Microsoft Azure is a cloud service that is constantly expanding to help your organization meet business challenges. You can build, and manage to deploy applications using the following Azure management options.
  • Azure Portal
  • Azure PowerShell and CLI
  • Azure Cloud Shell
  • Azure Mobile app
I have received many messages from users,” Want to learn Azure. But do not have an Azure subscription. Are there any tools? Simulators? etc” in this article, will elaborate and share how you can learn Azure without paying Subscriptions.

You can activate free Azure benefits with the following different options,

  • Azure Free Subscription
  • Microsoft Learn Azure Sandbox subscription.
  • Visual Studio subscription benefits (Formerly MSDN Subscriptions) 

How to learn Azure without paid subscription

Azure free Subscription

The Azure free account includes access to a number of Azure products that are free for 12 months, ₹13, 300 credit to spend for the first 30 days of SignUp and access to more than 25 products that are always free. 

You can learn from here more about the Azure free account.

How to learn Azure without paid subscription

Microsoft Learn Azure Sandbox subscription Microsoft Learn is an online learning platform where you can gain practical knowledge about Azure by completing a bunch of courses and hands-on labs. Unlike the other learning platforms, it provides a free sandbox (dedicated subscription) that you can use to complete the courses

How to learn Azure without paid subscription

Visual Studio subscription benefits [MCT, MVP, FTE, MPN, NFR] Visual Studio subscribers can use Microsoft Azure at no extra charge. With your monthly Azure DevTest individual credit, Azure is your personal sandbox for dev and test. You can create virtual machines, cloud services, and other Azure resources. Credit amounts vary based on subscription level.

Microsoft no longer offers Visual Studio Professional Annual subscriptions and Visual Studio Enterprise Annual subscriptions in Cloud Subscriptions. There will be no change to existing customers' experience and ability to renew, increase, decrease, or cancel their subscriptions.

If someone in your organization purchases, subscriptions for your organization, contact your Visual Studio subscription administrator and request a subscription that provides the monthly credit that you need.

You can sign in in your visual studio benefits https://my.visualstudio.com/benefits. and see the Azure credit . You can find below the table for Azure credit eligibility.


  • Visual Studio Enterprise Standard  
    •  $150 monthly credit
  • Visual Studio Enterprise with GitHub Enterprise
    • $150 monthly credit
  • Visual Studio Enterprise monthly
    • NA
  • Visual Studio Professional Standard
    • $150 monthly credit
  • Visual Studio Professional with GitHub Enterprise
    • $150 monthly credit
  • Visual Studio Professional monthly
    • Not Available
  • Visual Studio Test Pro
    • 50 monthly credit
  • MSDN Platforms
    • 100 monthly credit
  • Visual Studio Enterprise – Not For ReSale[NFR]
    • $150 monthly credit
  • Visual Studio Enterprise – FTE
    • $150 monthly credit
  • Visual Studio Enterprise - Microsoft Partner Network
    • $150 monthly credit
  • Visual Studio Professional - Microsoft Partner Network
    • NA
  • Visual Studio Enterprise – Imagine (Standard)
    • NA
  • Visual Studio Enterprise – Imagine (Premium)
    • NA
  • Visual Studio Enterprise – BizSpark
    • $150 monthly credit
  • Visual Studio Enterprise – MCT Software & Services
    • 100 monthly credit
  • Visual Studio Enterprise – MCT Software & Services Developer
    • $150 monthly credit


The Microsoft certification is become more trend because of a lot of job openings for whose completed certification, same time most employees searching the internet “Free Azure dumps”,” Free Training “and free certification Voucher, I will share great information for who’s looking to do certification and some company learning team still not may aware this info, still they are asking to submit the bill for refund the certification expenses reimbursement.

Microsoft provides the Microsoft Enterprise Skills Initiative (ESI) for free. The ESI program includes multiple courses, a Certificate practice exam, free certification voucher for developers, administrators, or engineers, with one-time retakes.

Enterprise Skills Initiative: Welcome - Microsoft

How to know your Company's eligibility for ESI Benefits

Microsoft does not mention in public about criteria for approval. If your employer has a nontrivial Azure subscription with Microsoft and bulks MSDN business with Microsoft, your company may qualify. Most major companies fit into this so you can log on to the ESI website with your company email id. Some companies won’t allow you to log in to your personal computer so log in with your company computer.

What is ESI in Microsoft?

