Azure Cloud Platform and Services
Microsoft Azure is a comprehensive cloud platform providing infrastructure, platform, and software services for building modern applications. This collection covers Azure services, deployment patterns, cost optimization, and practical cloud architecture decisions for organizations adopting Azure.
Azure Services and Strategic Use
Azure encompasses hundreds of services spanning compute, storage, networking, databases, AI/ML, integration, and analytics. Effective cloud architects understand not just what services exist, but when to use them and when alternatives are more appropriate.
Compute Services range from virtual machines for lift-and-shift migrations, to App Service for web applications, to container services and serverless options. The choice depends on workload characteristics, team expertise, and operational requirements.
Data Services include relational databases, NoSQL options, data warehousing, and analytics platforms. Each makes specific trade-offs about consistency, scalability, query patterns, and operational complexity.
Integration and Messaging services connect applications, enable asynchronous workflows, and support event-driven architectures.
Cloud Adoption and Operations
Articles in this section cover Azure service selection, infrastructure as code with Bicep and Terraform, cost management strategies, security and compliance, and operational patterns for production Azure workloads. Topics include migration strategies, hybrid scenarios, and designing for Azure’s specific capabilities.
The emphasis remains practical: understanding Azure options, making informed architectural choices, and avoiding vendor lock-in decisions made without deliberation.
AKS Disaster Recovery: Why Your Untested Backup Will Fail
Your cluster will fail. The question is not if, but when, and whether you can recover before customers notice. Most organizations discover their backup strategy does not work during an actual outage, when recovery time matters most and manual heroics cannot save you.
If you run Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) in production, you need a recovery plan that engineers can execute half asleep at 2 AM. We will go through what to back up, how Velero works in day-to-day operations, when Azure Backup for AKS is enough, and how to design realistic failover with measurable Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO).
The goal is simple: repeatable recovery procedures you have already tested, not a document that looks good in Confluence but fails during an incident.
Nobody Runs Your Cleanup Script (And Regulators Know It)
“Storage is cheap” — until your data retention strategy becomes evidence in a GDPR lawsuit.
After 15+ years in enterprise software, I’ve seen this pattern in project after project: elaborate wiki documentation, a cleanup script nobody runs, and production databases growing exponentially with personal data that should have been deleted years ago. The compliance checkbox is marked, but the actual deletion never happens.
When regulators investigate, they don’t want your policy documents. They want execution logs proving deletion actually happened. Azure Storage lifecycle policies, Cosmos DB TTL, and scheduled Functions give you exactly that — automated retention that runs without human intervention, with full audit trails.
Container Registry & Image Security in AKS Deployments
Your TLS Config is Probably Wrong: Five Audit Failures I Keep Finding