Azure fundamentals

What does Azure Powershell enable you to do?

Azure PowerShell enables you to connect to your Azure subscription and manage resources.

Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud combines public and private clouds, allowing you to run your applications in the most appropriate location. For example, you could host a website in the public cloud and link it to a highly secure database hosted in your private cloud (or on-premises datacenter). more expensive and complicated to set up/manage

What is a region?

A region is a geographical area on the planet containing at least one, but potentially multiple datacenters that are nearby and networked together with a low-latency network. Azure intelligently assigns and controls the resources within each region to ensure workloads are appropriately balanced.

Private Cloud

A simulation of a public cloud to your users, but you remain completely responsible for the purchase and maintenance of the hardware and software services you provide. ensure configuration / can meet security or legal requirements / startup CapEx costs/

What is a virtual machine?

A virtual machine, or VM, is a software emulation of a physical computer. Because VMs exist as software, dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of Azure VMs can be generated in minutes, then deleted when you don't need them. With low-cost, per-minute billing, you pay only for the compute resources you use, for as long as you are using them. Plus, there are many ways to configure the VMs to fit your needs.

Which of the following defines an Azure subscription correctly? Using Azure does not require a subscription All Azure subscriptions are always free An Azure subscription is a logical unit of Azure services that is linked to an Azure account

An Azure subscription is a logical unit of Azure services that is linked to an Azure account

How does Azure Data Storage storage types compare to on-premises storage?

An on-premises approach often requires numerous servers and administrative tools for each storage type. Azure data storage provides a variety of different storage options including distributed access and tiered storage. This makes it possible to integrate a combination of storage technologies providing the best storage choice for each part of your solution.

What are availability zones?

Availability Zones are physically separate datacenters within an Azure region. Each Availability Zone is made up of one or more datacenters equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking. It is set up to be an isolation boundary. If one zone goes down, the other continues working. Availability Zones are connected through high-speed, private fiber-optic networks.

What is the benefit of Azure App Service?

Azure App Service enables you to build and host web apps, background jobs, mobile backends, and RESTful APIs in the programming language of your choice without managing infrastructure. It offers auto-scaling and high availability, supports both Windows and Linux, and enables automated deployments from GitHub, Azure DevOps, or any Git repo to support a continuous deployment model. This platform as a service (PaaS) allows you to focus on the website and API logic while Azure takes care of the infrastructure to run and scale your web applications.

If your traffic is HTTP what is a better option than a Load Balancer?

Azure Application Gateway. Application Gateway is a load balancer designed for web applications. It uses Azure Load Balancer at the transport level (TCP) and applies sophisticated URL-based routing rules to support several advanced scenarios.

Are there restrictions on the kind of data that Azure Blob Storage can hold?

Azure Blob Storage is unstructured, meaning that there are no restrictions on the kinds of data it can hold. Azure Blob storage lets you stream large video or audio files directly to the user's browser from anywhere in the world. Blob storage is also used to store data for backup, disaster recovery, and archiving. It has the ability to store up to 8 TB of data for virtual machines.

Other than Azure Powershell, what is another scripting environment?

Azure CLI

What is the name of the browser-based scripting environment for command-line administration of Azure resources?

Azure Cloud Shell

What is Azure Cloud Shell?

Azure Cloud Shell is a browser-based command-line experience for managing and developing Azure resources. Think of Cloud Shell as an interactive console that you run in the cloud.

What docker containers does Azure support?

Azure Container Instances (ACI) Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

What's Azure Container Instances?

Azure Container Instances (ACI) offers the fastest and simplest way to run a container in Azure. You don't have to manage any virtual machines or configure any additional services. It is a PaaS offering that allows you to upload your containers and execute them directly.

Azure Cosmos DB

Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed database service. It supports schema-less data that lets you build highly responsive and Always On applications to support constantly changing data. You can use this feature to store data that is updated and maintained by users around the world.

What service can you use to migrate existing SQL Server databases with minimal downtime?

Azure Database Migration Service The service uses the Microsoft Data Migration Assistant to generate assessment reports that provide recommendations to help guide you through required changes prior to performing a migration. Once you assess and perform any remediation required, you're ready to begin the migration process. The Azure Database Migration Service performs all of the required steps. You just change the connection string in your apps.

