Keeping track of your AWS resources is critical. You don’t want to find out your server is overloaded from your customers — you want AWS to tell you first! In this post, we’ll set up monitoring for an EC2 instance using CloudWatch, send alerts with SNS, and push them straight into Slack for your team.

By the end, you’ll have a full end-to-end notification system:

CloudWatch → Alarm → SNS → Email + Slack ✅

In this guide, we’ll learn how to use Azure’s container services entirely from the Azure Portal—no command-line tools required.

We’ll cover these core services:

1. Azure Container Registry (ACR)
2. Azure Container Instances (ACI)
3. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
4. Azure Container Apps (ACA)

Along the way, we’ll explain:

• When and why to use each service.
• How they connect together.
• Step-by-step portal demos.

✅ 1. Azure Container Registry (ACR) – Your Private Image Store

What is ACR? Azure Container Registry is your private storage for container images (Docker images). It’s like a secure warehouse where you store your app’s containers before running them in Azure.

Azure App Service is one of the most popular services in Azure for hosting web applications, APIs, and backend services. However, many developers only use the basic deployment capabilities, missing out on its full power.

In this detailed blog, we’ll cover:

1. Azure App Service Overview
2. Deployment Center (Automated Deployments)
3. Deployment Slots (Zero Downtime Releases)
4. App Service Networking (Secure Network Architecture)
5. Autoscaling (Automatic Load Handling)
6. Security Best Practices (Locking Down Your App)

Let’s dive in.

🛠 1. Initial Setup – One-Time Only

📌 Scenario: You’re using Git for the first time on your machine.

Set your user details (required for commits):

git config --global user.name "Alice Dev"
git config --global user.email "alice@example.com"

Optional settings:

git config --global core.editor "code --wait"         # Use VS Code as Git editor
git config --global pull.rebase false                 # Pull uses merge by default
git config --global init.defaultBranch main           # Default branch is main, not master

📥 2. Cloning a Repository

📌 Scenario: You’re joining a team or starting a project from GitHub or Azure DevOps.

git clone https://github.com/org/project.git
cd project

🧠 Analogy: Cloning is like downloading a working copy of a shared Google Doc where Git tracks every change.

Studying for AZ-104 or prepping for interviews? This post will walk you through all major Azure networking concepts using real-world analogies — because once you can see it in your head, you can answer it out loud.

🧱 Azure Virtual Network (VNet)

What it is: Your own private space in the Azure cloud.

🧠 Analogy: A city where only your buildings (VMs, apps, databases) live. No one outside can enter unless you say so.

🧱 What Is Azure Storage (And Why Should You Care)?

Let’s start simple.

Imagine you own a bakery. You’ve got recipes (text files), security camera footage (videos), invoices (PDFs), and employee info (spreadsheets).

You want to:

• Keep them safe 🔐
• Access them from anywhere 🌍
• Share them with others securely ✉️
• Automatically back them up 🔁

Azure Storage is Microsoft’s way of giving you all that — but in the cloud. It’s like renting a virtual storage warehouse, and it’s more powerful and flexible than any USB stick, Google Drive, or hard disk.

🧭 Introduction

Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is one of the most powerful services AWS offers — it lets you rent virtual machines in the cloud in minutes. But what exactly is an EC2 instance? How does AWS slice physical machines into VMs? And how can you use EC2 cost-efficiently?

This post breaks EC2 into two parts:

1. The Technology Behind EC2 – virtualization, containers, and the Nitro hypervisor.
2. Using EC2 Effectively – instance types, pricing models, and best practices.

📦 Part 1: The Virtualization Stack – What EC2 Really Is

🧱 Layer 1: Physical Server — The Foundation

At the base is a physical server in an AWS data center. It’s a giant machine with powerful CPUs and massive RAM.

So, you’ve started working with AWS — maybe you’re building a product, exploring DevOps, or just trying to get your infrastructure right. But as you navigate the AWS Management Console, one service keeps showing up in every tutorial, every architecture, and every best practices list:

IAM – Identity and Access Management.

What is IAM, and why does it matter so much?

Unlocking Azure PIM: Your Guide to Smarter, Safer Cloud Access (A Deep Dive)

In today’s cloud-first world, organizations are rapidly migrating their digital assets and operations to platforms like Microsoft Azure. This brings incredible agility and scalability but also introduces complex security challenges. One of the most critical aspects of cloud security is managing who has access to what, and for how long. This is where Azure Privileged Identity Management (PIM) steps in, acting as a crucial guardian for your cloud infrastructure.

In today’s cloud-first world, Virtual Machines (VMs) are the backbone of countless applications. While the basic concept of a VM as “a computer in the cloud” is well-understood, truly mastering Azure VMs goes beyond simple deployment. It involves leveraging powerful features for efficient management, seamless scaling, robust high availability, rapid disaster recovery, and ironclad security.

Let’s dive into the essential Azure VM services and concepts, using the analogy of building and managing a highly advanced, automated Restaurant Chain.