Cloud Pro: Azure Integration: Choose, Compare and Launch

What's inside

1. Level 1: Azure Integration Services on One PageFree
   Learners map every Azure integration service onto one page, grouped by job: queues, publish-subscribe, event routing, workflow and orchestration, API management, and connectors and hybrid relay, with the current and former name of each.
2. Level 2: The Standard Integration ProfileFree
   Learners build the reusable integration profile that every later choice depends on: synchronous or asynchronous, commands or events, size and volume, latency, fan-out, long-running processes, partners and SaaS, API consumers and security, team skills and cost model.
3. Level 3: Ordering, Delivery Guarantees and Duplicates
   Learners pin down the delivery terms that decide most choices: at-most-once versus at-least-once, the point that exactly-once delivery across a network is almost never real, ordering scopes, peek-lock versus receive-and-delete, retries and dead-lettering.
4. Level 4: Service Bus: Queues, Topics and Sessions
   Learners see what Azure Service Bus is and where it fits: a broker for business messages, with queues, topics and subscriptions with filters, sessions for ordered work per key, and dead-letter queues, scheduled messages, duplicate detection and transactions.
5. Level 5: Service Bus Tiers, Limits and Pricing
   Learners compare the Basic, Standard and Premium tiers using dated limits from the docs (message size, entity counts, throughput, features per tier) and the cost levers behind them: operations, brokered connections and messaging units.
6. Level 6: Running Service Bus in Production
   Learners divide operations between themselves and Microsoft, weigh Service Bus pros and cons in a table, study real uses, and plan for availability across zones and regions and for networking and identity.
7. Level 7: Service Bus Quick Start and Verdict
   Learners deploy the smallest working Service Bus flow (a namespace, a topic, a subscription with a filter, sending and receiving) with the Azure CLI and Bicep or Terraform, clean it up, and write the choose-it-when and avoid-it-when verdict.
8. Level 8: Event Grid: Topics, Namespaces and MQTT
   Learners see what Event Grid is and where it fits: push-based event routing with system, custom and partner topics, the newer namespace model with pull delivery and an MQTT broker, CloudEvents, filtering and event subscriptions.
9. Level 9: Event Grid Limits, Pricing and Operations
   Learners assess Event Grid against dated limits (event size, throughput, subscriptions, retry and dead-letter behaviour), pricing per operation or per throughput unit, the split of operations between you and Microsoft, and a pros and cons table with real uses.
10. Level 10: Event Grid Quick Start and Verdict
    Learners deploy the smallest working Event Grid flow, a custom topic or system topic routed to a handler with a filter and a dead-letter location, using the CLI and Bicep or Terraform, then clean it up and write the verdict.
11. Level 11: Event Hubs and Queue Storage in Brief
    Learners place Event Hubs (a partitioned log for high-volume streams, already covered in the analytics course) and Queue Storage (cheap, simple queues inside a storage account) against Service Bus for application integration.
12. Level 12: Azure Relay in Brief and Messaging Recap
    Learners cover Azure Relay (Hybrid Connections, plus WCF Relay in older systems) for reaching services on-premises without opening inbound ports, then compare all the messaging and event services side by side.
13. Level 13: Logic Apps: Consumption, Standard and Connectors
    Learners see what Logic Apps is and where it fits: low-code workflows with triggers and actions, the multi-tenant Consumption model compared with the single-tenant Standard model, and managed connectors compared with built-in connectors.
14. Level 14: Logic Apps Limits and Pricing
    Learners check dated Logic Apps limits (run duration, message and payload size, loop and concurrency limits, connector throttling) and the cost levers in each model: per action and connector call in Consumption, and hosting plan plus connector calls in Standard.
15. Level 15: Logic Apps in Production and Quick Start
    Learners divide operations between themselves and Microsoft, fill in a Logic Apps pros and cons table with real uses, deploy a minimal Standard or Consumption workflow with the CLI and Bicep or Terraform, clean it up, and write the verdict.
16. Level 16: Durable Functions: Orchestration in Code
    Learners see what Durable Functions is and where it fits: orchestrations written in code, built from activities, durable timers, external events and entities, and patterns such as function chaining, fan-out and fan-in, waiting for a person, and monitoring.
17. Level 17: Durable Functions Backends, Limits and Cost
    Learners compare the storage backends (Azure Storage, MSSQL, Netherite and the managed Durable Task Scheduler) with their dated support status, then cover the limits that bite and the cost levers in the Functions hosting plan and the backend.