Azure Files

Azure Files offers fully managed file shares in the cloud that are accessible via the industry standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. Azure file shares can be mounted concurrently by cloud or on-premises deployments of Windows, Linux, and macOS. Typical usage scenarios would be to share files anywhere in the world, diagnostic data, or application data sharing.

Which is true about Azure Load Balancer? You must use Azure Load Balancer if you want to distribute traffic among your virtual machines running in Azure. Azure Load Balancer works with internet-facing traffic only. Azure Load Balancer distributes traffic among similar systems, making your services more highly available.

Azure Load Balancer distributes traffic among similar systems, making your services more highly available. If one system is unavailable, Azure Load Balancer stops sending traffic to it. It then directs traffic to one of the responsive servers.

How are Azure Logic Apps different than Azure Functions?

Azure Logic Apps are similar to Functions - both enable you to trigger logic based on an event. Where Functions execute code, Logic Apps execute workflows built from predefined logic blocks. They are specifically designed to automate your business processes. With Azure 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.

What is the use of Azure Queue?

Azure Queue storage is a service for storing large numbers of messages that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. You can use queue storage to: Create a backlog of work and to pass messages between different Azure web servers. Distribute load among different web servers/infrastructure and to manage bursts of traffic. Build resilience against component failure when multiple users access your data at the same time.

What are geographies?

Azure divides the world into geographies that are defined by geopolitical boundaries or country borders. An Azure geography is a discrete market typically containing two or more regions that preserve data residency and compliance boundaries

What is the Azure portal used for?

Azure portal for interacting with Azure via a Graphical User Interface (GUI)

What are the two cloud shell experiences to choose from?

Bash and PowerShell Both include access to the Azure CLI, the command-line interface for Azure.

Azure Advisor provides advice on: (Select one) Creating an Azure account Best practices and Security for your services Using the Azure portal effectively

Best practices and Security for your services Azure Advisor is a free service built into Azure that provides recommendations on high availability, security, performance, and cost.

What region does Microsoft does not directly maintain the datacenters?

China East, China North and more: These regions are available through a unique partnership between Microsoft and 21Vianet, whereby Microsoft does not directly maintain the datacenters

How are cloud services agile?

Cloud agility is the ability to rapidly change an IT infrastructure to adapt to the evolving needs of the business. This agility lets you manage your costs dynamically, optimizing spending as requirements change.

How is cloud computing cost-effective?

Cloud computing provides a pay-as-you-go or consumption-based pricing model. Rather than paying upfront for a pre-defined amount of computing resources or hardware, you can rent hardware and pay for the resources that you actually use. This consumption-based model brings with it many benefits, including: No upfront costs No need to purchase and manage costly infrastructure that you may not use to its fullest The ability to pay for additional resources only when they are needed The ability to stop paying for resources that are no longer needed

How is Azure Data Storage more agile than on-premises storage?

Compared to time and expense of deploying new servers, Azure data storage gives you the flexibility to create new services in minutes. This flexibility allows you to change storage back-ends quickly without needing a significant hardware investment.

Loosely coupled architectures

Components don't need to know about how data's created or processed byt he rest of the system, just have standard for communication for the components. Benefits: updated indecently make changes to components without affecting other manage performance and cost independently

What does cloud computing typically include?

Compute power - such as Linux servers or web applications Storage - such as files and databases Networking - such as secure connections between the cloud provider and your company Analytics - such as visualizing telemetry and performance data

If you wish to run multiple instances of an application on a single virtual machine, what is an option to use?

Containers

What are some benefits to containers?

Containers are meant to be lightweight, created, scaled out, and stopped dynamically. This design allows you to respond quickly to changes in demand or failure. Another benefit of containers is you can run multiple isolated applications on a single VM host. Since containers are secured and isolated, you don't need separate VMs for each app.

What architecture is often used for creating solutions using Containers?

Containers are often used to create solutions using a microservice architecture. This is where you break solutions into smaller, independent pieces. For example, you may split a website into a container hosting your front end, another hosting your back end, and a third for storage. This allows you to separate portions of your app into logical sections that can be maintained, scaled, or updated independently.

