Cloud Concepts Flashcards
What is cloud computing?
The delivery of computing services over the internet, enabling faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale. Uses a pay-as-you-go model, which means you only pay for the services you use.
What are the benefits of pay-as-you-go pricing?
- Lowers operating costs
- Runs infrastructure more efficiently
- Scales as business needs change
Azure Portal
A web-based, unified console that provides an alternative to command-line tools.
How do you use the Azure portal?
- Build, manage, and monitor everything
- Create custom dashboards
- Configure accessibility options
Compute
Describes concepts/objects related to software computation. A generic term used to reference processing power, memory, networking, storage, and other resources required for the computational success.
What computing services are delivered for cloud computing?
Compute, networking, storage, and analytics.
Public Cloud
- Owned by cloud services/hosting provider
- Provides resources and services to multiple organizations and users (multi-tenant)
- Accessed via secure network connection (typically over the internet)
- Many locations
- Uses OpEx
Private Cloud
- Organizations create a cloud environment in their datacenter.
- Organization is responsible for operating the services they provide.
- Does not provide access to users outside of the organization.
- Uses CapEx
Hybrid Cloud
Combines Public and Private clouds to allow applications to run in the most appropriate location.
Public Cloud Characteristics
- No capital expenditures to scale up
- Applications can be quickly provisioned and deprovisioned
- Organizations pay only for what they use
Private Cloud Characteristics
- 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 Characteristics
- Provides the most flexibility
- Organizations determine where to run their applications
- Organizations control security, compliance, or legal requirements
Cloud Benefits
- High availability: Depending on the service-level agreement (SLA) that you choose, your cloud-based apps can provide a continuous user experience with no apparent downtime, even when things go wrong.
- Scalability: Apps in the cloud can scale vertically and horizontally. Vertically to increase compute capacity by adding RAM or CPUs to a virtual machine. Horizontally increases compute capacity by adding instances of resources, such as adding VMs to the configuration.
- Elasticity: You can configure cloud-based apps to take advantage of auto-scaling, so your apps always have the resources they need.
- Agility: Deploy and configure cloud-based resources quickly as your app requirements change.
- Geo-distribution: You can deploy apps and data to regional datacenters around the globe, thereby ensuring that 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 apps with the confidence that comes from knowing that your data is safe in the event of disaster.
CapEx
- Up-front spending of money on physical infrastructure.
- Costs from CapEx have a value that reduces over time.
OpEx
- Spending and billing of services/products as needed.
- Expenses are deducted in the same year.
Consumption Based Model
- No upfront costs.
- No need to purchase and manage costly infrastructure that users might not use to its fullest potential.
- The ability to pay for more resources when they’re needed.
- The ability to stop paying for resources that are no longer needed.
Consumption Based Model Benefits
- Better cost prediction
- Prices for individual resources and services are provided
- Billing is based on actual usage
What areas are in the shared responsibility model?
- Data & Access
- Applications
- Runtime
- Operating System
- Virtual Machine
- Compute
- Networking
- Storage
IaaS Shared Responsibility
You Manage:
- Data & Access
- Applications
- Runtime
- Operating System
- Virtual Machine
Cloud Provider Manages:
- Compute
- Networking
- Storage
PaaS Shared Responsibility
You Manage:
- Data & Access
- Applications
Cloud Provider Manages:
- Runtime
- Operating System
- Virtual Machine
- Compute
- Networking
- Storage
Software as a Service
You Manage:
- Data & Access
CSP Manages:
- Applications
- Runtime
- Operating System
- Virtual Machine
- Compute
- Networking
- Storage
IaaS
Build pay-as-you-go IT infrastructure by renting servers, virtual machines, storage, networks, and operating systems from a cloud provider.
Components of IaaS
- Servers and storage
- Networking firewalls/security
- Datacenter physical plant/building
PaaS
Provides environment for building, testing, and deploying software applications; without focusing on managing underlying infrastructure.
PaaS Components
- Servers and storage
- Networking firewalls/security
- Datacenter physical plant/building
- Operating systems
- Development tools, database management, business analytics
SaaS
Users connect to and use cloud-based apps over the internet: for example, Microsoft Office 365, email, and calendars.
SaaS Components
- Servers and storage
- Networking firewalls/security
- Datacenter physical plant/building
- Operating systems
- Development tools, database management, business analytics
- Hosted applications/apps
Iaas Benefits
- The most flexible cloud service.
- You configure and manage the hardware for your application.
PaaS Benefits
- Focus on application development.
- Platform management is handled by the cloud provider.
SaaS Benefits
- Pay-as-you-go pricing model.
- Users pay for the software they use on a subscription model.
IaaS Characteristics
- Closest to managing physical servers
- Cloud provider keeps hardware up-to-date, operating system maintenance/network configuration is up to you
- An advantage: rapid deployment of new compute devices
- Most flexible. Aims to give you complete control over the hardware that runs your application.
- Instead of buying hardware, with IaaS, you rent it.
PaaS Characteristics
- Cloud service model is a managed hosting environment
- Cloud provider manages the virtual machines and networking resources, the cloud tenant deploys their applications into the managed hosting environment
- Developers can upload their web applications, without having to worry about the physical hardware and software requirements
SaaS Characteristics
- Cloud provider manages all aspects of the application environment, such as virtual machines, networking resources, data storage, and applications.
- Cloud tenant only needs to provide their data to the application managed by the cloud provider.
- 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.
Azure Functions
Code running your service and not the underlying platform or infrastructure. It creates infrastructure based on an event.
Azure Logic Apps
Cloud service that helps you automate and orchestrate tasks, business processes, and workflows when you need to integrate apps, data, systems, and services.
Serverless Computing Applications
Cloud service provider automatically provisions, scales, and manages the infrastructure required to run the code.
With IaaS, Customer is also responsible for what’s inside VM, which is:
- Patching
- Backup
- Config
- Anti-virus
- Firewall
Cloud services also expand the traditional IT offerings to include things like:
Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI)
You’ll always be responsible for:
- Information and data stored in the cloud
- Devices that are allowed to connect to your cloud (cell phones, computers, and so on)
- Accounts and identities of the people, services, and devices within your organization
The cloud provider is always responsible for:
- The physical datacenter
- The physical network
- The physical hosts
Multi-cloud
You deal with two (or more) public cloud providers and manage resources and security in both environments.
Azure Arc
A set of technologies that helps manage your cloud environment.
Azure VMware Solution
Lets you run your VMware workloads in Azure with seamless integration and scalability.
Vertical scaling
Increasing or decreasing the capabilities of resources.
Management of the Cloud
- 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.
Management in the Cloud
- Through a web portal.
- Using a command line interface.
- Using APIs.
- Using PowerShell.
Horizontal scaling
Adding or removing resources
Common scenarios for PaaS
- Development framework: PaaS provides a framework that developers can build upon to develop or customize cloud-based applications.
- Analytics or business intelligence: Tools provided as a service with PaaS allow organizations to analyze and mine their data, finding insights and patterns and predicting outcomes to improve forecasting, product design decisions, investment returns, and other business decisions.
Common scenarios for IaaS
- Lift-and-shift migration: You’re standing up cloud resources similar to your on-prem datacenter, and then simply moving the things running on-prem to running on the IaaS infrastructure.
- Testing and development: You have established configurations for development and test environments that you need to rapidly replicate.
Common scenarios for Saas
- Email and messaging.
- Business productivity applications.
- Finance and expense tracking.
