In the sample scenario, Contoso has decided that the organization will require several different relational stores. As the data engineer, you've been asked to set up data stores using Azure SQL database, PostgreSQL and MySQL. In this lesson you'll learn how to provision these services. Provisioning is the act of running a series of tasks to create, configure, and make available a service, such as Azure SQL database. Behind the scenes, the service provider will set up various resources, disks, memory, CPUs networks and so on, required to run the service. You'll be assigned these resources, and they remain allocated to you and charged to you until, you delete the service. How the service provider provisions resources is opaque, and you don't need to be concerned with how this process works. All you do is specify parameters that determine the size of the resources required, how much disk space, memory, computing power and network bandwidth. These parameters are determined by estimating the size of the workload that you intend to run using the service. In many cases you can modify these parameters after the service has been created, perhaps increasing the amount of storage space or memory if the workload is greater than you initially anticipated. The act of increasing or decreasing the resources used by a service is called scaling. This example demonstrates the process that Microsoft Azure performs when you provision a service. First, the user specifies the provisioning parameters, such as the type of service storage, memory, and compute power. The provisioning parameters are then sent to Microsoft Azure to provision the service. Azure allocates the necessary resources to create the service. Finally, the service is then ready for use. Microsoft Azure provides several tools you can use to provision services. These include the Microsoft Azure portal, Azure command-line interface Cli, Azure PowerShell, and Azure Resource Manager templates, let's take a brief look at each of these now. The Microsoft Azure portal is the most convenient way to provision a service for most users. It displays a series of service specific pages that prompt you for the settings required, and validates these settings before actually provisioning the service. The Azure command-line interface or CLI provides a set of commands that you can run from the operating system command prompt, or the cloud Shell in the Microsoft Azure portal. You can use these commands to create and manage Microsoft Azure resources. The CLI is suitable if you need to automate service creation, you can store Cli commands and scripts and you can run these scripts programmatically. The CLI can run on Windows, MacOS, and Linux computers. For a detailed information about the Azure CLI, read what is Azure CLI on the Microsoft website, you can find a link to this document from the additional readings at the end of this lesson. Many administrators are familiar with using Azure PowerShell commands to script and automate administrative tasks. Azure provides a series of commandlets, Azure specific commands that you can use in Power Shell to create and manage Azure resources. Like the CLI, PowerShell is available for Windows, MacOs, and Lenux. You can find further information about Azure Power Shell online, at Azure PowerShell documentation page. There is a link to this document from the additional readings at the end of this lesson. Let's take a look at Azure Resource Manager templates now, an Azure Resource Manager or ARM template describes the service or services that you want to deploy in a text file. In a format known as JSON, which is short for JavaScript object notation. Using JSON, you can define infrastructure and configuration for your project. This example in JSON format shows a template that you can use to provision and instance of Azure SQL database. The JSON code describes and stores the configuration settings that will be applied. You send the template to Azure using the az deployment group create command in the Azure CLI or, new-AzResourceGroupDeployment command in Azure PowerShell. For more information about creating and using Azure Resource Manager templates to provision Azure Resources, see what are Azure Resource Manager templates. Once again, you will find a link to this document in the additional readings at the end of this lesson.