DEV Community: Emeka moses

Creating Azure Virtual Network with 4 Subnets Using the Address Space 192.148.30.0/26

Emeka moses — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 18:08:37 +0000

Azure Virtual Network (VNet)

Is a fundamental service in Microsoft Azure that creates a private network environment within the Azure cloud. It functions similarly to a traditional network you might have on-premises, but with the added benefits of Azure's scalability, availability, and security features.

Here's a breakdown of key functionalities of an Azure VNet:

Isolation and Security

VNet isolates your Azure resources, such as virtual machines (VMs), from the public internet and other VNets. This isolation creates a secure environment for your applications to communicate with each other without worrying about unauthorized access.

Subnet Creation

VNets can be further segmented into subnets. Subnets act like sub-divisions within the VNet, allowing you to group related resources and define specific access controls for each subnet.

IP Address Management

VNets use a private IP address space (like the one you provided: 192.148.30.0/26) for resources within the network. This allows for private communication between resources without conflicting with public IP addresses.

Connectivity Options

VNets offer various options for connecting resources:

Internet Access

Subnets can be configured to allow resources controlled access to the internet through outbound rules in network security groups (NSGs).
VNet Peering: VNets can be peered together to enable communication between resources across different VNets within the same region.

VNets can connect to your on-premises network using a VPN gateway, creating a hybrid network environment.
Integration with Azure Services: VNets can integrate with various Azure services like Azure SQL Database or Azure Storage. By placing these services within a VNet, you can enforce private access only from authorized resources within the VNet.

Benefits of using Azure Virtual Network:

Improved Security: Isolation and access control features enhance the security of your cloud resources.
Simplified Management: VNets provide a centralized way to manage and configure your network infrastructure in Azure.
Scalability: You can easily scale your VNet by adding or removing subnets as needed.

Flexibility: VNets offer various connectivity options to suit your specific needs.

In summary, Azure VNet is a critical component for building secure and scalable private networks within the Azure cloud environment. It provides a foundation for deploying and managing your Azure resources while ensuring their isolation and controlled access.

Prerequisites
Before we begin, ensure you have:

An Azure subscription. If you don't have one, you can create a free account.

Basic familiarity with Azure Portal and networking concepts.

A plan for subnet allocation within the address space 192.148.30.0/26.

Steps in Creating Azure Virtual Network with 4 Subnets.

Step 1 Sign in to Azure Portal:

Navigate to portal.azure.com and log in with your Azure account.

Step 2 Create a Virtual Network:

from the Azure portal home page Click on Virtual network.

Step 3: Configure Address Space

In the "IP Addresses" tab, modify the existing address space to 192.148.30.0/26.

Click on Add a subnet.

Step 4: Add Subnets
Enter the following details:
1 Subnet name: Enter a name for the subnet (e.g., Subnet1).

2.Subnet address range: Enter the address range for the first subnet (e.g., 192.148.30.0/28).

Click on Add.

Repeat 1 & 2 above to add the remaining three subnets with the following details:

Subnet2: 192.148.30.16/28

Subnet3: 192.148.30.32/28

Subnet4: 192.148.30.48/28

Step 5: Review and Create

Click on Review + create to review your configuration
After the validation passes, click on Create

Step 6: Verification

Once the deployment is complete, navigate to the Resource Group you selected earlier (RG1)
Click on your Virtual Network (e.g., MyVNet).
Verify that the address space and subnets are correctly configured.
We have successfully created and deployed an Azure Virtual Network with four subnets given the address space 192.148.30.0/26.

In conclusion, we can appreciate that creating an Azure Virtual Network with multiple subnets using the address space 192.148.30.0/26 provides a robust foundation for deploying and managing your Azure resources. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can efficiently organize and secure your network infrastructure while leveraging Azure's scalability and connectivity options. Whether you're building a small-scale application or a complex enterprise solution, Azure Virtual Networks offer the flexibility and control needed to meet your networking requirements effectively.

Practical use of TCO and Pricing Calculator for Cost Management.

