Azure beginners guide! (free cloud services)

[@sMadaras]

The best introductory video to Azure I’ve ever seen.

[@christianlempa]

Thank you so much 😊

[@The113End]

Can you please make a video on the Azure Always Free services and how you can use it for your home lab?

[@christianlempa]

I thought this was the topic of the video :D, Do you have something specific in mind that interests you?

[@sachron3gmail]

hehe I have the same thought of requesting , maybe example Azure SQL Database always free that we can use for small lab that does not exceed the limits from our home lab. how to setup and connect it with any service to the connection string. Psst* not a must but that might be an interesting topic to try on so that I can learn from you

[@alanjrobertson]

Fantastic introductory video, Christian - more content on this please! Load balancer would be great, also interested in understanding their setup with Bastion for secure access.

[@marcwesterink7742]

Nice introduction. I couldn't have explained it any better for anyone who is getting started with Azure for the first time as ITPros (devs have a different path). I am working with Microsoft Azure since 2014. It's good to be reminded again that some free services exist, so I feel a bit stupid. Nevertheless, here are a few suggestions as a learning path. First Azure Fundamentals (skip this if you're a technical person), then Azure Administrator, then Azure Solutions Architect Expert. Then you can choose various specialties like Azure DevOps, Azure Networking and Azure Security Technologies that would be most interesting for Christian himself. Hope this helps!

[@blitz_cloud1580]

I recommand azure cloud, just because the interface is user-friendly for beginners, and the fact the have tight integrations with all their tools.I am currently on oracle cloud.

[@christianlempa]

Thank you so much! It's an honor to get such positive feedback from you, given your vast experience. :) These are awesome suggestions, and I'll take a look into it!

[@maxnatamo]

I'd love to see some more from Azure, since we just started trying it out. Maybe even some of the software-development-focused services, such as containers, test plans, etc.

[@christianlempa]

Good suggestion! I'll add it to my to-do list for next year :D

[@AndroSupercell]

Yes and also the load balancing for auto assigning public IP addresses is also appreciated❤

[@SivadasKRamdas]

Misleading besides that 200 USD, nothing is free.

[@ironsharpensiron6918]

Fantastic video there! Azure is almost always associated with enterprise-level work - either by extending one's on-premises environment to the cloud, or fork-lifting current workloads to the cloud. Clients are always wanting the biggest E/F/H/N-series VMs, storage accounts, and premium SKUs for all resources. You are one of the few people who even talk about Spot VMs, affordable Azure Marketplace offerings, or that Standard HDDs are viable options! During working hours, I have to get enterprise infrastructure up and running for customers. But after hours, I find it fun to work on my home lab with older components, limited network bandwidth and a much smaller budget. What you're covering brings back the 'fun' in 'fun-damentals of Azure'. It'd be great if you could continue this as a series where you integrate all the homelab features and have them hosted/integrated in Azure in an affordable way.

[@christianlempa]

Thanks for watching! :) Let's see if Azure wants to do more videos on this series, I'm definitely interested.

[@vipast6262]

Good timing, just started my Cloud Admin job - mainly with AWS , but they also use Azure.

[@WrakoLife]

What a coincidence. I'm also starting on new year with the same position.

[@christianlempa]

Wow best timing! 🤩

[@marsim4150]

you forgot to mention that the required credit card cannot be a prepaid one so the card is not only for identification !!! You have to constantly check if one or more free of charge services have changed the price from free to something.

[@JohnAngelmo]

Azure virtual machines are billed per minute and not per hour, from their FAQ: We charge for the number of whole minutes your virtual machine is running, so you are not billed for any extra seconds. In this example, you would be billed for 6 minutes.

[@dushkodavchev]

I have been actively using Azure for the last few years and I can say that they have good services. Although this is a video for total beginners, thank you. I hope you will have a project where you will connect multiple combinations of free services.

[@binarytech8457]

I would like to see a video about EntraID and how you connect your home lab with it.

[@Excited-IT-Architect]

Christan, thank you very much for your ideas in this video. Please also create a video of how to connect the homelab to the new Azure hosted machines - maybe as another point in the upcoming 2nd video. Thanks! 😀

[@christianlempa]

Thank you so much :) Great idea!

[@user-xp3ie9jb5s]

Nice video, Make one for the load balancer if you want

[@JeanFrancoCaringi]

great video! please, make another one about the load balancer

[@christianlempa]

thanks :)

[@peterholthoffman]

This was a good video and I learned a lot, very quickly! I had been a bit leery of trying Azure but I'm definitely going to give it a go now! My specific interest is going to be in creating something that will let a user at home query a SQL database hosted on Azure. I have to figure out - do I need an instance of Windows Server running first? Do I add SQL Server to that instance? How do I set up a remote desktop for the user? Those are some of the questions I will be investigating and they might make a good video topic for you.

[@christianlempa]

Thank you! :) I'm not doing much with SQL

[@thayaganthusiyanthan9708]

Keep up the good tutorials!

[@christianlempa]

Thanks! Keep watching 😝

[@BenReese]

That was a lot!! lol. Thank you for taking the time to do it though! I wasn't aware of the Azure Spot option, which looks great for home-lab testing. Is Spot an option from the CLI and/or Terraform? Would be interesting to simplify a test environment setup using TFE. Also, PowerShell is an easier way to interact on the CLI in my opinion. We can string together commands, like to start all demo VMs: Get-AzVM *demo* | Start-AzVM And maybe this is possible with the AZ CLI also, I haven't tried. I look forward to this series though!

[@christianlempa]

Good question, I still need to try out Azure with Terraform, that's on my list for next year

[@alanjrobertson]

Also re Spot - I'm guessing they email you if your server is deallocated, how long until you can start it up again?

