AZ-900

Explain the difference between - Total Cost of Ownership tool - Azure Cost Management Tool

TCO Tool: estimates current on-premises costs and cost-savings in migrating to Azure ACM Tool: track actual Azure expenditure

Azure Redis Cache

in-memory

Cloud Service Models

* Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): This service allows you to arhitect your own portion of the cloud, by configuring a virtual network. * Platform as a Service (Paas): application framework from the operating system and up. * Software as a Service (SaaS): delivery of an application through the internet (e.g. GMail) Less common models: * Disaster Recorvery aaS * Communications aaS * Monitoring aaS

Deployment Slots

Azure App Service Web Apps Deployment Slots are used to stage new version of web apps. When you're happy with the staging version, you can swap it for the production version. if something goes wrong after all, you can swap back the old version

How to reach High-Availability with Azure App Service Web Apps?

Azure App Service Web Apps are deployed in one Region, so you need to deploy a stand-by copy in another region

Except for the ad-hoc support by Support Tickets, what otherr options do you hhave?

* MSDN * Stack Overflow * Server Fault * Azure Feedback Forums * Azure Knowledge Center * Twitter yes, even twitter, and real people monitor all these channels, by the way.

Azure backup server

application aware backup whenever you want linux and windows backup/restore VMWare VMs cannot backup Oracle no support for tape backup requires live Azure license

System Center DPM

application aware backup whenever you want linux, windows any os can backup on-premises, cans store locally on tape backup/restore VMWare VMs cannot backup Oracle

Which are the current Geographies?

Americas Europe Asia Pacific Middle East and Africa

Common use cases of Cloud Computing

* Migration of Production Services * Traffic Bursting: for instance during the holiday season * Backup & Disaster Recovery: unlimited storage space with built-in data life cycle management * web hosting & CDN * Test and Development environments * Proof of Concept * Big Data and Data Manipulation

Azure Cost Management Tool?

* Monitor cloud spending * Increase organizational accountability: Implement governance policies for effective enterprise cloud cost management, and increase accountability with budgets, cost allocation, and charge-backs. * Optimize cloud efficiency: Improve the return on your cloud investment by using continuous cost optimization and industry best practices. * Manage your Azure and AWS spending

What is special to installing Azure Backup Agent?

* during installation you need to register the machine * download vault credentials into the agent and set an encryption passphrase * if you loose the passphrase, the backup is unrecoverable

Key Cloud Concepts

* on-demand resourcing: ... * Scalability: rapidly, up and down * Economy of Scale: ... * Flexibility and Elasticity: ... * Growth: ... * Utility based metering: you only pay what you use. * Shared infrastructure: ... * Highly Available: ... * Security: ...

Why does a system become unavailable

* planned maintenance * unplanned maintenance

A hypervisor is ...

... a piece of software used to create the virtualized environment allowing for multiple VMs to be installed on the same host. It creates a pool of virtual shared hardware devices

What are the ways to increase the performance of Azure App Service Web Apps?

1. Autoscaling 2. Azure Redis Cache 3. CDN

What are the Microsoft Azure Support plans?

1. Developers: for non-production. during normal business hours. 8 hour response time.. 2. Standard: for production workloads. 24/7 support from support engineers by phone & e-mail. 1 hour response time. 3. Professional Direct: Standard support + operational support + Training + Guidance from a ProDirect Delivery Manager 4. Premier: Professional Direct + 15 minutes response time + launch support (fee) + Guidance by technical account manager + on-demand training

What is the Azure Service Life Cycle?

1. Private Preview 2. Public Preview 3. General Availability

What are the benefits of vitualization?

1. Reduced capital expenditure: less hardware is required as you an have multiple VMs on the same machine 2. Reduced operating costs: less hardware, less space, less power, less cooling required within a datacenter 3. Smaller footprint: less space required to house the hardware 4. optimization of resources

What is the maximum time an Azure Function can run?

10 minutes

How many support plans does Microsoft Azure have?

4

If Site outage happens what are your recovery options?

