Documentation
Deep-dive guidance for every section of the Azure Digital Natives Checklist. Each page follows a consistent format: Why it matters, How to implement it, and Resources with links to official Azure documentation.
Foundation
Get these right first — identity, networking, and resource organization form the bedrock of every Azure environment.
- Identity & Access Management — Entra ID, RBAC, managed identities, MFA, conditional access, and workload federation.
- Networking & Security — VNets, NSGs, firewalls, private endpoints, Key Vault, WAF, DNS, and flow logs.
- Resource Management — Organization strategy, tagging, naming, locks, Resource Graph, and quotas.
Day 2 Operations
Keep your environment healthy, compliant, and cost-efficient as you scale.
- Cost Management & FinOps — Cost analysis, budgets, Advisor, reservations, FinOps, and dev/test pricing.
- Monitoring & Observability — Azure Monitor, health signals, workbooks, alerts, MELT, OpenTelemetry, and Grafana.
- Compliance & Governance — Azure Policy, management groups, regulatory compliance, Defender for Cloud, and Purview.
- SLA & SLO Management — Azure SLAs, composite SLAs, SLOs/SLIs, error budgets, and SLO monitoring.
- Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity — RPO/RTO, Azure Backup, Site Recovery, availability zones, and PaaS DR.
Build & Deploy
Automate everything — ship reliably, securely, and repeatably.
- Infrastructure as Code — Bicep, Terraform, CI/CD integration, landing zones, AVM, and azd.
- DevOps & CI/CD — Pipelines, IaC automation, deployment strategies, environment promotion, and pipeline security.
- GitHub Integration — GitHub Actions, OIDC federation, GHAS, Copilot, and branch protection.
- Platform Engineering — Internal developer platforms, deployment environments, golden paths, azd, and developer metrics.
Compute & Apps
Choose the right compute, design for resilience, and optimize for performance.
- Application Architecture — Compute selection, resilience patterns, API management, messaging, and reference architectures.
- AKS & Application Architecture — AKS guidance, fundamentals, monitoring, and best practices.
- VM Scale Sets — Orchestration modes, autoscaling, image management, health monitoring, and security.
- Performance Efficiency — Caching, CDN, load testing, database optimization, APM, and auto-scaling.
Data & AI
Your data layer and AI capabilities — from choosing the right database to building production AI applications.
- Data Services — Database selection, HA/backups, private access, scalability, and storage strategy.
- Azure AI Services — Azure OpenAI, RAG patterns, data handling, responsible AI, and AI Foundry.
Architecture & Strategy
Frameworks, patterns, comparisons, and migration playbooks to guide your Azure journey.
- Well-Architected Framework — Five pillars, WAF review, Advisor, and service guides.
- Tech Stack Decisions — Side-by-side comparisons for AKS vs Container Apps, Bicep vs Terraform, database selection, and more.
- Reference Architectures — Architecture diagrams for SaaS multi-tenant, event-driven microservices, and RAG AI patterns.
- Migration Strategies — Azure Migrate, the 5 Rs, database migration, hybrid connectivity, and CAF methodology.