Book Image

Scalable Data Analytics with Azure Data Explorer

By : Jason Myerscough
Book Image

Scalable Data Analytics with Azure Data Explorer

By: Jason Myerscough

Overview of this book

Azure Data Explorer (ADX) enables developers and data scientists to make data-driven business decisions. This book will help you rapidly explore and query your data at scale and secure your ADX clusters. The book begins by introducing you to ADX, its architecture, core features, and benefits. You'll learn how to securely deploy ADX instances and navigate through the ADX Web UI, cover data ingestion, and discover how to query and visualize your data using the powerful Kusto Query Language (KQL). Next, you'll get to grips with KQL operators and functions to efficiently query and explore your data, as well as perform time series analysis and search for anomalies and trends in your data. As you progress through the chapters, you'll explore advanced ADX topics, including deploying your ADX instances using Infrastructure as Code (IaC). The book also shows you how to manage your cluster performance and monthly ADX costs by handling cluster scaling and data retention periods. Finally, you'll understand how to secure your ADX environment by restricting access with best practices for improving your KQL query performance. By the end of this Azure book, you'll be able to securely deploy your own ADX instance, ingest data from multiple sources, rapidly query your data, and produce reports with KQL and Power BI.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Section 1: Introduction to Azure Data Explorer
5
Section 2: Querying and Visualizing Your Data
11
Section 3: Advanced Azure Data Explorer Topics

Introducing Azure Cloud Shell

One of the most convenient services, which I use daily, is Azure Cloud Shell. Azure Cloud Shell is an interactive command shell that supports Bash and PowerShell. Rather than installing the PowerShell Az module locally, we will use Azure Cloud Shell for the examples in this book. Azure Cloud Shell also includes a lightweight code editor that we will see later when we examine the code examples for this chapter.

Azure Cloud Shell requires a storage account, which can be created the first time you try to open Cloud Shell. Azure Cloud Shell can be accessed via https://shell.azure.com or by clicking the Azure Cloud Shell icon on the Azure portal's header menu (see Figure 2.6).

Figure 2.6 – Cloud Shell icon

Figure 2.6 – Cloud Shell icon

The first time you open Azure Cloud Shell, you will be prompted to select either Bash or PowerShell as your default shell (see Figure 2.7). Select PowerShell. You can switch shells at any time.

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