Emeka moses — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 02:12:09 +0000

This how organisations can make informed decisions by estimating the cost that will be saved when they chose to migrate their business operations from on premise to the cloud environment.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator: This tool helps businesses evaluate the complete cost of owning an asset over its entire lifecycle. It includes not only the initial purchase price but also ongoing costs such as maintenance, operation, training, and potential risks1.

Pricing Calculator: This tool allows businesses to estimate the costs of various services or products, helping them to compare different options and make informed decisions. It can include factors like service types, usage levels, and support requirement.

Let's explore this with the following steps.

Step 1
Type 'Total Cost of Ownership Calculator' in your browser

Click on 'Total Cost of Ownership(TCO) Calculator|Microsoft Azure'

Step 2
The first step on the Calculator is to define your workload. Here you will enter the details of your on premise workloads

(a) For Servers, Click on Add Server Workload

Under Workload 1, I wiil select Windows operating system and leave other parameters at default

Under Workload 2, I will select Web app under workload type and for operating system I will choose Linux.Other parameters will be left at default

(b) For Databases, Click on Add Database

Under Database 1 Source, I will select Microsoft SQL Server, and OS will be Windows. Others will be at default

Under Database 2 Source, I will select MySQL Server, and OS will be Linux. Others will be at default

(c)For Storage, Click on Add Storage and leave the parameters at default

(d) For Networking, I will select the Destination Region as North Europe

Step 3
Click Next

Step 4
I will leave the Assumptions at default and click on Next to view the Report which is the Comparison of on premise cost of infrastructure with Azure cost of infrastructure for the same workload

The Blue graph line indicate the On premise cost while the Green graph line shows the Azure cost for the same workload for a period of five years. There is a wide difference in the two costs. This difference is the cost saved by moving the organisation's workload to the cloud. It is indicated on the graph and this amount to $98,257 as shown on the top of the graph.

The two pie charts below shows the total on premise cost and total azure cost for the period amounting to $117,590 and $19,333 respectively

The graph also indicate the percentages of cost of each of the services used by the company while on premise and when migrated to the cloud on Azure

It is really worthwhile to migrate to the cloud. For instance, some costs that are incurred on premise are not incurred at all in the cloud i.e. Cost of building, equipping & maintaining Datacenter and Networking which are cared for by the Cloud Service Provider while other cost such as Compute services is reduced from 80% on premise to 69% in the cloud.

TCO is a very simple and easy to use tool.

Is this helpful? Please leave your feedback in the comment section.

How To Host Static Website on Azure Blob Storage

Emeka moses — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 00:28:51 +0000

introduction

A static website is like an electronic brochure that contains fixed information and doesn't change frequently. It consists of web pages that have text, images, and other content that remains the same for everyone who gains access to the website.

An example of such websites are cloud courses like whiz lab or cantril.io

By hosting a static website on Blob Storage, you can save costs and enjoy a straight forward hosting solution that ensures your website is easily accessible and efficient.

In this tutorial, we will be hosting our static website in Azure Storage. Please ensure the following prerequisites are followed before we begin.
Prerequisites.

Virtual Studio code

1.Install Visual Studio Code on your desktop.

2.Install the Azure Subscription, Azure Account and Azure storage account extensions on the visual studio code.

3.Create a storage account in the Azure portal

4.Create a folder that houses your static website data
Enable Static Website in Azure.

Enable static website hosting

a) Go to your storage account, and click on the Static website button on the left side of the search bar.

b)Click on the "Enabled" button to enable the static website

c)On the index document name type "index.html" and the Error document path type "404.html"

d) Click on the save button.

e)Once it's saved, It generates your primary and secondary endpoint.

d) When you go back to your storage account, click on containers, you can see that a web container has been created to host your static website data.

Open Your File On Visual Studio Code

a)The next step is to click on File at the top-left corner of your VScode.

b) Click on "Open File" and select the folder that houses your static website codes and data.

c)Once you open it, the file appears here as shown below.

d) Click on your file drop-down and click index.html

e) Once you click it, your html code automatically reflects as shown below.