SignUp Enterprise Skill Initiative

You can follow the below steps for the Signup Enterprise skill initiative

Step 1: Redirect to https://esi.microsoft.com/, if you have a company laptop use the same because some company not allowed to login into personal computers.

Step 2: Provide your company email id. For example, some company has multiple email id like employeeid@domain.com or employeename@domain.com, so you have tried with your base email id or try one by one.

ESI "company and personal" Link - Microsoft Training Support

Step3: Next steps, it will redirect to the Microsoft default login page to provide login details, or if already logged in, automatically redirect to the home page.

Suppose if your company is eligible for enterprise skill, not initiated, you will get the following error message.

Esi Work account tag to new personal accout - Microsoft .

Profile Setting

After the login is successful and if you are logging in for the first time, then you will see a profile settings menu where it will ask you which role you are interested to train yourself, your language, and your country.

Unable to logon to Enterprise Skills Initiative Support

ESI user benefits

The ESI program's main intention is to share the knowledge and give the support for complete certification with good learning and try to avoid third-party fake promises for dumps and training. Let’s understand the benefits of the below steps
  1. Microsoft Learning
  2. Microsoft Learning Live Training
  3. Microsoft certificate practice training
  4. Microsoft certification practice exam simulation with 247 questions
  5. Microsoft Free Exam Voucher
After login, you will be able to see the below screen.

Microsoft ESI free certification

Free Virtual Live Training

The ESI program provides all the Azure developer, Azure Admin, DevOps, Security, and Office 365 courses, The course is available for beginners to experts. My company has ESI benefits and most of my certification is done through the ESI program.

The courses are delivered over Microsoft Teams and conduct labs on Azure. The tutors are Microsoft's internal trainers. I will give a 5-star rating for all the training, it will be more useful.

Microsoft Enterprise Skills Initiative courses

Free Exam Practice test

MeasureUp is the leading provider of Microsoft certification practice tests and assessments for professionals. Written by subject matter experts, the practice tests cover all objectives of the exam in-depth, so you'll be ready for anything. In fact, so you'll pass your certification exam after successfully passing its MeasureUp Practice Test, The cost is around 99$.

Measureup discount code

The Great news, is the above practice exam is also free for you, you can follow the below steps for the free practice test.

Step 1: Log in with https://esi.microsoft.com/

Step 2: Select the Exam preparation.

Step 3: Select your exam and click on the practice test.

Step 4: The practice test simulation will start with around 245 questions. The question will get shuffled and shown the question at a time of 45. As per my experience, if you cleared the practice test, 100% will pass the main exam as well. The practice exam will show answers and clear explanations as well.

Microsoft ESI voucher

Free Exam Voucher

Microsoft certification cost is around $99 USD. The Microsoft ESI program offers a 100% discount voucher to apply at checkout on the Pearson Vue site for the exam. You can follow the below steps to schedule an exam with a free voucher code.

Step 1: Navigate to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/

Step 2: Search and select the exam for which you want to schedule the exam

Step 3: After selecting, you will get the following screen, select your country and click on the Schedule exam button.

free microsoft exam voucher

Personal Microsoft Account Link to ESI Account

You will be asked to sign in or create a new personal email account. If you have an existing registered personal Microsoft account, use it to sign in. If you do not currently have a personal Microsoft account, create a new account with your personal information and your personal email address or your @gmail.com, @hotmail.com email address. Follow the screen prompts and complete the required fields until you are told that you successfully created your account.

The following screen shows the link to the ESI account if you don’t have the link account tab ignore it for now, if you have already click on the linked account and provide your Company ESI account email ID and provide the login details.

Microsoft Dumps exam list

If you have already linked your accounts, you will see the option to claim a 100% by your employee discount, if it's not visible provide the company email id and check the eligibility, after verifying eligibility you will be able to see the like below screen.

How can I get free Microsoft exam voucher

You click on the Claim button, then proceed the all the steps for the scheduled date and accept all agreements, then submit the scheduled exam. The payment will display zero, so it won’t ask for any credit card information.

Video Demo


Summary

Microsoft Dumps List

Hope you all understand the process and it is useful for you. I have explained the same info on all the sessions in Malaysia, Germany, and India, everyone enjoyed and utilized the process, I don’t know which country and the company you are from, please try it yourself, Hope your company is eligible for ESI benefits and you can also utilize, learn and save money 😊
An Azure key vault is a cloud service for securely storing and accessing secrets. A secret is anything that you want to tightly control access to such as API Key and Subscription, Password, Secure content, Connection string, and certification.