What are containers?

Containers provide a consistent, isolated execution environment for applications. They're similar to VMs except they don't require a guest operating system. Instead, the application and all its dependencies is packaged into a "container" and then a standard runtime environment is used to execute the app. This allows the container to start up in just a few seconds because there's no OS to boot and initialize. You only need the app to launch.

What are some of the benefits of using Azure Application Gateway over a simple load balancer?

Cookie affinity. Useful when you want to keep a user session on the same backend server. SSL termination. Application Gateway can manage your SSL certificates and pass unencrypted traffic to the backend servers to avoid encryption/decryption overhead. It also supports full end-to-end encryption for applications that require that. Web application firewall. Application gateway supports a sophisticated firewall (WAF) with detailed monitoring and logging to detect malicious attacks against your network infrastructure. URL rule-based routes. Application Gateway allows you to route traffic based on URL patterns, source IP address and port to destination IP address and port. This is helpful when setting up a content delivery network. Rewrite HTTP headers. You can add or remove information from the inbound and outbound HTTP headers of each request to enable important security scenarios, or scrub sensitive information such as server names.

Can Azure Powershell automate repetitive tasks?

Creating administration scripts and using automation tools is a powerful way to optimize your workflow. You can automate repetitive tasks. Once a script is verified, it runs consistently, which can reduce errors

How are dashboards within azure portal stored and what is a benefit?

Dashboards are stored as JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) files. This means they can be uploaded and downloaded to other computers, or shared with members of the Azure directory. Azure stores dashboards within resource groups, just like virtual machines or storage accounts that you can manage within the portal.

Disk Storage

Disk storage allows data to be persistently stored and accessed from an attached virtual hard disk. The disks can be managed or unmanaged by Azure, and therefore managed and configured by the user. Typical scenarios for using disk storage are if you want to lift and shift applications that read and write data to persistent disks, or if you are storing data that is not required to be accessed from outside the virtual machine to which the disk is attached.

What is a region pair?

Each Azure region is always paired with another region within the same geography (such as US, Europe, or Asia) at least 300 miles away. This approach allows for the replication of resources (such as virtual machine storage) across a geography that helps reduce the likelihood of interruptions due to events such as natural disasters, civil unrest, power outages, or physical network outages affecting both regions at once. Examples of region pairs in Azure are West US paired with East US, and SouthEast Asia paired with East Asia

Which term from the list below would be viewed as benefits of using cloud services? Unpredictable costs Elasticity Local reach only

Elasticity

True or False. You can select the specific datacenter you want to deploy your app into. True False

False Azure organizes infrastructure around regions which include multiple datacenters. You can't select a specific datacenter, but you can pick the region you want resources deployed into.

True or False. Every region has an availability zone. True False

False Regions that support Availability Zones include Central US, North Europe, and SouthEast Asia.

What are the benefits of geographies?

Geographies allow customers with specific data residency and compliance needs to keep their data and applications close. Geographies ensure that data residency, sovereignty, compliance, and resiliency requirements are honored within geographical boundaries. Geographies are fault-tolerant to withstand complete region failure through their connection to dedicated high-capacity networking infrastructure.

Billing in Azure is ______________ Annually for each Azure account based on usage. Monthly for each Azure subscription based on usage. Monthly for each Azure account based on usage. Daily for each Azure subscription based on usage.

Monthly for each Azure subscription based on usage.

Cloud Computing supports vertical and horizontal scaling. What is horizontal scaling?

Horizontal scaling, also known as "scaling out", is the process of adding more servers that function together as one unit. For example, you have more than one server processing incoming requests.

What are the three storage tiers Azure offers for blob object storage?

Hot storage tier: optimized for storing data that is accessed frequently. Cool storage tier: optimized for data that is infrequently accessed and stored for at least 30 days. Archive storage tier: for data that is rarely accessed and stored for at least 180 days with flexible latency requirements.

Suppose you have two types of applications: legacy applications that require specialized mainframe hardware and newer applications that can run on commodity hardware. Which cloud deployment model would be best for you? Public cloud Private cloud Hybrid cloud

Hybrid cloud A hybrid cloud is a public and private cloud combined. You can run your new applications on commodity hardware you rent from the public cloud and maintain your specialized mainframe hardware on-premises.

