Unlocking the Power of Azure Fabric for Enterprise Microservices

Azure Fabric is a game-changer for enterprise microservices. It's a service mesh that provides a scalable and secure way to manage microservices, allowing for faster deployment and scaling of applications.

Azure Fabric integrates with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to provide a seamless experience for developers. This integration enables developers to focus on writing code, while Azure Fabric handles the underlying infrastructure.

Azure Fabric provides a centralized way to manage and monitor microservices, reducing the complexity of managing multiple microservices. By providing a single pane of glass for monitoring and logging, Azure Fabric makes it easier to identify and troubleshoot issues.

With Azure Fabric, developers can focus on building applications, not managing infrastructure. This allows for faster time-to-market and improved productivity.

To get started with Azure Fabric, you'll first need to create an Azure Resource group. This group will hold your Fabric Capacity, as seen in my case where I created a group named FabricPlayground.

Having a clear user identity is also essential. In my setup, the user is named Fabric explorer, which is crucial for accessing and managing your Azure Fabric resources.

Creating an Azure Resource group is a straightforward process that can be completed in just a few steps.

Your user identity will be used to authenticate and authorize access to your Azure Fabric resources, so make sure to choose a unique and descriptive name.

Azure Fabric's architecture is built on OneLake, a tenant-wide store for data that serves both professional and citizen developers. OneLake is the storage layer for data spread across cloud warehouses and lakes.

Seven Microsoft Fabric workloads run on OneLake: Data Factory, Synapse Analytics services, Power BI, and Data Activator. These workloads provide a range of services, including data integration, analytics, business intelligence, and real-time monitoring.

Azure Fabric also supports microservice applications, allowing you to build and manage them easily. With Azure Service Fabric, you can bring your Docker containers on Linux or Windows and run them reliably at scale alongside other workloads and services.

The Microsoft.Fabric Azure service provider needs to be enabled for Fabric Capacity, which requires a subscription for billing. Azure operates like a plugin system, adding features and services.

To enable the service provider, a Contributor or Owner role on the Azure Subscription is required. This role is only needed for creating the Fabric Capacity in Azure.

A default setting is that the Microsoft.Fabric service provider is disabled, so enabling it is necessary. Service providers can only be enabled on one Azure Subscription, so this needs to be done for every subscription if needed.

You might already have enough privileges or even an Azure Admin who can create the Fabric Capacity resource. This role is also needed to assign a Fabric Capacity to a workspace.

Creating the Runtime is a crucial step in setting up your Fabric Capacity, and it's essential to be aware of the costs involved. Please note that the price of your Fabric Capacity will be determined by this step.

The cheapest option is F2, which is a good starting point. I personally start with F2 for this reason.

You'll want to navigate to your resource group to create the Fabric Capacity. By default, the size is set to F64, which is very expensive.

Take note of the prices given when selecting sizes, as they can vary significantly. Microsoft should have set the cheapest option, F2, as the default, but it's set to F64 by default instead.

Azure Service Fabric is a reliable and scalable platform for building and managing microservice applications. It's an open source project that powers core Azure infrastructure and other Microsoft services.

You can choose from a variety of productive programming models and languages, including .NET Core 2.0, C#, and Java, to build your microservice and container-based applications. Service Fabric cluster can be deployed in Azure or used with Azure Service Fabric mesh, a fully managed microservices platform.

Service Fabric is designed to deliver highly available and durable services at cloud-scale, automatically scaling, upgrading, and self-healing from faults when they occur. It simplifies microservices development and application lifecycle management.

Data-aware platform for low-latency, high-throughput workloads with stateful containers or microservices, and supports Windows/Linux in Azure, on-premises, or other clouds.

Here are some key features of Azure Service Fabric:

Microsoft Fabric is built on OneLake, a storage layer for data spread across cloud warehouses and lakes. This architecture provides a tenant-wide store for data that serves both professional and citizen developers.

OneLake is the foundation for seven Microsoft Fabric workloads. These workloads include Data Factory, Synapse Analytics services, Power BI, and Data Activator.

Data Factory is the data integration service that runs on OneLake. Synapse Analytics services, on the other hand, include Data Warehousing, Data Engineering, Data Science, and Real-Time Analytics.

Power BI is the business intelligence service that leverages OneLake for data storage and analysis. Data Activator is the real-time monitoring service that also runs on OneLake.

Here are the seven Microsoft Fabric workloads that run on OneLake:

Azure Service Fabric is a powerful platform for building and deploying mission-critical applications. It simplifies microservices development and application lifecycle management, making it easier to create and manage complex systems.

One of the key benefits of Azure Service Fabric is its ability to deliver low latency and improved efficiency at massive scale. You can run anywhere, supporting Windows/Linux in Azure, on-premises, or other clouds.

Azure Service Fabric is designed to solve difficult distributed systems problems, including reliable failure detection and failover, leader election, state management, and more. This enables you to provide automatic recovery from failures and gain insight into application health and performance.

With Azure Service Fabric, you can orchestrate microservices and container-based apps, and develop low-latency, resilient services that scale. You can also automate scale operations, integrate health monitoring, and provide fast yet safe upgrades with zero downtime.

Here are some key benefits and features of Azure Service Fabric: