Vivek Kaushik

Aspect	Description
What is Azure PaaS?	Azure PaaS provides a cloud platform allowing developers to build, deploy, and manage applications without worrying about underlying infrastructure. It offers managed environments, scaling, and integration tools to accelerate development.
Pricing Model	Pay-as-you-go: You pay only for the resources and services you actually consume, often based on compute time, storage, or transactions. Some services also have tiered pricing (Free, Basic, Standard, Premium) accommodating different workloads.
Scalability	Services provide automatic or manual scaling options—such as scaling out (adding instances) or scaling up (increasing resources). Many services support autoscaling based on demand and can handle large volumes of data or requests dynamically.
Security	Built-in features include encryption at rest and in transit, network isolation (VNet integration), firewall rules, DDoS protection, and compliance with standard certifications (ISO, GDPR, HIPAA). Supports private endpoints for enhanced security.
IAM (Identity and Access Management)	Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) allows granular permission assignments to users/groups. Managed Identities enable secure access to other Azure resources without managing credentials. Integration with Azure Active Directory offers centralized authentication.
Deployment Models	Azure Resource Manager (ARM) model enables declarative infrastructure as code (IaC) deployments using templates or Bicep, supporting repeatable and automated deployments. Supports continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines with Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions.
Ease of Use	Intuitive Azure portal UI, SDKs, CLI, and REST APIs with extensive documentation. Many services offer no-code/low-code options (e.g., Logic Apps). Supports multiple programming languages and frameworks. Managed services reduce operation overhead.

Key Azure PaaS Services Overview

Service

Key Functions

Pricing Basis

Scalability

Security & IAM

Deployment & Ease of Use

Azure App Service

Host web, mobile, and API apps with built-in auto-scaling, deployment slots, custom domains

Per instance plan (Basic, Standard, Premium)

Auto/manual scaling, deployment slots to swap versions

SSL/TLS, managed certs, VNet integration, RBAC

Deploy via Azure Portal, CLI, ARM templates; integrates with CI/CD

Azure Functions

Serverless compute triggered by events (HTTP, queue, timer), supports multiple languages

Consumption plan (per execution), Premium plan

Automatic scaling based on triggers

Integrated with Azure AD, network controls, identity-based access

Easy function deployment via portal, CLI, or DevOps; supports bindings

Azure Durable Functions

Extension of Azure Functions for stateful, orchestrated workflows with built-in support for retries, checkpoints, long-running processes

Pricing depends on underlying Azure Functions plan (Consumption or Premium), plus Azure Storage transactions cost for orchestration state management

Automatically scales with orchestrations; can handle large-scale, stateful workflows with reliable event-driven execution

Integrated with Azure AD, supports Managed Identity for secure resource access; leverages Azure Storage security; role-based access controls apply

Deployed like Azure Functions (portal, CLI, DevOps); additional orchestration code; full integration with Azure Functions tooling and bindings

Azure Service Bus

Enterprise messaging broker with queues, topics, dead-lettering, sessions for decoupled communication

Metered by operations, throughput units

Supports partitioning, scaling throughput units

TLS encryption, RBAC, managed identity

Managed service with SDK support; integrates with Azure DevOps pipelines

Azure Event Grid

Fully managed event routing service enabling reactive event-driven architectures; supports multiple event sources and handlers; publishes events to subscribers with low latency and at massive scale. Supports advanced filtering, event domains, custom topics, and reliable delivery.

Consumption-based pricing: $0.60 per million operations beyond first 100,000 free operations per month. Operations include event ingress, filtering, delivery attempts, and management calls.

Automatically scales to handle millions of events per second with elastic scaling and built-in load balancing.

Integrates with Azure Active Directory for authentication; supports role-based access control, encryption of data at rest and in transit (TLS); supports private endpoints and network controls for secure eventing.

Easily deployed and managed via Azure Portal, CLI, ARM templates, and SDKs; integrates seamlessly with Azure services; supports webhook, Azure Functions, Logic Apps, and Event Hubs as event handlers.

Azure Event Hub

Big data streaming platform for event ingestion (telemetry, logs)

Throughput units (pre-purchased or pay-as-you-go)

Partitioned consumers, auto-scale with throughput units

Encryption, private endpoints, RBAC

Easy setup with SDKs, Event Hub capture for storage integration

Azure IoT Hub

Managed IoT device connection, bi-directional messaging, device management

Per number of device messages and connected devices

Scalable to millions of devices

Per-device identity, secure messaging, integration with Azure Security Center

Azure Portal or CLI for setup; SDKs support for device programming