Describe Core Azure Services Flashcards
NB: What is a region? (2)
a geographical AREA containing at least one, but potentially multiple DATACENTRES
that are nearby and NETWORKED together with a low-latency network.
What are special Azure regions? (1)
Used when building out your applications for COMPLIANCE or LEGAL purposes
What are the four Azure geographies? (4)
Americas
Europe
Asia Pacific
Middle East and Africa
What are the benefits of Azure geographies? (3)
Data residency and compliance needs - both access for customers and from legal/compliance POV
Fault-tolerant to withstand complete region failure
NB: What is an availability zone?
Availability Zones are PHYSICALLY SEPARATE datacenters with independent power, cooling, and networking within an Azure region.
ISOLATION boundary - redundancy
CONNECTIVITY - high-speed, private fiber-optic networks
Describe the Azure services that support Availability Zones (2)
Zonal services – you pin the resource to a specific zone (for example, virtual machines, managed disks, IP addresses)
Zone-redundant services – platform replicates automatically across zones (for example, zone-redundant storage, SQL Database).
What is a region pair? (2)
Each region paired with another region
within same geography
at least 300 miles away
Advantages of regions pairs (3)
In extensive OUTAGE, one in every pair is prioritised for restore ASAP
Planned Azure UPDATES rolled out to paired regions one at a time
Data RESIDES within same geography as its pair
Describe Azure Resource Manager (2)
Azure Resource Manager is the deployment and management SERVICE for Azure. It provides a management layer that enables you to create, update, and delete RESOURCES in your Azure account.
NB: Compute: Describe Azure Virtual Machines (1)
on-demand, scalable computing resources
NB: Compute: Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets (1)
Scaling for Windows or Linux VMs hosted in Azure
Compute: Azure Kubernetes Service (1)
Docker vs container
ORCHESTRATION - Container orchestration service
CONTAINER - used to deploy, scale and manage Docker containers and container-based applications in a cluster environment
Docker is a standalone software that can be installed on any computer to run containerized applications. Containerization is an approach of running applications on an OS such that the application is isolated from the rest of the system. You create an illusion for your application that it is getting its very own OS instance, although there may be other containers running on same system. Docker is what enables us to run, create and manage containers on a single operating system.
Kubernetes turns it up to 11, so to speak. If you have Docker installed on a bunch of hosts (different operating systems), you can leverage Kubernetes. These nodes, or Docker hosts, can be bare-metal servers or virtual machines. Kubernetes can then allow you to automate container provisioning, networking, load-balancing, security and scaling across all these nodes from a single command line or dashboard. A collection of nodes that is managed by a single Kubernetes instance is referred to as a Kubernetes cluster.
Compute: Azure Service Fabric (1)
Distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable microservices and containers.
Runs in Azure or on-premises
Compute: Azure Batch (1)
Managed service for parallel and high-performance computing applications
Compute: Azure Container Instances (1)
Run containerized apps on Azure without provisioning servers or VMs
NB: Compute: Azure Functions (1)
EVENT-DRIVEN - An event-driven, serverless compute service
NB: What is an app service?
Managed hosting service for web apps and mobile back-ends.
HTTP-based service
Without managing infrastructure
NB: What is the MS Azure Marketplace?
Online store that hosts apps that are certified and optimised to run in Azure
What is Azure?
Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform.
CONTINUALLY EXPANDING - Azure is a continually expanding set of cloud services that help your organization meet your current and future business challenges.
FREEDOOMMM - Azure gives you the freedom to build, manage, and deploy applications on a massive global network using your favorite tools and frameworks.
What is cloud computing?
PAYG / RENT - Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services over the Internet using a pay-as-you-go pricing model. Put another way; it’s a way to rent compute power and storage from someone else’s data center.
NB: Azure Virtual Network
Connects VMs to incoming Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections
Azure Load Balancer
Balances inbound and outbound connections to applications or service endpoints
NB: Azure Application Gateway
WEB TRAFFIC LB - web traffic load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications.
NB: Azure VPN Gateway
S2S - Connects your on-premises networks to Azure through Site-to-Site VPNs
vNets - Accesses Azure Virtual Networks through high-performance VPN gateways
Uses the industry-standard protocols Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) and Internet Key Exchange (IKE)
Azure DNS
FAST - provides ultra-fast DNS responses
AVAILABILITY - ultra-high domain availability
NB: Azure Content Delivery Network
Lets you reduce load times, save bandwidth, and speed responsiveness—whether you’re developing or managing websites
Azure DDoS Protection
Protects Azure-hosted applications from distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks
Azure Traffic Manager
Distributes network traffic across Azure regions worldwide
Azure ExpressRoute
Connects to Azure over high-bandwidth dedicated secure connections
Azure Network Watcher
Monitors and diagnoses network issues using scenario-based analysis
Azure Firewall
HA and SCALABLE
Implements high-security, high-availability firewall with unlimited scalability
Azure Virtual WAN
Creates a unified wide area network (WAN), connecting local and remote sites
NB: Azure Blob storage
LARGE - Storage service for very large objects, such as video files or bitmaps
NB: Azure File storage
File shares that you can access and manage like a file server
Azure Queue storage
A data store for queuing and reliably delivering messages between applications
Azure Table storage
A NoSQL store that hosts unstructured data independent of any schema
These services (Network/Compute/Storage all share several common characteristics:
DURABLE and highly available with redundancy and replication.
SECURE through automatic encryption and role-based access control.
SCALABLE with virtually unlimited storage.
MANAGED, handling maintenance and any critical problems for you.
ACCESSIBLE from anywhere in the world over HTTP or HTTPS.
Mobile backend services - what has changed?
Azure enables developers to create mobile backend services for iOS, Android, and Windows apps quickly and easily.
Features that used to take time and increase project risks, such as adding corporate sign-in and then connecting to on-premises resources such as SAP, Oracle, SQL Server, and SharePoint, are now simple to include.
NB: Azure Cosmos DB
Globally distributed NoSQL (semi-structured data) Database service
Schema-less
Multiple APIs (SQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Gremlin, Table Storage)
Designed for
- Highly responsive (real time) applications with super low latency responses <10ms
- Multi-regional applications
NB: Azure SQL Database
Reliable relational database based on SQL Server
NB: Azure Database for MySQL
Azure SQL version for MySQL database engine
NB: Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Azure SQL version for PostgreSQL database engine
SQL Server on VMs
Fully fledged SQL Server on IaaS
Azure Synapse Analytics
Azure SQL DW (Synapse) – Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) version of SQL Server
NB: Azure Database Migration Service
DATABASES - Migrates your databases to the cloud with no application code changes
Azure Cache for Redis
DATABASES - Caches frequently used and static data to reduce data and application latency
Azure Database for MariaDB
DATABASES - Fully managed and scalable MariaDB relational database with high availability and security
Azure App Service
WEB - Quickly create powerful cloud web-based apps
Azure Notification Hubs
WEB - Send push notifications to any platform from any back end.
Azure API Management
WEB - Publish APIs to developers, partners, and employees securely and at scale.
Azure Cognitive Search
WEB - Fully managed search as a service.
Web Apps feature of Azure App Service
WEB - Create and deploy mission-critical web apps at scale.