Microsoft Azure Tools: CLI, PowerShell, and SDKs

In the previous lesson, we learned about the foundational concepts of cloud computing in general and Microsoft Azure in particular. In this lesson, we’ll do more hands-on learning and learn about the most essential Microsoft Azure services developers need to know.

Note: This course is not meant to be a comprehensive guide for all Microsoft Azure services, as this is both impractical and impossible. It is impractical because, as software developers, we need only to know a subset of relevant services. It is impossible because Microsoft Azure contains hundreds of services, each worth a course of its own.

Understanding Microsoft Azure resource manager

Previously, we learned how we could use the Microsoft Azure portal to learn how to create, update, manage, and delete our Microsoft Azure resources.

However, an important question arises: How is that managed behind the scenes? What do our interactions with the Microsoft Azure portal practically do? This is where our discussion regarding Azure resource manager (ARM) begins.

Whenever we interact with Microsoft Azure using the Azure portal, we send a request to ARM. Azure resource manager (ARM) is responsible for authorizing and authenticating the incoming request before forwarding it to the relevant Microsoft Azure service.

The following image gives us more idea about how ARM works: