Azure DevOps Essentials
Everything you need to be productive on Microsoft Azure — before touching AKS.
Microsoft built Azure to extend Windows Server, Active Directory, and enterprise IT into the cloud. This track covers the core Azure services every DevOps engineer needs: identity (Entra ID), networking, compute, containers, serverless, secrets, observability, and CI/CD.
Modules
Section titled “Modules”| # | Module | Time | What You’ll Learn |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Entra ID & Azure RBAC | 2.5h | Tenants, Managed Identities, RBAC |
| 2 | Virtual Networks (VNet) | 3h | NSGs, ASGs, VNet Peering, hub-and-spoke |
| 3 | VMs & VM Scale Sets | 2h | VMSS, Availability Zones, Azure LB |
| 4 | Blob Storage & Data Lake | 1.5h | Access tiers, SAS tokens, identity access |
| 5 | Azure DNS & Traffic Manager | 1.5h | Routing methods, Front Door basics |
| 6 | ACR (Container Registry) | 1h | ACR Tasks, geo-replication, Private Link |
| 7 | ACI & Container Apps | 3h | Standalone containers, KEDA, Dapr |
| 8 | Azure Functions | 2h | Triggers, bindings, Durable Functions |
| 9 | Azure Key Vault | 1.5h | Secrets, keys, certificates, Managed Identity |
| 10 | Azure Monitor & Log Analytics | 2.5h | KQL, alerts, App Insights |
| 11 | CI/CD: Azure DevOps & GitHub Actions | 2h | Pipelines YAML, OIDC, self-hosted agents |
| 12 | ARM & Bicep | 1.5h | Templates, modules, What-If deployments |
Total time: ~24 hours
Prerequisites
Section titled “Prerequisites”- Cloud Native 101
- Hyperscaler Rosetta Stone — recommended