AZ900 Certification Flashcards
Name the 6 main Azure compute services described in the Azure fundamentals course and very briefly what they are.
Azure Virtual Machines: software emulations of physical computers.
Azure App Service: a PaaS for quickly building, deploying and scaling enterprise-grade web, mobile and API apps.
Azure Container Instances: A compute resource for deploying and managing containers.
Azure Kubernetes Service: Orchestration service for containers in Azure
Azure Functions: Service for running event triggered code which can be completed quickly.
Azure Virtual Desktop: A desktop and application virtualization service.
What are virtual machine scale sets?
An Azure compute resource used to deploy and manage a set of identical VM’s.
Give 4 examples of when to use VM’s from the Azure Fundamentals learning path
During testing and development
When running applications in the cloud
When extending your datacenter to the cloud
During disaster recovery
How can you scale VM’s in Azure? Name 2 ways and when to use which.
Virtual machine scale sets: Let’s you create and manage a group of identical, load-balanced VM’s
Azure Batch: Enables large-scale high performance computing (HPC) batch jobs with the ability to scale to many VM’s.
When you run a batch job in Azure Batch which 6 tasks does Batch perform?
Starts a pool of compute VM's for you Installs applications and staging data Runs jobs with as many tasks as you have Identifies failures Requeues work Scales down the pool as the work completes
What are the 4 most common app service styles which can be hosted in Azure and what are they?
Web app: A computer program that utilizes web browsers and web technology to perform tasks over the internet.
API app: platform for creating hosting and using API’s for cloud and on-premise (separates business logic and UI).
WebJobs: Background processes for a WebApp in Azure - such as resizing an image when uploaded to blob storage.
Mobile apps: Unlike a web app which runs in the the browser, mobile apps are native apps which are installed on a mobile device.
What is a container?
Containers are virtualizations environment - virtual machines virtualize hardware, containers virtualize the operating system (OS). Containers bundle an app and all its dependencies.
What is Kubernetes?
Kubernetes is an orchestration service for containers with distributed architectures and large volumes of containers.
What is serverless computing? Also name 3 benefits of serverless computing
Serverless computing is the abstraction of servers, infrastructure, and operating systems.
- Abstraction of servers: Serverless computing abstracts the servers you run on so you never explicitly need to reserve server instances and developers can focus on coding instead of infrastructure.
- Event-driven scale: Serveless computing is excellent for workloads that respond to incoming events which can be triggered by timers, HTTP requests, Queues and more.
- Micro-billing: You only pay for the time your code is running, letting costs scale with demand.
What are the 2 implementations of serveless computing in Azure called?
Azure Functions
Azure Logic Apps
What is the difference between a stateless and a stateful process?
Stateless processes have no knowledge or reference to past transactions. They are isolated and have no context. Stateful processes are performed with the context of previous transactions. If a stateful interaction is interrupted you can pick up where you left off - if a stateless interaction is interrupted you have to start over.
Name three reasons that make cloud computing cheaper than on prem?
1) Lower your operating costs.
2) Run your infrastructure more efficiently.
3) Scale as your business needs change.
Name 6 compute resources in Azure
1) VM
2) VM scale sets
3) Kubernetes
4) Service fabric
5) Azure batch
6) Container instances
Name 9 Azure networking services
1) Virtual network
2) Load balancer
3) Azure application gateway
4) Azure VPN gateway
5) Azure DNS
6) Azure DDoS protection
7) Azure ExpressRoute
8) Azure Firewall
9) Azure Virtual WAN
Name the 4 Azure storage services
1) Blob starage
2) File storage
3) Queue storage
4) Table storage
Name 6 Azure Database services
Azure Cosmos DB
- Globally distributed database that supports NoSQL options.
Azure SQL Database
- Fully managed relational database with auto-scale, integral intelligence, and robust security.
Azure Database for MySQL
- Fully managed and scalable MySQL relational database with high availability and security.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL
- Fully managed and scalable PostgreSQL relational database with high availability and security.
SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines
- Service that hosts enterprise SQL Server apps in the cloud.
Azure Synapse Analytics
- Fully managed data warehouse with integral security at every level of scale at no extra cost.
Name 4 Azure services for building web applications
Azure App Service
- Quickly create powerful cloud web-based apps.
Azure Notification Hubs
- Send push notifications to any platform from any back end.
Azure API Management
- Publish APIs to developers, partners, and employees securely and at scale.
