Benefits of cloud services Flashcards
When building or deploying a cloud application, two of the biggest considerations are:
uptime (or availability) and the ability to handle demand (or scale).
When deploying an application, a service, or any IT resources, it’s important that the resources are available when needed.
What does high availability focus on?
High availability focuses on ensuring maximum availability, regardless of disruptions or events that may occur.
When you’re architecting your solution, you’ll need to account for service availability guarantees. Azure is a highly available cloud environment with uptime guarantees depending on the service.
Where are these guarantees found?
in Service level agreements (SLAs)
Another major benefit of cloud computing is the scalability of cloud resources. What does scalability refer to and what are its benefits?
Scalability refers to the ability to adjust resources to meet demand. If you suddenly experience peak traffic and your systems are overwhelmed, the ability to scale means you can add more resources to better handle the increased demand.
The other benefit of scalability is that you aren’t overpaying for services. Because the cloud is a consumption-based model, you only pay for what you use. If demand drops off, you can reduce your resources and thereby reduce your costs.
Scaling generally comes in two varieties:
vertical and horizontal.
Vertical scaling is focused on increasing or decreasing the capabilities of resources.
Horizontal scaling is adding or subtracting the number of resources.
Give an example/scenario of vertical scaling.
With vertical scaling, if you were developing an app and you needed more processing power, you could vertically scale up to add more CPUs or RAM to the virtual machine. Conversely, if you realized you had over-specified the needs, you could vertically scale down by lowering the CPU or RAM specifications.
Give an example/scenario of horizontal scaling.
With horizontal scaling, if you suddenly experienced a steep jump in demand, your deployed resources could be scaled out (either automatically or manually). For example, you could add additional virtual machines or containers, scaling out. In the same manner, if there was a significant drop in demand, deployed resources could be scaled in (either automatically or manually), scaling in.
Reliability and predictability are two crucial cloud benefits that help you develop solutions with confidence.
What does the reliability of the cloud refer to?
Reliability is the ability of a system to recover from failures and continue to function. It’s also one of the pillars of the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework.
The cloud, by virtue of its decentralized design, naturally supports a reliable and resilient infrastructure. With a decentralized design, the cloud enables you to have resources deployed in regions around the world. With this global scale, even if one region has a catastrophic event other regions are still up and running. You can design your applications to automatically take advantage of this increased reliability. In some cases, your cloud environment itself will automatically shift to a different region for you, with no action needed on your part.
Reliability and predictability are two crucial cloud benefits that help you develop solutions with confidence.
What does the predictability of the cloud refer to?
Predictability in the cloud lets you move forward with confidence. Predictability can be focused on performance predictability or cost predictability. Both performance and cost predictability are heavily influenced by the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework. Deploy a solution built around this framework and you have a solution whose cost and performance are predictable.
what does performance predictability focus on?
Performance predictability focuses on predicting the resources needed to deliver a positive experience for your customers. Autoscaling, load balancing, and high availability are just some of the cloud concepts that support performance predictability. If you suddenly need more resources, autoscaling can deploy additional resources to meet the demand, and then scale back when the demand drops. Or if the traffic is heavily focused on one area, load balancing will help redirect some of the overload to less stressed areas.
What does cost predictability focus on?
Cost predictability is focused on predicting or forecasting the cost of the cloud spend. With the cloud, you can track your resource use in real time, monitor resources to ensure that you’re using them in the most efficient way, and apply data analytics to find patterns and trends that help better plan resource deployments. By operating in the cloud and using cloud analytics and information, you can predict future costs and adjust your resources as needed. You can even use tools like the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) or Pricing Calculator to get an estimate of potential cloud spend.
How can cloud features support governance and compliance?
Things like set templates help ensure that all your deployed resources meet corporate standards and government regulatory requirements.
Plus, you can update all your deployed resources to new standards as standards change.
Cloud-based auditing helps flag any resource that’s out of compliance with your corporate standards and provides mitigation strategies.
Depending on your operating model, software patches and updates may also automatically be applied, which helps with both governance and security.
How can cloud features support security?
On the security side, you can find a cloud solution that matches your security needs. If you want maximum control of security, infrastructure as a service provides you with physical resources but lets you manage the operating systems and installed software, including patches and maintenance. If you want patches and maintenance taken care of automatically, platform-as-a-service or software-as-a-service deployments may be your best cloud strategy.
And because the cloud is intended as an over-the-internet delivery of IT resources, cloud providers are typically well suited to handle things like distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, making your network more robust and secure.
A major benefit of cloud computing is the manageability options. There are two types of manageability for cloud computing:
Management of the cloud
Management in the cloud
A major benefit of cloud computing is the manageability options.
What is the management of the cloud?
Management of the cloud speaks to managing your cloud resources. In the cloud, you can:
- Automatically scale resource deployment based on need.
- Deploy resources based on a preconfigured template, removing the need for manual configuration.
- Monitor the health of resources and automatically replace failing resources.
- Receive automatic alerts based on configured metrics, so you’re aware of performance in real-time.
