Azure Fundamentals -- Terms

Azure Functions

-- With Functions, you write code to complete each step. -- With Logic Apps, you use a GUI to define the actions and how they relate to one another. Azure Functions is best suited for software developers. It might require more effort to research the APIs, write the code, and manually orchestrate the services. With the Azure Functions service, you can host a single method or function by using a popular programming language in the cloud that runs in response to an event. An example of an event might be an HTTP request, a new message on a queue, or a message on a timer. Azure Functions is used when you need to perform work in response to an event (often via a REST request), timer, or message from another Azure service, and when that work can be completed quickly, within seconds or less. Functions are a key component of serverless computing. They're also a general compute platform for running any type of code. If the needs of the developer's app change, you can deploy the project in an environment that isn't serverless. This flexibility allows you to manage scaling, run on virtual networks, and even completely isolate the functions.

Cloud Solution Provider (CSP)

A Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) is a Microsoft Partner who helps you build solutions on top of Azure. Your CSP bills you for your Azure usage at a price they determine. They also answer your support questions and escalate them to Microsoft, as needed.

DDoS attack

A distributed denial of service attack attempts to overwhelm and exhaust an application's resources, making the application slow or unresponsive to legitimate users.

Firewall

A firewall is a network security device that monitors incoming and outgoing network traffic and decides whether to allow or block specific traffic based on a defined set of security rules. You can create firewall rules that specify ranges of IP addresses.

Managed device

A managed device is a device that meets your standards for security and compliance.

Network security group (NSG)

A network security group (NSG) enables you to filter network traffic to and from Azure resources within a virtual network.

Network security group

A network security group enables you to filter network traffic to and from Azure resources within an Azure virtual network. You can think of NSGs like an internal firewall.

Policy assignment

A policy assignment is a policy definition that takes place within a specific scope. This scope could be a management group (a collection of multiple subscriptions), a single subscription, or a resource group.

Resource lock

A resource lock prevents resources from being accidentally deleted or changed.

Service credits

A service credit is the percentage of the fees you paid that are credited back to you according to the claim approval process. Credits typically increase as uptime decreases. If servers are unavailable for long periods, you get money back this way.

Service-level agreements (SLAs)

A service-level agreement (SLA) is a formal agreement between a service company and the customer. For Azure, this agreement defines the performance standards that Microsoft commits to for you, the customer.

Workload

A workload is a distinct capability or task that's logically separated from other tasks, in terms of business logic and data storage requirements. Each workload defines a set of requirements for availability, scalability, data consistency, and disaster recovery.

Deep learning

AI system that's modeled on the neural network of the human mind, enabling it to discover, learn, and grow through experience. This one is better at feeding itself. Machine learning requires you to feed it, but Deep Learning can feed itself, kind of. (AI = Artificial Intelligence)

Adaptive application controls

Adaptive application controls provides alerts that inform the company about unauthorized applications that are running on its VMs.

General Availability

After a new Azure service is validated and tested, it's released to all customers as a production-ready service. This is known as general availability (GA). When they're done testing a new service, everyone can use it.

Web API (application programming interface)

An API that's accessible from servers that accept requests via HTTP.

Azure virtual network

An Azure virtual network is similar to a traditional network that you'd operate in your own datacenter. It enables virtual machines and other compute resources to securely communicate with each other, the internet, and on-premises networks.

Application SLA (service-level agreement)

An application SLA defines the SLA requirements for a specific application.

Authentication (AuthN) and Authorization (AuthZ)

Authentication: Who are you? Authorization: How deep can you go? Authentication is the process of establishing the identity of a person or service that wants to access a resource. It involves the act of challenging a party for legitimate credentials. Authentication establishes the user's identity, but authorization is the process of establishing what level of access an authenticated person or service has. It specifies what data they're allowed to access and what they can do with it.