Public cloud

Most common deployment method. high scalability/agility/not responsible for maintenance or hardware/ cannot implement specific security requirements/ cannot manage are you may want to

What are the three major categories of cloud computing?

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) Platform as a service (PaaS) Software as a service (SaaS)

An Azure dashboard is stored as which type of file? XML JSON PNG

JSON

What is an architectural pattern that can be used to build loosely coupled system?

N-tier An N-tier architecture divides an application into two or more logical tiers. Architecturally, a higher tier can access services from a lower tier, but a lower tier should never access a higher tier. Tiers help separate concerns and are ideally designed to be reusable. Using a tiered architecture also simplifies maintenance. Tiers can be updated or replaced independently, and new tiers can be inserted if needed.

How is Azure Data Storage more reliable than on-premises storage?

On-premises backup and recovery is very challenging and expensive. Azure data storage provides data backup, load balancing, disaster recovery, and data replication as services to ensure data safety and high availability.

What is an Azure region? One or more Azure data centers within a specific geographical location. A way of breaking networks into smaller networks. Firewall rules which define the flow of traffic in and out of Azure.

One or more Azure data centers within a specific geographical location. Azure regions help you deliver your apps and services closest to your users. West US and North Europe are examples.

Is Cloud Computing Capital or Operation Expenditure? Define it

Operational Expenditure (OpEx): OpEx is spending money on services or products now and being billed for them now. You can deduct this expense from your tax bill in the same year. There's no upfront cost. You pay for a service or product as you use it.

Platform as a service (PaaS)

PaaS provides an environment for building, testing, and deploying software applications. The goal of PaaS is to help you create an application quickly without managing the underlying infrastructure. used for: development framework and analytics or business intelligence

What are three key characteristics of SLAs for Azure products and services?

Performance Targets Uptime and Connectivity Guarantees Service credits

You're developing an application and want to focus on building, testing, and deploying. You don't want to worry about managing the underlying hardware or software. Which cloud service type is best for you? Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software as a Service (SaaS)

Platform as a Service (PaaS) Platform as a Service is the best choice here because the PaaS services handle the IT management tasks for you, so you can focus on writing code.

How is Azure Data Storage more cost effective than on-premises storage?

Rather than the significant up-front expense, Azure data storage provides a pay-as-you-go pricing model which is often appealing to businesses as an operating expense instead of an upfront capital cost. It's also scalable, allowing you to scale up or scale out as demand dictates and scale back when demand is low. You are charged for data services only as you need them.

What do Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) provide to customers?

SLAs describe Microsoft's commitment to providing Azure customers with specific performance standards. There are SLAs for individual Azure products and services. SLAs also specify what happens if a service or product fails to perform to a governing SLA's specification.

Software as a service (SaaS)

SaaS is software that is centrally hosted and managed for the end customer. It is usually based on an architecture where one version of the application is used for all customers, and licensed through a monthly or annual subscription. Office 365, Skype, and Dynamics CRM Online are perfect examples of SaaS software.

Imagine that you work on a photo-sharing application that runs on millions of mobile devices. Demand is unpredictable because you see a spike in usage whenever a locally or nationally significant event occurs. Which Azure compute resource is the best match for this workload? Serverless computing Containers Virtual machines

Serverless computing The photo-sharing app is event driven and needs to handle unpredictable demand. Serverless computing is a good fit for this because it is event based and can scale instantly to process spikes in traffic. It should also be a cost-effective choice because you will pay for compute time only when processing user data.

What is serverless computing?

Serverless computing lets you run application code without creating, configuring, or maintaining a server. The core idea is that your application is broken into separate functions that run when triggered by some action. This is ideal for automated tasks - for example, you can build a serverless process that automatically sends an email confirmation after a customer makes an online purchase.

How are serverless, VMs, and containers charged?

Serverless models only pay for the processing time used by each function as it executes. VMs and containers are charged while they're running - even if the applications on them are idle.