Azure Cognitive Search
- Deploy this fully managed search as a service.
Name the 3 Azure IoT services
IoT Central
- Fully managed global IoT software as a service (SaaS) solution that makes it easy to connect, monitor, and manage IoT assets at scale.
Azure IoT Hub
- Messaging hub that provides secure communications between and monitoring of millions of IoT devices.
Azure Sphere
Name the 3 Azure big data services
Azure Synapse Analytics
- Run analytics at a massive scale by using a cloud-based enterprise data warehouse that takes advantage of massively parallel processing to run complex queries quickly across petabytes of data.
Azure HDInsight
- Process massive amounts of data with managed clusters of Hadoop clusters in the cloud.
Azure Databricks
- Integrate this collaborative Apache Spark-based analytics service with other big data services in Azure.
Name the two types of AI services in Azure
Azure Machine Learning
Azure Cognitive services
Name the two Devops services in Azure
Azure DevOps
- Use development collaboration tools such as high-performance pipelines, free private Git repositories, configurable Kanban boards, and extensive automated and cloud-based load testing. Formerly known as Visual Studio Team Services.
Azure DevTest Labs
- Quickly create on-demand Windows and Linux environments to test or demo applications directly from deployment pipelines.
Name and explain the 3 different cloud models
Public cloud
- Services are offered over the public internet and available to anyone who wants to purchase them. Cloud resources, such as servers and storage, are owned and operated by a third-party cloud service provider, and delivered over the internet.
Private cloud
- A private cloud consists of computing resources used exclusively by users from one business or organization. A private cloud can be physically located at your organization’s on-site (on-premises) datacenter, or it can be hosted by a third-party service provider.
Hybrid cloud
- A hybrid cloud is a computing environment that combines a public cloud and a private cloud by allowing data and applications to be shared between them.
Name some of the pros/cons of the different cloud models (private, public, hybrid)
Public cloud
No capital expenditures to scale up.
Applications can be quickly provisioned and deprovisioned.
Organizations pay only for what they use.
Private cloud
Hardware must be purchased for start-up and maintenance.
Organizations have complete control over resources and security.
Organizations are responsible for hardware maintenance and updates.
Hybrid cloud
Provides the most flexibility.
Organizations determine where to run their applications.
Organizations control security, compliance, or legal requirements.
Name benefits of cloud computing
High availability
Scalability
Agility (Deploy and configure cloud-based resources quickly)
Geo-distribution
Disaster recovery
Explain IaaS
This cloud service model is the closest to managing physical servers; a cloud provider will keep the hardware up-to-date, but operating system maintenance and network configuration is up to you as the cloud tenant. For example, Azure virtual machines are fully operational virtual compute devices running in Microsoft datacenters. An advantage of this cloud service model is rapid deployment of new compute devices. Setting up a new virtual machine is considerably faster than procuring, installing, and configuring a physical server.
Explain Paas
This cloud service model is a managed hosting environment. The cloud provider manages the virtual machines and networking resources, and the cloud tenant deploys their applications into the managed hosting environment. For example, Azure App Services provides a managed hosting environment where developers can upload their web applications, without having to worry about the physical hardware and software requirements.
Explain SaaS
In this cloud service model, the cloud provider manages all aspects of the application environment, such as virtual machines, networking resources, data storage, and applications. The cloud tenant only needs to provide their data to the application managed by the cloud provider. For example, Microsoft Office 365 provides a fully working version of Microsoft Office that runs in the cloud. All you need to do is create your content, and Office 365 takes care of everything else.
Relate IaaS, PaaS and SaaS in terms of least user responsibility/management
SaaS>PaaS>IaaS
Explain serverless computing
Like PaaS, serverless computing enables developers to build applications faster by eliminating the need for them to manage infrastructure. With serverless applications, the cloud service provider automatically provisions, scales, and manages the infrastructure required to run the code. Serverless architectures are highly scalable and event-driven, only using resources when a specific function or trigger occurs.
IoT services
Name the central message hub, that handles bi-directional communication between IoT device and IoT apps
Azure IoT hub
IoT services
Name the services that build on the Azure IoT hub, including a dashboard that allows you to connect, monitor, and manage your IoT devices
Azure IoT central
IoT services
Name this service: end-to-end, highly secure IoT solution for customers that encompasses everything from the hardware and operating system on the device to the secure method of sending messages from the device to the message hub.
Azure Sphere
IoT services
Decision criteria for IoT services and the service choice for each
1) Is it critical to ensure that the device is not compromised?
