Learning Azure Functions

Embracing the cloud—a Serverless architecture to solve problems at scale About This Book Learn to develop, manage, deploy, and monitor Azure functions in any language. Make the most out of Azure functions to build scalable systems. A step-by-step guide that will help you eliminate the pain points of implementing a serverless architecture. Who This Book Is For This book aims at IT architects and developers who want to build scalable systems and deploy serverless applications with Azure functions. No prior knowledge of Azure functions is necessary. What You Will Learn Understand the folder structure of a function and the purposes of the files Deploy a function and test it Explore the common triggers that are used to activate a function Discover how bindings can be used to output the results of a function Build a dll that has functionality that can be leveraged by a function Chain functions to allow the invocation of one function from another Understand how to monitor the health of your functions In Detail Functions help you easily run small pieces of code in cloud with Azure functions without worrying about a whole application or the infrastructure to run it. With Azure functions, you can use triggers to execute your code and bindings to simplify the input and output of your code. This book will start with the basics of Azure Functions. You will learn the steps to set up the environment and the tools that we will be using in the further chapters. Once you have a better understanding of this, we will be creating our first hello world function app. Later you will be introduced to triggers, how they are used to activate a function, and how binding can be used to output results of a function.You will also explore the steps to create an assembly with complex functionality that can be used by functions. Next, this book will teach you to scale your functions and use them to process data, integrate systems, and build simple APIs and microservices. Finally, this book will cover some diagnostic techniques with Azure App services and best practices of working with Azure Functions. By the end of this book, you will be well-versed with the techniques of scaling your Azure functions and making the most of serverless architecture. Style and Approach A step-by-side guide filled with real world examples that will guide you with the steps to build a scalable Cloud system

Start creating highly scalable apps and monitoring your Azure functions in production using Azure Functions 4.0. This book thoroughly explains durable functions for statefulness, covering the basics all the way through how to create bindings in durable functions. It’s a deep dive into the Azure Functions serverless API and will guide you through the process of converting monolithic applications to use Azure Functions. This updated edition is revised to cover changes to Azure Portal and delves into Azure Functions runtime versions, the Isolated Process model, and offers a comparison of Azure Functions and Azure Logic Apps. You’ll also learn how to register binding extensions and gain an introduction to Azure Functions binding expression patterns, along with best practices for using Azure Functions. Beginning Azure Functions will provide you with the foundational knowledge to work with Azure Functions and teach you practical skills, such as how to create Azure Functions using different triggers and bindings. You’ll also see how to monitor your Azure Functions in production with live monitoring, and how to perform remote debugging and how to secure your functions. Upon completing this book, you’ll understand Azure Functions and how to create them using the Azure portal and Visual Studio. What You Will Learn Use triggers and bindings in an Azure function Create a serverless API using Azure Functions Understand durable Azure functions, including scalability, disaster recovery, and geo-distribution Deploy Azure Function and monitor it in production Who This Book Is For Developers who want to get started with Azure Functions, as well as DevOps developers, who are looking for guidance in how to deploy and monitor functions.

Without established design patterns to guide them, developers have had to build distributed systems from scratch, and most of these systems are very unique indeed. Today, the increasing use of containers has paved the way for core distributed system patterns and reusable containerized components. This practical guide presents a collection of repeatable, generic patterns to help make the development of reliable distributed systems far more approachable and efficient. Author Brendan Burns—Director of Engineering at Microsoft Azure—demonstrates how you can adapt existing software design patterns for designing and building reliable distributed applications. Systems engineers and application developers will learn how these long-established patterns provide a common language and framework for dramatically increasing the quality of your system. Understand how patterns and reusable components enable the rapid development of reliable distributed systems Use the side-car, adapter, and ambassador patterns to split your application into a group of containers on a single machine Explore loosely coupled multi-node distributed patterns for replication, scaling, and communication between the components Learn distributed system patterns for large-scale batch data processing covering work-queues, event-based processing, and coordinated workflows

