Preface

Azure is an ever-evolving platform. It offers an environment on the cutting edge of technology that suits many different industry requirements. New capabilities and features are coming out fast, which makes it difficult to stay up to date. This book will give you a complete overview of all the current features and capabilities that Azure has to offer from an administrative perspective, and is a complete guide to preparing for the AZ-103 exam.

This book will cover all the exam objectives. It will start with how to manage Azure subscriptions and resources, where you will learn how to manage Azure subscriptions and resource groups, analyze resource utilization and consumption, and manage role-based access control (RBAC). In the second part, you will learn how to implement and manage storage by creating and configuring storage accounts, how to import and export data to Azure, and how to configure Azure Files and implement Azure Backup. The third part will cover how to deploy and manage virtual machines (VMs), where you will learn how to create and configure VMs for Windows and Linux and how to manage Azure VMs and VM backups. The fourth part of this book will cover how to configure and manage virtual networks, by covering implementing and managing virtual networking; how to integrate on-premise networks with Azure virtual networks; how to monitor and troubleshoot virtual networking; how to create and manage Azure Security Groups and Azure DNS; and how to implement Azure Load Balancer. The last part of this book will cover how to manage identities, where you will learn how to manage Azure Active Directory (AD), how to implement and manage hybrid identities, and how to implement multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Each chapter will conclude with a Further reading section, which is a very important part of each chapter, as it will give you extra, and sometimes crucial, information for passing the AZ-103 exam. As the questions on the exam will change slightly over time and this book will eventually become outdated, the Further reading sections will be the place that will provide you with all the updates.