A: AZURE SPHERE
2) Do I need a dashboard for reporting and management?
A: AZURE IoT CENTRAL
else:
Azure IoT Hub
AI SERVICES
Name the service choice if you want to make custom predictions
Azure Machine Learning is a platform for making predictions. It consists of tools and services that allow you to connect to data to train and test models to find one that will most accurately predict a future result. After you’ve run experiments to test the model, you can deploy and use it in real time via a web API endpoint.
AI SERVICES
Name the service choice that enable applications to see, hear, speak, understand, and even begin to reason.
Azure cognitive services
Azure Cognitive Services provides prebuilt machine learning models that enable applications to see, hear, speak, understand, and even begin to reason. Use Azure Cognitive Services to solve general problems, such as analyzing text for emotional sentiment or analyzing images to recognize objects or faces. You don’t need special machine learning or data science knowledge to use these services. Developers access Azure Cognitive Services via APIs and can easily include these features in just a few lines of code.
While Azure Machine Learning requires you to bring your own data and train models over that data, Azure Cognitive Services, for the most part, provides pretrained models so that you can bring in your live data to get predictions on.
AI SERVICES
Name the service choice if you want a virtual agent that understand and reply to questions just like a human.
Azure Bot Service
Azure Bot Service and Bot Framework are platforms for creating virtual agents that understand and reply to questions just like a human. Azure Bot Service is a bit different from Azure Machine Learning and Azure Cognitive Services in that it has a specific use case. Namely, it creates a virtual agent that can intelligently communicate with humans. Behind the scenes, the bot you build uses other Azure services, such as Azure Cognitive Services, to understand what their human counterparts are asking for.
Bots can be used to shift simple, repetitive tasks, such as taking a dinner reservation or gathering profile information, on to automated systems that might no longer require direct human intervention. Users converse with a bot by using text, interactive cards, and speech. A bot interaction can be a quick question and answer, or it can be a sophisticated conversation that intelligently provides access to services.
AI services
Decision criteria for AI services and the service choice for each
Are you building a virtual agent that interfaces with humans via natural language?
A: AZURE BOT SERVICES
Do you need a service that can understand the content and meaning of images, video, or audio, or that can translate text into a different language?
A: AZURE COGNITIVE SERVICES
Do you need to predict user behavior or provide users with personalized recommendations in your app?
A:COGNITIVE SERVICES
Will your app predict future outcomes based on private historical data?
A: AZURE MACHINE LEARNING
SERVERLESS OPTIONS
Decision criteria for serverless computing services and the service choice for each
Do you need to execute custom algorithms or perform specialized data parsing and data lookups?
A: AZURE FUNCTIONS
Do you need to perform an orchestration across well-known APIs?
a: AZURE LOGIC APPS
Do you have existing automated tasks written in an imperative programming language?
A: AZURE FUNCTIONS
Do you prefer a visual (declarative) workflow or writing (imperative) code?
A: AZURE LOGIC APPS/AZURE FUNCTIONS
Compare Azure functions and Azure logic apps
With the Azure Functions service, you can host a single method or function by using a popular programming language in the cloud that runs in response to an event. An example of an event might be an HTTP request, a new message on a queue, or a message on a timer.
Because of its atomic nature, Azure Functions can serve many purposes in an application’s design. Functions can be written in many common programming languages, such as C#, Python, JavaScript, Typescript, Java, and PowerShell.
Logic Apps is a low-code/no-code development platform hosted as a cloud service. The service helps you automate and orchestrate tasks, business processes, and workflows when you need to integrate apps, data, systems, and services across enterprises or organizations. Logic Apps simplifies how you design and build scalable solutions, whether in the cloud, on-premises, or both. This solution covers app integration, data integration, system integration, enterprise application integration (EAI), and business-to-business (B2B) integration.
BUILD SOLUTIONS
Azure DevOps, GitHub, Github Actions, Azure DevTest labs
Choice if you need to automate and manage test-lab creation?
A: Azure DevTest Labs
If your aim is to automate the creation and management of a test lab environment, consider choosing Azure DevTest Labs.
Among the three tools and services we’ve described, it’s the only one that offers this functionality.
However, you can automate the provisioning of new labs as part of a toolchain by using Azure Pipelines or GitHub Actions.
BUILD SOLUTIONS
Azure DevOps, GitHub, Github Actions, Azure DevTest labs
Choice if you need to build open-source software?