Imperative code and Declarative code

Imperative code details each individual step that should be performed to achieve a desired outcome. By contrast, declarative code details only a desired outcome, and it allows an interpreter to decide how to best achieve that outcome. Declarative code is an overview of things, like using a graphical interface to put flow-chart bubbles on a screen. It's not as specific as imperative code. Imperative code requires more coding knowledge to make!

Azure AD

Azure AD is Microsoft's cloud-based identity and access management service. If you've worked with Active Directory, Azure AD will be familiar to you.

Azure Advisor

Azure Advisor identifies unused or underutilized resources and recommends unused resources that you can remove. This information helps you configure your resources to match your actual workload.

Web application firewall (WAF)

Azure Application Gateway also provides a firewall that's called the web application firewall (WAF). WAF provides centralized, inbound protection for your web applications against common exploits and vulnerabilities.

Azure Boards

Azure Boards has sophisticated project-management features that allow you to assign tasks to a user. Azure Boards is a project management suite.

Are you building a virtual agent that interfaces with humans via natural language?

Azure Bot Service

Do you need a service that can understand the content and meaning of images, video, or audio, or that can translate text into a different language?

Azure Cognitive Services

Do you need to predict user behavior or provide users with personalized recommendations in your app?

Azure Cognitive Services Personalizer

Azure Cognitive Services

Azure Cognitive Services provides prebuilt machine learning models that enable applications to see, hear, speak, understand, and even begin to reason. Use Azure Cognitive Services to solve general problems, such as analyzing text for emotional sentiment or analyzing images to recognize objects or faces. You don't need special machine learning or data science knowledge to use these services. Azure Cognitive Services can be divided into the following categories: - Language - Speech - Vision - Decision Azure Cognitive Services includes Vision services that can identify the content of an image. It can understand what a person means when they say something using idioms or figurative language.

Azure Cosmos DB

Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed, multi-model database service. Can migrate your company's database to Azure Cosmos DB and still stick to the API you're most comfortable with (examples SQL, MongoDB, Gremlin).

Azure DDoS Protection

Azure DDoS Protection helps protect Azure resources from DDoS attacks. (Distributed Denial of Service)

Azure Data Lake Analytics

Azure Data Lake Analytics is an on-demand analytics job service that simplifies big data. Instead of deploying, configuring, and tuning hardware, you write queries to transform your data and extract valuable insights. Ask the question, and it answers. You only pay while it's running.

Azure Database for PostgreSQL

Azure Database for PostgreSQL is a relational database service in the cloud. The server software is based on the community version of the open-source PostgreSQL database engine. Your familiarity with tools and expertise with PostgreSQL is applicable when you're using Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Azure Database for PostgreSQL is available in two deployment options: - Single Server == You can build your first app on a small database for a few dollars a month, and then adjust the scale to meet the needs of your solution. and - Hyperscale (Citus) == It serves applications that require greater scale and performance, generally workloads that are approaching, or already exceed, 100 GB of data.

Azure Databricks

Azure Databricks helps you unlock insights from all your data and build artificial intelligence solutions.

Azure Dedicated Host

Azure Dedicated Host provides dedicated physical servers to host your Azure VMs for Windows and Linux.

Azure DevOps Services

Azure DevOps Services is a suite of services that address every stage of the software development lifecycle. Azure DevOps includes: -Azure Repos == centralized source-code repository - Azure Boards == project management suite - Azure Pipelines == a CI/CD pipeline automation tool. - Azure Artifacts == a repository for hosting artifacts, such as compiled source code - Azure Test Plans == automated test tool that can be used in a CI/CD pipeline to ensure quality before a software release.

Azure DevTest Labs

Azure DevTest Labs provides an automated means of managing the process of building, setting up, and tearing down virtual machines (VMs) that contain builds of your software projects.

Azure Firewall

Azure Firewall is a managed, cloud-based network security service that helps protect resources in Azure virtual networks.

Azure Government

Azure Government is a separate instance of the Microsoft Azure service. It addresses the security and compliance needs of US federal agencies, state and local governments, and their solution providers. Azure Government offers physical isolation from non-US government deployments and provides screened US personnel.

