Develop Azure Infrastructure as a Service compute solutions Flashcards

1
Q

Describe azure storage accounts.

A

A storage account provides access to objects in azure storage for a specific subscription. A storage account can be either standard or premium.

Premium uses ssds. Use this for production workloads and sensitive I/O operations.
Standard is good for dev and test.

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2
Q

Describe the azure pricing model for virtual machines.

A

You pay for compute and storage costs separately.

Computer costs can be paid for in one of two ways:

  1. Pay as you go: Pay for compute expenses on a per-hour basis, billed on a per-minute basis. Good for quick tests and development.
  2. Reserved virtual machine instance: Pay in advance to have a virtual machine for 1-3 years in a specific region. Huge discount. Can be terminated for a fee. Good if you vm is running continuously.
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3
Q

Describe the default disk stores on a virtual machine and their purpose.

A

The first disk stores the operating system.
The second disk is used as a temporary storage.
Additional disks are used to store application data.

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4
Q

Described unmanaged and managed disks.

A

Unmanaged disks: You are reponsible for managing the storage accounts that contain these disks. Stores up to 40 standard hdds on a storage account.

Managed disks: Azure is responsible for managing the storage accounts that contain these disks. This scales out infinitely on a single storage account. Azure recommends using this one.

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5
Q

How can you allow external access to virtual machines in your VNet?

A

External access into a VNet is not allowed by default. You need to configure the VNet by creating firewall rules to allow access.

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6
Q

How do storage accounts relate to virtual machine disks?

A

A virtual machine will always have one or more storage accounts to hold each attached virtual disk.

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7
Q

How is the data for virtual harddisks stored?

A

It is stored as page blobs. Azure allocates space only for the storage you use.

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8
Q

How many disks can a virtual machine have?

A

It is determine by your size selection. The general rule is 2 disks per cpu.

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9
Q

What are azure virtual machines?

A

Azure virtual machines are a scalable computing resouce that is provisioned over the internet. They provide an operating system, storage and network capabilities.

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10
Q

What are the considerations for deciding the location of a virtual machine?

A
  1. Place your virtual machines as close to your users to meet performance, legal, complicance or tax requirements.
  2. Locations have different hardware and configurations.
  3. Prices vary by location.
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11
Q

What are the items in the azure virtual machine checklist?

A
  • Start with the network
  • Name the VM
  • Location of the VM
  • Size of the VM
  • Pricing model for the VM
  • Storage for the VM
  • Select an operating system
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12
Q

What do azure locations represent?

A

Azure groups its datacenters into geographic regions. A location represents a datacenter in a geographic region.

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13
Q

What happens when you change the size of a running VM?

A

It will restart and the IP address may change. You will only have sizes available on that cluster. If you turn it off then you will have all sizes available.

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14
Q

What is a good naming convention for azure virtual machines?

Following that naming convention, what would the name devusc-webvm01 be used for?

A

A good naming convention would include:

  • Environment (dev, prod, uat) identifies the environment for the resource.
  • Location (uw for US West, ue for US East) identifies the region where the resource is deployed.
  • Instance (01, 02, 03, etc) if more than one of the same resource exists.
  • Product or Service (service) identifies the product, application or service the resource supports.
  • Role (sql, web, messaging) identifies the role of the associated resource.

devusc-webvm01 represents the first development web server hosted in the US South Central location.

  • Environment is development.
  • Location is US South Central region.
  • Role is web server.
  • Instance is 01.
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15
Q

What is Azure storage?

A

Azure storage is a cloud-based data storage solution.

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16
Q

What is IaaS?

A

Infrastructure as a service is instant computing infrastructure that is provisioned over the internet.

17
Q

What is size for an azure virtual machine?

A

Processing power, memory and storage capacity are not specific independently. Instead, Azure utilizes a grouping of variations of processing power, memory and storage capacity called a size.

18
Q

What is the purpose of azure virtual networks (VNets)?

A

Provides private connectivity between azure virtual machines and other azure services that are part of the same virtual network.

19
Q

What is the purpose of the azure virtual machine checklist?

A

It provides a framework for planning the creation of your virtual machine.

20
Q

What is the VM name size for linux and windows?

A

15 characters for windows.

64 characters for linux.

21
Q

What should a memory optimized size be used for?

A

High memory-to-cpu ratio.

Relational database serers, medium/large caches and in-memory analytics.

22
Q

What should compute optimized size be uesd for?

A

High cpu-to-memory ratio.

Medium traffic web servers, network appliances, batch processes and application servers.

23
Q

What should GPU size be used for?

A

Heavy graphics rendering and video editing. Good for model training and inferencing with deep learning.

24
Q

What should high performance computes size be used for?

A

Fastest and most powerful. If you don’t fit into the other sizes, then pick this one because you obviously need the best.

25
Q

What should the general purpose size be used for?

A

General purpose virtual machines have balanced cpu-to-memory ratio.

Best used for testing, development, small/medium databases and low/medium traffic web servers.

26
Q

What should the storage optimized size be used for?

A

High disk throughput and IO. Good for databases.

27
Q

When would you choose IaaS? Name some scenarios where you would use it.

A

IaaS is used when your usage scenario requires control over networking, storage and an operating system.

Some scenarios where you could use it:

  1. Different operating systems with software installed for testing.
  2. Hosting a website where you need control over the application server settings.
  3. Borrowing compute power for high-performance computing and big data analysis.
  4. Extend your physical data centre by borrowing infrastructure.