AZ-900 Microsoft Azure Fundamentals notes

AZURE ARCHITECT

Region & Availibility Zones

Region

• A set of data centers deployed within a latency-defined perimeter and connected through a dedicated regional low-latency network

How to choose

• Location -> closest to the users to minimize latency
• Features -> some features are not available in all regions
• Price -> vary from region to region

Paired regions

1. Each region is paired
2. Outage failover
3. Planned updates
4. Replication

Availability Zones (AZ)

• Physical location within a region
• Independent
• 3 zones minimum

Resource Groups & Azure Resource Manager

Resource Group

• Everything is inside a resource group
• Facts:
  • One resource -> 1 RG
  • Add / remove at anytime
  • Move resources from one to another
  • Multiple region resources can be in 1 RG
  • Access control can be on RG level
  • Interacts with other resources from other RG
  • RG has a location or region to store metadata in it

Azure Resource Manager (ARM)

• Manage all resources and all interactions through the ARM
• Benefits
  • Group Resource Handling -> Can deploy, manage, and monitor resources as a group
  • Consistency -> Deploying resources from various tools will always result in the same consistent state
  • Dependencies -> Define dependencies between resources to make sure they do not conflict with each other over resources
  • Access Control -> Built-in features in the ARM make it easy to assign access rights to users
  • Tagging -> Tag resources to identify them for future scenarios quickly; tagging is a way to label individual resources
  • Billing -> Leverage tags to stay on top of billing for groups of resources

COMPUTE

Virtual machine

• A part of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Manage everything except the hardware, including the networking components
• Tools -> Azure Portal to manage VMs (even hybrid clouds)
• Compliance -> Azure blueprints to make your VMs comply with guidelines
• Recommendations -> Azure will recommend improvements to ensure better security, higher availability, and greater performance
• Choices:
  • RAM
  • CPUs
  • OS
• Pricing -> Calculated Hourly. More resources, higher cost per hour
• Use Cases

-> Core of Azure compute & are widely used

Scale sets

• A group of identical, load-balanced VMs
• Benefits
  • Multiple VMs -> easy to manage VMs using an LB
  • High Availability -> If one fails or stops, the others in the scale set will keep working
  • Auto Scaling -> Automatically match demand by adding or removing VMs from the scale sets
  • Large Scale -> Run up to 1000 VMs in 1 scale set
  • No extra cost -> No added cost, just the cost of resources
• Use cases: for better elasticity

EXAM TIPS

• Set of identical VMs. They can be activated & deactivated as needed
• A baseline VM for scale set ensures application stability
• No more cost, just cost for the resource you use

App Service

1. Web App

• Both windows & Linux
• Support a lot of languages
• Azure integrates for easier deployment
• Auto Scaling

2. Web App for containers

• Deploy and run containerized applications in Azure
• A container is entirely self-contained
• All dependencies are shipped inside the container
• Deploy anywhere with a consistent experience
• Reliable between environments

3. API App

• Expose and connect your data backend
• Application Programming Interface
• No graphical component or user interface
• Connect other applications programmatically
• Use a range of programming languages

EXAM TIPS

• An easy way to host & manage your web application
• Paas offering in Azure

Azure Container Instances

• Primary Azure service for running container workloads
• On-demand -> save money
• Use containerized applications to process data on demand by only creating the container image when one needs it
• Works with tools of choice
• Use the Azure Portal, Azure CLI, or Powershell

Features

• Manage Application Dependencies
  • All the dependencies for an application are included in the container image
  • Can manage the application and its dependencies with confidence
• Less overhead
  • VM requires a lot more maintenance and updates
  • Containers don't have any components relating to the operating system
• Increase portability -> Applications running in containers can be deployed quickly to multiple different operating systems and hardware platforms
• Efficiency
  • Development, deployment, and maintenance are all more efficient when using containers
  • Scaling and patching are much simpler
• Consistency -> Operations team can rely on containers being the same every time, no matter which target they are being deployed to

