This second edition of Learn Azure in a Month of Lunches reminds me that things change quickly and that you must always keep learning. Gone are the days when you could take a week-long course in Windows Server and comfortably run it for years without changing much. This doesn’t mean that the IT world is a scarier place, but you do need to approach cloud computing with an open mind and be willing to adjust constantly.
When I started to work with Azure, the number of available services was almost overwhelming. I knew that I should pay attention to security, performance, redundancy, and scale, but I didn’t know how to adapt more than a decade of large-scale server administration to the world of cloud computing. Over time, I began to learn about the various Azure services that provide those key components. These services rarely work in isolation, but I didn’t know the best way to integrate them or how to decide which service to use for each task. This book is a way to explain to my past self, and to many others following a similar path, how to quickly understand the core services in Azure and make them work together.