Cloud Concepts (15-20%) Flashcards
What are the major services that Azure provides?
- Storage - meaning servers such as windows, linux, hosting environments, etc., memory
- Compute Power - like files and/or databases, CPU
- Networking - in azure but also outside when connecting to your company network
- Analytics - services for visualization and telemetry data
What is scalability?
Increasing capability of a resource, or adding/removing resources
What is vertical scaling?
Increasing the CPU, memory, storage of an individual resource / set of resources
Decreasing is scaling down
What is horizontal scaling?
Increasing the number of resources rather than the power of one resource
What is elasticity?
- Scaling up/down resources on demand based on user activity/need
- Also known as automatic scaling
What does it mean to provision a server?
Setup a server to be used on a network
What does agility mean for cloud computing?
- The ability to allocate and deallocate resources in a very short time
- Provision a server, request a resource in minutes versus days
What is fault tolerance?
- The ability to remain up and running during component and service failures
- Cloud reallocates to different server given a local failure
What is disaster recovery?
Two copies of the same app in two Azure regions
Replication allows the two version to stay the same over time
What is cloud availability?
- Uptime / Downtime
- the agreed level of operational uptime for the system
How does Azure benefit from economies of scale?
- Able to offer many services for free
- At a larger scale - more people leveraging more of their services - the cost to run many services if very low so they can offer services for free
- Economies of Scale - The large operations get, the more effective they beomc eat managing shared operations
What does Capital Expenditure mean for the Cloud?
- Buying your own infrastructure
- High cost at the start to purchase hardware but cost reduces over time (just paying for maintenance)
What are the benefits of Capital Expenditure?
It’s your own infrastructure so you have control
What are the cons of Capital Expenditure?
- Big initial investment
- Lots of maintenance required - support staff, hardwares failures, etc.
- Tax dedication over time with depreciation
What does Operational Expenditure mean for the cloud?
Renting infrastructure
What are the benefits of Operational Expenditure?
- No initial investments
- Pay for what you use
- Maintenance is done by the vendors
- Tax dedication in same year
What are the benefits a Consumption based model?
You only pay for the resources that you use, and you stop paying when you longer use those resources
In Azure where can you see your costs?
- Cost Management and Billing Overview
- Storage and Compute usage factor in to calculating cost
What are the Cloud Service Model Layers of Azure?
- Infrastructure as a Service
- Platform as a Service
- Software as a Service
What sub-layers make up the Software layer of Azure?
- The applications and the data itself
What sub-layers make up the Platform layer of Azure?
- Runtime - software designed to support the execution of programs.
- Middleware - software that sits between the operating system and the actual applications.
- Operating System - software that supports a computers basic functions (executing applications, performing tasks)
What are the sub-layers that make up the Platform layer of Azure?
- Servers
- Networking
- Storage
What is the Infrastructure layer?
Hardware and virtualization
What is the Platform layer?
- Software and configuration required to run the application
What is the Software layer?
The application and its data
What is on-premise?
You own all layers - Software, Platform, Infrastructure
What is Infrastructure as a Service?
- Cloud provider will manage Infrastructure
- You own Software and Platform (middleware)
What is Platform as a Service?
- Cloud provider will manage infrastructure and platform
- You own the Software
- Usually used when you’re doing AI, Business Analytics, building your own software
- Most common method
What is SaaS?
- Cloud provider will manage everything
- Ex. Outlook, Skype, Teams, etc.
What are the main criteria for assessing different deployment models?
- Cost
- IT skills required
- Control
- Configuration flexibility
- Maintenance
What is Public Cloud?
- All resources are hosted in a public cloud - shared with other customers
- The cost is lower
- Advantages - No CapEx cost, highly available and agile, pay are you go pricing, no hardware maintenance, no deep technical skills required
- Disadvantages - Security & compliance is not specific to your business, you can’t make changes to hardware, can’t tailor hardware to business requirements
What is Private Cloud?
- Everything is hosted in a private datacenter
- Cost is higher
- Advantages - Can support any scenario, total control over security, Can meet any security and companies requirement
- Disadvantage - High initial cost, limited agility, IT skills are mandatory
What is hybrid Cloud model?
- Hardware is noted both in private and public datacenter - separated by application
- Advantages - great flexibility, run legacy apps in private cloud, utilize existing infrastructure, meet security requirements
- Disadvantages - Can be more expensive, complicated to manage, IT skills are mandatory
- What is containerization (tier 2hypervisor) versus VM (tier 1 hypervisor)?
- VM - Individual Virtual machines with many applications per VM, their own Guest OS per virtual machine
- Next layer - hypervisor
- Next layer - Host OS
- Next layer - The hardware is split for maximum efficiency
- Containerization - Individual applications configured within their own container
- Next layer - docker engine - creates containers on one OS
- Next layer - Host OS - the OS split for maximum efficiency and to make containers lightweight
- No hypervisor, same OS for docker engine
Containerization - Individual applications configured within their own container
- Next layer - docker engine - creates containers on one OS
- Next layer - Host OS - the OS split for maximum efficiency and to make containers lightweight
- No hypervisor, same OS for docker engine