Workflow

• Software Development Cycle → Application placed in a container → Azure Container Instances

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system for automating application deployment, scaling, and management

• Open Source -> public code base and community involvement in the product
• Orchestration -> keeps track of lots of parts of a system and makes sure containers are configured correctly to work together
• Automatic Application Deployment -> k8s will deploy more images of containers as needed
• Automatic Scaling -> automatic monitoring of application load to determine when to scale the numbers of containers used

AKS

• Replicate Container Architectures:
  • Reuse your container architecture by managing it in Kubernetes.
  • This makes setup quicker and increases confidence in the stability of the system
• Standard Azure Services Included
  • User does not have to worry about infrastructure and hardware.
  • IAM, elastic provisioning, and much more included

Azure Container Registry (ACR)

• file and artifacts for container images

Azure Virtual Desktop

• Completely virtualized version of Windows -> 100% runs on cloud
• Reuse windows 10 license
• Concurrency -> Multiple users can use the same VM instance
• Access from everywhere -> Use Windows 10 from anywhere on any device with an internet browser
• Secured data -> Use Azure Storage to secure the data

Functions

IaaS/PaaS vs Function

Runs once and stops

Architect

• No maintenance
• No process
• No VM related
• A function = 1 job to do

Benefits

• Only run when needed
• Save money
• Resilience

NETWORKING

Virtual Network

Subnet Regions and Subscriptions

• Cloud Advantages
  • Scaling -> Adding virtual networks or more addresses to a network is simple
  • High Availability -> Peering virtual networks, using a load balancer, or using a VPN gateway will all increase the availability
  • Isolation -> Manage and organize resources with subnets and network security groups

VNet Peering

• Benefits
  • Low latency with high bandwidth
  • Link separated networks
  • Data transfer easily within the network

EXAM TIPS

• VNet = fundamental part of your Azure infrastructure
• An address space is a range of IP addresses you can use for your resources
• A subnet is a smaller network, a part of your VNet
• VNet = single region + single subscription
• VNet can scale and have HA & isolation

Load balancer

• Distributes new inbound flows that arrive on the Load Balancer's frontend to backend pool instances, according to rules and health probes

• Scenarios:

  1. Internet traffic
  2. Internal networks
  3. Port forwarding
  4. Outbound traffic

VPN Gateway

Components

• Azure VNet & VPN Gateway
• Tunnel with protocols
• On-premises gateway

-> site-to-site connections

EXAM TIPS

• VPN GWs are instrumental in a hybrid cloud architecture
• A VPN GW is a specific VNet GW. It consists of 2 or more dedicated VNets
• VNet GW + VPN = VPN Gateway
• Send encrypted data between Azure and on-premise network
• Azure GW subnet, secured tunnel & on-premise GW make up VPN GW scenarios

Application Gateway

Benefits

• Scale up/down -> Scale the application gateway up or down based on the amount of traffic received
• Encryption -> Comply with any security policies, disable or enable traffic encryption to the backend
• Zone redundancy -> Span multiple availability zones and improve fault resiliency
• Multi-site hosting -> Use the same application gateway for up to 100 websites

EXAM TIPS

• Application GW is a high-level load balancer
• Works on HTTP request of the traffic instead of the IP address and port
• Traffic on a specific web address goes to a specific machine
• Fit for most Azure services

Content delivery network (CDK)

• A distributed network of servers that can deliver web content via the edge node closest to the user.

