Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Course: Describe Cloud Concepts

PaaS

Platform as a Service

Azure is a highly available cloud environment with uptime guarantees depending on the service

These guarantees are part of the service-level agreements (SLAs)

2 Types of expenses when comparing IT Infrastructure Models

1. Capital Expenditure (CapEx) 2. Operational Expenditure (OpEx)

Common PaaS Scenarios:

1. Development Framework 2. Analytics or Business Intelligence

Common SaaS Scenarios:

1. Email and Messaging 2. Business Productivity Applications 3. Finance and Expense Tracking

Benefits of Operating in the Cloud

1. High Availability and Scalability 2. Reliability and Predictability 3. Security and Governance 4. Manageability

(SRM) Your service model will determine responsibility for things like:

1. Identity and directory infrastructure 2. Applications (code, version) 3. Network Controls (network settings, vpn) 4. Operating Systems (patches, updates)

Common IaaS Scenarios:

1. Lift-and-Shift Migration 2. Testing and Development

Consumption-based model benefits

1. No upfront costs 2. No need to purchase and manage costly infrastructure that users might not use to its fullest potential 3. The ability to pay for more resources when they're needed 4. The ability to stop paying for resources that are no longer needed

With cloud computing, you typically pay only for the cloud services you use, which helps you:

1. Plan and manage your operating costs 2. Run your infrastructure more efficiently 3. Scale as your business needs change

(SRM) The Consumer will always be responsible for:

1. The information and data stored in the cloud 2. Devices that are allowed to connect to your cloud (cell phones, computers, etc) 3. The accounts and identities of the people, services and devices within your organization (users)

(SRM) The Cloud provider is always responsible for:

1. The physical datacenter 2. The physical network (cables, network connectivity to internet) 3. The physical hosts

Public cloud

Built, controlled and maintained by a third-party cloud provider over the public internet -Anyone that wants to purchase cloud services can access and use resources

CapEx (abr.)

Capital Expenditure

Private cloud

Cloud (delivering IT services over the internet) that's used by a single entity, over the Internet or private internet Provides much greater control for the company and its IT department. -Greater cost and fewer of the benefits of a public cloud deployment -May be hosted from your on-site datacenter -May also be hosted in a dedicated datacenter offsite, potentially by a third party

What are cloud models?

Cloud models define the deployment type of cloud resources

IaaS (Responsibility varies)

Customer: 1. Identity and directory infrastructure 2. Applications 3. Network Controls 4. Operating Systems

Cloud providers are typically well suited to handle things like

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks

DDoS

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks

(SRM) for PaaS

Evenly distributes responsibility between the cloud provider and consumer.

Horizontal Scaling examples

Experience a jump in demand, add additional virtual machines or containers

Horizontal Scaling

Focused on adding or subtracting the number of resources

Vertical Scaling

Focused on increasing or decreasing the capabilities of resources

Cost Predictability

Focused on predicting or forecasting the cost of the cloud spend. Examples: You can track your resource use in real time, monitor resources to ensure efficiency, and apply data analytics to find patterns and trends that help better plan resource deployments. Tools: Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) or Pricing Calculator for estimating potential cloud spend

Performance Predictability

Focuses on predicting the resources needed to deliver a positive experience for your customer. Examples: Autoscaling, load balancing and high availability support performance predictability

Management in the Cloud

How you're able to manage your Cloud environment and resources You can manage these: 1. Through a web portal 2. Using a Command line interface 3. Using APIs 4. Using PowerShell

Provides the most flexibility

Hybrid Cloud

Vertical Scaling examples

Needing more processing power (adding more CPUs or RAM to the virtual machine)

Cloud Computing operates on a consumption-based model

OpEx

OpEx (abr.)

Operational Expenditure

Development Framework

PaaS provides a framework that developers can build upon to develop or customize cloud-based applications PaaS lets developers create applications using built-in software components. Cloud features such as scalability, high-availability and multi-tenant capability are included, reducing the amount of coding needed

Predictability

Performance Predictability or Cost Predictability

Three main cloud models

Private Public Hybrid

Data is not collocated with other organizations' data

Private Cloud

Hardware must be purchased for startup and maintenance

Private Cloud

Organizations are responsible for hardware maintenance and updates

Private Cloud

Paying for a complete and deployed solution

SaaS

SaaS

Software as a Service

OpEx

Spending Money on services or products over time. (ex. renting a convention center, leasing a company vehicle, or signing up for cloud services)

(SRM) If you're using a Cloud SQL database,

The Cloud provider would be responsible for maintaining the actual database. But the customer is responsible for the data that gets ingested into the database.

