Preface

Cloud developers are in high demand right now, and as this demand continues to grow, so too does the requirement for up-to-date knowledge of the ever-evolving plethora of cloud technologies and features. One of the most popular ways in which to provide evidence of possessing the knowledge required to be a successful cloud developer is by obtaining relevant certifications.

The chapters of this book are structured in a way that aligns with the skills measured in the AZ-204 exam, so you can see which area of the exam is being addressed in each chapter. You’ll explore all the services and features covered by the exam in a clear, succinct way, including practical exercises to follow along to get a firm understanding of concepts, with access to downloadable code examples if required.

Who this book is for

This book is intended to help professional developers with experience in Microsoft Azure in preparing to take and pass the AZ-204: Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure exam, as well as developers looking to increase their existing knowledge of how to develop solutions for Azure.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Azure and Cloud Fundamentals, recaps some of the fundamentals of cloud computing and some important concepts of Azure, providing a sound foundation for the rest of the book.

Chapter 2, Implementing IaaS Solutions, builds on the topics discussed in the previous chapter by exploring Infrastructure as a Service solutions, including virtual machines and ARM templates, finishing with containers and their associated Azure solutions.

Chapter 3, Creating Azure App Service Web Apps, covers one of the most used services in Azure development, Azure App Service. This chapter introduces App Service and goes into detail about authentication and authorization within App Service, networking features, and app settings and logging within App Service.

Chapter 4, Implementing Azure Functions, starts with an introduction to Azure Functions, including hosting, scaling, and binding options. We explore developing, testing, and deploying functions, along with stateful durable functions.

Chapter 5, Developing Solutions That Use Cosmos DB Storage, explores NoSQL solutions hosted in Azure, including coverage of Azure Table storage and its features and leveraging service from the code. This chapter also provides a deep dive into Cosmos DB, explaining Cosmos DB scaling, high availability, consistency, and recovery features. It demonstrates querying from the Azure portal and the SDK.

Chapter 6, Developing Solutions That Use Azure Blob Storage, covers Azure Blob Storage and its role in supporting deployed applications and services in Azure. You will learn about the features of the Azure Blob Storage service and study cases where Azure Blob Storage can help to host web applications.

Chapter 7, Implementing User Authentication and Authorization, is where, after a detailed introduction to the Microsoft identity platform, we implement authentication with the Microsoft Authentication Library. Building on this, we explore Microsoft Graph and demonstrate making calls to it within code. We then finish with a detailed look at shared access signatures for authorizing access to storage resources in Azure.

Chapter 8, Implementing Secure Cloud Solutions, is where we explore using Azure Key Vault to secure application secrets, including authorization and authentication with Key Vault. This leads us on to the topic of managed identities, including options and best practices. The final topic of this chapter is Azure App Configuration, for centrally and securely managing your application configuration settings and feature flags.

Chapter 9, Integrating Caching and Content Delivery within Solutions, starts with an introduction to dynamic content caching with Azure Cache for Redis and continues to explore static content caching with Azure CDN, including different caching patterns, high availability, pricing models, and integration with Azure platform services such as Azure App Service and Azure Blob Storage.

Chapter 10, Troubleshooting Solutions by Using Metrics and Log Data, explores a variety of telemetry and monitoring topics, including troubleshooting crashes with Application Insights, monitoring web logs with Azure Monitor, and creating live dashboards and workbooks using Kusto queries.

Chapter 11, Implementing API Management, is all about web APIs, Swagger, and the API Management service, with a deep dive into advanced configuration using policies.

Chapter 12, Developing Event-Based Solutions, explores a variety of the event-based services available in Azure, including Event Hubs for ingesting big data, Event Grid for reactive programming, IoT Hub for telemetry monitoring, and Azure Relay for hyper-cloud communication.

Chapter 13, Developing Message-Based Solutions, is all about the implementation of messaging patterns. We will introduce messaging services in Azure, starting with Azure Storage and then moving on to Azure Service Bus. We provide guidelines for reliable content delivery with message-based services. We finish with an introduction into the concept of DevOps and some examples of DevOps practices.

Chapter 14, Mock Exam Questions, is a mock exam to build your familiarity with the types of questions you might be presented with in the exam. We introduce the different types of exam questions and timings and then get straight into the mock exam questions.

To get the most out of this book

You will need the latest version of Visual Studio Code, .NET, PowerShell Core, the Azure CLI, Git, and Docker Desktop. All code examples have been tested using .NET 6.0, PowerShell Core 7, and version 2.37.0 of the Azure CLI on Windows 10 and Windows 11. However, they should also work with future releases as well.

Check the license requirements for Docker Desktop if you want to follow along with the exercises in Chapter 2, Implementing IaaS Solutions. A Docker Personal plan is free for personal, individual use. Each chapter details which (if any) Visual Studio Code extensions are required.

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code from the book’s GitHub repository (a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

As every chapter in this book relates to Microsoft Azure, you will also need a non-production Azure tenant and subscription that can be used to follow the exercises and enable your own learning and experimentation.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Developing-Solutions-for-Microsoft-Azure-AZ-204-Exam-Guide. If there’s an update to the code, it will be updated in the GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Code in Action

The Code in Action videos for this book can be viewed at https://bit.ly/3LtUSAp.

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots and diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://packt.link/1TGWe.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: “The URL includes the scope parameter, scope=openid+profile+email, which consists of the standard OIDC permissions that the User.Read permission uses.”

A block of code is set as follows:

using Microsoft.Identity.Client;
const string _clientId = "<app/client ID>";
const string _tenantId = "<tenant ID>";
var app = PublicClientApplicationBuilder

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

var app = PublicClientApplicationBuilder
    .Create(_clientId)
    .WithAuthority(AzureCloudInstance.AzurePublic, _tenantId)
    .WithRedirectUri("http://localhost")
    .Build();

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

$ dotnet new console -n "<app name>"

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: “Select Microsoft for Identity provider, leave everything as default, and click Add.”

Tips or important notes

Appear like this.

Get in touch

Feedback from our readers is always welcome.

General feedback: If you have questions about any aspect of this book, email us at [email protected] and mention the book title in the subject of your message.

Errata: Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you have found a mistake in this book, we would be grateful if you would report this to us. Please visit www.packtpub.com/support/errata and fill in the form.

Piracy: If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the internet, we would be grateful if you would provide us with the location address or website name. Please contact us at [email protected] with a link to the material.

If you are interested in becoming an author: If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, please visit authors.packtpub.com.

Share Your Thoughts

Once you’ve read Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure AZ-204 Exam Guide, we’d love to hear your thoughts! Please click here to go straight to the Amazon review page for this book and share your feedback.

Your review is important to us and the tech community and will help us make sure we’re delivering excellent quality content.