Skip to content

Platform Fundamentals¶

This section explores the core operating principles of the Azure Virtual Machine platform. We focus on how the infrastructure behaves and the underlying components that power your virtualized workloads.

Section Contents¶

Page	Description
How Azure VM Works	Exploration of hosts, hypervisors, guest OS, and management/data planes.
Compute Model	Understanding VM size families, vCPU/memory ratios, and burstable series.
VM Lifecycle	Managing states: create, start, stop, deallocate, redeploy, and reimage.
Disks and Storage	Differentiating OS, data, and temp disks, plus managed disk caching.
Networking Basics	Core components: VNet, subnet, NIC, NSG, and Public IP addressing.
Identity and Access	Securing workloads with RBAC, managed identities, and Key Vault integration.
Availability and Resiliency	Designing for uptime with Availability Sets, Zones, Scale Sets, and SLAs.
Backup and Recovery Basics	Introduction to Azure Backup, snapshots, and disaster recovery strategies.

Azure VM Architecture¶

graph TD
    User(User/API) --> MP(Management Plane)
    MP --> Fabric(Azure Fabric Controller)
    Fabric --> Host(Physical Host)
    Host --> Hyp(Hypervisor)
    Hyp --> VM1(VM Instance)
    Hyp --> VM2(VM Instance)

    subgraph "Infrastructure"
    Host
    Hyp
    end

Note

Understanding the distinction between "Stop" and "Deallocate" is crucial for cost management and resource allocation within the Azure platform. See VM Lifecycle for details.

See Also¶

Sources¶