The developer no need to write secure content in UI Application, take as an example previously, we storing our database connecting string to in the UI application as a plain text or creating custom encryption algorithm for encrypting and decrypt the connection, now Microsoft provided a fantastic feature for store and retrieve the secure content in Azure key vault and azure will take care for your safety about content.

I am sharing a quick experience that you may also experience same in your working environment, on Prod environment database is more secure and live, but always developer can able to find the prod database connection string from config file and using same connection string developer can able to login database, edit the value, if developer update any value wrongly, that is become a bigger issue and also admin trying to change the password every frequent also application should have to do redeployment. Here, to avoid this issue, the application owners can use the azure Key vault to a prod database.

Azure portal: Create a key vault

A good practice is to create a separate vault for each deployment environment of each of your applications, such as development, test, and production. 

In this article, we will learn more about how to create an Azure key vault using the Azure portal. Once you have created a key vault, you can enable the “Azure monitor Log” to monitor the key vault.

Create Azure Key Vault

Step 1: Navigate to Azure Portal and create / login to the portal

Step 2: create a new azure key vault as shown below

Step 3: Navigate create new Resource > Search “Key Vault”, you will get the following screen and click on create.

Quickstart - Create an Azure Key Vault with the Azure portal

After clicking on the Create new button, you will get the following screen which you can provide info about your key vault
  1. Select Subscription and Resource group.
  2. Provide key vault name, Vault name must only contain alphanumeric characters and dashes and cannot start with a number.
  3. Select the region, which is nearest to your deployment zone.
  4. Pricing tier: Key Vault is designed to store configuration secrets for server apps. It's not intended for storing data belonging to your app's users, This will reflect the cost model. Azure Key Vault service is offered in two service tiers: standard and premium, pricing will refer below table by the West Us region and Indian currency. The best-recommended way, please go and check-inway, please go and check on Microsoft official website for exact current pricing based on your region

Key Vault pricing

You have to fill in the details as shown screen shot below

Manage Key Vault in Azure Stack Hub using the portal - Azure

After clicking on the Review + create a button, the Azure portal will validate the information and will give the confirmation with the review screen

Azure Key Vault Tutorial | Secure secrets, keys and certificates easily

Click on the Creation option and wait for a few min for deployment

Azure Key Vault Reviews 2021: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2

Click to go to Resource and be able to find 3 types of Azure Key Vault (KV) stores: 
  1. secrets
  2.  keys 
  3. certificates (certs).

Azure portal: Create a key vault

Secrets 

 Provides secure storage of secrets, such as DB connection strings, account keys, or passwords for PFX (private key files). The secret is a name-value pair of strings. Secret names must be 1-127 characters long, contain only alphanumeric characters and dashes, and must be unique within a vault. A secret value can be any UTF-8 string up to 25 KB in size.
  1. Upload options have two different types 1. Manual 2. Certificate.
  2. Name: Provide a valid secret name. Secret names can only contain alphanumeric characters and dashes.
  3. Value: Provide the single line value, the Azure Portal currently only supports single-line secret values, use Azure PowerShell to set multi-line values.

Azure portal: Create a key vault

(Cryptographic) Keys 

keys represented as JWK (JSON Web Key). Supports multiple key types and algorithms, and enables the use of Hardware Security Modules (HSM) for high-value keys.

There are 3 options to create the key
  1. Generate - Key type is RSA and EC, Select RSA and EC size and provide activate expiration date
  2. Import – Select your key to upload, Key type is RSA and provide activate expiration date
  3. Restore Backup -Select existing key to upload

Azure portal: Create a key vault=

Certificates 

Certificates are a managed X.509 certificate, which is built on top of keys and secrets and adds an automated renewal feature/auto-rollover. When a Key Vault certificate is created, an addressable key and secret are also created with the same name. The Key Vault key allows key operations and the Key Vault secret allows retrieval of the certificate value as a secret. A Key Vault certificate also contains public x509 certificate metadata.

Azure portal: Create a key vault

If you try to browse on secrets, key, and certificate key identifiers from the azure portal, you will get an unauthorized response because Keyvault is not public internet and is controlled through Active Directory.

Azure portal: Create a key vault

What next?

In this article, You created a new different azure key vault using the Azure portal. Will share in the next article about Key Vault integrate with xamarin mobile applications.
Azure App service logging are the output of runtime trace statement in the different app code. logging feature will help you might only want to see a logged message when a particular level of error has occurred, While developing a Web App or an API, this can be very useful in order to debug it.

