A

Seminar Report
On
Microsoft Azure : Cloud
Computing Platform & Services
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirement for the award of B. Tech. degree
in Information Technology

By
Shivam Sharma
1709713096

Under the Guidance of

Dr. Sanjeev Kumar Singh
Professor and Head of Department

Department of Information Technology

Galgotias College of Engineering & Technology
1, Knowledge Park, Phase II, Greater Noida – 201306
 ABSTRACT

Software industry is heading towards centralized computing. Due to this trend data and
programs are being taken away from traditional desktop PCs and placed in Compute clouds
instead. Compute clouds are enormous server farms packed with computing power and
storage space accessible through the Internet.

Instead of having to manage one's own infrastructure to run applications, server time and
storage space can be bought from an external service provider. From the customers point of
view the benefit behind this idea to be able to dynamically adjust computing power up or
down to meet the demand for that power at a particular moment. This kind of flexibility not
only ensures that no costs are incurred by excess processing capacity, but also enables
hardware infrastructure to scale up with business growth. Because of growing interest in
taking advantage of cloud computing a number of service providers are working on providing
cloud services. Amazon. Salesforce.com and Google are examples of firms that already have
working solutions on the market. Recently also Microsoft released a preview version of its
cloud platform called the Azure. Early adopters can test the platform and development tools
free of charge.

The main purpose of this paper is to shed light on the internals of Microsoft's Azure platform.
In addition to examining how Azure platform works. The benefits of Azure platform are
explored. The most important benefit in Microsoft's solution is that it resembles existing
Windows environment a lot. Developers can use the same application programming
interfaces (APIs) and development tools they are already used to. The second benefit is that
migrating applications to cloud is easy. This partially stems from the fact that Azure's
services can be exploited by an application whether it is run locally or in the cloud.

i
 CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the Seminar entitled “Microsoft Azure: Cloud Computing Platform &
Services” is a bona fide record of the Seminar work done by Shivam Sharma (1709713096)
under my supervision and guidance, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
Outcome Based Education Paradigm in Information Technology from Golgotias College of
Engineering & Technology Greater Noida for the academic year 2020-21

Dr . Sanjeev Kumar Singh

Professor and Head of Department

Dept. of Information Technology

ii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Mr. Nilotpal Pathak Sir for valuable
guidance, inspiration and help without which it would have been difficult to achieve anything
worthwhile.
I also wish to express my sincere thanks to Dr Sanjeev Kumar Singh Sir, HOD Information
Technology for extending all facilities and all words of encouragement while working on this
seminar report. It is an honour for me to express the greatest of all the love, honour, respect
and appreciations to my family, whose inspiration and vision brought me where I am today.
Lastly my special gratefulness to all those who helped and guided me directly or indirectly in
the completion of this seminar report.

SHIVAM SHARMA
Roll No:- 1709713096
B.TECH (IT-B)
Galgotias College of Engineering & Technology

iii
 CONTENTS
Chapter No TITLE Page no.

Abstract i

Certificate ii

Acknowledgement iii

1 Cloud Computing Overview 1

1.1 Types of Cloud 2

1.2 Benefits Of Cloud 3

1.3 SPI 4

2 Microsoft Azure 5

2.1 Introduction 5

2.2 Azure as PAAS 6

2.3 Azure as IAAS 7

2.4 Azure Management Portal 9

3 Services Of Microsoft Azure 11

3.1 Compute Services 11

3.2 Network Services 12

3.3 Data Services 12

3.4 App Services 13

4 Applications Of Microsoft Azure 14

5 DataCenters 15

6 Advantages Of Microsoft Azure 17

7 CONCLUSION 19

8 REFERENCES 20
1.CLOUD COMPUTING-OVERVIEW
The popular trend in today's technology driven world is 'Cloud Computing. Cloud computing
can be referred to as the storing and accessing of data over the internet rather than your
computer's hard drive. This means you don't access the data from either your computer's hard
drive or over a dedicated computer network (home or office network). Cloud computing
means data is stored at a remote place and is synchronized with other web information.
One prominent example of cloud computing is Office 365 which allows users to store, access
edit their MS Office documents online without installing the actual program on their device.

Fig 1 - Overview Of Cloud Computing

1
1.1 TYPES OF CLOUD
The storage options on cloud is in 3 forms
1) Public
2) Private
3) Hybrid

Fig 2 – Types Of Cloud

2
1. Public Cloud:
A service provider makes the clouds available to the general public which is termed as a
public cloud. These clouds are accessed through internet by users. These are open to public
and their infrastructure is owned and operated by service providers as in case of Google and
Microsoft.