18. Level 18: Durable Functions Production and Quick Start
    Learners divide operations between themselves and Microsoft, fill in a pros and cons table with real uses, deploy a minimal fan-out and fan-in orchestration with the CLI and Bicep or Terraform, clean it up, and write the verdict.
19. Level 19: API Management: Gateway, Tiers and v2
    Learners see what API Management is and where it fits: a gateway with policies, products and subscriptions, a developer portal and a self-hosted gateway, and how the Consumption, classic and v2 tiers (Basic v2, Standard v2 and Premium v2) differ.
20. Level 20: API Management Limits, Pricing and Operations
    Learners assess dated API Management limits (units per tier, request throughput, regions and network features) and the cost levers (per call on Consumption, per unit on classic and v2), then divide operations between themselves and Microsoft and fill in a pros and cons table.
21. Level 21: API Management: Quick Start, Choose It or Avoid It
    Build and then delete the smallest working API Management setup from the CLI and Bicep or Terraform, and finish the nine-part lesson with clear conditions for when to choose it and when to avoid it.
22. Level 22: Renames, Retirements and the Migrations They Force
    Check the official Azure retirement and update notices for every integration service in the course, and turn each rename or retirement into a dated migration task with an owner.
23. Level 23: Queue and Topic Patterns in Practice
    Use competing consumers, load levelling, publish-subscribe fan-out and subscription filters correctly, and see which Azure service does each one best.
24. Level 24: Event Design: Notifications, State and Schemas
    Design events that consumers can rely on: thin notifications or events that carry state, a CloudEvents envelope, and schemas that can change without breaking subscribers.
25. Level 25: Idempotent Consumers and Duplicate Handling
    Make consumers safe under at-least-once delivery by deduplicating on message identity and making side effects idempotent, rather than relying on the broker alone.
26. Level 26: Retries, Poison Messages and Dead Letters
    Build a retry and dead-letter strategy across Service Bus, Event Grid and Functions so failures are bounded, visible and can be replayed safely.
27. Level 27: The Transactional Outbox
    Stop data and messages drifting apart by writing business changes and outgoing messages in one database transaction, then relaying the messages to the broker.
28. Level 28: Sagas and Compensation
    Coordinate a business transaction across several services with a saga, using compensating actions instead of distributed locks, and build it either orchestrated or choreographed.
29. Level 29: Central Workflow Versus Choreography
    Decide when a process belongs in a central workflow (Logic Apps or Durable Functions) and when services should react to events independently.
30. Level 30: API Design, Security and Versioning
    Design APIs that consumers can depend on, secure them in layers through API Management and Entra ID, and change them without breaking existing clients.
31. Level 31: Tracing a Message Across Services
    Follow one business transaction through API Management, Service Bus, Functions and Logic Apps using correlation IDs, W3C trace context, OpenTelemetry and Application Insights.
32. Level 32: Worked Cost: Two Real Integrations
    Estimate the monthly cost of two contrasting integrations from first principles using dated list prices, then find the levers that change the total most.
33. Level 33: The Weighted Selection Scorecard
    Turn the integration profile into a weighted scorecard that ranks candidate services, or combinations of them, for a specific job, with the reasoning recorded.
34. Level 34: Mapping Azure to Another Cloud
    Map each Azure integration service to its closest equivalent on another cloud (for example AWS SQS, SNS, EventBridge, Step Functions and API Gateway) and note where the two differ.
35. Level 35: Scoring Azure Against Another Cloud
    Run the same weighted scorecard across Azure and another cloud using dated, cited evidence for limits, prices, regions and service maturity.
36. Level 36: Planning the Launch
    Turn the chosen design into a launch plan covering infrastructure as code, environments, identity, networking, observability, cost guardrails and cutover.
37. Level 37: Risk, Lock-In and Review Triggers
    Assess how hard the decision is to reverse, where the lock-in is, and what operating risks exist, and set clear triggers for revisiting the decision.
38. Level 38: Final Challenge: Decision Workshop Exam
    Run a full decision workshop for a realistic multi-integration scenario, from profile to scorecard to cross-cloud check to launch plan, and finish with a one-page selection record.

Access

The first 2 levels are free with a free account. Every level, the podcast edition and the AI tutor come with All Access at £4.99/month or any Creator plan — see pricing.

Start free →