Azure Foundational Topics

Microsoft Azure is one of the two clouds every IT professional is now expected to understand — and the AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals certification is where most people start. This book is the structured, plain-English guide to both.

Across nineteen chapters and a set of architecture deep dives, Rodrigo J. R. Silva builds your Azure knowledge from the ground up: the global infrastructure of regions and availability zones, the resource and management hierarchy, core compute, storage, and networking services, the shared responsibility model, identity with Microsoft Entra ID, and the governance and compliance tools that keep real deployments safe.

The second half is built for people who own a cloud bill. You'll work through subscriptions and billing, Azure pricing models, Cost Management, reservations and savings plans, and a practical FinOps playbook for keeping spend under control.

Every chapter is mapped to the AZ-900 exam objectives and written to be used, not just memorised — with quick-reference appendices, a CLI and PowerShell cheat sheet, service limits, a certification roadmap, and a full glossary.

Whether you're sitting the exam or just need Azure to make sense, this is the foundation to build on.