Become an expert in implementing Azure Functions to work seamlessly with your serverless applications Key FeaturesDevelop scalable, robust multi-tier apps without worrying about infrastructure needsDeploy and manage cost-effective and highly available serverless apps using Azure FunctionsAccelerate enterprise-level application development by seamlessly integrating different cloud services with Azure FunctionsBook Description Application development has evolved from traditional monolithic app development to using serverless options and microservices. This book is designed to guide you through using Microsoft's Azure Functions to process data, integrate systems, and build simple APIs and microservices. You will discover how to apply serverless computing to speed up deployment and reduce downtime. You'll also explore Azure Functions, including its core functionalities and essential tools, along with understanding how to debug and even customize Azure Functions. In addition to this, the book will take you through how you can effectively implement DevOps and automation in your working environment. Toward the concluding chapters, you'll cover some quick tips, troubleshooting techniques, and real-world serverless use cases that will help you make the most of serverless computing. By the end of this book, you will have gained the skills you need to develop and deliver cost-effective Azure serverless solutions. What you will learnCreate and deploy advanced Azure FunctionsLearn to extend the runtime of Azure FunctionsOrchestrate your logic through code or a visual workflowAdd caching, security, routing, and filtering to your APIsUse serverless technologies in real-world scenariosUnderstand how to apply DevOps and automation to your working environmentWho this book is for This book is designed for cloud administrators, architects, and developers interested in building scalable systems and deploying serverless applications with Azure Functions. Prior knowledge of core Microsoft Azure services and Azure Functions is necessary to understand the topics covered in this book.

Learn Azure in a Month of Lunches, Second Edition, is a tutorial on writing, deploying, and running applications in Azure. In it, you’ll work through 21 short lessons that give you real-world experience. Each lesson includes a hands-on lab so you can try out and lock in your new skills. Summary You can be incredibly productive with Azure without mastering every feature, function, and service. Learn Azure in a Month of Lunches, Second Edition gets you up and running quickly, teaching you the most important concepts and tasks in 21 practical bite-sized lessons. As you explore the examples, exercises, and labs, you'll pick up valuable skills immediately and take your first steps to Azure mastery! This fully revised new edition covers core changes to the Azure UI, new Azure features, Azure containers, and the upgraded Azure Kubernetes Service. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the technology Microsoft Azure is vast and powerful, offering virtual servers, application templates, and prebuilt services for everything from data storage to AI. To navigate it all, you need a trustworthy guide. In this book, Microsoft engineer and Azure trainer Iain Foulds focuses on core skills for creating cloud-based applications. About the book Learn Azure in a Month of Lunches, Second Edition, is a tutorial on writing, deploying, and running applications in Azure. In it, you’ll work through 21 short lessons that give you real-world experience. Each lesson includes a hands-on lab so you can try out and lock in your new skills. What's inside Understanding Azure beyond point-and-click Securing applications and data Automating your environment Azure services for machine learning, containers, and more About the reader This book is for readers who can write and deploy simple web or client/server applications. About the author Iain Foulds is an engineer and senior content developer with Microsoft. Table of Contents PART 1 - AZURE CORE SERVICES 1 Before you begin 2 Creating a virtual machine 3 Azure Web Apps 4 Introduction to Azure Storage 5 Azure Networking basics PART 2 - HIGH AVAILABILITY AND SCALE 6 Azure Resource Manager 7 High availability and redundancy 8 Load-balancing applications 9 Applications that scale 10 Global databases with Cosmos DB 11 Managing network traffic and routing 12 Monitoring and troubleshooting PART 3 - SECURE BY DEFAULT 13 Backup, recovery, and replication 14 Data encryption 15 Securing information with Azure Key Vault 16 Azure Security Center and updates PART 4 - THE COOL STUFF 17 Machine learning and artificial intelligence 18 Azure Automation 19 Azure containers 20 Azure and the Internet of Things 21 Serverless computing

