Azure - Compute

1. Virtual Servers (IaaS)

This is the foundational layer, giving you direct control over virtual machines.

Azure Virtual Machines (VMs): This is the core Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering, allowing you to provision and manage virtual servers in the cloud. It is highly flexible and provides full control over the operating system and software configuration. Azure offers a vast catalog of VM series optimized for different workloads, including general purpose, compute-optimized, memory-optimized, and GPU-enabled instances.
Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS): This service allows you to create and manage a group of identical, load-balanced VMs. It is essential for building highly available and scalable applications, as it can automatically increase or decrease the number of VM instances in response to demand or a set schedule.

Azure provides a comprehensive suite of services for running and managing containerized applications, from simple instances to full-blown Kubernetes.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): This is Azure's fully managed Kubernetes offering. AKS simplifies the deployment, management, and scaling of containerized applications using the industry-standard Kubernetes orchestrator. It offloads the operational overhead of managing the Kubernetes control plane, allowing developers to focus on their applications.
Azure Container Apps (ACA): This is a higher-level, serverless container service built on Kubernetes. It is designed for building microservices and web apps without exposing the underlying complexity of the Kubernetes API. ACA handles scaling, networking, and ingress automatically, making it an ideal middle ground between a simple container instance and a full AKS cluster.
Azure Container Instances (ACI): This is the simplest and fastest way to run a single container in Azure without any orchestration. ACI is a serverless offering where you are billed per-second for the resources your container consumes. It is perfect for simple tasks, automation scripts, build jobs, or for quickly bursting workloads from an AKS cluster.

This category allows you to run code without provisioning or managing any underlying servers.

Azure Functions: This is Azure's primary serverless, event-driven compute service. It allows you to run small pieces of code (or "functions") in response to a variety of triggers, such as an HTTP request, a new message in a queue, or a change in a database. You only pay for the compute time you consume, and it scales automatically based on demand. It is the direct competitor to AWS Lambda.

This is a fully managed environment for deploying and scaling web applications and APIs.

Azure App Service: This is a powerful and mature PaaS offering designed to make it incredibly easy to build, deploy, and scale web applications. Developers can simply upload their code (written in languages like .NET, Java, Node.js, Python, etc.) or a Docker container, and App Service handles all the underlying infrastructure, including patching, security, load balancing, and scaling. It includes features like deployment slots for blue-green deployments and seamless integration with CI/CD pipelines.

These services are tailored for specific, large-scale workloads.

Azure Batch: A managed service for running large-scale parallel and high-performance computing (HPC) applications efficiently. It manages and schedules the compute-intensive work, automatically provisioning VMs and installing applications to run the jobs. It's ideal for workloads like financial risk modeling, 3D rendering, and media transcoding.
Azure Spring Apps: A fully managed service specifically for developers building Spring Boot microservices (a popular Java framework). Co-developed with VMware, it abstracts away the complexity of managing Spring Cloud infrastructure, allowing developers to focus solely on their application code.

This is a key strategic advantage for Azure, extending its management capabilities to on-premises environments.

Azure Arc: A hybrid cloud service that extends the Azure control plane to manage resources located outside of Azure. With Azure Arc, you can govern, manage, and secure your on-premises Windows and Linux servers, Kubernetes clusters, and data services as if they were running natively in Azure, providing a single pane of glass for your entire hybrid environment.