A: GitHub
Although Azure DevOps can publish public code repositories, GitHub has long been the preferred host for open-source software. If you’re building open-source software, you would likely choose GitHub if for no other reasons than its visibility and general acceptance by the open-source development community.
BUILD SOLUTIONS
Azure DevOps, GitHub, Github Actions, Azure DevTest labs
Choice if you need sophisticated project management and reporting
A: Azure DevOps
Although GitHub has work items, issues, and a Kanban board, project management and reporting is the area where Azure DevOps excels. Azure DevOps is highly customizable, which allows an administrator to add custom fields to capture metadata and other information alongside each work item. By contrast, the GitHub Issues feature uses tags as its primary means of helping a team categorize issues.
BUILD SOLUTIONS
Azure DevOps, GitHub, Github Actions, Azure DevTest labs
Choice if you need a high level of permission granularity
A: Azure DevOps
GitHub works on a simple model of read/write permissions to every feature. Meanwhile, Azure DevOps has a much more granular set of permissions that allow organizations to refine who is able to perform most operations across the entire toolset.
BUILD SOLUTIONS
Azure DevOps, GitHub, Github Actions, Azure DevTest labs
Choice if you need to integrate w. third party tools
A: GitHub + Azure DevOps
Although we make no specific recommendations about third-party tools, it’s important for you to understand your organization’s existing investments in tools and services and to evaluate how these dependencies might affect your choice. It’s likely that most vendors that create DevOps tools create hooks or APIs that can be used by both Azure Pipelines and GitHub Actions. Even so, it’s probably worth the effort to validate that assumption.
Name the four developer services in Azure used for collaboration on code development and building and deploying solutions.
Azure DevOps
Azure Devtest Labs
GitHub
GitHub actions
Name the management tools in Azure
Visual tools provide full, visually friendly access to all the functionality of Azure as well as command line tools
Azure Portal
- The user friendly GUI option
Azure mobile app
- Mobile app for Azure resources
Azure PowerShell
- a shell with which developers and DevOps and IT professionals can execute called cmdlets
Azure CLI
- The Azure CLI command-line interface is an executable program with which a developer, DevOps professional, or IT professional can execute commands in Bash.
ARM templates
- The template then orchestrates the creation of those resources in parallel. That is, if you need 50 instances of the same resource, all 50 instances are created at the same time.
MANAGING AND CONFIGURING
PORTAL, MOBILE, POWERSHELL, CLI, ARM TEMPLATES
Choice if you need to perform one-off management, administrative, or reporting actions?
PORTAL + POWERSHELL + CLI,
MANAGING AND CONFIGURING
PORTAL, MOBILE, POWERSHELL, CLI, ARM TEMPLATES
Choice if you need a way to repeatedly set up one or more resources and ensure that all the dependencies are created in the proper order?
ARM templates
MANAGING AND CONFIGURING
PORTAL, MOBILE, POWERSHELL, CLI, ARM TEMPLATES
Choice if you are Windows/Linux based
Windows: PowerShell
Linux: Azure CLI
Compare Azure Advisor, Azure Monitor and Azure Service Health
AZURE ADVISOR
- Advisor dashboard displays personalized recommendations for all your subscriptions, and you can use filters to select recommendations for specific subscriptions, resource groups, or services
(reliability, Security, Performance, Cost, operational excellence)
AZURE MONITOR
- Azure Monitor is a platform for collecting, analyzing, visualizing, and potentially taking action based on the metric and logging data from your entire Azure and on-premises environment.
AZURE SERVCE HEALTH
- Azure Service Health provides a personalized view of the health of the Azure services, regions, and resources you rely on
MONITORING SERVICES
ADVISOR, MONITOR, SERVICE HEALTH
Choice if you need to analyze how you’re using Azure to reduce costs, improve resilience, or harden your security?
Azure Advisor
MONITORING SERVICES
ADVISOR, MONITOR, SERVICE HEALTH
Choice if you want to monitor Azure services or your usage of Azure?
Azure monitor
MONITORING SERVICES
ADVISOR, MONITOR, SERVICE HEALTH
Choice if you want to measure custom events alongside other usage metrics?
Azure monitor
MONITORING SERVICES
ADVISOR, MONITOR, SERVICE HEALTH
Choice if you need to set up alerts for outages or when autoscaling is about to deploy new instances?
Azure monitor
MONITORING SERVICES
ADVISOR, MONITOR, SERVICE HEALTH
Choice if you want to monitor Azure services or your usage of Azure?