6 in total: 1. Recover to latest (default): lowest RPO, high RTO (as it needs to process a lot of unprocessed data) 2. Latest Processed: lower RTO but higher RPO (because unprocessed data is discarded) 3. Latest Application-Consistent 4. Latest Multi-VM Processed 5. Latest Multi-VM Application-Consistent 6. Custom Recovery Point

Recovery Services Vault

A place where VM backups are stored in according to a Backup Policy

Planned Maintenance

A planned maintenance event is when the underlying Azure fabric that hosts VMs is updated by Microsoft. A planned maintenance event is done to patch security vulnerabilities, improve performance, and add or update features. Most of the time these updates are done without any impact to the guest VMs. But sometimes VMs require a reboot to complete an update. When the VM is part of an availability set, the Azure fabric updates are sequenced so not all of the associated VMs are rebooted at the same time. VMs are put into different update domains. Update domains indicate groups of VMs and underlying physical hardware that can be rebooted at the same time. Update domains are a logical part of each data center and are implemented with software and logic.

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.

What is a geography and why do they matter?

An Azure geography is a discrete market typically containing two or more regions that preserve data residency and compliance boundaries. They matter because: 1. Geographies allow customers with specific data residency and compliance needs to keep their data and applications close. 2. Geographies ensure that data residency, sovereignty, compliance, and resiliency requirements are honored within geographical boundaries. 3. Geographies are fault-tolerant to withstand complete region failure through their connection to dedicated high-capacity networking infrastructure.

What is an SLA

An SLA or Service-Level Agreement is a formal document that provides specific terms that state the level of service that will be provided to a customer.

Explain Update Domains and Fault Domains

An update domain is a group of VMs that can be rebooted at the same time without impacting your application. A fault domain is a shared power source, storage and network switch (that can fail without impacting your applications)

When do you qualify for an Enterprise agreement?

As a private business you have to have 500 users and devices. As a public organization you must have at least 250 users and devices

What is an availability zone?

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.

Azure App Service Web Apps

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 automatic scaling and high availability. App Service supports both Windows and Linux, and enables automated deployments from GitHub, Azure DevOps, or any Git repo to support a continuous deployment model. supports ASP.NET, ASP.NET Core, Java, Ruby, Node.js, PHP or Python Integrated with Azure DevOps, GitHub, BitBucket, Docker Hub and Azure Container Registry

Azure CDN

Azure Content Delivery Network

Azure IaaS VM Backup

Azure IaaS VM Backup: backsup VMs in the cloud Only backup service that doesn't allow on-premises backups

Benefits of using Azure

Be ready for the future: Continuous innovation from Microsoft supports your development today and your product visions for tomorrow. Build on your terms: You have choices. With a commitment to open source, and support for all languages and frameworks, build how you want and deploy where you want to. Operate hybrid seamlessly: On-premises, in the cloud, and at the edge--we'll meet you where you are. Integrate and manage your environments with tools and services designed for a hybrid cloud solution. Trust your cloud: Get security from the ground up, backed by a team of experts, and proactive compliance trusted by enterprises, governments, and startups.

How do you request ad-hoc support?

By opening a support ticket from the Azure Portal

What are the 4 core foundation services of the Cloud?

CANS * Compute * Analytics * Network * Storage (files & DBs)

What are the 8 main foundation services of the cloud?

CANS * Compute * Analytics * Network * Storage (files & DBs) IASI * IoT * AI * Security * Integration

What are 4 of the basic services that Cloud Providers povide?

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

What are the four major subjects to know for the fundamentals exam?

CASC * Cloud Concepts * Azure Pricing and Support * Security, Privacy, Compliance and Trust * Core Azure Services

Scaling Azure App Service Web Apps

Can be done manually vertically or horizontally. You can also specify thresholds and let Azure handle it automatically. For instance "scale 40% horizontally if the CPU reaches 60%"

Main difference between VMs and Containers

Containers don't need a host OS and are smaller and thus more resource-efficient than VMs

Differences between Datacenters and Cloud Computing

Datacenter: few locations, Physical Security your responsibility, Mechanical & Electrical infrastructure are on you, Network infrastructure your responsibility and can be both hardware or software based, Servers can be physical and virtual, Storage is limited and -frankly- a pita. Cloud: location around the globe, Physical security and mechanical & electrical infra is part of the vendor, Network infra is only virtual and security is a shared responsibility, servers are virtual only (except for reserved instances) and security is a shared responsibility, storage is unlimited with a myriad of storage services that cater to different requirements

What are region pairs and why are they important?

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.

Enterprise Agreements include all support plans

False, twice. 1) you cannot obtain a developer support plan, 2) you have to pay for your support plan

What is GA?

GA = General Availability. When a product has been successfully tested and preview it is made generally available.