Azure HDInsight

Azure HDInsight is a fully managed, open-source analytics service for enterprises. It's a cloud service that makes it easier, faster, and more cost-effective to process massive amounts of data.

Azure IoT services

Azure IoT (Internet of Things) services is how you collect TELEMETRY data, which is data you collect from a distant, remote source that you receive at your receiving station for analysis. You sell 100 washing machines, and they're all reporting back to you, telling you what's working or broken, how often they're used, etc. By using Azure IoT services, devices that are equipped with these kinds of sensors and that can connect to the internet could send their sensor readings to a specific endpoint in Azure via a message. The message's data is then collected and aggregated, and it can be converted into reports and alerts.

Azure IoT Central

Azure IoT Central builds on top of IoT Hub by adding a dashboard that allows you to connect, monitor, and manage your IoT devices. The visual user interface (UI) makes it easy to quickly connect new devices and watch as they begin sending telemetry or error messages. IoT Central quickly creates a web-based management portal to enable reporting and communication with IoT devices. If a company uses IoT Central, the company would actually be using an IoT hub that's preconfigured for its specific needs by the Connected Logistics starter template. Otherwise, the company would need to do a lot of custom development to build its own cloud-based dashboards and management systems on top of Azure IoT Hub. If a company wants to integrate the telemetry data and all other functionality into an existing maintenance request system. In this case, Azure IoT Central is not required. Central is just something you use on top of Azure IoT Hub, and Azure IoT Central is not required if you already have your own telemetry monitoring system.

Azure IoT Hub

Azure IoT Hub is a managed service that's hosted in the cloud and that acts as a central message hub for bi-directional communication between your IoT application and the devices it manages. You can connect virtually any device to your IoT hub. An IoT hub communicates to IoT devices by sending and receiving messages. If you don't already have a web-based management portal to enable reporting and communication between your data center and IoT devices out in the world, then you probably want to get Azure IoT Central on top of Azure IoT Hub. Bring telemetry data to the Azure IoT Hub, so you can see what's going on with devices at distant locations.

Azure Key Vault

Azure Key Vault is a centralized cloud service for storing an application's secrets in a single, central location. It provides secure access to sensitive information by providing access control and logging capabilities.

Will your app predict future outcomes based on private historical data?

Azure Machine Learning

Azure Machine Learning

Azure Machine Learning is a platform for making predictions. It consists of tools and services that allow you to connect to data to train and test models to find one that will most accurately predict a future result. After you've run experiments to test the model, you can deploy and use it in real time via a web API endpoint.

Azure Pipelines

Azure Pipelines is a CI/CD tool for building an automated toolchain. It lacks features to assign tasks for individual developers to work on. However, it can automate other tools to assign tasks to users. Azure Pipelines can be used to automate a CI/CD process. CI/CD = Continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD)

Initiatives

Azure Policy enables you to define both individual policies and groups of related policies, known as initiatives.

Azure PowerShell

Azure PowerShell is a shell with which developers and DevOps and IT professionals can execute commands called cmdlets (pronounced command-lets).

Azure SQL Database

Azure SQL Database is a platform as a service (PaaS) database engine. It handles most of the database management functions, such as upgrading, patching, backups, and monitoring, without user involvement. You can migrate your existing SQL Server databases with minimal downtime by using the Azure Database Migration Service.

Azure Security Center

Azure Security Center is a monitoring service that provides visibility of your security posture across all of your services, both on Azure and on-premises.

Azure Sentinel

Azure Sentinel is Microsoft's cloud-based SIEM system. It uses intelligent security analytics and threat analysis. Security information and event management (SIEM) system.

Azure Sphere

Azure Sphere provides a complete solution for scenarios where security is critical. Azure Sphere creates an end-to-end, highly secure IoT solution for customers that encompasses everything from the hardware and operating system on the device to the secure method of sending messages from the device to the message hub. Azure Sphere has built-in communication and security features for internet-connected devices. Security everywhere, in every part of hardware and every step of the process between sending and getting information.