2. Private Cloud:
These clouds are dedicated to a particular organization That particular organization can use
the cloud for storing the company's data, hosting business application, etc. The data stored on
public cloud can't be shared with other organizations. The cloud is managed either by the
organization itself or by the third party.

3. Hybrid Cloud:
When two or more clouds are bound together to offer the advantage of both public and
private clouds, they are termed as Hybrid Cloud Organizations can use private clouds for
sensitive application, while public clouds for non-sensitive applications, The hybrid clouds
provide flexible, scalable and cost-effective solutions to the organizations.

1.2 BENEFITS OF CLOUD

There are many benefits of clouds. Some of them are listed below.

 Cloud service offers scalability.

 Allocation and de-allocation of resources dynamically per demand
 It saves on cost by reducing capital infrastructure
 It allows the user to access the application independent of their location and hardware
configuration
 It simplifies the network and lets the client access the application without buying
license for individual machine,
 Storing data on clouds is more reliable as it is not lost easily.

3
1.3 SPI
Next comes how cloud services are categorized. S stand for Software, P stands for Platform
and I for Infrastructure in SPL
 SAAS is Software as a service
 PAAS is Platform as a service and
 IAAS is Infrastructure as a Service.

All these allow user to run application and store data online. Each offers a different level of
user flexibility and control.

Softwar
a aServic

Platfw

Fig 3 – Services Of Cloud Computing

Following are the examples of these models

 SAAS Model: E-mil (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.)
 PAAS Model: Microsoft Azure
 IAAS Model: Amazon S3

4
2. MICROSOFT AZURE

2.1 INTRODUCTION
Azure was announced in October 2008 and released on 1 February 2010 as Windows Azure.
before being renamed to Microsoft Azure on 25 March 2014. Along with Amazon Web
Services Azure is considered a leader in the IAAS field.
Microsoft Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build,
deploy, and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacentres.
You can build applications using any language, tool or framework. And you can integrate
your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment.
This definition tells us that Microsoft Azure is a cloud platform, which means you can use it
for running your business applications, services, and workloads in the cloud. But it also
includes some key words that tell us even more:

 Open Microsoft Azure provides a set of cloud services that allow you to build and
deploy cloud-based applications using almost any programming language framework
or tool.

 Flexible Microsoft Azure provides a wide range of cloud services that can let you do
everything from hosting your company's website to running big SQL databases in the
cloud it also includes different features that can help deliver high performance and
bow latency for cloud based applications

 Microsoft-managed Microsoft Are services are currently hosted in several datacentres

spread across the United States, Europe and Asia. These datacentres are managed by
Microsoft and provide expert global support on a 24x7x365 bass

 Compatible Cloud application running on Microsoft Azure can easy be integrated

with on-premises IT environments that utilize the Microsoft Windows Server
platform.

It provides both PAAS und TAAS lenses and supports many different programming
languages tools and frameworks, including both Microsoft-specific and third-party software
and Systems.

5
2.2 AZURE AS PAAS (PLATFORM AS A SERVICE)
As the name suggests, a platform is provided to clients to develop and deploy software. The
clients can focus on the application development rather than having to worry about hardware
and infrastructure. It also takes care of most of the operating systems, servers and networking

Pros:-
 The overall cost is bow as the resources are allocated on demand and servers are
automatically updated.

 It is less vulnerable as servers are automatically updated and being checked for all
known security issues. The whole process is not visible to developer and this does not
pose a risk of data breach.

 Since new versions of development took are tested by the Azure team becomes easy
for developers to move on to new tools. This also helps the developers to meet the
customer's demand by quickly adapting to new versions.

Cons:-
 There are portability issues with using PAAS.

 There can be a different environment at Azure, this the application might have to be
adapted accordingly.

6
2.3 Azure as IAAS (Infrastructure as a Service)
It is a managed compute service that gives complete control of the operating systems and the
application platform stack to the application developers. It lets the user to access manage and
monitor the data centres by themselves.

Pros:-
 This is ideal for the application where complete control is required. The virtual
machine can be completely adapted to the requirements of the organization or
business.

 IAAS facilitates very efficient design time portability. This means application can be
migrated to Windows Azure without rework All the application dependencies such as
database can also be migrated to Azure.

 IAAS allows quack transition of services to clouds, which helps the vendors to offer
services to their clients easy. This also helps the vendors to expand their business by
selling the casting software or services in new markets.