Azure provides built-in diagnostics to assist with debugging an App service App. In this article, you will learn what are the different types of diagnostics logging and steps to enable in Azure Portal. I have shared in my previous article details information to create a web app using the Azure portal and use the same application for demo.
Enable diagnostics logging for apps in Azure App Service

Types of Azure App service Logging

Azure provides the below-logging feature in the new Azure portal and all the logging features will support the Windows platform and some of the logging will support Linux as well. Logs can be stored and located for accessing information in the portal.
  1. Application Logging (Filesystem and Blob)
  2. Web Server logging (Filesystem and Storage)
  3. Detailed Error Message
  4. Failed request tracing

Step to Enable Application logging

Application logs message generated by the application. There are two options available in application logging as Filesystem and Blob. Contains one or more text files. The format of the log messages depends on the logging provider and access logging in the following directory - /Logfile/Application/

Filesystem

The Filesystem option is for temporary debugging purposes and turns itself off in 12 hours.

Blob

The Blob option is for long-term logging and needs a blob storage container to write logs to.

Error Level

Application error detail fall into the following error level
  1. Error – Included category by Error and Critical
  2. Warning - Included category by Warning, Error, and Critical
  3. Information - Included category by Info, Warning, Error, and Critical
  4. Verbose - Trace, Debug, Info, Warning, Error, Critical (all categories)
You can follow the below steps to enable application logging for Windows apps in the Azure portal.

Step 1: Navigate to the Azure portal and select your Web app and select App Service logs.
Enable diagnostics logging for apps in Azure App Service

Step 2: Select on either Application logging Filesystem or Blob or both, in this demo I have enabled Application logging as a File system.
Step 3: You can also set the Error level as Error, warning, information, verbose.
Step 4: Select Save Options.

Step to Enable Web Server logging

Web Server Logging also having two different types of storage and File Systems, Raw HTTP request data in the W3C extended log file format. Each log message includes data such as the HTTP method, resource URI, client IP, client port, user agent, response code, and store log file in the /LogFiles/http/RawLogs/. You can follow the below steps to enable webserver logging

Step 1: Navigate to the Azure portal and select your Web app and select App Service logs.

Enable diagnostics logging for apps in Azure App Service

Step 2: Select on either Web server logging Filesystem or Blob, in this demo I have enabled server logging as a File system.
Step 3: Provide Quota and Retention Period (Days), set the number of days the logs should be retained.
Step 4: Once all the details filled and click on save options

Detailed Error Message

Detail Error Message selects as ON, they will generate an error message as a File system and Copies of the .htm error pages that would have been sent to the client browser. For security reasons, detailed error pages shouldn't be sent to clients in production, but App Service can save the error page each time an application error occurs that has HTTP code 400 or greater and file will store in the directory is http://logfiles/DetailedErrors/

Enable diagnostics logging for apps in Azure App Service

Failed request tracing

The Failed request tracing including a trace of the IIS components used to process the request and the time taken in each component. It's useful if you want to improve site performance or isolate a specific HTTP error. The file format is XML files and an XSL file. You can view the formatted XML files in the browser and a file store directory is /LogFiles/W3SVC#########/

Enable diagnostics logging for apps in Azure App Service

Download Log File

All the different logging has Specify logs stored in the App Service file system, the easiest way is to download the ZIP file in the browser at

Windows apps: https://<app-name>.scm.azurewebsites.net/api/dump

Linux/container apps: https://<app-name>.scm.azurewebsites.net/api/logs/docker/zip


Summary

In this article, you have learned detail about the Azure logging feature and how to enable different logging uses the Azure portal, Will share in the next article about implementing logging and send log messages to the application logs. If you have any questions/feedback/ issues, please write them in the comment box.
The Azure App Service is an HTTP-based service for hosting web applications, REST APIs, and mobile back ends. We can create and deploy using different languages like .Net, .Net Core, Java, Ruby, Node.js. PHP, or Python. In the previous article shared steps to create web apps using visual studio, in this article will show the steps create a web app by using Azure Portal.

Create an App Service by using Azure Portal

Set up an App Service

  1. Navigate to Microsoft Azure Portal.
  2. Select the All resource links at the top of the left-hand navigation.
  3. Select Web > App Service to display the App service creation wizardCreate an App Service by using Azure Portal

Create Web App Wizard

Web Apps lets you quickly build, deploy, and scale enterprise-grade web, mobile, and API apps running on any platform and fill out the following fields in each of the sections on the wizard.

