Crafting architectures in the Azure landscape

Azure isn’t just about tools; it’s about crafting solutions:

■■ Two-tier and three-tier frameworks: Azure champions modularity. Whether you’re looking at a two-tier or a more comprehensive three-tier setup, focus on modulariza-tion, decoupling, and scalability.

■■ Synapse’s serverless and provisioned models: With Azure Synapse Analytics, you get to choose between on-demand (serverless) or provisioned resources, ensuring you have optimal performance for your workload without overcommitting resources.

The Azure advantage

These are the advantages of Azure:

■■ Seamless interplay: One of Azure’s strengths is the seamless integration between its services. This ensures a fluid data journey, from source to insights.
■■ Safety first: Your data’s security is paramount. With Azure, benefit from its built-in security and compliance features, ensuring peace of mind even with massive datasets.
■■ Adaptable and scalable: The Azure landscape morphs with your needs. Take advan-tage of its flexibility, scaling resources as your data needs evolve.

Practical scenario

Let’s immerse ourselves in a scenario where you play the role of a chief data officer for an inter-national retailer named GlobaRetail Inc.

Figure 4-1 shows the key data journey components that are crucial to this scenario.

FIGURE 4-1  Data journey from Azure data sources to visualization to Power BI

Skill 4.1 Describe common elements of large-scale analytics     CHAPTER 4 105

SETTING THE STAGE

As the chief data officer at GlobaRetail Inc., you oversee the expansive operations, so you need to leverage cutting-edge Azure services to effectively manage your vast data landscape. You have the following options:

■■ Azure SQL Database: Your stores across 40 countries register millions of transactions daily. Each transaction, from purchase to return, is meticulously logged in Azure SQL Database. This platform not only offers scalability to handle the data but ensures consis-tent performance across peak shopping periods.

■■ Azure Cosmos DB: Your product range is vast and diversified, catering to global tastes.

Azure Cosmos DB becomes your go-to solution, hosting the dynamic product catalog with its globally distributed setup. This ensures that product details, price adjustments, and stock levels are consistently and quickly accessible, regardless of where a customer is shopping from.

■■ IoT Hub: In modern store operations, sensors are deployed across outlets. They track customer footfalls, monitor shelf stocks, and even regulate store lighting and tempera-ture. The real-time stream of data from these sensors funnels through Azure’s IoT Hub.