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Chapter 12
Figure 1: The Microsoft Azure dashboard
For new users, Azure offers a $200 credit, and a range of free services. For paid
services, you can choose from a range (called "subscriptions" on the Azure platform)
of monthly payment plans or "pay-as-you-go" options. You will need to provide
your credit card information to access paid services. Some of the popular services
offered by Azure are:
• Virtual Machines: You can create your own machines on the net, with up
to 128 virtual CPUs (vCPUs) and up to 6 TB of memory. There is a wide
range of virtual machine series offered by Azure. Since the topic of this
book is deep learning, we will limit ourselves to N-series virtual machines
offered by Azure, which are sufficient for our needs. In a later section, Virtual
machines on cloud, you will learn the features of N-series and how to deploy
one. To see the complete range of virtual machines offered please refer to:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/pricing/details/virtualmachines/series/.
• Function: Provides serverless architecture; one need not worry about
hardware or networking, you just need to deploy your code, and Function
takes care of the rest.
• Storage Services: Azure provides Blob storage to store any type of data
in the cloud. The data stored on Blob can be used for content distribution,
backup, and big data analytics.
• IoT Hub: Provides a central communication service to communicate
between your IoT devices and code. Using IoT Hub, you can connect
virtually any device to the cloud.
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