Cloud Computing for Beginners with Microsoft Azure

A container is an application packaged together with the libraries and configuration it needs, run as an isolated process on a host that is already switched on, so the same package behaves the same way on a laptop, in a build pipeline and in production.

Object storage keeps every file as a self-contained object (the bytes, a unique key and some metadata) inside a flat bucket you read and write over HTTP, with no drive to mount and no directory tree underneath it.

Kubernetes is an open-source system that runs containers across a cluster of machines, keeping the number and placement of running copies matched to a declared desired state, and restarting, rescheduling and scaling them without a person intervening.

Shared hosting puts your website on a machine that is simultaneously running hundreds of other people's, pooling its processor, memory and disk between all of you, which is both why it costs so little and why your speed partly depends on strangers.

A VPS is a software-defined slice of one physical machine that behaves as a server in its own right, with its own operating system, reserved CPU, memory and disk, and administrative access down to the kernel.

A dedicated server is an entire physical computer rented by a single customer, with no hypervisor taking a share and no other tenants on the hardware, chosen when consistent performance, specific components or provable isolation matter more than the ability to resize in seconds.