Suppose you work at a startup with limited funding. Why might you prefer Azure data storage over an on-premises solution? To ensure you run on a specific brand of hardware which will let you to form a marketing partnership with that hardware vendor. The Azure pay-as-you-go billing model lets you avoid buying expensive hardware. To get exact control over the location of your data store.

The Azure pay-as-you-go billing model lets you avoid buying expensive hardware. There are no large, up-front capital expenditures (CapEx) with Azure. You pay monthly for only the services you use (OpEx).

What is a blade?

The Azure portal uses a blades model for navigation. A blade is a slide-out panel containing the UI for a single level in a navigation sequence. For example, each of these elements in this sequence would be represented by a blade: Virtual machines > Compute > Ubuntu Server.

What kind of data does Azure Data Lake Storage hold and how can you interact with the data?

The Data Lake feature allows you to perform analytics on your data usage and prepare reports. Data Lake is a large repository that stores both structured and unstructured data.

What kind of database is Azure SQL Database?

relational database as a service (DaaS) You can use it to build data-driven applications and websites in the programming language of your choice without needing to manage infrastructure.

How does a load balancer distribute traffic evenly?

The load balancer receives the user's request and directs the request to one of the VMs in the web tier. If a VM is unavailable or stops responding, the load balancer stops sending traffic to it. The load balancer then directs traffic to one of the responsive servers. Load balancing enables you to run maintenance tasks without interrupting service.

Application availability refers to what? The service level agreement of the associated resource. Whether the application supports an availability zone. The overall time that a system is functional and working.

The overall time that a system is functional and working.

Whats Azure Kubernetes Service?

The task of automating and managing and interacting with a large number of containers is known as orchestration. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a complete orchestration service for containers with distributed architectures with multiple containers.

What is network latency? The amount of data that can fit on the connection. The distance data must travel to reach its destination. The time it takes for data to travel over the network.

The time it takes for data to travel over the network. Latency measures the time it takes for data to reach its destination. Latency is typically measured in milliseconds.

How can Traffic Manager improve latency (time it takes for data to travel over the network)?

Traffic Manager uses the DNS server that's closest to the user to direct user traffic to a globally distributed endpoint. It directs the client web browser to a preferred endpoint. Traffic Manager can route traffic in a few different ways, such as to the endpoint with the lowest latency. With Traffic Manager in place, you can host exact copies of your service in multiple geographic regions.

True or false: Azure Cloud Shell is an interactive, browser-accessible shell for managing Azure resources? True False

True Azure Cloud Shell is an interactive shell for managing Azure resources. You can control and administer all of your Azure resources in the current subscription through a command-line interface built right into the portal.

True or False. Azure has free services you can use once you have an Azure subscription.

True Azure has several free services you can use including Azure App Services, Functions, and Azure Kubernetes containers.

Use Azure Functions when demand is variable True/False

True Azure Functions scale automatically based on demand, so they're a solid choice when demand is variable. For example, you may be receiving messages from an IoT solution used to monitor a fleet of delivery vehicles. You'll likely have more data arriving during business hours.

What regions are specialized to be used for compliance or legal purposes?

US DoD Central, US Gov Virginia, US Gov Iowa and more: These are physical and logical network-isolated instances of Azure for US government agencies and partners. These datacenters are operated by screened US persons and include additional compliance certifications.

Which of the following situations would yield the most benefits from relocating an on-premises data store to Azure? Unpredictable storage demand that increases and decreases multiple times throughout the year. Long-term, steady growth in storage demand. Consistent, unchanging storage demand.

Unpredictable storage demand that increases and decreases multiple times throughout the year. Azure data storage is flexible. You can quickly and easily add or remove capacity. You can increase performance to handle spikes in load or decrease performance to reduce costs. In all cases, you pay for only what you use.

Virtual Machine(VM)

VM is an emulation of a computer - just like your desktop or laptop you're using now. Each VM includes an operating system and hardware that appears to the user like a physical computer running Windows or Linux. You can then install whatever software you need to do the tasks you want to run in the cloud. The difference is that you don't have to buy any of the hardware or install the OS. The cloud provider runs your virtual machine on a physical server in one of their datacenters - often sharing that server with other VMs (isolated and secure). With the cloud, you can have a VM ready to go in minutes at less cost than a physical computer.