Connect To Azure

a) To connect to your $web container, click on the Azure extension.

b) Next click on the Resources drop-down, click on the Azure subscription drop-down.

c) Under the Azure subscription, click on the storage account drop-down

d)You will see the storage account you created in the Azure Portal, right-click on it.

e) Click on "Deploy to the static website via Azure Storage"

f) You will be prompted to select your folder to deploy the static website.

g) Wait for the deployment to be complete and click on browse static website

h) You will be redirected to your static website as shown below.

i) On the Azure portal, go to the $web container in your storage account, you can see that all your static website data has been deployed in the container.

How to Create Virtual Machine Scale Set.

Emeka moses — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 02:20:16 +0000

Login to Azure
Create a Virtual Machine Scale Set
Clean Up Resource

This article steps through using Azure portal to create a Virtual Machine Scale Set.

Loging To Azure

Create a Virtual Machine Scale Set

You can deploy a scale set with a Windows Server image or Linux image such as RHEL, Ubuntu, or SLES.

Type Scale set in the search box. In the results, under Marketplace, select Virtual Machine Scale Sets.
Select Create on the Virtual Machine Scale Sets page, which opens the Create a Virtual Machine Scale Set page.

In the Basics tab, under Project details, make sure the correct subscription is selected and create a new resource group called myVMSSResourceGroup.

Under Scale set details, set myScaleSet for your scale set name and select a Region that is close to your area
Under Orchestration, select Uniform.

Under Instance details, select a marketplace image for Image. Select any of the Supported Distros.

Under Administrator account configure the admin username and set up an associated password or SSH public key.

A Password must be at least 12 characters long and meet three out of the four following complexity requirements: one lower case character, one upper case character, one number, and one special character.

If you select a Linux OS disk image, you can instead choose SSH public key. You can use an existing key or create a new one.

Select Next: Disks to move the disk configuration options
leave the default disk configurations.
Select Next: Networking to move the networking configuration options.

On the Networking page, under Load balancing, select the Use a load balancer checkbox to put the scale set instances behind a load balancer.
In Load balancing options, select Azure load balancer.
In Select a load balancer, select a load balancer or create a new one.

For Select a backend pool, select Create new, type myBackendPool, then select Create.

Select Next: Scaling to move to the scaling configurations.

On the Scaling page, set the initial instance count field to 5. You can set this number up to 1000.

For the Scaling policy, selete custom autoscale

When you're done, select Review + create.

After it passes validation, select Create to deploy the scale set.

Clean Up Resources

Delete Resource

When no longer needed, you can delete the resource group, virtual machine, and all related resources.

On the Overview page for the VM, select the Resource group link
At the top of the page for the resource group, select Delete resource group.
A page will open warning you that you are about to delete resources. Type the name of the resource group and select Delete to finish deleting the resources and the resource group

How To Create a Linux virtual machine in the Azure portal. by moses emeka

Emeka moses — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 19:38:38 +0000

Sign in to Azure
Create virtual machine
Connect to virtual machine
Install web server
View the web server in action
Clean up resources

Applies to: ✔️ Linux VMs

Azure virtual machines (VMs) can be created through the Azure portal. The Azure portal is a browser-based user interface to create Azure resources. This quickstart shows you how to use the Azure portal to deploy a Linux virtual machine (VM) running Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS. To see your VM in action, you also SSH to the VM and install the NGINX web server.

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.
Sign in to Azure

Sign in to the Azure portal.

Create virtual machine

Enter virtual machines in the search

Under Services, select Virtual machines.

In the Virtual machines page, select Create and then Virtual machine. The Create a virtual machine page opens.

In the Basics tab, under Project details, make sure the correct subscription is selected and then choose to Create new resource group. Enter myResourceGroup for the name

Under Instance details, enter myVM for the Virtual machine name, and choose Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS - Gen2 for your Image. Leave the other defaults. The default size and pricing is only shown as an example. Size availability and pricing are dependent on your region and subscription

Under Administrator account, select SSH public key

In Username enter azureuser.