Cons:-
 Since users are given complete control they are tempted to stick to a particular version
for the dependencies of applications. It might become difficult for them to migrate the
application to future versions.

 There are many factors which increases the cost of its operation. For example, higher
server maintenance for patching and upgrading software.

 There are lots of security risks from unpatched servers. Some companies have well-
defined processes for testing and updating on- premise servers for security
vulnerabilities. These processes need to be extended to the cloud-hosted IAAS VMs
to mitigate hacking risks.

 The unpatched servers pose a great security risk. Unlike PAAS, there is no provision
of automatic server patching in IAAS. An unpatched server with sensitive information
can be very vulnerable affecting the entire business of an organization.

 It is difficult to maintain legacy apps in IAAS. It can be stuck with the older version
of the operating systems and application stacks. Thus, resulting in applications that
are difficult to maintain and add new functionality over the period of time.

7
It becomes necessary to understand the pros and cons of both services in order to choose the
right one according your requirements. In conclusion t can be said that, PAAS has definite
economic advantages for operations over IAAS for commodity applications. In PAAS, the
cost of operations breaks the business model Whereas. IAAS gives complete control of the
OS and application platform stack.

8
2.4 AZURE MANAGEMENT PORTAL
Azure Management Portal is an interface to manage the services and infrastructure launched
in 2012 Al the services and applications are displayed in t and it lets the user manage them.
Getting started
 A free trial account can be created on Azure management portal by visiting the
following link manage windowsazure.com

 The screen that pops up is as shown in the following mug: The account can be created
using our existing Gmail Hotmail or Yahoo account.

Fig 4 – Sign in to Microsoft Azure

9
Once logged in, you will be redirected to the following screen, where there is a list of
services and applications.

Fig 5 – Services & Applications of Microsoft Azure

When you click on a category, is details are displayed on the screen. You can see the number
of applications, virtual machine, mobile services and so on by clicking on the menu item.

10
3. SERVICES OF MICROSOFT AZURE
Windows Azure provides businesses with four basic categories of cloud-based services:
1) Compute services
2) Network services
3) Data services
4) App services

Fig 6 - Services Of Microsoft Azure

3.1. Compute services

Windows Azure compute services provide the processing power required for cloud
applications to be able to run Windows Azure currently offers four different complete
services:
 Virtual Machines: This service provides you with a general-purpose computing
environment that lets you create, deploy and manage virtual machines running in the
Windows Azure cloud.

 Web Sites: This service provides you with a managed web environment you can use
to create new websites migrate your existing business website to the cloud.

 Cloud Services: The serve allows you to build and deploy highly available and
almost infinitely scalable applications with low administration costs using almost any
programming language.

 Mobile Services: Thus service provides a turnkey solution for building and
deploying apps and storing date for mobile devices.

11
3.2. Network services
Windows Azure network services provide you with different options for how Windows
Azure applications can be delivered to users and data centres. Windows Aare currently offers
two different network services:

 Virtual Network: This service allows you to treat the Windows Azure public cloud
as it is an extension of your on-premises datacentre.

 Traffic Manager: This service allows you to route application traffic for the user
who is using the application to Windows Aare datacentres in three ways for best
performance. in round robin fashion, or using an Active/Passive failover
configuration.

3.3. Data services

Windows Aare data services provide you with different ways of storing, managing
safeguarding, analysing , and reporting business data Windows Azure currently offers five
different data services

 Data Management : This service lets you store your business data in SQL databases,
either with dedicated Microsoft SQL Server virtual machines, using Windows Azure
SQL Database, using NoSQL Tables via REST, or using BLOB storage.

 Business Analytics: This service enables ease of discovery and data enrichment using
Microsoft SQL Server Reporting and Analysis Services or Microsoft SharePoint
Server running in a virtual machine. Windows Azure SQL Reporting the Windows
Azure Marketplace, or HDInsight, a Hadoop implementation for Big Data.

 HDInsight: This is Microsoft Hadoop-based service which brings a 100 percent

Apache Hadoop soon to the cloud.

 Cache: The service provides a distributed caching solution that can help speed up
your cloud based applications and reduce database load.

 Backup: The service helps you protect your server data offsite by using automated
and manual backups to Windows Azure.

 Recovery Manager: Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager helps you protect
business critical services by coordinating the replication and recovery of System
Centre 2012 private clouds at a secondary location.

