How to Use Azure Service Catalog for Enterprise Data Management

Azure Service Catalog is a powerful tool for enterprise data management, allowing you to create and manage a centralized catalog of IT services.

With Azure Service Catalog, you can automate the request and approval process for IT services, reducing the time and effort required to deliver new services to your organization.

By using Azure Service Catalog, you can improve the efficiency of your IT operations and reduce the administrative burden on your IT team.

To get started with Azure Service Catalog, you'll need to create a catalog and define the services that will be available to your users.

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Azure's Service Catalog allows you to create a centralized location for your teams to deploy applications without making mistakes or choosing expensive VM sizes.

You can prebuild templates and control parameters to ensure deployments are done correctly. The template can be deployed without a UI, or with a user interface that asks for parameters.

One feature of the Service Catalog is the ability to create a managed application that can be deployed by your team members. This application can be assigned to a specific group and can be given a specific RBAC role, such as Contributor.

Here are some key features of the Service Catalog:

You can also use the Service Catalog to create a service catalog for your different teams in your company, allowing them to deploy applications without making mistakes or choosing expensive VM sizes.

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Azure Purview is a powerful data governance and catalog service that offers several key features. One of its major strengths is its ability to support hybrid data platforms, sourcing metadata from repositories hosted on-premises, on Azure cloud, and even cross-clouds.

Automated data discovery is another crucial feature of Azure Purview. This service can scan data repositories and detect metadata with over 100 classification rules that automatically classify attributes based on matching rules. This saves a lot of time and effort in metadata management.

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Azure Purview also has a mechanism for lineage identification, which allows it to bind with services like Azure Data Factory and automatically extract lineage. This feature is particularly useful for understanding the flow of data and identifying potential issues.

The Purview Metadata Catalog and Business Glossary are two more important features of this service. The catalog allows for the creation of metadata terms that can be used and mapped with the metadata created in the Purview metadata catalog, while the Business Glossary enables the creation of business glossary terms that can be used and mapped with the metadata.

Azure Purview also has a Data Map with Search feature, which allows for the organization of different data repositories from different hosting sources into collections. This enables the creation of data maps and easy discovery of metadata using the search functionality.

Here are the key features of Azure Purview at a glance:

Creating an Instance is a crucial step in utilizing the Service Catalog.

You can create an instance from a service catalog item, which is a pre-defined template that includes the necessary resources and configurations for a specific service.

To create an instance, you'll need to select the service catalog item you want to use, and then click on the "Launch" button.

This will launch a new instance of the service, which can be customized further before it's deployed.

The instance will be created in the specified environment, such as a development or production environment.

You can also specify the instance type, such as a virtual machine or a container, when creating the instance.

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Azure Service Catalog has robust security features to manage permissions and control access to data sources and the catalog itself. You can assign one of five roles to users, including the Catalog Administrator, Data Source Administrator, Curator, Contributor, and Automated data source process.

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Each role has specific privileges, such as the Catalog Administrator, who can call all APIs on the catalog, but is not an owner. The Data Source Administrator is responsible for setting up scans, while the Curator can edit content.

Here's a brief overview of the roles:

Azure Data Catalog has a robust security system in place to manage permissions and control access to data sources.

It uses Role Based Access Control, which consists of five roles that determine what actions users can perform.

The Catalog Administrator role is the most powerful, allowing users to call all APIs on the catalog without being an owner.

The Data Source Administrator role is responsible for setting up scans, which is a crucial task for managing data sources.

Users with the Curator role can edit content, making them responsible for maintaining the accuracy and relevance of the data in the catalog.

The Contributor role provides read-only access, limiting users to viewing but not editing data sources.

There is also an Automated data source process role, which is primarily used for integrating Azure Data Factory (ADF) with the catalog to push lineage into the catalog.

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A service catalog notification schema is used to send notifications to a specified endpoint after the successful provisioning of a managed application instance. The notification schema contains various properties that provide information about the event that triggered the notification.

The notification schema includes properties such as eventType, applicationId, eventTime, provisioningState, applicationDefinitionId, billingDetails, plan, and error. These properties provide detailed information about the managed application instance, including the type of event that triggered the notification, the fully qualified resource identifier of the managed application, and the provisioning state of the managed application instance.

Here's a breakdown of the properties included in the notification schema:

The notification schema provides detailed information about the managed application instance, which can be used to trigger notifications based on specific events and provisioning states.

To get started with the Azure Service Catalog, you'll first need to access the Azure portal. See Quickstart: Create and publish an Azure Managed Application definition for the steps to follow.

The Azure portal is your gateway to managing and configuring your Azure services. It's a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to navigate and find what you need.

To create and publish an Azure Managed Application definition, you can follow the instructions in the Quickstart guide. This will help you get started with using the Azure Service Catalog to manage your applications.

In the Azure portal, you can create a new resource group to host your managed application definition. This is done by executing a PowerShell script that adapts your Subscription ID, resource group name, and location.

To deploy a managed application, you need to register the Microsoft.Solutions provider in your subscription's Resource Providers. This step is crucial to avoid errors during deployment.

The Azure portal offers a user-friendly interface to create and publish an Azure Managed Application definition. You can find the Quickstart guide in the Azure portal to get started with this process.

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To create a managed application, you need to provide a name, display name, and description. You can also assign permissions to a group and choose the RBAC role, such as Contributor.

Here are the steps to create a managed application in the Azure portal:

Note: These steps can also be done in PowerShell, but the Azure portal offers a more user-friendly interface for creating and publishing managed applications.

Registering a data source in Azure Data Catalog is a straightforward process. You can select multiple sources to scan at once, as shown in the example of using Azure SQL Database.

To begin, create a new scan and select the tables you want to scan. The scan will then identify the metadata and classification of the data assets.

You can schedule a scan to occur periodically, which is preferable when the data source is volatile. This ensures that the metadata and classification are up-to-date.

After a scan is finished, the Azure Data Catalog will have identified the metadata and classification of the data assets. Classifications are applied to formal data, which is usually driven by the government or consists of fixed formats.

If a classification is not provided by default, you can always add a custom classification that applies to your data. After adding a new classification, you can run the scan again to include the new classification on the data.

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