Azure Service Health to monitor Azure services and Azure Monitor if it’s related to your specific services.
Describe the difference between authorization and authentication
Authentication is the process of establishing the identity of a person or service that wants to access a resource.
Authentication establishes the user’s identity, but authorization is the process of establishing what level of access an authenticated person or service has. It specifies what data they’re allowed to access and what they can do with it.
Name the Azure authentication and authorazation service, that enables users to sign-in and access applications on your tenant?
Azure Active Directory
Name services within Azure AD
Authentication
SSO
Application management
Device management
Explain the difference between multifactor authentication and conditional access
Multifactor authentication is a process where a user is prompted during the sign-in process for an additional form of identification. Examples include a code on their mobile phone or a fingerprint scan (something the user knows, has or are)
Conditional Access is a tool that Azure Active Directory uses to allow (or deny) access to resources based on identity signals. These signals include who the user is, where the user is, and what device the user is requesting access from.
Name the four management levels in Azure and explain how you can manage access easily between these mangement levels
A management group (a collection of multiple subscriptions).
A single subscription.
A resource group.
A single resource.
Control access via RBAC
How can you prevent accidental changes of resources?
Resource lock
Name the two levels of locking via resource locks
CanNotDelete means authorized people can still read and modify a resource, but they can’t delete the resource without first removing the lock.
ReadOnly means authorized people can read a resource, but they can’t delete or change the resource. Applying this lock is like restricting all authorized users to the permissions granted by the Reader role in Azure RBAC.
Explain Azure blueprint and how it relates to resource locks
To make the protection process more robust, you can combine resource locks with Azure Blueprints. Azure Blueprints enables you to define the set of standard Azure resources that your organization requires. For example, you can define a blueprint that specifies that a certain resource lock must exist. Azure Blueprints can automatically replace the resource lock if that lock is removed.
Descirbe “tags” and how they are beneficial
Tags are used to identify grouped resources. This is helpful in usage tracking and invoicing
Explain Azure policy and Azure policy initiatives
Azure Policy enables you to define both individual policies and groups of related policies, known as initiatives. Azure Policy evaluates your resources and highlights resources that aren’t compliant with the policies you’ve created. Azure Policy can also prevent noncompliant resources from being created.
An Azure Policy initiative is a way of grouping related policies together. The initiative definition contains all of the policy definitions to help track your compliance state for a larger goal.
How can you define a repeatable set of governance tools and standard Azure resources that your organization requires? Incl. Role assignments, Policy assignments, Azure Resource Manager templates, Resource groups
Azure blueprints
What is MS cloud adoption Framework
The Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure provides you with proven guidance to help with your cloud adoption journey. The Cloud Adoption Framework helps you create and implement the business and technology strategies needed to succeed in the cloud.
Name the five steps in the cloud adoption framework
Define your strategy. Make a plan. Ready your organization. Adopt the cloud. Govern and manage your cloud environments.
Name the seven key networking capabilities provided by Azure virtual networks (VNets)
Isolation and segmentation, Internet communications, communication between Azure resources, communication with on-premises resources, route network traffic, filter network traffic, connect virtual networks.
Name 3 mechanisms for achieving connectivity between your local and cloud environments
Point-to-site virtual private networks, site-to-site virtual private networks, Azure ExpressRoute
What is a VPN and what is the difference between a site-to-site vpn and a point-to-site vpn?
A VPN is a virtual private network. VPNs extend a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The traffic is usually encrypted. For point-to-site virtual networks in Azure the client computer initiates an encrypted VPN connection to connect that computer to the Azure virtual network. For site-to-site VPNs in Azure an on-premise VPN gateway or device is linked to the Azure VPN gateway in a virtual network such that Azure devices appear as being on the local network. The connection between the gateways is encrypted.
What can you do in a route table?
Define rules about how traffic should be directed. Custom route tables allow you to control how packets are routed between subnets.
What is a BGP?
A BGP is a Border Gateway Protocol. A Border Gateway Protocol works with Azure VPN gateways, Azure Route Servers or ExpressRoute to propagate on-premise BGP routes to Azure virtual networks.
What are network security groups used for?
A network security group (NSG) is an Azure resource that can contain multiple inbound and outbound security rules. The rules can allow or block traffic based on factors such as source and destination IP, port and protocol.
What is Peering?
Peering is a way of linking Azure VNets thereby enabling resources in each virtual network to communicate with each other.