Azure status

Azure status provides a global view of the health of Azure services and regions. Is anything down? -- this is a good place to start an investigation.

Defense in depth

Ogres have layers. You can visualize defense in depth as a set of layers, with the data to be secured at the center. A defense-in-depth strategy uses a series of mechanisms to slow the advance of an attack that aims at acquiring unauthorized access to data.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth refers to data moving in and out of Azure datacenters.

ARM templates

By using Azure Resource Manager templates (ARM templates), you can describe the resources you want to use in a declarative JSON format. (So, less code, since it's declarative and not imperative). ARM templates are the best infrastructure-as-code option for quickly and reliably setting up your entire cloud infrastructure declaratively.

Azure Advisor

Choose Azure Advisor when you're looking for an analysis of your deployed resources. For when you want to be alerted when new recommendations to improve your cloud environment are available. Azure Advisor evaluates your Azure resources and makes recommendations to help improve reliability, security, and performance, achieve operational excellence, and reduce costs. Advisor is designed to help you save time on cloud optimization.

Azure Monitor

Choose Azure Monitor when you want to measure custom events alongside other collected telemetry data. This service is a platform that powers Application Insights, monitoring for VMs, containers, and Kubernetes. Azure Monitor is a platform for collecting, analyzing, visualizing, and potentially taking action based on the metric and logging data from your entire Azure and on-premises environment.

Identity signals

Conditional Access is a tool that Azure Active Directory uses to allow (or deny) access to resources based on identity signals. These signals include who the user is, where the user is, and what device the user is requesting access from. -Your device is from IP address "Nekos 4 ever"? That's a no for you! We got that signal, as well as the ID you have, which is identity signal "signing in on computer in office level 1." No access for you.

Deallocation

Deallocate a VM when it's no longer running. The hard disks and data are still stored on Azure. The VM isn't using up CPU resources and doesn't have a network in Azure's datacenter. Doesn't generate costs associated with compute time or the VM's IP address. But data is still stored so you're charged for disk storage. Minimize costs by deallocating a VM when you don't plan to use it. You can schedule deallocation times.

Artifact

Each component in the blueprint definition is known as an artifact. It is possible for artifacts to have no additional parameters (configurations). An example is the Deploy threat detection on SQL servers policy, which requires no additional configuration. Artifacts can also contain one or more parameters that you can configure. The following screenshot shows the Allowed locations policy. This policy includes a parameter that specifies the allowed locations.

Service lifecycle

Every Azure service starts in the development phase. Next, the service is released to the public preview phase, to get feedback. After a new Azure service is validated and tested, it's released to all customers as a production-ready service.

What's the difference between Azure Functions and Azure Logic Apps?

Functions is more complicated and requires more coding knowledge than Logic Apps. The primary difference between the two services is their intent. Azure Functions is a serverless compute service, and Azure Logic Apps is intended to be a serverless orchestration service. Those with less coding experience should use Logic Apps, so they can orchestrate things without doing those big weedy calculations or writing coding algorithms. Azure Logic Apps makes it easy to create a workflow across well-known services with less effort than writing code and manually orchestrating all the steps yourself. Azure Functions pricing is based on the number of executions and the running time of each execution. Logic Apps pricing is based on the number of executions and the type of connectors that it utilizes.

Machine learning

Feed it information, then it knows what to do in similar places. Another approach to artificial intelligence. A data science technique that uses existing data to train a model, test it, and then apply the model to new data to forecast future behaviors, outcomes, and trends.

GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions can be used to automate a CI/CD process. GitHub Actions enables workflow automation with triggers for many lifecycle events. One such example would be automating a CI/CD toolchain. A toolchain is a combination of software tools that aid in the delivery, development, and management of software applications throughout a system's development lifecycle. CI/CD = Continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD)

Why use GitHub instead of Azure DevOps public code repositories?

GitHub has long been the preferred host for open-source software. If you're building open-source software, you would likely choose GitHub if for no other reasons than its visibility and general acceptance by the open-source development community.

