Cloud Concepts 1.2

Question 1

Availability

Answer 1

Encompasses availability of the
infrastructure, applications, and services.
Generally expressed as a number of 9’s,
such as five nines or 99.999% availability.

Question 2

Scalability

Answer 2

The ability of a system to
handle growth of users or work.
Refers to the ability of a system or
service to handle more traffic (to scale).
Ability to grow as demand increases.
Controlled by SKU or tier selection

Question 3

Elasticity

Answer 3

The ability of a system to automatically
grow and shrink based on app demand.
Focuses on the ability of a system or
service to scale quickly to spikes in demand.
Capabilities can be rapidly provisioned and de-provisioned
(scale-out, scale-in).
Additional instances quickly auto-deployed

Question 4

Agility

Answer 4

Focuses on the speed and ease of
allocating and deallocating resources.
This allows for vast amounts of computing
resources to be provisioned in minutes.
Example: Provisioning a scale set of 10 VMs

Question 5

Fault
Tolerance

Answer 5

The ability of a system to handle
faults in a service like power,
network, or hardware failures.
Generally, refers to component level failures

Question 6

High
Availability

Answer 6

The ability to keep services up and
running for long periods of time.
Generally, refers to service-level
failures

Question 7

Disaster
Recovery

Answer 7

The ability to recover from an event
which has taken down a cloud service.
Generally, focuses on recovery in the
event of a service or site failure.

Question 8

Reliability

Answer 8

The ability of a system to recover from
failures and continue to function.
Reliability consists of two principles:
resiliency and availability.

Question 9

Reliability 2 principals

Answer 9

resiliency and availability

Question 10

Resiliency

Answer 10

aims to return an application to a
fully functioning state after a failure occurs.

Question 11

goal of availability

Answer 11

is to provide
consistent access to your application.

Question 12

Predictability

Answer 12

Azure enables solutions with predictable
cost and performance.
The level of service and performance and
the associated cost are known in advance!

Question 13

Security

Answer 13

Protection of customer data
(access control, encryption).
Protection of cloud applications.
Protection of cloud infrastructure.
All models have built-in DDoS protection from Azure DDoS

Question 14

Azure DDoS

Answer 14

Standard tier provides enhanced DDoS mitigation
features to defend against DDoS attacks.

Question 15

Governance

Answer 15

A set of rules and policies that guide an
organization’s cloud operations.
To ensure data security, manage risk,
control costs, and improve efficiency.
The guidance and guardrails that ensure we’re as
secure, consistent, and efficient as possible

Question 16

Deployment templates (Governance topic)

Answer 16

help ensure deployed resources meet corporate
standards and regulatory requirements.

Question 17

Software updates (Governance topic)

Answer 17

may be applied by
the cloud provider, which helps with governance and security.

Question 18

Security

Answer 18

Protection of customer data
(access control, encryption).
Protection of cloud applications.
Protection of cloud infrastructure.

Question 19

Shared Responsibility Model

Answer 19

explains who is
responsible for security in each model and scenario.

Question 20

Manageability OF THE CLOUD
Answers WHAT

Answer 20

Automatically scale resource
deployment based on need.
Deploy resources based on a
preconfigured template.
Monitor the health of resources and
automatically replace failing resources.
Receive automatic alerts based on
configured metrics.

Question 21

Manageability IN THE CLOUD
Speaks to HOW

Answer 21

Speaks to how you’re able to manage
your cloud environment and resources:
Through a web portal
Using a command line interface
Using APIs
Using PowerShell

Question 22

IAAS

Answer 22

CSP provides building blocks, like
networking, storage and compute
CSP manages staff, HW, and
datacenter

Question 23

IAAS examples

Answer 23

Azure Virtual Machines
Amazon EC2
GCP Compute Engine

Question 24

iaaS Use cases When to use virtual machines?

Answer 24

During testing and development. VMs provide a quick and easy way to create
different OS and application configurations.
Test and dev teams can easily deploy and then delete the VMs when they no
longer need them.
When running applications in the cloud. Can provide technical and financial
benefits, as when an application might need to handle fluctuations in demand.
Shutting down VMs when you don’t need them or quickly starting them up to
meet a sudden increase in demand means you pay only for resources you use.
When extending your datacenter to the cloud. Can extend the capabilities of
its own on-premises network by creating a virtual network in Azure and adding
VMs to that virtual network.
Makes it easier/less expensive to deploy than on-premises.
During disaster recovery. Enables significant cost savings by using an IaaSbased approach to disaster recovery.
Enables push button, automated VM spin up and shutdown in a disaster.

Question 25

PAAS

Answer 25

Customer is responsible for
deployment and management of apps
CSP manages provisioning,
configuration, hardware, and OS

Question 26

PAAS Examples

Answer 26

Azure SQL Database
API Management
Azure App Service

Question 27

PAAS use cases, When to use PaaS services?

Answer 27

Development framework
PaaS provides a framework that developers can build upon to develop or
customize cloud-based applications.
PaaS lets developers create applications using built-in software components.
Cloud features such as scalability, high-availability, and multi-tenant capability
are included, reducing the amount of coding that developers must do.
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
Improves forecasting, product design decisions, investment returns, and other
business decisions.
BOTTOM LINE: Reduces developer effort and increases solution quality
BOTTOM LINE: Simplifies data analysis and improves business outcomes

Question 28

SAAS

Answer 28

Customer has some responsibility in
access management and data recovery.
Customer just configures features.
CSP is responsible for management,
operation, and service availability.

Question 29

SAAS Examples

Answer 29

Office 365
Service Now
Sales Force

Question 30

SAAS use cases

Answer 30

Common SaaS use cases include:
Email and messaging
Business productivity applications
Finance and expense tracking
BOTTOM LINE: These are important utility
functions not core to the company’s purpose.
SaaS enables companies to securely and reliably outsource a
variety of functions so they can focus on revenue generation.