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Dipak Ahirav
Dipak Ahirav

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Day 2: Exploring the Azure Portal - Your Gateway to Cloud Management

Welcome back to our Azure journey! Yesterday, we introduced Microsoft Azure and its benefits. Today, we'll dive into the Azure portal, your primary interface for managing Azure resources. We'll explore the portal's features, navigate its dashboard, understand the user interface components, and create our first resource group. Let's get started!

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Overview of the Azure Portal

The Azure portal is a web-based application that allows you to build, manage, and monitor everything from simple web apps to complex cloud applications in a unified console. It provides a graphical user interface (GUI) to manage your Azure resources efficiently.

Navigating the Azure Dashboard

  1. Accessing the Portal: Go to portal.azure.com and sign in with your Azure account.
  2. Dashboard Overview: The dashboard is the landing page of the Azure portal. It provides a customizable view of your Azure resources and services.

    • Tiles: Represent individual resources or metrics.
    • Custom Dashboards: You can create and customize multiple dashboards to suit different needs.
  3. Global Search: The search bar at the top allows you to quickly find resources, services, and documentation.

  4. Navigation Bar: On the left, you'll find the main navigation bar with options like Home, Dashboard, All services, and more.

  5. Notifications: The bell icon at the top-right corner displays notifications for your Azure account.

  6. Cloud Shell: The Cloud Shell icon provides access to a built-in command-line interface (CLI) for managing Azure resources using PowerShell or Bash.

Understanding the UI Components

  1. Home: The Home page provides quick access to recently used resources, shortcuts to popular services, and helpful links.
  2. All Services: A comprehensive list of all Azure services categorized for easy navigation.
  3. Resource Groups: Resource groups are logical containers that help you manage and organize your Azure resources.
  4. Favorites: You can pin frequently used services to the navigation bar for quick access.
  5. Settings: Access your account settings, subscription details, and other configurations.

Creating Your First Resource Group

Resource groups are essential for organizing and managing Azure resources. Let's create one:

  1. Step 1: Navigate to Resource Groups

    • Click on "Resource groups" in the navigation bar or search for it using the global search bar.
  2. Step 2: Add a New Resource Group

    • Click on the "+ Add" button to create a new resource group.
  3. Step 3: Configure Resource Group Details

    • Subscription: Select your Azure subscription.
    • Resource Group: Enter a name for your resource group (e.g., "MyFirstResourceGroup").
    • Region: Choose the region where you want to create the resource group (e.g., East US).
  4. Step 4: Review and Create

    • Click on "Review + create" and then "Create" to finalize the creation of your resource group.
  5. Step 5: Verification

    • After a few moments, your resource group will be created. You can view it by navigating back to the Resource Groups section.

Conclusion

Today, we explored the Azure portal, learned how to navigate its dashboard, and created our first resource group. Understanding the Azure portal is crucial for efficient cloud management. Tomorrow, we'll dive deeper into Azure Resource Manager (ARM) and learn how to manage resources effectively using ARM templates.

Series Index

Part Title Link
1 Getting Started with Microsoft Azure: An Introduction Read
2 Day 2: Exploring the Azure Portal - Your Gateway to Cloud Management Read

Feel free to leave your thoughts or questions in the comments below. Happy exploring!


This concludes Day 2 of our Azure journey. See you tomorrow!


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