Azure Traffic Manager

Handles failover of Azure App Service Web Apps by using priority routing. In case of outage of the primary region it will route the traffic to the secondary. It doesn't handle Database failover! You need to configure geo-redundant storage Doesn't handle backup recovery! You need to configure geo-redundant storage

Advantages/Benefits of the Cloud

High availability: Depending on the service-level agreement that you choose, your cloud-based applications can provide a continuous user experience with no apparent downtime even when things go wrong. Scalability: Applications in the cloud can be scaled in two ways: Vertically: Computing capacity can be increased by adding RAM or CPUs to a virtual machine. Horizontally: Computing capacity can be increased by adding instances of a resource, such as adding more virtual machines to your configuration. Elasticity: Cloud-based applications can be configured to take advantage of auto-scaling, so your applications will always have the resources they need. Agility: Cloud-based resources can be deployed and configured quickly as your application requirements change. Geo-distribution: Applications and data can be deployed to regional datacenters around the globe, so your customers always have the best performance in their region. Disaster recovery: By taking advantage of cloud-based backup services, data replication, and geo-distribution, you can deploy your applications with the confidence that comes from knowing that your data is safe in the event that disaster should occur.

When are Microservices most appropriate?

High release velocity highly scalable rich (business) domains small development teams

Isolated Service Tier

If you need really high performing instances or more than 20 instances.

What happens if a resource fails to respect an SLA?

In some cases (which?) a Azure Credits are given in compensation

What is cloud computing?

Is a remote virtual pool of on-demand shared resources offering Compute, Storage, Database and Network services that can be rapidly deployed at scale

What is Azure Advisor?

It can advise you about different subjects: * High Availability * Security * Performance * Cost: a.o. tracks under-used or un-used resources

Durable Functions

Like Azure Functions, but stateful. A context is passed through the function to track prior activity. Allows you to create workflows and call other functions synchronously or asynchronously

Azure API Management

Makes it easy to provide APIs that can be used by internal developers and external partners and customers Gateway between clients and backend handles management tasks such as security, monitoring, analytics and rate limiting You can transform your legacy APIs into RESTful ones

Azure Service Fabric

Microsoft's proprietary container orchestrator/Microservice Platform Also runs on Linux, Windows On Azure, On-Premises and even on AWS

Does every region have two or more Availability Zones?

Nope. SomeEven have none... Not every region has support for Availability Zones. The following regions have a minimum of three separate zones to ensure resiliency. Central US East US 2 West US 2 West Europe France Central North Europe Southeast Asia

Azure Backup Agent

Not application aware Windows only (no linux) backs up on-premises or in the cloud Also called MARS (Microsoft Azure Recovery Service) backup 3X a day

Open Service Broker for Azure (OSBA)

Open Service Broker for Azure is the open source, Open Service Broker-compatible API server that provisions managed services in the Microsoft Azure public cloud.

What are the different characteristics of Microsoft's Azure SLA?

PUCS 1. Performance Targets 2. Uptime 3. Connectivity Guarantees 4. Service Credits

Cloud Deployment Models

Public Cloud: cloud shared and offered over the internet to the public Private Cloud: privately hosted, owned and used by the company using the cloud. This require more capital expenditure than a public cloud Hybrid Cloud: combines both pubic and private models (not mentioned in course) Community Cloud

What kind of previews are there?

Public and private. Private are only for specific Azure Users. Public previews can be accessed by all users through the Azure Portal.

Site Recovery Service

Purpose = get you up and running as quickly as possible in the event of an outage Does this by failing over to a different location It supports three fail over scenarios: 1. Azure to Azure 2. On-premises to Azure 3. On-Premises to secondary site

What is resiliency?

Resiliency is the ability of a system to recover from failures and continue to function. It's not about avoiding failures, but responding to failures in a way that avoids downtime or data loss. The goal of resiliency is to return the application to a fully functioning state following a failure. High availability and disaster recovery are two crucial components of resiliency. When designing your architecture you need to design for resiliency, and you should perform a Failure Mode Analysis (FMA). The goal of an FMA is to identify possible points of failure and to define how the application will respond to those failures.

Recovery Service Vault are multi-region by default, right?

Right! you need to use geo-redundant storage, but that's the default.

What "tool" do I use if I want to try out or rapidly deploy entire end-to-end solutions from 3rd party vendors?

The Azure Marketplace.

What are the SLAs for the free or shared tiers?

The free and share tiers don't come with an SLA.

Who owns the azure subscription?

The person that creates the subcription

What's the main benefit of Serverless Computing compared to VMs or Containers?

The serverless model differs from VMs and containers in that you 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.

What's the difference -if any- between Spending limits and quotas?

