Cloud Fundamentals Flashcards

1
Q

What is “cloud computing”?

A

Renting resources like storage space or CPU cycles on another company’s computers

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2
Q

What are the four typical computing services offered by cloud providers?

A

**Compute power - i.e. Linux servers or web apps
**Storage - such as files and databases
Networking - secure connection user -> provider
Analytics - i.e. visualizing telemetry/performace data

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3
Q

What is the difference between a container and a VM?

A

Containers do not require an OS and rely on a runtime environment that runs the app and all of its dependencies from within the container. VMs are simply virtual computers.

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4
Q

What is “vertical scaling” in cloud computing?

A

Vertical scaling (a.k.a. “scaling up”) is the process of adding resources to increase the power of an existing server (add more CPUs, storage, or memory)

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5
Q

What is “horizontal scaling” in cloud computing?

A

Horizontal scaling (a.k.a. “scaling out”) is the process of adding more servers that function together as a unit (multiple servers processing incoming requests)

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6
Q

What is “fault tolerance”?

A

When one component fails, a backup component takes its place

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7
Q

What are “Capital expenditures” (a.k.a. CapEx)?

A

Physical resources that have an upfront cost for a business

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8
Q

What are “Operational expenditures” (a.k.a. OpEx)?

A

Money spent on services or products as you use them (no upfront cost)

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9
Q

For accounting purposes, what are the costs of all cloud services classified as?

A

Operational expenditures (OpEx)

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10
Q

What does “agile” refer to in terms of cloud services?

A

The ability to rapidly scale IT infrastructure to adapt to evolving business needs

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11
Q

What is the difference between “public cloud” and “private cloud”?

A

Public cloud refers Azure in the online portal using their servers, whereas private cloud is a deployment of Azure used on-premises

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12
Q

What is “hybrid” cloud in cloud computing?

A

It refers to an approach that uses Azure both locally (on-prem) and through Microsoft’s servers

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13
Q

What are the three major categories of cloud computing?

A

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Platform as a Service (Paas)
Software as a Service (SaaS)

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14
Q

What is IaaS?

A

Infrastructure as a Service is a cloud-provisioned service that provides the hardware, virtualization, storage and networking required to run your software

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15
Q

What is PaaS?

A

Platform as a Service eliminates the need to set up and maintain dependent hardware/software (i.e. OS, web server, system updates) elements required to run a web application (you only provide application and data)

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16
Q

What is SaaS?

A

Software as a service is software that is centrally hosted and managed for the end customer (i.e. Office 365 or Skype)

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17
Q

What are Azure subscriptions?

A

Logical containers for Azure resources that separate out resources and data

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18
Q

What are the three tiers of support offered for Azure support plans?

A

Developer (lower response priority)
Standard (production, mid-level priority)
Professional Direct (highest priority)

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19
Q

What is a “hypervisor”?

A

A piece of software that manages virtualization of hardware (mimicking different computers)

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20
Q

What is Kubernetes used for in Azure?

A

It enables management of a cluster of VMs that run containerized services

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21
Q

What tool is used as a console within Azure?

A

Azure Cloud Shell

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22
Q

What options of consoles do you have for Azure CLI?

A

Bash or PowerShell

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23
Q

In Azure CLI, what command lists account information?

A

az account list

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24
Q

In Azure CLI, what command lists resource groups?

A

az group list

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25
Q

In Azure CLI, what flag and option allow for output to be displayed as a table?

A

–output table

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26
Q

How would you use Azure CLI to filter down to web sites within a certain Resource Group?

A

az resource list –resource-group replace-with-group-name –resource-type Microsoft.Web/sites

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27
Q

What are “Availability zones” in Azure?

A

They are physically separate datacenters within an Azure region that can be used for redundancy

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28
Q

What is a “region pair” in Azure?

A

An Azure region is always paired with another at least 300 miles away within the same geography (i.e. East US and West US)

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29
Q

What does SLA stand for?

A

Service-level agreement

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30
Q

What are the three key characteristics of a SLA?

A
  1. Performance Targets
  2. Uptime and Connectivity Guarantees
  3. Service Credits
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31
Q

What is a “composite SLA value”?

A

Applications that have multiple components with different uptime rates (i.e. SQL Database with 99.99% and web app with 99.95%) will have a composite value equal to the percentage of both multiplied together (i.e. .9995 * .9999)

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32
Q

How can you improve the composite SLA for a web application using a SQL database?

A

If the SQL database is unavailable, put the transactions into a queue for processing

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33
Q

How do you calculate the percentage chance of simultaneous failure?

A

Failure rate A * Failure rate B

i.e. .001 * .0001

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34
Q

Where are scripts/data stored from when using Azure Cloud Shell?

A

In the Azure Storage Account created when you first access ACS - this persists through different sessions

35
Q

In Azure, how can you get quick tips on availability, performance, security and costs?

A

Use the Azure Advisor service from the menu

36
Q

How do you view all of the Azure resources that are available to create?

A

Portal Menu > Create a Resource > See all

37
Q

How do you see all of the Azure “preview” features?

A

Search “preview” in the Azure Marketplace

38
Q

What is “Azure compute”?

A

Computing service for running cloud-based applications that provides resources like mulit-core processors and supercomputers

39
Q

What are the four common techniques for performing compute in Azure?

A

1) VMs
2) Containers
3) Azure App Service
4) Serverless Computing

40
Q

What is serverless computing?

A

Cloud-hosted execution that runs your code but offers NO control over the underlying infrastructure (simply runs your code and takes care of the processing reqs)

41
Q

What are update domains in Azure?

A

They are logical groupings of VMs that can be rebooted at the same time

42
Q

Hoe do you avoid planned maintenance from causing downtime in your servers in Azure?