Azure Bot Service

Hello, you are speaking to a bot. Please press 2 if you don't like BOTs, press 4 if you like bots a little tooooo much, and press 9 to speak with a human agent. I'm sorry, I didn't understand what you said, since I speak English but I can only understand Spanish. Azure Bot Service and Bot Framework are platforms for creating virtual agents that understand and reply to questions just like a human. Azure Bot Service is a bit different from Azure Machine Learning and Azure Cognitive Services in that it has a specific use case.

ISO 27001

ISO 27001 is a standard that applies to the security of IT systems, published by the International Organization for Standardization.

Azure Service Health

If you want to keep tabs on Azure itself, especially the services and regions you depend on, you want to choose Azure Service Health. For when you want official outage root cause analyses (RCAs) for Azure incidents. Azure Service Health provides a personalized view of the health of the Azure services, regions, and resources you rely on. The status.azure.com website, which displays only major issues that broadly affect Azure customers, doesn't provide the full picture. But Azure Service Health displays both major and smaller, localized issues that affect you.

Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC)

Instead of defining the detailed access requirements for each individual, and then updating access requirements when new resources are created, Azure enables you to control access through Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC). Azure provides built-in roles that describe common access rules for cloud resources. You can also define your own roles.

Azure Blueprints

Instead of having to configure features like Azure Policy for each new subscription, with Azure Blueprints you can define a repeatable set of governance tools and standard Azure resources that your organization requires.

Azure China 21Vianet

It's a physically separated instance of cloud services located in China.

Enterprise Agreement

Larger customers, known as enterprise customers, can sign an Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft. This agreement commits them to spending a predetermined amount on Azure services over a period of three years. Huge companies get these, large savings for large spenders.

Azure SQL Managed Instance

Like Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance is a platform as a service (PaaS) database engine. Azure SQL Managed Instance has MORE STUFF than Azure SQL Database. Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance offer many of the same features; however, Azure SQL Managed Instance provides several options that might not be available to Azure SQL Database. For example, Azure SQL Managed instance has more languages and "characters" to use for data, but Azure SQL Database only has the Latin-letter languages.

Azure Logic Apps

Logic apps are similar to functions. Both enable you to trigger logic based on an event. Where functions execute code, logic apps execute workflows that are designed to automate business scenarios and are built from predefined logic blocks. -- With Functions, you write code to complete each step. -- With Logic Apps, you use a GUI to define the actions and how they relate to one another. Logic Apps is a low-code/no-code development platform hosted as a cloud service. The service helps you automate and orchestrate tasks, business processes, and workflows when you need to integrate apps, data, systems, and services across enterprises or organizations. Azure Logic Apps makes it easy to create a workflow across well-known services with less effort than writing code and manually orchestrating all the steps yourself. Azure Logic Apps is best suited for users who are more comfortable in a visual environment that allows them to automate their business processes. Azure Logic Apps is designed in a web-based designer and can execute logic that's triggered by Azure services without writing any code. You build an app by linking triggers to actions with connectors.

Multifactor authentication

Multifactor authentication is a process where a user is prompted during the sign-in process for an additional form of identification. Examples include a code on their mobile phone or a fingerprint scan.

Security posture

Organization's ability to protect from and respond to security threats. The common principles used to define a security posture are confidentiality, integrity, and availability, known collectively as "CIA".

Azure Reservations

Pay in advance. Azure Reservations offers discounted prices on certain Azure services. Azure Reservations can save you up to 72 percent as compared to pay-as-you-go prices. To receive a discount, you reserve services and resources by paying in advance. Prepay for 1 or 3 years of use of VMs.

Scope

Role-based access control is applied to a scope, which is a resource or set of resources that this access applies to. Scopes include: -A management group (a collection of multiple subscriptions). -A single subscription. -A resource group. -A single resource.

Single sign-on (SSO)

SSO enables you to remember only one username and one password to access multiple applications. A single identity is tied to a user, which simplifies the security model.

