Azure Cloud Basics Tutorial for Developers

This Azure cloud basics tutorial is a hands-on introduction to Microsoft Azure for developers. Instead of just listing services, we will create a resource group, deploy a simple web app with Azure App Service, and add a storage account for files. By the end, you will understand how core Azure building blocks fit together so you can plug them into real projects.

In this Azure tutorial you will:

• Learn the core concepts: subscriptions, regions and resource groups
• Install and use the Azure CLI from your terminal
• Create a resource group for a small demo environment
• Deploy a sample web app to Azure App Service
• Add an Azure Storage account and blob container
• See how this ties into Linux, CI/CD and data platforms

For deeper reference, keep the
Microsoft Azure documentation
open. You can also connect this Azure cloud basics tutorial to your
Linux basics for developers,
CI/CD pipeline tutorial,
Java backend tutorial,
and
Kubernetes basics tutorial.

1. Azure cloud basics tutorial: core concepts

Before touching the CLI, it helps to understand how Azure organizes resources. At a high level:

• Subscription – billing and access boundary for your resources.
• Region – physical location of the datacenter (for example, eastus).
• Resource group – logical folder that holds related resources (apps, databases, storage).

In this tutorial, everything you create will live inside a single resource group so it is easy to manage and delete later.

2. Set up your Azure CLI environment

To follow the commands, you need an Azure account and the Azure CLI. If you haven’t already:

1. Create a free account at the
   Azure free account page.
2. Install the Azure CLI from the
   install guide.

2.1 Log in with the Azure CLI

# log in (browser will open)
az login

# show your active subscription
az account show --output table

If you have multiple subscriptions, you can select one explicitly:

az account set --subscription "YOUR-SUBSCRIPTION-NAME"

3. Create a resource group for this tutorial

A resource group lets you manage related resources as a unit. It also makes cleanup easier when you are done experimenting.

3.1 Choose a region and group name

Pick a region close to you, such as eastus, and a short name like rg-azure-basics-demo. Then create the group:

RESOURCE_GROUP="rg-azure-basics-demo"
LOCATION="eastus"

az group create \
  --name "$RESOURCE_GROUP" \
  --location "$LOCATION" \
  --output table

The output confirms that the resource group exists and lists the region. Every resource you create next will reference this group.

4. Deploy a sample web app with Azure App Service

Now you will deploy a simple web app using Azure App Service, one of the easiest ways to run HTTP-based workloads on Azure. You can deploy different stacks (Java, .NET, Node, Python); this example uses a basic Linux web app.

4.1 Create an App Service plan and web app

Start by defining a few variables:

APP_PLAN="plan-azure-basics-demo"
APP_NAME="web-azure-basics-demo-$RANDOM"

az appservice plan create \
  --name "$APP_PLAN" \
  --resource-group "$RESOURCE_GROUP" \
  --sku B1 \
  --is-linux \
  --output table

Then create a web app that runs a built-in runtime, such as Node or .NET. Here’s an example with Node:

az webapp create \
  --name "$APP_NAME" \
  --resource-group "$RESOURCE_GROUP" \
  --plan "$APP_PLAN" \
  --runtime "NODE:18-lts" \
  --output table

Azure now provisions an App Service plan (compute layer) and a web app (your application host) in the resource group.

4.2 Browse to the app

To view the default app page, run:

az webapp show \
  --name "$APP_NAME" \
  --resource-group "$RESOURCE_GROUP" \
  --query "defaultHostName" \
  --output tsv

Copy the hostname into a browser. You should see a basic “Your app is up and running” page, confirming that the deployment succeeded.

5. Add an Azure Storage account and blob container

Most real applications need to store files, logs or static assets. In this section you will create a Storage account and a blob container for uploads or static files.

5.1 Create a Storage account

STORAGE_NAME="stazurebasics$RANDOM"

az storage account create \
  --name "$STORAGE_NAME" \
  --resource-group "$RESOURCE_GROUP" \
  --location "$LOCATION" \
  --sku Standard_LRS \
  --kind StorageV2 \
  --output table

5.2 Create a blob container

Next, create a container named files and upload a sample file. First, fetch a connection string:

CONN=$(az storage account show-connection-string \
  --name "$STORAGE_NAME" \
  --resource-group "$RESOURCE_GROUP" \
  --query connectionString -o tsv)

Then create a container and upload a simple text file:

echo "Hello from Azure Storage" > sample.txt

az storage container create \
  --name files \
  --connection-string "$CONN" \
  --output table

az storage blob upload \
  --container-name files \
  --file sample.txt \
  --name sample.txt \
  --connection-string "$CONN" \
  --output table

This small workflow gives you a place to store assets that your web app can serve or process.

6. Simple Azure resource summary table

To visualize what you created in this Azure tutorial, here is a small summary table showing the main resources and their roles:

This kind of summary makes it easier for non-cloud specialists to understand how your architecture fits together, especially when paired with infrastructure as code and CI/CD pipelines.

7. Where to go after this Azure tutorial

This Azure cloud basics tutorial gave you a practical starting point: resource groups, App Service, Storage and the CLI. Next steps could include:

• Deploying a real Java, .NET, Node or Python backend from your
  Git version control tutorial repo.
• Connecting your app to a database using techniques from the
  SQL basics tutorial
  and
  MariaDB tutorial for developers.
• Containerizing services and running them on
  Kubernetes
  or Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
• Automating deployments with the
  CI/CD pipeline tutorial.

As you layer these pieces together, Azure becomes just another part of your toolchain—one that plays nicely with your existing Linux skills, Git workflows and data engineering stack.