Core Azure Services Flashcards
Regions
- Regions are made up of one or more datacenters in close proximity.
- Provide flexibility and scale to reduce customer latency.
- Preserve data residency with a comprehensive compliance offering.
*Azure offers more global regions than any other cloud provider with 60+ regions representing over 140 countries
Region Pairs
- At least 300 miles of separation between region pairs.
- Automatic replication for some services.
- Prioritized region recovery in the event of outage.
- Updates rollout sequentially to minimize downtime.
Availability Zone
- Physically separate datacenters within an Azure region. 3 AZs in each region.
- Each zone is made up of one or more datacenters equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking.
- Set up to be an isolation boundary. If one zone goes down, the other continues working (downtime protection).
- Availability zones are connected through high-speed, private fiber-optic networks.
Availability Options
- Single VM – easier lift and shift (VM SLA: 99.99% w/ premium storage)
- Availability Zones – protection from entire datacenter failures (VM SLA: 99.99%)
- Region pairs – regional protection w/in data residency boundaries (multi-region DR)
Azure Resources
VMs, Storage Accts, VNs, App Services, SQL Databases, Functions
Resource Groups
A container that holds related resources for an Azure solution. The resource group includes resources that you want to manage as a group. You decide which resources belong in a resource group based on what makes the most sense for your organization.
Resource Group Characteristics
- Resources can exist in only one resource group.
- Resources can exist in different regions.
- Resources can be moved to different resource groups.
- Applications can utilize multiple resource groups.
Resource Group Benefits
- If you delete a resource group, all resources contained within it are also deleted.
- Organizing resources by life cycle can be useful in nonproduction environments, where you try and dispose stuff.
- Resource groups make it easy to remove a set of resources all at once.
- Resource groups are also a scope for applying role-based access control (RBAC) permissions.
Azure Resource Manager
Provides a management layer that enables you to create, update, and delete resources in your Azure subscription.
Azure Subscriptions
Provides you with authenticated and authorized access to Azure accounts.
• Billing boundary: generate separate billing reports and invoices for each subscription.
• Access control boundary: manage/control access to the resources that users can provision with specific subscriptions.
Subscription Functionality
If you have multiple subscriptions, you can organize them into invoice sections. Each invoice section is a line item on the invoice that shows the charges incurred that month.
Management Groups
- Management groups can include multiple Azure subscriptions.
- Subscriptions inherit conditions applied to the management group.
- 10,000 management groups can be supported in a single directory.
- Management group tree can support up to 6 levels of depth - doesn’t include root level or subscription level.
- Each management group and subscription can support only one parent.
- Each management group can have many children.
- All subscriptions and management groups are within a single hierarchy in each directory.
Virtual Machines
- SW emulations of physical computers.
- Virtual processor, memory, storage, network.
- Virtual machine scale sets let you deploy and manage a set of identical virtual machines.
App Services
• Fully managed platform to build, deploy, scale web apps and APIs quickly. Works w/ .Net, .NetC Core, Node.js,
Java, Phython, or php
• PaaS - enterprise grade performance, security, and compliance requirements
Container Instances
- A fully managed platform to build, deploy, and scale web apps and APIs quickly
- PaaS - enterprise grade performance, security, and compliance requirements
- Light-weight, virtualized environment that does not require OS mgmt and can respond to changes on demand
- PaaS offering that runs a container in Azure without the need to manage a VM or additional services
- Logically separate applications into multiple containers
- Offers fastest/simplest way to run a container w/out having to manage VMs or adopt any additional services
Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS)
- An orchestration service for containers with distributed architectures and large volumes of containers.
- Platform for managing containerized workloads.
Azure Virtual Desktop
- A desktop and app virtualization that runs in the cloud.
* Create a full desktop virtualization environment without having to run additional gateway servers.
Windows Virtual Desktop
- A desktop and app virtualization that runs in the cloud.
- Create a full desktop virtualization environment without having to run additional gateway servers.
- Publish unlimited host pools to accommodate diverse workloads.
- Reduce costs with pooled, multi-session resources.
Azure Virtual Network (VNet)
Enables Azure resources to communicate with each other, the internet, and on-premises networks.
Virtual Private Network Gateway (VPN)
Used to send encrypted traffic between an Azure VN and an on-premise location over the public internet.
Azure Express Route
Extends on-premises networks into Azure over a private connection that is facilitated by a connectivity provider.
Azure container storage (blob)
• An object storage solution for the cloud.
• It can store massive amounts of data, such as text or binary data.
• Azure Blob Storage is unstructured, meaning that there are no restrictions on the kinds of data it can hold.
• Blob Storage can manage thousands of simultaneous uploads, massive amounts of video data, constantly growing
log files, and can be reached from anywhere with an internet connection.
Disk storage
- Provides disks for Azure virtual machines.
- Applications/other services can access/use disks as needed, like in on-premises scenarios.
- Disk Storage allows data to be persistently stored and accessed from an attached virtual hard disk.
Azure Files
• Offers fully managed file shares in cloud that are accessible via industry standard Server Message Block and
Network File System (preview) protocols.
• Can be mounted concurrently by cloud or on-premises deployments of Windows, Linux, and macOS.
• Applications running in Azure VMs/cloud services can mount a file storage share to access file data, just like
desktop application would mount a typical SMB share.
• Any number of Azure virtual machines or roles can mount and access the file storage share simultaneously.
Azure Storage Access Tiers
• Hot - Optimized for storing data that is accessed frequently.
• Cool - Optimized for storing data that is infrequently accessed and stored for at least 30 days.
• Archive - Optimized for storing data that is rarely accessed and stored for at least 180 days with flexible latency
requirements.
Azure Cosmos Database
A globally-distributed database service that elastically and independently scales throughput and storage.
Azure SQL Database
A relational database as a service (DaaS) based on the latest stable version of the Microsoft SQL Server database engine.
Azure Database for MySQL
A fully-managed MySQL database service for app developers.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL
A relational database service based on the open-source Postgres database engine.
Azure SQL Managed Instance
Allows existing SQL Server customers to lift and shift their on-premises application to the cloud with minimal application and database changes. PaaS.
• Fully managed and evergreen platform as a service.
• Preserves all PaaS capabilities (automatic patching and version updates, automated backups, and high availability)
• Exchange existing licenses for discounted rates on SQL Managed Instance using the Azure Hybrid Benefit
Azure Marketplace
• Allows customers to find, try, purchase, provision apps/services from leading service providers.
• Helps connect users with Microsoft partners, independent software vendors, and startups offering their
solutions and services.
• All solutions and services are certified to run on Azure.
