Cloud Pro Crash Course: Azure Services Compared with AWS and Google Cloud

What's inside

1. Level 1: How Azure Is Organised and How to Use This CourseFree
   Learn how Azure's account hierarchy (tenant, management groups, subscriptions, resource groups), regions and availability zones, pricing and support plans work, and how they compare with AWS and Google Cloud, so you can read every later mapping table correctly.
2. Level 2: Compute: Virtual Machines and Scale SetsFree
   Review every current Azure compute service, from Virtual Machines and scale sets to dedicated hosts, spot capacity and HPC options, and map each job to its AWS and Google Cloud equivalent.
3. Level 3: Serverless and App Hosting
   Map Azure Functions, App Service, Static Web Apps and the other managed hosting options to their AWS and Google Cloud counterparts, including how hosting plans change behaviour.
4. Level 4: Containers: AKS, Container Apps and Registries
   Review Azure's container services, including AKS, Container Apps, Container Instances and Container Registry, and set them against EKS, ECS, Fargate, App Runner, GKE, Cloud Run and Artifact Registry.
5. Level 5: Storage: Blobs, Files, Disks and Archive
   Map Azure Storage accounts, Blob tiers, Files, managed disks, NetApp Files and data-transfer services to AWS and Google Cloud storage, with attention to redundancy and access tiers.
6. Level 6: Databases: Relational, NoSQL and Caching
   Review Azure SQL, the open-source managed databases, Cosmos DB and Azure's caching services, and map each to the AWS and Google Cloud database it most closely matches.
7. Level 7: Analytics: Warehousing, Lakes and Streaming
   Map Azure's analytics services, including Microsoft Fabric, Synapse, Databricks, Data Factory, Stream Analytics and Data Explorer, to Redshift, Glue, EMR, Kinesis, BigQuery, Dataflow and Dataproc.
8. Level 8: AI and Machine Learning Services
   Review Azure's AI platform, model hosting, Azure Machine Learning, AI search and prebuilt AI services, and map them to Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker and the AWS AI services, and to Google's Vertex AI and Cloud AI APIs.
9. Level 9: Networking: VNets, Load Balancing and Edge
   Map Azure virtual networks, load balancers, Application Gateway, Front Door, DNS, VPN Gateway, ExpressRoute and Firewall to their AWS and Google Cloud equivalents, noting where the network models differ.
10. Level 10: Security and Identity: Entra, Key Vault, Defender
    Review Microsoft Entra ID, Azure RBAC, Key Vault, Defender for Cloud, Microsoft Sentinel and the other security services, and map each to AWS IAM and the AWS security services and to Google Cloud IAM and Security Command Center.
11. Level 11: Integration and Messaging
    Map Service Bus, Event Grid, Event Hubs, Logic Apps, API Management and Queue Storage to SQS, SNS, EventBridge, Kinesis, Step Functions, API Gateway, Pub/Sub, Eventarc, Workflows and Apigee.
12. Level 12: Management and Monitoring
    Review Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Application Insights, Azure Policy, Advisor, Cost Management and Resource Manager templates and Bicep, and map them to CloudWatch, CloudFormation, AWS Config, Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging and Infrastructure Manager.
13. Level 13: Hybrid and Edge: Arc, Azure Local and More
    Map Azure Arc, Azure Local (formerly Azure Stack HCI) and Azure's other edge and on-premises options to AWS Outposts, ECS/EKS Anywhere, Systems Manager and Google Distributed Cloud.
14. Level 14: Developer Tools and Migration
    Review Azure DevOps, GitHub integration, Azure Migrate, Database Migration Service and Azure's other developer and migration tools, and map them to the AWS and Google Cloud tools for the same jobs.
15. Level 15: Terms That Mean Different Things Across Clouds
    Untangle words that sound the same on all three clouds but mean different things, such as account, subscription, project, region, zone, tenant, resource group and reserved capacity.
16. Level 16: Working Across Clouds: Identity, Network, Cost
    Look at what running more than one cloud really involves: workload identity federation, private network links between clouds, egress charges and where data sits, and the operating cost of a second cloud.
17. Level 17: The Consolidated Cross-Cloud Equivalence Sheet
    Build one dated reference sheet that brings together the key Azure, AWS and Google Cloud equivalents from all thirteen categories, with notes on where matches break and which mappings are judgement calls.
18. Level 18: Final Challenge: Multi-Cloud Selection Record Exam
    Apply the whole course to a multi-cloud scenario that draws on every category: select services, justify each choice against its equivalents, and write a short, dated decision record that favours no cloud overall.

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.

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