Book excerpt: Build large-scale, mission-critical hardened applications on the Azure cloud platform. This 2nd edition provides information on the newer features in Azure, such as Linux extensions and supporting Azure Services such as HDInsight and SQL Server on Linux. Updated with new applications Hardening Azure Applications also discusses Scale Sets (VMSS), a major upgrade that enables autoscaling and seamlessly makes machines ready for high availability. The authors take you step by step through the process of evaluating and building applications with the appropriate hardness attributes. After a small introduction to cloud computing, you will learn about various cloud and hardened cloud applications in detail. Next, you will discover service fundamentals such as instrumentation, telemetry, and monitoring followed by key application experiences. Further, you will cover availability and the economics of 9s. Towards the end, you will see how to secure your application and learn about the modernization of software organisations, a new topic in this edition. After reading this book, you will master the techniques and engineering principles that every architect and developer needs to know to harden their Azure/.NET applications to ensure maximum reliability and high availability when deployed at scale. What You Will Learn Use techniques and principles to harden Azure/.NET applications Secure your applications on Azure Create a scale set on Azure Work with service fundamentals such as instrumentation, telemetry, and monitoring Who This Book Is For Developers and IT professionals who are working on Azure applications.