For SSH public key source, leave the default of Generate new key pair, and then enter myKey for the Key pair name.

Under Inbound port rules > Public inbound ports, choose Allow selected ports and then select SSH (22) and HTTP (80) from the drop-down

Leave the remaining defaults and then select the Review + create button at the bottom of the page.

On the Create a virtual machine page, you can see the details about the VM you are about to create. When you are ready, select Create

When the Generate new key pair window opens, select Download private key and create resource. Your key file will be download as myKey.pem. Make sure you know where the .pem file was downloaded; you will need the path to it in the next step.

When the deployment is finished, select Go to resource.

On the page for your new VM, select the public IP address and copy it to your clipboard.

Connect to virtual machine

If you are on a Mac or Linux machine, open a Bash prompt and set read-only permission on the .pem file using chmod 400 ~/Downloads/myKey.pem. If you are on a Windows machine, open a PowerShell prompt

At your prompt, open an SSH connection to your virtual machine. Replace the IP address with the one from your VM, and replace the path to the .pem with the path to where the key file was downloaded.

ssh -i C:/users/EMMYFURTHER/Downloads/myKey.pem azureuser@10.111.12.123

Install web server

To see your VM in action, install the NGINX web server. From your SSH session, update your package sources and then install the latest NGINX package

When done, type exit to leave the SSH session.

View the web server in action

Use a web browser of your choice to view the default NGINX welcome page. Type the public IP address of the VM as the web address. The public IP address can be found on the VM overview page or as part of the SSH connection string you used earlier

Clean up resources

Delete resources

When no longer needed, you can delete the resource group, virtual machine, and all related resources.

On the Overview page for the VM, select the Resource group link
At the top of the page for the resource group, select Delete resource group.
A page will open warning you that you are about to delete resources. Type the name of the resource group and select Delete to finish deleting the resources and the resource group.

Create Window 11 virtual machine in Azure portal

Emeka moses — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 00:49:36 +0000

Table of contents

Sign in to Azure
Create virtual machine
Connect to virtual machine
Install windows 11
View the windows 11 welcome page
Clean up resources.
Delete a reources.

Azure virtual machines (VMs) can be created through the Azure portal. This method provides a browser-based user interface to create VMs and their associated resources.

Sign in to Azure

https://portal.azure.com/

Create Virtual Machine

Enter virtual machines in the search.
Under Services, select Virtual machines.
In the Virtual machines page, select Create and then Azure virtual machine. The Create a virtual machine page opens.
Under Instance details, enter myVM for the Virtual machine name and choose Windows 11 pro, Version 22H2 - x64 Gen 2 for the Image. Leave the other defaults

5.Under Administrator account, provide a username, such as azureuser and a password. The password must be at least 12 characters long and meet the defined complexity requirements.

6.Under Inbound port rules, choose Allow selected ports and then select RDP (3389) and HTTP (80) from the drop-down.

7.Leave the remaining defaults and then select the Review + create button at the bottom of the page.

8.After validation runs, select the Create button at the bottom of the page.

9.After deployment is complete, select Go to resource.

Connet to Virtual Machine

Create a remote desktop connection to the virtual machine. These directions tell you how to connect to your VM from a Windows computer. On a Mac, you need an RDP client such as this Remote Desktop Client from the Mac App Store.

1.On the overview page for your virtual machine, select the Connect > RDP

2.In the Connect with RDP tab, keep the default options to connect by IP address, over port 3389, and click Download RDP file

3.Open the downloaded RDP file and click Connect when prompted.

4.In the Windows Security window, select More choices and then Use a different account. Type the username as localhost\username, enter the password you created for the virtual machine, and then click OK.

5.You may receive a certificate warning during the sign-in process. Click Yes or Continue to create the connection.

Install windows

To see your VM in action, install the windows 11 pro. Open a PowerShell prompt on the VM and run the following command:

When done, close the RDP connection to the VM.