Reliability

The ability of a system to recover from failures and continue to function.

With a decentralized design,

The cloud enables you to have resources deployed in regions around the world. Even if one region has a catastrophic event, other regions are up and running. You can design your applications to automatically take advantage of this increased reliability - Your cloud environment will shift to a different region for you automatically

In a SaaS, the consumer is responsible for:

The data put into the system, the devices you allow to connect and the users that have access.

Analytics or Business Intelligence

Tools provided as a service with PaaS allow organizations to analyze and mine data, find insights and patterns and predict outcomes to improve forecasting and make business decisions

CapEx

Typically a one-time, up-front expenditure to purchase or secure tangible resources. (ex. a new building, repaving a parking lot, building a datacenter, buying a company vehicle)

When building or deploying a cloud application, two of the biggest considerations are

Uptime (or availability) The ability to handle demand (scale)

Benefit of scalability

You aren't overpaying for services Because the cloud is a consumption-based model, you only pay for what you use. If demand drops off, you can reduce your resources and thereby reduce your costs.

General public availability

A Key difference between public and private clouds

Hybrid Cloud

A computing environment that uses both public and private clouds in an inter-connected environment. -Can be used to allow a private cloud to surge for increased, temporary demand by deploying public cloud resources. -Hybrid cloud can be used to provide an extra layer of security -Users can flexibly choose which services to keep in public cloud and which to deploy to their private cloud infrastructure

Azure Arc

A set of technologies that helps manage your cloud environment, whether its a public cloud solely on Azure, a private cloud in your datacenter, a hybrid configuration or a multi-cloud environment running on multiple cloud providers at once.

Cloud computing is a way to rent compute power and storage from someone else's datacenter. You can treat cloud resources like you would resources in your own datacenter.

However, unlike in your own datacenter, when you're done using cloud resources, you give them back. You're only billed for what you use.

Organizations control security, compliance or legal requirements

Hybrid Cloud

Organizations determine where to run their applications

Hybrid Cloud

Renting Space in a Datacenter

IaaS

The most flexible category of cloud services, as it provides you the maximum amount of control for your cloud resources

IaaS

Examples of IaaS

Virtual Machine, Virtual Network and Virtual Network Interface Card (NIC)

In a cloud-based model, you don't have to worry about getting the resource needs just right.

If you need more virtual machines, you add more. If you don't need as many, you remove them. You're only paying for the virtual machines that you use, not the "extra capacity" that the cloud provider has on hand

With a traditional datacenter, you try to estimate the future resource needs.

If you overestimate, you spend more on your datacenter than you need to and potentially waste money. If you underestimate, your datacenter quickly reaches capacity, and your applications and services may suffer from decreased performance.

Security

If you want maximum control of security, IaaS provides physical resources but lets you manage the operating systems and installed softwares, including patches and maintenance If you want patches and maintenance taken care of automatically, PaaS or SaaS may be the best strategies for you

IaaS

Infrastructure as a Service

With Cloud Computing, you don't pay for the physical infrastructure, the electricity, the security etc.

Instead, you pay for the IT resources you use. If you don't use any IT resources this month, you don't pay for any.

Azure VMware Solution

Lets you run your VMware workloads in Azure with seamless integration and scalability.

In an IaaS model, the cloud provider is responsible for:

Maintaining the hardware, network connectivity (to the internet) and physical security. You're essentially renting the hardware in a cloud datacenter, are responsible for installation and configuration, patching and updates and security etc.

Two types of manageability for cloud computing

Management of the Cloud Management In the Cloud

Management of the Cloud

Managing your Cloud Resources In the Cloud, you can: 1. Automatically scale resource deployment based on need 2. Deploy resources based on a preconfigured template, removing the need for manual configuration 3. Monitor health of resources and automatically replace failing resources 4. Receive Automatic Alerts based on configured metrics

Autoscaling

Performance Predictability Deploys additional resources to meet the demand and scales back when the demand drops

Load balancing

Performance Predictability Redirects traffic overload to less stressed areas

(SRM) for SaaS

Places the most responsibility on the cloud provider.