The spending limit is equal to the amount of credit and it can't be changed. It can be removed though (if you move to a pay as you go subscription). Quotas relate to resources (max nr of VMs per account and such)

What are Azure Reservations?

They are paying in advance for specific products for a pre-determined period

What do you use tags for?

To group resources logically and create an cost report based on that goup.

Tools that are commonly used for day-to-day management and interaction include...

Tools that are commonly used for day-to-day management and interaction include: Azure portal for interacting with Azure via a Graphical User Interface (GUI) Azure PowerShell and Azure Command-Line Interface (CLI) for command line and automation-based interactions with Azure Azure Cloud Shell for a web-based command-line interface Azure mobile app for monitoring and managing your resources from your mobile device

(T/F) All solutions and services are certified to run on Azure.

True (src: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/intro-to-azure-fundamentals/what-is-microsoft-azure)

(T/F) The Azure portal updates continuously and requires no downtime for maintenance activities.

True (src: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/intro-to-azure-fundamentals/what-is-microsoft-azure)

Unplanned Maintenance

Unplanned maintenance events involve a hardware failure in the data center, such as a power outage or disk failure. VMs that are part of an availability set automatically switch to a working physical server so the VM continues to run. The group of virtual machines that share common hardware are in the same fault domain. A fault domain is essentially a rack of servers. It provides the physical separation of your workload across different power, cooling, and network hardware that support the physical servers in the data center server racks. In the event the hardware that supports a server rack becomes unavailable, only that rack of servers is affected by the outage.

How can you estimate costs? And how can you come to the best estimate?

Using the Price Calculator. To get the best estimate you need to know exactly what you'll deploy and where.

How do I Calculate the total savings i can get by moving to the cloud?

Using the Total Cost of Ownership Calculator

What are typical Compute power choices?

VACS Virtual Machines: Software emulations of physical computers Azure App Service: a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering in Azure that is designed to host enterprise-grade web-oriented applications 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. 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.

What are the main types of app styles supported by Azure App Service?

WAWM * Web Apps * API Apps * WebJobs (background tasks) * Mobile Apps back-ends

What are the purchasing options for Azure products and services?

WEC Web Direct Enterprise Cloud Solution Provider

Azure Functions

What AWS calls Lambda

Azure Import/Export Service

What AWS calls Snowball

What is the Composite SLA?

When combining SLAs across different service offerings, the resultant SLA is called a Composite SLA. The resulting composite SLA can provide higher or lower uptime values, depending on your application architecture.

How is an availability set organized in terms of fault domains and update domains?

With an availability set, you get: * Up to three fault domains that each have a server rack with dedicated power and network resources * Five logical update domains which then can be increased to a maximum of 20

Recovery Services Vault are multi region, right?

Wrong! you need to make a Recovery Services Vault for each region you need backups for.

Does it make sense to have multiple subscriptions?

Yes. Some companies do this for billing purposes; they get separate billing and invoicing reports. Or for separating Production from development subscriptions.

Can you have several subscriptions at the same time?

Yup

Are there several pricing options for VMs?

Yup, * Normal * Reserved VM Instances * Hybrid Benefit * DEV/TEST pricing

Do usage costs vary between regions?

Yup, slightly.

Enterprise Agreement

agreement to purchase a pre-determined amount of Azure Services. Savings of 15-45% percent with respect to Web Direct users

Azure Batch

designed for batching service is free, buit you pay for the underlying compute spent

How can you reduce the cost of your VMs?

either use reserved instances or low-priority instances (AWS Spot instances)

WebJobs

feature to run a program (.exe, Java, PHP, Python, or Node.js) or script (.cmd, .bat, PowerShell, or Bash) in the same context as a web app, API app, or mobile app. They can be scheduled or run by a trigger. WebJobs are often used to run background tasks as part of your application logic.

How do you choose the region you need to deploy

normally you choose the region closest to your users, but you also have to weigh in the cost you'll incur in that region.

Azure Container Instances

simple container runtime service Easy and fast for one container, but very limited

Azure services that support Availability Zones fall into which categories

two categories: 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).

Ho much cost savings can i make with Azure Reservations?

up to 72% over pay-as-you-go subscriptions

Azure Logic Apps

you can create a workflow visually in the azure portal integrated with lots of other Azure services (e.g. Machine Learning) Has connectors for product from other vendors like twitter and salesforce can connect to applications on-premises like Oracle

When do you qualify to become a CSP?

you need to sign an agreement with Microsoft.