What is azure?

Azure is Microsoft’s cloud platform.

Azure uses a technology called virtualization. Virtualization separates the coupling between a computer’s hardware and its operating system by using an abstraction called hypervisor. Hypervisor emulates all the functions of a computer, its cpu and virtual machine. It can run more than 1 virtual machines at the same time, optimize the capacity of the abstracted hardware and each virtual machine can run any compatible operating system. Azure takes this virtualization technique and repeats it on a massive scale in Microsoft data centers throughout the world. Each data center has minim racks built with servers and each server includes a hypervisor to run multiple virtual machines. A network switch provides connectivity to all of these servers. One server in each rack runs a specific software called fabric controller. Each fabric controller is connected to another software called orchestrator. Orchestrator manages everything that happens in azure including responding to user requests and users can request using orchestrator’s web api which can be called from many tools including azure portal. When auser makes request to create a virtual machine, orchestrator packages the request with everything thats needed to create a virtual machine, selects the best rack and sends the request to the fabric controller. One the fabric controller has created a virtual machine, the user can connect to it.

Source credit — Microsoft azure learning portal.