(SRM) for IaaS

Places the most responsibility on the consumer, with the cloud provider being responsible for the basics of physical security, power and connectivity.

Organizations have complete control over resources and security

Private Cloud

Applications can be quickly provisioned and deprovisioned

Public Cloud

No capital expenditures to scale up

Public Cloud

Organizations don't have complete control over resources and security

Public Cloud

Organizations pay only for what they use

Public Cloud

Scalability

Refers to the ability to adjust resources to meet demand The ability to scale means you can add more resources to better handle increased demand

Two crucial cloud benefits

Reliability and Predictability (Performance and Cost)

Compute Resources

Resources that perform some type of task that requires CPU cycles to perform the work Compute Services - a category of services in Azure that provides CPU cycles for rent. Virtual Machines are only one type of compute resource. The Marketplace contains many types of resources, not just compute.

Shared Responsibility Model (SRM)

Responsibilities are shared between the cloud provider and the consumer. Physical security, power, cooling and network connectivity are the responsibility of the cloud provider. Consumer is responsible for the data and information stored in the cloud, as well as access security (only giving access to those who need it)

The least flexible category of cloud services, but easiest to get up and running. Requires the least amount of technical knowledge

SaaS

Service Models (Cloud Service Type)

SaaS (software as a service) PaaS (platform as a service) IaaS (infrastructure as a service)

Cloud features support governance and compliance

Set templates to ensure deployed resources meet corporate standards and government regulatory requirements Cloud-based auditing to flag resources out of compliance Depending on operating model, software patches and updates may be automatically applied

SaaS (Responsibility varies)

Shared: 1. Identity and directory Infrastructure Cloud provider: 2. Applications 3. Network Controls 4. Operating systems

PaaS (Responsibility varies)

Shared: 1. Identity and directory Infrastructure 2. Applications 3. Network Controls Cloud provider: 4. Operating systems

Cloud computing

The delivery of computing services over the internet. Computing services include common IT infrastructure such as virtual machines, storage, databases and networking. Cloud services also expand the traditional IT offerings to include things like Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI).

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

The formal agreement between service provider and customer that guarantees the customer a stated level of service. Azure SLA's are represented as percentage related to availability (uptime), Each Azure service has its own SLA

For PaaS, the cloud provider maintains:

The physical infrastructure, physical security and connection to the internet. They maintain the operating systems, middleware, development tools and business intelligence services that make up a cloud solution. You don't have to worry about licensing or patching for operating systems and databases.

Scaling comes in two varieties:

Vertical Scaling Horizontal Scaling

Azure App Services is considered a PaaS because:

You give Azure the code and the configuration, and you have no access to the underlying hardware

Testing and Development

You have established configurations and development and test environments that you need to rapidly replicate. You can stand up or shut down the different environments rapidly with an IaaS structure, while maintaining complete control

Instead of maintaining CPUs and storage in your datacenter

You rent them for the time you need them. The cloud provider takes care of maintaining the underlying infrastructure for you.

Multi-Cloud

You use multiple public cloud providers, possibly use different features from different cloud providers, or started your cloud journey with one provider and are migrating to another. You deal with 2 or more public cloud providers and manage resources and security in both environments

(SRM) If you deployed a virtual machine and installed a SQL database on it

You'd be responsible for database patches and updates, as well as maintaining the data and information stored in the database.

When you're architecting your solution

You'll need to account for service availability guarantees

(SRM) With an on-premises datacenter

You're responsible for everything

Lift-and-Shift Migration

You're standing up cloud resources similar to your on-prem datacenter, and then simply moving the things running on-prem to running on the IaaS Infrastructure

High availability focuses on

ensuring maximum availability, regardless of disruptions or events that may occur

Cloud features support

governance and compliance

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services over the internet by using a

pay-as-you-go pricing model

With SaaS,

you're essentially renting or using a fully developed application. Example: Email, financial software, messaging applications and connectivity software.