Azure portal

The Azure portal is a browser-based graphical user interface (GUI) console for interacting with Azure resources.

The portal is designed for self-service and is the most common method for creating and managing your Azure environments. It is the quickest way for anybody new to Azure to get started and carry out simple tasks; a desktop app is also available to provide the same user interface experience.

There are other ways to interact with Azure services and resources; if you want to create and manage more complex resources or perform automation tasks, you can use a command-line interface (CLI) such as PowerShell or Bourne Again Shell (Bash). Finally, you can use the Azure mobile app if you need quick visibility and must interact with your Azure resources from anywhere, anytime. In this chapter, you will learn about how to use each of these to interact with your Azure resources. You will also gain some practical skills with some of these management tools in the Exercise section. The Azure portal is public-facing and can be accessed at https://portal.azure.com.

The Azure portal provides users with a quick and straightforward way to access Azure resources, often through dashboard views or high-level overview visualizations; these can also be exported in various formats, such as reports and Excel, based on the resource type.

The Azure portal allows users to create, change, and delete resources directly within the portal as a seamless single user interface experience. The Azure portal can also be accessed from a mobile device; you can use the Azure mobile app (iOS and Android) to do so, which we will cover in the Azure mobile app section later in this chapter.

Being a web-based console, the portal can be accessed from anywhere if you have an internet connection and from all modern desktops, laptops, and tablet devices (running Windows, Android, and so on). The only limitation is that your browser must have JavaScript enabled, and your operating system must be capable of running one of the following supported browsers:

• Microsoft Edge (latest version)
• Safari (latest version, Mac only)
• Chrome (latest version)
• Firefox (latest version)

The portal user experience can be customized through personal settings. These settings can be accessed by clicking the gears icon on the top right of the portal toolbar; the following settings are available:

• Directories + subscriptions
• Appearance + Startup views
• Language + region
• My information
• Signing out + notifications

In addition to the preceding settings, customized dashboards can be created.

All tasks that are carried out in the portal use the underlying Azure Resource Manager (ARM) API. The ARM API performs all the activities in the background and will notify you of progress and whether any tasks have been completed or failed.

Full deployment and activity logging is provided, which provides all the activities/tasks that a user and the Azure platform initiate; this can be helpful in troubleshooting issues and for audit and compliance purposes.

Governance can also be put in place through Azure Policy, and access controls can be put in place through role-based access control (RBAC), both of which you will learn about in more detail in Chapter 9, Azure Governance; access controls can prevent users from adding, changing, or deleting resources and locks can also be added to resources to prevent accidental deletion.

This section looked at the Azure portal and covered some of its functionalities. The following section will look at Azure PowerShell.