What Azure Services are Availability zones primarily used for?

VMs, managed disks, load balancers, and SQL databases.

Cloud Computing supports vertical and horizontal scaling. What is vertical scaling?

Vertical scaling, also known as "scaling up", is the process of adding resources to increase the power of an existing server. Some examples of vertical scaling are: adding more CPUs, or adding more memory.

Suppose you have an existing application running locally on your own server. You need additional capacity but prefer to move to Azure instead of buying upgraded on-premises hardware. Which compute option would likely give you the quickest route to getting your application running in Azure? Serverless computing Containers Virtual machines

Virtual machines You have full control over the VM setup, so you can configure it to match your on-premises server. This will allow your existing application to run on the Azure VM with little or no change.

The compute options give you different levels of control over the configuration of the environment in which your application runs. Which of the following lists the compute options in order from "most control" to "least control"? Serverless computing, containers, virtual machines Containers, serverless computing, virtual machines Virtual machines, containers, serverless computing

Virtual machines, containers, serverless computing Virtual machines give you full control over the environment. Containers give you limited control. Serverless computing does not allow you to do any infrastructure configuration.

How are Virtual Networks broken unto subnets?

Virtual networks can be segmented into one or more subnets. Subnets help you organize and secure your resources in discrete sections. The web, application, and data tiers each have a single VM. All three VMs are in the same virtual network but are in separate subnets.

What is the benefit to an Azure Load Balancer?

When you manually configure typical load balancer software on a virtual machine, there's a downside: you now have an additional system that you need to maintain. If your load balancer goes down or needs routine maintenance, you're back to your original problem. If instead, however, you use Azure Load Balancer, there's no infrastructure or software for you to maintain. You define the forwarding rules based on the source IP and port to a set of destination IP/ports.

When would you use Azure functions?

When you're concerned only about the code running your service, and not the underlying platform or infrastructure, Azure Functions are ideal. They're commonly 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.

What are some common web app styles that Azure App Service can host?

With Azure App Service, you can host most common web app styles including: Web Apps API Apps WebJobs Mobile Apps

What is the Azure portal good and not good for?

You can customize the dashboard by moving and resizing tiles, and displaying services you're interested in. The portal doesn't provide any way to automate repetitive tasks. For example, to set up multiple VMs, you would need to create them one at a time by completing the wizard for each VM. This makes the portal approach time-consuming and error-prone for complex tasks.

How can availability zones be useful?

You can use Availability Zones to run mission-critical applications and build high-availability into your application architecture by co-locating your compute, storage, networking, and data resources within a zone and replicating in other zones. Keep in mind that there could be a cost to duplicating your services and transferring data between zones.

How can you manage the VM?

You can use any Azure management interface, including the Azure portal, Azure CLI, and Azure PowerShell

Which of the following is true about virtual networks? You configure virtual networks through software. A virtual network accepts network traffic on all ports. You configure the firewall through virtual machines. Virtual networks are always reachable from the internet.

You configure virtual networks through software. Software enables you to treat a virtual network just like your own network. Azure maintains the physical hardware for you.

Example of a three-tier

Your e-commerce web application follows this three-tier architecture: The web tier provides the web interface to your users through a browser. The application tier runs business logic. The data tier includes databases and other storage that hold product information and customer orders.

What are the two categories of Azure services that support Availability Zones fall into?

Zonal services - you pin the resource to a specific zone (for example, virtual machines, managed disks, IP addresses) Zone-redundant services - platform replicates automatically across zones (for example, zone-redundant storage, SQL Database).

What's the benefit to cloud computing?

it's flexible and cost-efficient

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

aims to give you complete control over the hardware that runs your application (IT infrastructure servers and virtual machines (VMs), storage, networks, and operating systems). Instead of buying hardware, with IaaS, you rent it. It's an instant computing infrastructure, provisioned and managed over the internet. used for: migrating worloads, test and development, website hosting, storage/backup/recovery

What is a snapshot of a running VM is called?

an image

What are the three different cloud deployment models?

public, private, hybrid

How does Azure provide security and high availability?

through encryption and replication features