Core Azure Services Flashcards
Describe “data centers”
A data center is a physical facility used for hosting groups of networked servers on its own power, cooling, and networking infrastructure.
Describe “regions”
A region is a geographical area on the plant with one or more data centers connected on a low-latency network. Some services are only available in certain regions.
There are 50+ regions globally with special government regions and partnered regions within countries.
Describe “geographies”
A geography usually contains two or more regions that ensures data residency, sovereignty, resiliency, and compliance.
Includes the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa.
Describe “availability zones”
An availability zone is a regional feature which contains physically separate facilities designed to protect from data center failures.
Includes one or more data centers. Enabled zones have a minimum of three data centers.
Describe “region pairs”
A region pair is a statically paired pair of regions within the same geography to provide physical isolation and data residency.
Describe a “resource”
An Azure resource is an object used to manage services in Azure. These represent the service lifecycle and are saved as JSON definitions.
Describe “resource groups”
Resource groups hold logically related resources typically organized by type, lifecycle (app, environment), department, billing, location, or any combination of these.
Describe the “resource manager”
The resource manager is where management can be done for all resources where access and billing can be controlled.
Describe the compute product “virtual machines”
IaaS
Total control over the operating system and software
Can run any application/scenario
Supports marketplace and custom images
Custom software with custom system configurations
Describe the compute product “virtual machine scale sets”
IaaS
Set of identical virtual machines
Built-in auto scaling features
Designed for manual and auto-scaled workloads like web services, batch processing, etc.
Describe the compute product “app services”
PaaS
Designed for enterprise grade web app services
Supports multiple programming languages and containers
Describe the compute product “functions”
PaaS Server less Consumption-based plan or dedicated plan Designed for smaller services No worries about underlying infrastructure and platform
Describe the compute product “Azure container instances (ACI)”
PaaS
Simplest, fastest way to run a container
Server less containers
Designed for simple web apps/services, background jobs, and scheduled scripts
Describe the compute product “Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)”
PaaS
Open-source container orchestration platform
Highly scalable and customizable
Designed for high scale container deployments
Describe a “container”
Uses host’s OS
Lightweight
Responds quicker to demand changes
Designed for almost any scenario
Describe the networking product “virtual network”
Logically isolated networking components
Segmented into one or more subnets
Subnets are discrete sections
Enable communication of resources with each-other, internet, and on-premises
Scoped to a single region
VNet peering allow cross region communication
Isolation, Segmentation, Communication, Filtering, Routing
Does not allow subnets
Describe the networking product “load balancer”
Even traffic distribution Supports both inbound and outbound scenarios High-availability scenarios Both TCP and UDP Internal and External traffic Port Forwarding High scale with up to millions of flows
Describe the networking product “VPN gateway”
Virtual network gateway for on-premises to azure traffic over the public internet
Describe the networking product “application gateway”
Web traffic load balancer Web application firewall Session affinity URL routing SSL termination
Describe the networking product “content delivery network”
Minimizes latency
Points of presence (POP) with many locations
Describe the storage product “Cosmos DB”
Globally distributed NoSQL DB service
Schema-less
Multiple APIs (SQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Gremlin, Table Storage)
Designed to be highly responsive and to communicate with multi-regional applications
Describe the storage product “SQL DB”
Relational database
Structured data service
High-performance
List the Azure SQL product family
Azure SQL Database
Azure Database for MySQL
Azure Datab
List the Azure SQL product family
Azure SQL Database (relational DB based on SQL)
Azure Database for MySQL (Azure SQL version for MySQL)
Azure Database for PostgreSQL (Azure SQL version for PostgreSQL)
Azure SQL Managed Instance (fully fledged SQL server managed by cloud provider)
Azure SQL on VM (fully fledged SQL serve on IaaS)
Azure SQL DW (Synapse; massively parallel processing)
Describe the “Azure IoT Hub”
PaaS Highly secure, scalable, and reliable Integrates with a lot of Azure Services C, C#, Java, Python, Node.js Internet Protocols: HTTPS, AMQP, MQTT
Describe the “Azure IoT Central”
SaaS Industry specific app templates No deep technical knowledge required Service for connecting, management and monitoring IoT devices Highly secure, scalable, and reliable Built on top of Azure IoT Hub
Describe the “Azure Sphere”
Secure end-2-end IoT solutions
Sphere Certified Chips
Sphere OS based on Linux
Describe “Azure Synapse Analytics”
PaaS
Big data analytics platform
Spark, Synapse SQL, Synapse Pipelines, Studio
Describe “Azure HDInsight”
PaaS
Flexible multi-purpose data platform
Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, HBase, Hive, Storm, Machine Learning
Describe “Azure Databricks”
PaaS
Workspace for notebook, cluster, data, access management, and collaboration
Based on Apache Spark
Three V’s of Big Data
Velocity of data processing/transfers
Volume of data
Variety of data (complex)
Describe “artificial intelligence”
AI is the simulation of human intelligence and capabilities by computer software.
Describe “machine learning”
Machine learning is a subcategory of AI where a computer software is taught to draw conclusion and make predictions from data
Describe “Azure Machine Learning”
PaaS
Cloud-based platform for creating, managing, and publishing machine learning tools
ML Workspace - top level resource
ML Studio - web portal for end-2-end development
Features notebooks (python R), automated ML, designer (GUI), data and compute resources, and pipelines for model training (designer), deployment, and management
Describe “server less computing”
Server less computing is a cloud-hosted execution environment that allows customers to run their applications in the cloud while completely abstracting underlying infrastructure
Describe “Azure Functions”
PaaS
Server less coding platform
Small services and event-based applications
Scales easily
Describe “Azure Logic Apps”
PaaS
Sever less enterprise integration service
Designed for orchestration of business processes, integration of workflows for applications, data, systems, and services
no code
Describe “Azure Event Grid”
Fully managed server less event routing service
Uses publish-subscribe model
Designed for event-based and near-real time applications
Supports dozen of built-in events for most common Azure services
Describe “DevOps”
DevOps is a set of practices that combine both development and operations
DevOps aims to shorten the development life cycle by providing continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) capabilities while ensuring high quality of devlierables
Describe “Azure DevOps”
Includes boards (tracking work), pipelines (building CI/CD workflows), repos (VCS like Git), test plans (manual and exploratory testing), and artifacts (manage project deliverables)
Describe “Azure DevTest Labs”
PaaS
Service for creation of sandbox environments for developers/testers
Quick setup of self-managed virtual machines
Preconfigured templates for VMs
Plenty of additional artifacts (tools, apps, custom actions)
Lab policies (quotas, sizes, auto-shutdowns)
Share and automate labs via custom images
Premade plugins/API/tools for CI/CD pipeline automation
Describe “Azure Portal”
Public web-based interface for management of Azure
Designed for self-service
Customizable
Simple tasks
Describe “Azure PowerShell”
PowerShell and module
Designed for automation
Multi-platform and PowerShell Core
Simple to use
Describe “Azure CLI”
CLI for Azure Designed for automation Multi-platform (python) Simple to use Native OS terminal scripting
Describe “Azure Cloud Shell”
Cloud-based scripting environment Completely free Supports Azure PowerShell and Azure CLI Interfaces with Azure Portal Integration Shell Portal VS Code Extension Windows Terminal Azure Mobile App Microsoft Docs integration
Describe “Azure Advisor”
Personalized consultant service Designed to provide recommendations and best practices for cost security reliability performance operational excellence actionable recommendations (pro-active) free
