGs filter traffic statefully at the subnet or NIC level; a Load Balancer distributes Layer 4 (TCP/UDP) traffic while Application Gateway or Front Door handle Layer 7 (HTTP) routing, with Front Door additionally providing global anycast entry and CDN caching; VNet Peering connects VNets directly (even across regions), while a VPN Gateway or ExpressRoute connects on-premises networks to Azure, the latter over a private, non-internet circuit for guaranteed low latency and higher throughput. Identity core: Microsoft Entra ID is the identity provider; RBAC roles (Owner, Contributor, Reader, and hundreds of built-in granular roles) are assigned at a scope (management group, subscription, resource group, or resource) and inherit downward; managed identities let a resource authenticate to other Azure services without any credential in code at all — system-assigned (tied to the resource's lifecycle) or user-assigned (a standalone identity you can attach to multiple resources).
Cricket analogy: VNet Peering is like two franchise academies sharing a direct training pipeline so players can move between them freely, while a VPN Gateway is like a secure, monitored transfer agreement with an entirely separate cricket board overseas — different levels of trust and directness.
Managed identities are almost always the right choice over storing a connection string or key for service-to-service authentication within Azure — a Function App or App Service with a system-assigned managed identity can authenticate to Key Vault, Storage, or SQL Database with zero credentials living anywhere in your code or configuration.
Pricing and Limits
Pricing models to know: pay-as-you-go (no commitment, highest per-unit cost), Reserved Instances/Savings Plans (1 or 3-year commitment for significant discounts on predictable workloads, typically 30-70% off), and Spot pricing (steep discounts on VMs Azure can reclaim with short notice when it needs the capacity back, suited only to interruption-tolerant workloads like batch processing). Azure Free Tier and student/dev-test subscriptions offer limited free monthly amounts of popular services (a fixed number of App Service or Function App compute hours, some Cosmos DB RU/s) useful for learning and testing, but hit hard caps quickly under real load. Subscription-level limits matter for planning too — default quotas exist on things like vCPU count per region and per VM family, storage accounts per region, and resource group count — and these are soft limits you can request an increase for through a support ticket, not hard architectural ceilings, so don't design around them without checking the current documented values, since Microsoft revises them periodically.
Cricket analogy: Spot pricing VMs are like a franchise signing an overseas player only for the available window between their national team duties — a great deal while it lasts, but the team must accept the player can be recalled by their board with short notice.
Documented default limits, service SKUs, and pricing change over time — Microsoft regularly adds new SKUs, adjusts free-tier amounts, and revises quota defaults. Treat every specific number in this reference (and in any cheat sheet, including this one) as a starting point to verify against the current Azure documentation or pricing calculator before making a real capacity or budget decision.
- Core compute options: App Service (PaaS web), Functions (serverless), Container Apps, AKS (managed Kubernetes), VMs (full IaaS control).
- Blob Storage access tiers (Hot/Cool/Cold/Archive) trade retrieval speed for storage cost; pick based on access frequency.
- NSGs filter at subnet/NIC level; Load Balancer handles Layer 4, Application Gateway/Front Door handle Layer 7 routing.
- VNet Peering connects Azure VNets directly; VPN Gateway/ExpressRoute connect on-premises networks, with ExpressRoute using a private circuit.
- RBAC roles are assigned at a scope in the resource hierarchy and inherit downward automatically.
- Managed identities let resources authenticate to other Azure services with zero stored credentials.
- Reserved Instances/Savings Plans discount predictable workloads; Spot pricing discounts interruption-tolerant workloads; both differ from pay-as-you-go.
Practice what you learned
1. Which Azure Blob Storage access tier is optimized for data accessed rarely and tolerant of longer retrieval times?
2. At what network layer does a standard Azure Load Balancer operate, compared to Application Gateway?
3. What is the main advantage of ExpressRoute over a standard VPN Gateway for connecting on-premises networks to Azure?
4. What is the key benefit of using a managed identity instead of storing a connection string or key in application code?
5. What is a key characteristic of Spot pricing for Azure VMs?
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