Project Details

  • Subscription: Select Azure subscription, which you have
  • Resource Group: Create a new resource group to make it easier to clean up the resources later.

Instance Details

  • Name: The name you choose must be unique among all Azure web apps. This name will be part of the app's URL like msdevbuildapp.azurewebsites.net.
  • Publish: Let us Select Code for in this article demo.
  • Runtime Stack: Select .NET Core 3.1 LTS. 
  • Operating System: Keep Windows selected here, it's the default when you selected .NET Core 3.1 LTS above.
  • Region: Keep the default selection for now.

App Service Plan

  • Windows Service Plan: Leave the default selection. By default, the wizard will create a new plan in the same region as the web app.
  • SKU and size: Select F1. To select the F1 tier, select Change size to open the Spec Picker wizard. On the Dev / Test tab, select F1 from the list, then select Apply.
reate an App Service by using Azure Portal

Select Review and Create to navigate to the review page, then select Create to create the app.

Create an App Service by using Azure Portal

Deployment success message

Wait for 2 to 3 minutes, the portal will display the deployment page, where you can view the status of your deployment.

Create an App Service by using Azure Portal

Deployment Overview

Once the app service is ready, you can select the Go to resource button and the Azure portal will display the web app overview page like below.

Create an App Service by using Azure Portal

To preview your new web app's default content, select its URL at the top right, navigate to your web app service (https://msdevbuild.azurewebsites.net). The placeholder page that loads indicate that your web app is up and running and ready to receive deployment of your app's code.

App Service Editor

Microsoft provided App Service Editor tool is a web-based editor for App Service. On the Development Tools section of the left-hand navigation of your app and click on App Service Editor (Preview).

Create an App Service by using Azure Portal

The Editor is similar to the visual studio online editor with different section solutions preview, code Editor, and Design preview page.

Create an App Service by using Azure Portal

Summary

Navigate or refresh your web app service URL and you will get updated content in the browser. In this article, you have learned about creating Web app using the Azure portal and learned about Azure Online Editor.

Create an App Service by using Azure Portal

If you have any questions/feedback/ issues, please write them in the comment box.
Azure has role-based access control (RBAC) to restrict access to resources and management features, but it can’t be used to quickly prevent the users from accidentally deleting a resource.

One of my friends called and asked How to avoid unknown or accidental deletion of Azure resources by other users, In this article, will share the steps, Azure resource lock implementation, Which Prevents Accidental Deletion of Resources.

Microsoft Azure: Avoid unknown or accidental deletion of Azure resources

Type Azure Lock

Microsoft provided two types of azure resource lock

CannotDelete 

 Lock prevents users from deleting a storage account, but permits reading and modifying its configuration.

Type Azure Resource Lock

ReadOnly 

Lock prevents users from deleting a storage account or modifying its configuration but permits reading the configuration.


Type Azure Resource Lock

User role Administrator and owner can modify the above two azure lock features.

Configure Azure Lock

We will see the following steps for how to configure azure lock using the Azure portal.

Step 1: Navigate to your storage account, or if you have not created it before, I have shared steps in my previous article about how to create an Azure storage account.

Microsoft Azure: Avoid unknown or accidental deletion of Azure resources

Step 2: On Storage account quick setting menu and Select on Lock, the lock list showing empty means, they are is no lock available on existing so click on Add for new lock configuration

Microsoft Azure: Avoid unknown or accidental deletion of Azure resources

Create new Lock

As mentioned above, Resource lock has two types, so select the Lock type as per your need and provide the lock name and description for understanding.

Microsoft Azure: Avoid unknown or accidental deletion of Azure resources

After clicking on Ok, You will get the following list screen with Lock Name, type, and Edit. Edit Options for Edit the name and type, delete option for deleting the lock associated with a storage account.

Microsoft Azure: Avoid unknown or accidental deletion of Azure resources

Resource Lock testing

You can navigate to Storage account and click on Delete

Microsoft Azure: Avoid unknown or accidental deletion of Azure resources

After clicking on the delete option, Immediately Azure intelligent will show the notification saying you can’t delete because of the Resource lock

Microsoft Azure: Avoid unknown or accidental deletion of Azure resources

Summary

You have learned now and How to Avoid Accidental Deletion of Azure Resource on the Azure Portal and available lock options. If you have questions, Keep continuing to post your comment below.

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