Resource tags

Tags provide extra information, or metadata, about your resources. Resource tags are another way to organize resources.

Total cost of ownership

Term used in finance. It can be hard to see all the hidden costs related to operating a technology capability on-premises. Software licenses and hardware are additional costs. Even a freaking bank account has a TCO, since there are hidden fees EVERYWHERE.

The Azure CLI

The Azure CLI command-line interface is an executable program with which a developer, DevOps professional, or IT professional can execute commands in Bash. The Azure CLI enables you to use Bash to run one-off tasks on Azure.

Azure compliance documentation

The Azure compliance documentation provides you with detailed documentation about legal and regulatory standards and compliance on Azure. Here you find compliance offerings across these categories: -Global -US government -Financial services -Health -Media and manufacturing -Regional

Azure portal

The Azure portal is a great place for newcomers to learn about Azure and set up their first resources. The Azure portal can perform most, if not all, management and administrative actions. If you're just learning Azure and/or need to set up and manage resources infrequently (or prefer a visual interface for viewing reports), it makes sense to take advantage of the visual presentation that the Azure portal offers.

Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure

The Cloud Adoption Framework helps you create and implement the business and technology strategies needed to succeed in the cloud. Cloud Adoption Framework consists of tools, documentation, and proven practices. The Cloud Adoption Framework includes these stages: -Define your strategy. -Make a plan. -Ready your organization. -Adopt the cloud. -Govern and manage your cloud environments.

Trust Center

The Trust Center showcases Microsoft's principles for maintaining data integrity in the cloud and how Microsoft implements and supports security, privacy, compliance, and transparency in all Microsoft cloud products and services. Provides support and resources for the legal and compliance community.

REST API

The design of the URL style that's used to expose the API's functionality. (API = Application Programming Interface)

Serverless computing

The key idea is that you're not responsible for setting up or maintaining the server. You don't have to worry about scaling it when there's increased demand, and you don't have to worry about outages. The term serverless computing is a misnomer. After all, there is a server (or a group of servers) that executes your code or desired functionality.

Web API endpoint

The location of the code library.

Composite SLA (service-level agreement)

The process of combining SLAs helps you compute the composite SLA for a set of services. Computing the composite SLA requires that you multiply the SLA of each individual service. For example, 4 servers with 99.9% uptime are multiplied together to get 0.9978, or 99.78% uptime as the total composite service-level agreement.

Just-in-time VM access

This access blocks traffic by default to specific network ports of VMs, but allows traffic for a specified time when an admin requests and approves it. VMs only running at the times we allow it.

Azure Synapse Analytics

This helps with machine learning. Lots of data to feed machines. Azure Synapse Analytics is the logical choice for analyzing large volumes of data Azure Synapse Analytics (formerly Azure SQL Data Warehouse) is a limitless analytics service that brings together enterprise data warehousing and big data analytics. You can query data on your terms by using either serverless or provisioned resources at scale.

Redundancy

To ensure high availability, you might plan for your application to have duplicate components across several regions, known as redundancy. Conversely, to minimize costs during non-critical periods, you might run your application only in a single region.

TCO Calculator

Total cost of ownership calculator. Helps you estimate cost savings of using Azure over time instead of using on-premises datacenters in your own building, etc.

Usage meters

When you provision a resource, Azure creates meters to track usage of that resource. Think of usage meters similar to how you use electricity or water in your home. Determines how much you pay.

Web Direct

You purchase Azure services directly from the Azure portal website and pay standard prices.

Online Services Terms (OST)

a legal agreement between Microsoft and the customer. The OST details the obligations by both parties with respect to the processing and security of customer data and personal data.

Azure Repos

centralized source-code repository it's where you put your code! Azure Repos is a centralized, source-code management repository. It is not used to manage testing VMs.

Availability zone

separate data centers contained in a region An availability zone is a unique physical location within an Azure region. Each zone is made up of one or more datacenters equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking. These zones use different schedules for maintenance, so if one zone is affected, your virtual machine instance in the other zone is unaffected.