Data and storage

The Microsoft Azure SQL Database is a RDBMS in the cloud. It supports the SQL Server engine and hence we can use existing SQL Server tools, libraries, and APIs to manage the SQL Database in the cloud. It comes in different pricing tiers such as Basic, Standard, and Premium service tiers that have different capacities for different workloads.

Microsoft Azure Storage is a cloud storage offering that is highly available, scalable, and durable. Microsoft Azure Storage services provide Blob storage, Table storage, Queue storage, and File storage:

• Blob storage (Object storage): This is used to store unstructured object data such as documents, media files, and binary data
• Table storage: This is used to store structured data such as NoSQL key-attribute data
• Queue storage: This is for reliable messaging
• File storage: This is used to store file data that can be used by Azure virtual machines and cloud services

Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is a cloud-based, multitenanted, and highly available identity management service from Microsoft. It can manage users, groups, and multi-factor authentication; add an application organization that is developing for authentication; add an application from the gallery for authentication; add a custom domain; add role-based access control; and so on.

To access Azure AD from the Azure portal, go to https://portal.azure.com and click on Azure Active Directory.

Verify the Overview details with Users and groups, App registrations, and Azure AD Connect.

The application Gallery supports 2,771 applications for Azure AD integration at the time of writing this chapter. Categories include Business Management, Collaboration, Construction, Content management, CRM, Data Services, Developer Services, E-commerce, Education, ERP, Finance, Health, Human resources, IT infrastructure, Mail, Marketing, Media, Mobile Device Management, Productivity, Project Management, Security, Social, Supply Management, Telecommunications, Travel, and Web Design and Hosting.

Major applications supported are Office365, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Google Apps, and so on.
Go to https://manage.windowsazure.com to access Azure AD from the classic portal:

One of the biggest benefits that we will utilize in this book is the way we can provide authentication to access Azure Web Apps. We can configure Azure Web Apps with Directory so only specific users can access the application hosted on Azure Web Apps.