What You’ll Learn

By the end of this course, participants will:

• Translate AWS constructs to Azure correctly (with updated 2025 service names).

• Design secure landing zones with VNets, Entra ID, RBAC, and governance controls.

• Deploy compute, containers, and serverless apps using Azure-native services.

• Implement monitoring, security, and policy to match or improve on AWS standards.

• Plan migration costs and strategy using Azure calculators, reservations, and Migrate programs.

Benefit: AWS experts leave with the knowledge and hands-on experience to confidently design and deploy Azure solutions with parity to their existing AWS skills.

Course Outline (1-Day)

Module 1 — Azure Foundations for AWS Pros 

• Entra ID tenants, subscriptions, management groups vs AWS Organizations/accounts.

• Regions, AZs, pairs; Resource Groups vs AWS tags/folders.

• Control plane: Azure Resource Manager (ARM) & Bicep vs CloudFormation.

• Lab: Create a management group, configure subscription RBAC, and deploy a resource group with Bicep.

Outcome: Map AWS’s organizational model to Azure’s tenancy, regions, and control plane.

Module 2 — Identity & Access (Entra ID) 

• Microsoft Entra ID vs AWS IAM (users, groups, roles vs app registrations & managed identities).

• RBAC scope: management group → subscription → resource group → resource.

• External identities vs Cognito; Key Vault vs Secrets Manager/SSM.

• Lab: Register an app + enable system-assigned managed identity; retrieve a secret from Key Vault.

Outcome: Understand how Azure identity differs from AWS IAM and how to secure apps without static keys.

Module 3 — Networking & Traffic

• VNet vs VPC; subnets, NSG (stateful) vs Security Groups, when to add Azure Firewall.

• Load Balancing: Azure LB vs NLB; App Gateway (WAF) vs ALB; Front Door vs CloudFront/Global Accelerator.

• Private Link/Endpoints; Virtual WAN vs Transit Gateway; ExpressRoute vs Direct Connect.

• Lab: Build a hub-and-spoke VNet with Application Gateway (WAF) and private endpoints.

Outcome: Design Azure networks using familiar AWS analogs.

Module 4 — Compute & Containers 

• VMs & Scale Sets vs EC2 & Auto Scaling; Spot, images, availability sets/zones.

• Containers: AKS vs EKS, ACR vs ECR, Container Apps vs ECS/Fargate.

• Ingress, managed identities (IRSA equivalent), logging.

• Lab: Push an image to ACR and deploy to AKS (or Container Apps) with HTTPS ingress.

Outcome: Deploy containerized workloads in Azure with AWS-comparable controls.

Module 5 — Serverless & Integration 

• Azure Functions vs Lambda; API Management vs API Gateway.

• Messaging: Event Grid, Service Bus, Storage Queues vs EventBridge/SNS/SQS.

• Logic Apps vs Step Functions.

• Lab: Build an HTTP-triggered Function behind API Management with an Event Grid trigger.

Outcome: Orchestrate lightweight integrations with Azure’s serverless tools.

Module 6 — Data & Storage 

• Blob Storage vs S3; Azure Files vs EFS; disks vs EBS.

• Managed databases: Azure SQL, Postgres/MySQL vs RDS/Aurora.

• Cosmos DB vs DynamoDB (RU/s vs WCUs); Event Hubs vs Kinesis.

• Data Factory vs Glue (high level).

• Lab: Set blob lifecycle rules with an event trigger that writes to Cosmos DB.

Outcome: Translate AWS storage and data patterns into Azure-native equivalents.

Module 7 — Security, Observability & Governance 

• Azure Monitor (metrics, logs), Activity Log vs CloudWatch/CloudTrail.

• Defender for Cloud vs GuardDuty/Security Hub; Sentinel (SIEM).

• Azure Policy & Blueprints vs AWS Config & SCPs; CAF landing zones.

• Lab: Enable Defender recommendations, configure Log Analytics, apply policy initiatives.

Outcome: Apply security and monitoring practices to meet enterprise compliance needs.

Module 8 — DevOps, IaC & Cost

• IaC: Bicep/ARM vs CloudFormation; Terraform parity.

• Pipelines: GitHub Actions/Azure DevOps vs CodePipeline/CodeBuild.

• Cost Management: Reservations/Savings Plans, Hybrid Benefit vs AWS RIs/SPs.

• Azure Migrate overview for lift-and-shift planning.

• Lab: Use GitHub Actions workflow to deploy Bicep into a resource group.

Outcome: Automate delivery and plan migrations cost-effectively in Azure.