Day 11: Microsoft Module Core Cloud Services - Introduction to Azure and Azure architecture and service guarantees

There are 3 exercises need to be done in this module.

Important points:

• Azure Advisor and Azure Cost Management are two services that help you optimize cloud spend. You can use these services to identify where you're using more than you need, and then scale back to the capacity you're actually using.

Knowledge check:

1. What is Azure?

• Microsoft's cloud computing platform, which provides compute power, storage, and services over the Internet using a pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Azure provides raw compute power and storage, as well as services to help you explore new software paradigms such as intelligent bots and mixed reality.

• A single data center located in Redmond, Washington.
• A hosting environment specifically for virtual machines

2. Which of the following is an example of an Azure application platform?

• Azure App Service

Azure App Service is an HTTP-based service that enables you to build and host many types of web-based solutions without managing infrastructure.

• Azure Load Balancer
• Azure Table Storage
• Azure Cache for Redis

3. When should you scale out your deployment?

• When your application or service requires a more powerful CPU or more memory to run faster.
• When you need additional virtual machines to speed up your application.

Scaling out means adding additional systems, such as virtual machines. For example, you might create many virtual machines configured in the same way and use a load balancer to distribute work across them.

• When you're using excess capacity that you don't need.

Knowledge check:

1. Deploying an app can be done directly to what level of physical granularity?

• Region

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

• Datacenter
• Server rack

2. To use Azure datacenters that are made available with power, cooling, and networking capabilities independent from other datacenters in a region, choose a region that supports _________?

• Geography distribution
• Service-Level Agreements (SLAs)
• Availability Zones

Availability Zones are datacenters set up to be an isolation boundary from others in the region, with their own power, cooling, and networking. If one zone in a region goes down, other Availability Zones in the region continue to work.

3. Application availability refers to what?

• The service level agreement of the associated resource.
• Application support for an availability zone.
• The overall time that a system is functional and working.

Correct. The time that a system is working is referred to as the application availability.

That's for today.