Describe cloud concepts

Question 1

Define cloud computing

Answer 1

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services over the internet

Question 2

Describe the shared responsibility model

Answer 2

The cloud provider ensures the protection of the cloud, the configuration within the cloud is the responsibility of the cloud tenant

Question 3

Define the public cloud model

Answer 3

Computing services and resources offered by a 3rd party cloud provider over the public internet where multiple clients share the same back-end/hardware

Question 4

Identify appropriate use cases for each cloud model

Answer 4

Public cloud: Startups that want to reduce costs
Private cloud: Casino computer systems that are hosted on-premises for extra security
Hybrid cloud: Older companies that have their own servers that the office that wants to transition to the cloud

Question 5

Describe the consumption-based pricing model

Answer 5

Cloud tenants pay only for what they use and operate under an Operational Expenditure (OpEx) model

Question 6

Compare cloud pricing models

Answer 6

The Subscription model is a monthly flat fee no matter how much you use the service.
The Pay As You Go model is consumption-based, where you pay for only the services you use, and for how long you use them.
The Per User model is where you pay a monthly flat fee based on the number of users using that service.

Question 7

Describe the benefits of high availability in the cloud

Answer 7

The cloud provider takes care of local failures and fault tolerance which provides a continuous user experience with no downtime

Question 8

Describe the benefits of reliability in the cloud

Answer 8

Azure, by virtue of its decentralized design, provides reliability, enabling you to have resources deployed around the world so your product remains unscathed in the face of any local catastrophes.

Question 9

Describe the benefits of security in the cloud

Answer 9

The level of security the cloud tenant has control over is based on which cloud type they want to use, IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS. However, cloud providers are typically well-suited to handle security and cyber attacks, such as DDoS.

Question 10

Describe the benefits of manageability in the cloud

Answer 10

To manage your cloud resources, you can:
Automatically scale resource deployment based on need
Deploy resources based on a preconfigured template
Monitor the health of resources and auto-replace failing resources
Receive automatic alerts based on configured metrics
You can manage your cloud resources and environment using:
A web portal
A command line interface
APIs
PowerShell

Question 11

Describe infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

Answer 11

The cloud provider takes care of the hardware, but operating system maintenance and network configuration is taken care of by the cloud tenant

Question 12

Describe platform as a service (PaaS)

Answer 12

The cloud provider takes care of the virtual machine and networking resources, the cloud tenant deploys their applications into the managed hosting environment

Question 13

Describe software as a service (SaaS)

Answer 13

The cloud provider manages all aspects of the application environment, the cloud tenant only needs to provide their data

Question 14

Identify appropriate use cases for each cloud service (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS)

Answer 14

IaaS: lift-and-shift migration - standing up cloud resources similar to the on-premises datacenter, then moving things running on-premises to the cloud
PaaS: development frameworks, such as GitHub workflow
SaaS: Email and messaging

Question 15

Define the private cloud model

Answer 15

Computing resources used exclusively by one organization, who might also own the data center or is hosted by a 3rd party cloud provider

Question 16

Define the hybrid cloud model

Answer 16

A computing environment that’s a combination of public and private and allows data and applications to be shared between the two

Question 17

Describe the benefits of scalability in the cloud

Answer 17

Apps in the cloud have vertical and horizontal scalability, meaning compute capacity can increase by either adding more RAM or CPUs to an instance of a VM or increasing the number of instances of a resource, such as adding VMs to the configuration

Question 18

Describe the benefits of predictability in the cloud

Answer 18

Azure provides both performance and cost predictability.
Performance predictability is enabled by features such as autoscaling, load balancing, and high availability, to ensure your product automatically can handle changing demands.
Cost predictability is focused on forecasting the cost of the cloud spend, you can track/monitor resources to make sure you’re using them the most efficient way and apply analytics to better plan resource deployments.

Question 19

Describe the benefits of governance in the cloud

Answer 19

You can use set templates to help ensure that your deployed resources meet corporate standards and government regulation requirements. Cloud-based auditing can flag any resource that’s not in compliance.