[@Shocker99]

I'd like to see a generic load balancing video. As a home lab person, i don't see a purpose for Azure. I can it's use cases for business use though.

[@christianlempa]

Sure, I'll add it to my to-do list for the second video

[@docmalitt]

Hi, excellent video (as always) and I might say Microsoft, for whatever reason they don't - I don't care. But free courses, free resources, free playgrounds and practice means more users playing for free... but... more user start getting used to Azure services (probably putting it into their CV) and I think we cannot even imagine if their global percentage in cloud computing grows just 1%. It must be billions of money. However, I look at it as a win-win at least for now. So yes, please continue because there's a developers option that is always free and I'm sure some intelligent people (like you) will be able to find something cool to incorporate into out homelab on everyday basis. Cheers Christian and enjoy the holidays, you have definitely deserved all the good luck there is in this f-d up world. ho-ho-ho

[@christianlempa]

Thank you so much! Enjoy the holidays as well. :) All great suggestions, I'll have a look into

[@joaocapitao437]

Great Video!

[@christianlempa]

Thanks

[@QuickLearner-b5l]

Hey Christian, Love your channel! Question for you and anyone that may be able to help. So, out of curiosity, say I wanted to start a small IT/Managed services business, how difficult a/o expensive would it be for a small statup with say 5-10 clients. The idea is do everything offsite and from home and still be able to rdp, manage users, etc? I looked into some of the costs as far as Azure services, but would I need overhead or is there another option to get started managing my own small IT business from home? If you could do a video on this it would be a huge help, as among the other content I find yours to very helpful. Thanks.

[@juangassa]

give us more videos of azure, make how to upload our dockers to containerapps!

[@mathesonstep]

I had no idea about spot pricing, that's awesome, came here from YT shorts

[@christianlempa]

Nice! Thanks :)

[@andreas_tech]

Hi, would you recommended making a Cloud certification?! Thanks

[@christianlempa]

If you're working in cloud, or your plan is to do so, sure. If not... I doubt it makes a huge difference

[@fastmover45]

can I ask what is that screen saver I know its some sort of "Matrix" but which one. very good vid keep it up!

[@christianlempa]

just cmatrix in the terminal :)

[@fastmover45]

@@christianlempa many thanks buddy !

[@haxi52]

nice video. The thing about VMs is they aren't really cloud friendly, and you can see this in the pricing. By using more "cloud native" types of services like functions, containers etc you will get much better scalability and pricing.

[@christianlempa]

Thanks! I always feel VMs is the best and easiest way to get started, but of course, there's so much more interesting stuff to discover :D

[@pinkerdroit]

Thank you for this! 🐱👍

[@christianlempa]

Thank you! :)

[@batista98854]

Thanks from India.

[@heselmas]

Building a beefy vm server 3K. Renting the same resources in azure will get through the 3K in +- 2 months.

[@alexpulido2431]

it is always scarry to use your credit card, even if they say they are not going to charge, after a year you are going to forget about it and it will surprise you to see big charges in your card, things you can not cancel, can not get reimbursed, etc.

[@madeyeQ]

If you're going to decommission the machine every time to save money, you could just as well do the same with a digital ocean droplet. It would also cut down the cost and will definitely be cheaper than using Azure. Besides I wouldn't trust MS with my data. Just a personal opinion though.

[@Aruneh]

It's such a pain every time I have to work with Azure. The various web UIs constantly change, services and pricing can be hella confusing and the less than stellar uptime. Generally it's just a pain in the ass. AWS is *slightly* better. But I'd rather own my infrastructure, at home AND at work.

[@aelidrissi3584]

Really you only need a VM with maximal networking capability. The rest are money grabbing confusing services that needs a lot of learning and with no real added value. Services that only take your freedom to make changes or to immigrate if you are not happy

[@patrickcasavant-cssmv]

If they want us to learn their technology's, they should offer always free VM and resources to individual doing lab testing... I don't want to build something that will cost me an arm and a leg after 12 months!!

[@christianlempa]

I think Azure Spot is a very fair option

[@patrickcasavant-cssmv]

@@christianlempa Azure spot look good, i have to work on Azure in my job, it is a whole world, pretty complicated! lol! For now i will stick on OCI free tier, the Ampere 4 cores option with 24 gig ram Always free is the best offer i have found.

[@fordonmekochgalenskaper5665]

Should be nice to try, but no chance that I sign up for an MS account or give them my card number.

[@qodeninja]

LOL @ MS. no thanks

[@Mikesco3]

Aaaannndd.... He's on the dark side... 🤔

[@snax_4820]

You have become a Microsoft salesman. Shame on you!

[@christianlempa]

Just because 1 out of 150+ videos? come on ... :D

[@RazoBeckett.]

please record videos in 30fps .

[@dorofteiionutz3952]

Iff it is free , than you are the product. It wants you to make your infrastructure arround this , and afther that You will pay because trial ends. So. You are the product.

[@horst.zimmermann]

Haha, it's free but we need your payment information..... actually nothing is "free" , if you don't pay with your money you pay with your personal information

[@gnox_]

Azure is not beginners friendly like aws

[@dushkodavchev]

AWS is also not beginner friendly.

[@zyghom]

NO, but if this makes you happy then please

[@christianlempa]

It does :D

[@zyghom]

@@christianlempa I knew it ;)

[@Koqualski]

Dislike 👎

[@webcoach.digital]

Great video with some very useful recommendations. Especially about Azure Spot and chances of saving money in test modes. Thank you!

[@christianlempa]

Thank you 😊