A

Add them to an availability set with redundant VMs

43
Q

What is a fault domain in Azure?

A

A representation of the grouping of VMs sharing the same hardware, which causes them to be susceptible to unplanned outages (essentially represents a server rack)

44
Q

What are virtual machine scale sets?

A

A group of identical, load-balanced VMs

45
Q

What is “Azure Batch”?

A

Large-scale job scheduling and compute management that can scale up to thousands of VMs

46
Q

What is the “ACI” service?

A

Azure Container Instances is the fastest, simplest way to run a container in Azure - as a PaaS with no additional configurations/services (elastic scale)

47
Q

What is “container orchestration” in Azure?

A

The task of automating, managing and interacting with a large number of containers at once

48
Q

What is AKS in Azure?

A

Azure Kubernetes Service is an orchestration service for containers

49
Q

What is Azure App Service?

A

A PaaS (only provide your code) solution for hosting web apps that has built-in load balancing, quick scaling, and traffic management

50
Q

What is “WebJobs” in Azure?

A

It allows you to run a program/script within Azure App Service based off of a schedule or trigger (often used to run background tasks)

51
Q

What is “Serverless computing”?

A

Functions that run based off of triggers and scale easily as needed with no need to manage underlying infrastructure (PaaS)

52
Q

What is an “Azure Logic App”?

A

Apps that are designed in a web-based designer that execute logic triggered by Azure services without writing any code

53
Q

How would you migrate data from an on-prem SQL Server to an Azure SQL Database?

A

Using the Microsoft Data Migration Assistant in Azure

54
Q

What is Azure Data Lake used for?

A

Structured and unstructured data storage

55
Q

What is “Azure Files”?

A

Fully managed file shares that use Server Message Block (SMB) for encryption at rest and in transit

56
Q

What is “Azure Queue storage”?

A

A service for storing many messages that can be accessed from anywhere in the world (typically has sender and receiver components)

57
Q

What are the three Azure data storage tiers?

A

1) Hot
2) Cool
3) Archived

58
Q

What is “N-tier Architecture” in Azure?

A

It’s an application architecture separated into n number of logical tiers where higher tiers can access services from a lower tier, but the reverse is not true

59
Q

What is an “Azure region”?

A

One or more Azure data centers within a specific geographic location (i.e. East US)

60
Q

In Azure, what is an NSG?

A

A Network Security Group allows or denies inbound network traffic to your Azure resources

61
Q

What are the uses for an Azure Load Balancer?

A
  • Incoming internet traffic
  • Internal traffic across Azure services
  • Port forwarding for specific traffic
  • Outbound connectivity for VMs in a Vnet
62
Q

What is “Azure Application Gateway”?

A

A load balancer and Web Application Firewall (WAF) for HTTP traffic to web applications

63
Q

What is a CDN in Azure?

A

A Content Delivery Network is a distributed network of servers that reliably serves a web application to its consumers (a way to get content to users in their local region to minimize latency)

64
Q

What is “Azure Traffic Manager”?

A

A service that uses the DNS server closest to the user to direct user traffic to a globally distributed endpoint

65
Q

What are the four things that you’re always responsible for in Azure web app deployments?

A

1) Data
2) Endpoints
3) Accounts
4) Access Management

66
Q

What is the “Azure Security Center”?

A

A service that provides security recommendations and resource monitoring

67
Q

What is a “Service Principal” in Azure?

A

An identity that is used by a service or application

68
Q

What are “managed identities” in Azure?

A

An account within Azure AD that is managed and can be used to authenticate an application or Azure service the same way that any other AD account could

69
Q

In Azure, how is a Vnet securely connected to on-prem resources?

A

Typically through a VPN connection

70
Q

What is “Azure Policy”?

A

A service used to create, assign, and manage policies to enforce different rules and effects over Azure resources

71
Q

What are “Azure Management Groups”?

A

Containers for managing access, policies and compliance across multiple Azure subscriptions

72
Q

What are “Azure Blueprints”?

A

A blueprint for the deployment of various resource templates (i.e. role assignments, policy assignments, Azure Resource Manager templates, resource groups)

73
Q

What is the “Azure Service Trust Center”?

A

A website resource with details about how Microsoft implements and supports security, privacy, and compliance in their products

74
Q

What is Azure’s “Compliance Manager”?

A

A risk assessment dashboard within the Service Trust Portal that allows tracking, assigning and verifying organizational regulatory compliance

75
Q

What is “Azure Monitor”?

A

A service for monitoring how applications are performing and identifies issues affecting them and their dependencies

76
Q

What is “Application Insights” in Azure?

A

A service that monitors the availability, performance and usage of web applications

77
Q

What is “Azure Monitor for VMs”?

A

A service that montiors Azure VMs at scale for performance and health metrics

78
Q

What is “Autoscale” in Azure Monitor?

A

A service that ensures you have the appropriate amount of resources running to effectively manage the load on your application

79
Q

What is the “NetworkWatcherRG” resource group in Azure?

A

It’s created automatically to enable Network Watcher in Azure VNets

80
Q

In Azure, what is a “deployment”?

A

The instantiation of an Azure resource

81
Q

In Azure, what are “resource locks”?

A

A setting that can be applied to any resource to block modification or deletion

82
Q

How should you estimate costs for Azure resources?

A

Azure Pricing Calculator

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/

83
Q

When VM workloads are predictable and static, how can you save money on the VM cost?

A

Use the “reserved instance” functionality

84
Q

What is the difference between Azure CLI and Azure Cloud Shell?

A

Azure CLI can be run locally with the command prompt or PowerShell, whereas Azure Cloud Shell is run in the Azure portal