View the windows 11 welcome page

In the portal, select the VM and in the overview of the VM, hover over the IP address to show Copy to clipboard. Copy the IP address and paste it into a browser tab. The default welcome page will open, and should look like this:

Clean up resources

Delete resources

When no longer needed, you can delete the resource group, virtual machine, and all related resources.

On the Overview page for the VM, select the Resource group link.
At the top of the page for the resource group, select Delete resource group.

3.A page will open warning you that you are about to delete resources. Type the name of the resource group and select Delete to finish deleting the resources and the resource group.

CORE AZURE ARCHITETURAL COMPONETS

Emeka moses — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 04:05:05 +0000

Introductions
Azure Regions
Azure Availability Zones
Resource Groups
Azure Resource Manager(ARM)
Conclusion

Introductions

Microsoft Azure architecture runs on a massive collection of servers and networking hardware, which, in turn, hosts a complex collection of applications that control the operation and configuration of the software and virtualized hardware on these servers. This complex orchestration is what makes Azure so powerful.
In this module, we 'll be introduced to the core architectural components of Azure. You’ll be looking Azure Regions, availability zones, resource groups; Azure resource manager(ARM).

Azure Regions

An Azure region is a geographical area in which one or more physical Azure data centres reside. These data centres exist as part of a latency-defined perimeter to offer the best possible performance and security to users.
Azure has more than 60 announced regions, which is more than all other cloud providers to date.
Azure is made up datacentres located around the globe.
These datacentres are organised and made available to the end users by country/region

Azure region key point:

Each region is a set of data centres deployed within a Specific geographic location.
Each Azure region is paired with another region within the same geographical area, which is at least 300 miles away. It allows replication of resources (such as VMs) which helps in reducing the interruptions due to natural disasters, civil unrest, power outages, or physical.

Examples are East US, west Europe, southeast Asia.

Azure Availability Zones

Azure availability zones are physically and logically separated datacenters with their own independent power source, network, and cooling. Connected with an extremely low-latency network, they become a building block to delivering high availability applications.

Lets simply say,

Availability zones are physically separate locations within an Azure region.

each availability zone is made up of one or more datacentres equipped with independence power, cooling, and networking.

Availability zones are set up to be an isolation boundary
If one Availability zone goes down, the other continues working

Benefits

Protect against infrastructure disruptions.
Ensure high availability and business continuity.
Achieve the scale and high availability that you need.
Securely support your solution needs.

Example

In a region like East US, there can be multiple availability zones.

Resource Group

A resource group is a logical container that holds related resources for an Azure solution. The resource group can include all the resources for the solution, or only those resources that you want to manage as a group.

key points

Resource within a group share the same lifecycle and management.
Simplifies management and deployment.
Can group resources by application and management

benefits

easy to manage cost
simplified resources management and organization

Example

A resource group for a web app could include the app service, database, and storage accounts.

Azure Resource Manager

Azure Resource Manager is the deployment and management service for Azure. It provides a management layer that enables you to create, update, and delete resources in your Azure account. You use management features, like access control, locks, and tags, to secure and organize your resources after deployment.

Key points
provide a unified way to manage Azure Resource
Allows users to create, update, and delete resources as a group
Uses template to automate deployment.

Feature
Role based access control(RBAC)
Tagging for resource organizations
Audit logs for tracking changes.

***Benefits*
Consistent management layer
Facilitate automation and orchestration

conclusions
Azure core architectural components such as regions, resource groups, and Availability Zones serve as the underlying building blocks for any Azure solution that gets deployed. Azure Resource Manager is used to manage these building blocks and the solutions that are built upon them

Core azure Architectural Componets

Emeka moses — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 16:24:48 +0000

1. - Introductions
2. - 1. Azure Regions
3. - 2. Azure Availability Zones
4. - 3. Resource Groups
5. - 4. Azure Resource Manager(ARM)
6. - 5. Conclusions ## Introductions In this module, we 'll be introduced to the core architectural components of Azure. You’ll be looking Azure Regions, availability zones, resource groups; Azure resource manager(ARM).