12
3.4. App services
Windows Azure app services provide you with ways of enhancing the performance, security.
discoverability, and integration of your cloud apps that are running. Windows Azure
currently offers seven different app services:

 Media Services: This service allows you to build workflows for the creation
management. and distribution of media using the Windows Aare public cloud.

 Messaging: This consists of two services ( Windows Azure Service Bus and
Windows Azure Queue) that allow you to keep your apps connected across your
private cloud environment and the Windows Azure public cloud.

 Notification Hubs: This service provides a highly scalable, cross-platform push

notification infrastructure for applications running on mobile devices.

 BizTalk Services: This service provides Business-to-Business (B2B) and Enterprise

Application Integration (EAD) capabilities for delivering cloud and hybrid integration
solutions.

 Active Directory: This service provides you with identity management and access
control capabilities for your cloud applications.

 Multifactor Authentication: The service provides an extra layer of authentication in

addition to the user's account credentials , in order to better secure access for both on-
premises and cloud applications.

13
4. APPLICATIONS OF MICROSOFT AZURE
Windows Azure is usually misinterpreted as just a hosting solution, but there is a lot more
that can be done using Windows Azure. It provides a platform to develop applications using a
range of available technologies and programming languages. It offers to create and deploy
applications using net platform, which is Microsoft's own application development
technology. In addition to net, there are many more technologies and languages supported.
For example. Java, PHP. Ruby. Oracle. Linux, MySQL, Python.

Windows Azure applications are scaled by creating multiple instances of the application The
number of instances needed by the application is specified by the developer while hosting the
applications. If traffic is increased or decreased on the website or web application it can be
managed easily by logging in to Windows Azure management portal and specifying the
instances. Load balancing can abo be automated which would allow Azure to make the
decision self as when to assign more resources to application

Web applications support net, java, python, PHP and node.js Tasks such as scaling and
backups can be easily automated. A new feature called web jobs is available, which is a kind
of botch processing service Web jobs can also be sealed and scheduled The mobile
application platforms supported are Xamarin IOS, Xamarin Android and IOS Azure platform
is developed in such a way that developers need to concentrate on only the development part
and need not worry about other technical stuff outside their domain. Thus most of the
administrative work is done by Azure itself.

A marketplace is also set by Azure where its customers can buy applications and services. It
is a platform where customers can search applications and deploy them in an easier way.
Azure marketplace is available in 88 countries at present. An application purchased from the
marketplace can be easily connected to the local development environment by the application
developers. The pricing is done using 5 different models, which includes usage-based and
monthly fee. Some of the applications are even free of charge.

14
5. DATACENTERS
When we think of cloud, we imagine a place with large number of machines in big rooms.
There must be a place where all the data is stored. Microsoft has datacentres all over the work
from where Windows Azure services are managed. Datacentres are divided in regions. The
exact location of these datacentres is not revealed by Microsoft for obvious security reasons
Following are the 19 listed regions as can abo be seen in the image
1) Central US
2) East US
3) East US 2
4) US Gov lowa
5) US Gov Virginia
6) North Central US
7) South Central US
8) West US
9) North Europe
10) West Europe
11) East Asia
12) Southeast Asia
13) Japan East
14) Japan West
15) Brazil South
16) Australia East
17) Australia Southeast
18) Central India
19) South India

Fig 7 – DataCenters Of Microsoft Azure

15
5.1 HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT DATA CENTER FOR YOUR APPLICATION
When creating Windows Azure application, whether it is mobile application, web application
or database storage it asks to specify the region. Region here specifies a regional datacentre

 Performance: You should select the nearest datacentre to the users of your
application. The performance can be affected by the relative location of the users who
want to access the application If a user is closer to the datacentre, the performance
will be better.

 Cost: The price of hosting the application may also increase or decrease depending
upon the datacentre you choose Price actually can vary according to the database
hosting location or any other service being used by the application. You should
choose the same location for all the services that are being used by your application.
For example, database or any media service. If they are kept in separate datacentre
there will be charges per transaction, but anything extra won't be charged if they are
kept at the same datacentre.

 Legal Aspect: Laws vary from country to country and restrictions could be enforced
in some regions on what formation can be shared and what cannot.

16
6. ADVANTAGE MICROSOFT AZURE
The Microsoft Azure Platform offers a range of businesses flexibility, control, and an
affordable solution for running Web-scale applications. The services reduce tedious and
expensive infrastructure management and planning and are built with security and reliability
in mind, along with the option of a pay-as-you-go model

 Pay as you grow: Match usage needs with the option of pay-as-you-go pricing -
paying for the services you use and reducing the capital costs associated with
purchasing hardware and infrastructure.