Benefits

1. Better performance
2. Scaling
3. Distribution -> Edge servers will serve requests closest to the user. Less traffic is then sent to the server hosting the application

Terms

• Cache on edge -> Collection of temporary copies of original files
• Origin server -> Original location of the files, such as a web application

Express Route

Equivelant AWS Direct Connect- Super fast connection which don't go over the Internet

• if you need a private, secure, high-bandwidth, low-latency connection directly from your data center or infrastructure to Azure -> ExpessRoute

STORAGE

• Storage account must be unique across global (identical to AWS S3) as every object has its web address

Blob

• Binary Large Object -> pretty much anything
• Storage Levels: Storage Account → Container → Blob

Scenarios

• Images
• All types
• Streaming audio/video
• Log files
• Data store (archiving, backup, restore, DR)

Types

1. Block:
   • up to 4.7TB
   • Made up of individual managed blocks of data
2. Append:
   • Block blobs optimized for append operations
   • Works well for logging
3. Page:
   • Store files up to 8TB
   • We could access any part of the file at any time (ex: virtual hard drive)

Pricing tiers

• Hot
  • Frequently accessed files
  • Lower access times and higher access costs
• Cold
  • Lower storage costs and higher access times
  • Data remains here for at least 30 days
• Archive
  • Lowest cost and highest access times

Disk

• Managed Disk
  • Attach to VMs
  • Azure Manages
  • User does not have to worry about backup and uptime
• Size and Performance
  • Microsoft and Azure guarantee size and performance as per the agreement of use
• Upgrade
  • Easy to upgrade disk size and type

Disk Types

• HDD
  • Spinning hard drive
  • Low cost and suitable for dev env, backups
• Standard SSD
  • Standard for production
  • Higher reliability, scalability, and lower latency than the HDD
• Premium SSD
  • Super fast and high performance
  • very low latency
  • used for critical workloads
• Ultra Disk
  • For the most demanding, data-intensive workloads
  • Disk size up to 64TB

File

Issues

• Constraints -> Contains a limited amount of storage
• Backups -> time and resources spent on maintaining backups
• Security -> challenging to keep all data secure at all times. Specialist assistance is often needed
• File Sharing -> can be difficult to share files across teams and orgs

Benefits

• Sharing -> Share access to the Azure file storage across machines and provide access to the on-prem infrastructure as well
• Managed -> user does not have to worry about hardware or operating system
• Resilient -> Network and power outages will not affect the user's storage

Scenarios

• Hybrid -> Supplement or replace your existing on-premises file storage solution
• Lift and Shift -> Move your existing file storage and related services to Azure

Archive

Requirement

• Policies, legislation, and recovery can be requirements for archiving data
• These can be vast amounts of data

Lowest Price

• The archive tier is the lowest price for storage on Azure
• Few dollars a month can get TBs of space

Features

• Durable, encrypted, and stable -> Perfectly suited for data that is accessed infrequently
• Free up Premium Storage -> Cheap archive storage allows for freeing up more premium storage on-prem
• Secure -> Fully secure to allow for any personal data such as financial records, medical data, and more
• Archive storage is blob storage so that the same tools will work for both

DATABASES

CosmosDB

Features

• Global from the start
• Easy synchronization -> Traditional databases that aren't cloud-enabled could be complicated to set up across multiple regions
• One Click to Add Regions
• Continued Synchronization -> stays on top of all reads and writes to the data and makes sure the data is moved between regions to stay in Sync
• Latency: 0-9ms
• Scalability:
  1. Automated -> Automatically scales to meet resource demand
  2. It can support Infinity resource -> Any number of users of your application
  3. Lowest price -> Even though the scaling is automatic, only pay for the resources that are used
• Developer: various SDKs, APIs, and supported languages: C#, Java, Python, Nodejs,...
• Platforms: Choose from numerous data platforms such as SQL, MongoDB, and Cassandra

HOWEVER, COSTS CAN RUN UP FAST

Azure SQL

• Managed Service - Database as a service
• Can migrate to Azure SQL to save the cost and lower the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
• Built-in ML for:
  1. Optimization
  2. Warning of performance

Benefits

• Scalability -> Scale the Azure SQL instances and get HA as well
• Space -> up to 100TB
• Security -> built-in security features of the Azure cloud platform

TO BE UPDATED