Serverless computing is radically changing the way we build and deploy applications. With cloud providers running servers and managing machine resources, companies now can focus solely on the application’s business logic and functionality. This hands-on book shows experienced programmers how to build and deploy scalable machine learning and deep learning models using serverless architectures with Microsoft Azure. You’ll learn step-by-step how to code machine learning into your projects using Python and pre-trained models that include tools such as image recognition, speech recognition, and classification. You’ll also examine issues around deployment and continuous delivery including scaling, security, and monitoring. This book is divided into four parts: Cloud-based development: learn the basics of serverless computing with machine learning, functions as a service (FaaS), and the use of APIs Adding intelligence: create serverless applications using Azure Functions; learn how to use pre-built machine-learning and deep-learning models Deployment and continuous delivery: get up to speed with Azure Kubernetes Service, as well as Azure Security Center, and Azure Monitoring Application examples: deliver data at the edge, build conversational interfaces, and use convolutional neural networks for image classification

Build serverless solutions using Azure Functions. This book provides you with a deep understanding of Azure Functions so you can build highly scalable and reliable serverless applications. The book starts with an introduction to Azure Functions and demonstrates triggers and bindings with use cases. The process to build an OTP mailer with Queue Storage Trigger and SendGrid output binding is presented, and timer triggers and blob storage binding are covered. Creating custom binding for Azure Functions and building a serverless API using Azure Functions and Azure SQL are discussed. You will know how to build a serverless API using Azure Functions and Azure Cosmos DB, and you will go over enabling application insights and Azure Monitor. Storing function secrets in Azure Key Vault is discussed as well as authentication and authorization using Azure Active Directory. You will learn how to secure your serverless apps using API Management and deploy your Azure Functions using IDEs. Deploying your Azure Functions using CI/CD pipelines is demonstrated along with running Azure Functions in containers. You will learn how to leverage Azure Cognitive Services to build intelligent serverless apps. And the authors introduce you to Azure Durable functions and teach you how to integrate Azure Functions in the logic app workflow. They also discuss best practices and pitfalls to avoid while designing Azure Functions. After reading this book, you will be able to design and deploy Azure Functions and implement solutions to real-world business problems through serverless applications. What Will You Learn Monitor and secure Azure Functions Build and deploy Azure Functions Enable continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) DevOps strategies for Azure Functions Run Azure Functions on Azure Kubernetes Cluster Who This Book Is For Experienced developers, cloud architects, and tech enthusiasts in Azure

Harness the power of the Cloud, leveraging the speed and scale of Azure Serverless computing About This Book Take advantage of the agility, scale, and cost-effectiveness of the cloud using Azure Serverless compute Build scalable, reliable, and cost-effecient applications with Serverless architecture and .NET Learn to use Azure functions to their fullest potential in .NET Who This Book Is For This book is for .NET developers who would like to learn about serverless architecture. Basic C# programming knowledge is assumed. What You Will Learn Understand the best practices of Serverless architecture Learn how how to deploy a Text Sentiment Evaluation application in an Azure Serverless environment Implement security, identity, and access control Take advantage of the speed of deployment in the cloud Configure application health monitoring, logging, and alerts Design your application to ensure cost effectiveness, high availability, and scale In Detail Serverless architecture allows you to build and run applications and services without having to manage the infrastructure. Many companies have started adopting serverless architecture for their applications to save cost and improve scalability. This book will be your companion in designing Serverless architecture for your applications using the .NET runtime, with Microsoft Azure as the cloud service provider. You will begin by understanding the concepts of Serverless architecture, its advantages and disadvantages. You will then set up the Azure environment and build a basic application using a sample text sentiment evaluation function. From here, you will be shown how to run services in a Serverless environment. We will cover the integration with other Azure and 3rd party services such as Azure Service Bus, as well as configuring dependencies on NuGet libraries, among other topics. After this, you will learn about debugging and testing your Azure functions, and then automating deployment from source control. Securing your application and monitoring its health will follow from there, and then in the final part of the book, you will learn how to Design for High Availability, Disaster Recovery and Scale, as well as how to take advantage of the cloud pay-as-you-go model to design cost-effective services. We will finish off with explaining how azure functions scale up against AWS Lambda, Azure Web Jobs, and Azure Batch compare to other types of compute-on-demand services. Whether you've been working with Azure for a while, or you're just getting started, by the end of the book you will have all the information you need to set up and deploy applications to the Azure Serverless Computing environment. Style and approach This step-by-step guide shows you the concepts and features of Serverless architecture in Azure with .NET.