 Reduce operational costs: Azure reduces the need for up-front technology
purchases and by running applications in the cloud you decrease the need for
maintaining on premise infrastructure.

 Increase business efficiency and agility: by dynamically adding and subtracting

capacity in real time Azure simplifies maintaining and operating applications by
providing on demand compute and storage to host scale and manage web and
connected applications.

 Build and deploy software quickly and easily by capitalising on the same personnel
development tools and investments, knowledge that already powers your IT
organisation

 Easy developer on-ramp to the cloud: Millions of developers worldwide already

use the NET Framework and the Visual Studio development environment Utilize
those same skills to create cloud-enabled applications that can be written, tested, and
deployed all from Visual Studio. Azure will support more programming languages
and development environments in the future, such as Eclipse, Ruby, PHP, and Python

 Enables Agile & Rapid Results: Applications can be deployed to the Platform with
the click of a button. Changes can be made quickly and without downtime, making it
an ideal platform for affordably experimenting and trying new ideas.

 Imagine and Create New User Experiences : The Platform enables you to create
web, mobile, or hybrid applications that use the cloud with on-premises applications.
Combined with Live Services ability to reach over 400 million live users, new
opportunities exist to interact and reach users in new ways.

17
 Offers choice: The open architecture gives developers the choice to build web
applications, applications running on connected devices, PCs, servers, or hybrid
solutions offering the best of online and on-premises.

 Standards-Based Compatibility: The services platform supports industry-standard

protocols including HTTP REST, SOAP, RSS, and AtomPub, for consuming
exposing. and integrating with third-party services. You can easily integrate
applications but on a variety of different technologies and operating systems.

18
7. CONCLUSION
Executing applications in the clouds offer many advantages over the traditional way of
running programs. Firstly, using cloud computing allows rapid service deployment and
massive Savings upfront because not having to invest in infrastructure. Secondly, cloud
computing model allows computing power and storage to scale up with business growth In
addition to this, it's also easy to dynamically adjust computing power up or down. As a
customer, you end up paying for the actual usage of resources

The advantages of using the Azure cloud platform relate to the fact that Microsoft has tried to
minimize the changes involved in migrating applications to the cloud. Effort required from
developers already familiar with Microsoft's technologies to utilize the Azure is minimal. In
addition to this upcoming releases of Azure are going to support applications written in
languages such as Python and PHP. Another advantage in Microsoft's solution is that the
services provided can be used in a very flexible fashion. Not only are Azure services
available to cloud applications, but also traditional on-premises applications are free to
exploit them What's Even better, Microsoft seems to be improving in terms of
interoperability. Because all of the services are accessible via industry standard protocols, it
is guaranteed exploiting them doesn't force customers to use Microsoft's operating systems
on-premises. Although there are many advantages in cloud computing, there are abo
disadvantages that shouldn't be ignored.

The First and most obvious disadvantage is the fact that by running applications in the cloud
you have to hand over your private data Privacy and security concerns are direct
consequences of this. Secondly, although cloud computing relieves customers from the
burden of infrastructure management also takes away the possibility to be in total control of
that infrastructure. In addition to losing control on hardware, using compute clouds also ties
the customer very tightly to the cloud service provider Data for example, is usually stored a
proprietary format which makes porting applications to competitors systems hand As
customers are locked in they are also at the mercy of that certain service provider's future
pricing strategy.

19
8. REFERENCES

1) D. Chappell Introducing the Azure Services Platform - an early look at Windows

Azure, .NET services, SQL services and Live services, October 2008.
http://download.microsoft.com/downbad/e/4/3/e43bb484-3b52-4fa8-a919-
ec60a32954bc/Azure_Services_Platform.pdf

2) H. Erdogmus. Cloud computing: Does Nirvana hide behind the Nebula? IEEE
Software, 26(2):4-6, 2009.

3) M. Fitzgerald. When the forecast calls for clouds. Inc.Boston , 31(1):100-102, 2009.

4) B. Hayes, Cloud computing Commune ACM, 51(7)9-11.2008.

5) J. N. Hoover. A stake in the cloud. Information Week, 26(1209) 22-24, 2008

6) Microsoft Azure Services Platform documentation, October 2008.

http://www.microsoft.com/Azureidefault.mspx

7) Weiss Computing in the clouds. Net Worker. 11(4):16-25, 2007.

20