Microsoft Azure Cloud Concepts

Question 1

Describe how datacenters operated in the past. What is the disadvantage of this model?

Answer 1

Datacenters were comprised of many services with dedicated servers.

The disadvantage are:

1. We need to pay for hardware.
2. We need physical space for our data center.
3. We pay for electricity, cooling, utilities, etc.
4. We pay for experts to maintain the data center.
5. It is treated as a capital expenditure.
6. The hardware is idle and unused outside of peak hours.

Question 2

Describe how virtualization works. What are the advantages and disadvantages?

Answer 2

Virtualization shared physical resources among many servers.

The advantage is that the servers utilize the same compute as needed.

The disadvantages are that:

1. We need to pay for hardware
2. We need physical space for our data center.
3. We pay for electricity, cooling, utilities, etc.
4. We pay for experts to maintain the data center.
5. It is treated as a capital expenditure.

Question 3

Describe cloud computing and how it improved the old datacenter model.

Answer 3

In cloud computing we consume a compute resources as a utility just like electricity. The cloud provider has the physical data center with virtualization. We consume the compute from this data center and share the resources with many others.

The advantages are:

1. We do not need to maintain in-house infrastructure.
2. We only pay for the resources we use. We can turn off resources and not have to pay for them while they are off.
3. It is treated as an operational expenditure.

Question 4

Describe CAPEX and OPEX.

Answer 4

Capital expenditures (CAPEX) are depreciated over the useful life of the asset. Companies can only claim the deprecated expense every year on their financial statements.

Operational expenditures (OPEX) are deducted in the same year they are made.

Question 5

Describe the payment models for cloud computing.

Answer 5

The payment model is based on the service you are consuming. You can pay by the second or by the hour. You can get a standard cost by locking into a 1-3 year reserved plan if your service will be up 24/7.

Question 6

Describe how the cloud provides rapid elasticity.

Answer 6

You can enable autoscale on a service, so that it will increase the compute resources when you reach a specific threshold.

Whenever you need the resources the cloud will allow you to create them. If you don’t need the resources, then you can turn the resources off and not pay for them.

Question 7

Describe how the cloud provides reliability.

Answer 7

High availability provides protection against hardware failure.

Disaster recovery provides protection against natural disasters like an earthquake.

Fault tolerance allows zero downtime where a hardware failure or natural disaster will not affect the availability of your service.

Question 8

Name the three types of cloud computing services.

Answer 8

1. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
2. Platform as a Service (PaaS)
3. Software as a Service (SaaS)

Question 9

Describe the data center balance of what you manage versus what the cloud provider manages in “On-premises”.

Answer 9

You have your own data center with networking, storage, virtualization, servers, etc. You manage everything.

Question 10

Describe the data center balance of what you manage versus what the cloud provider manages in “IaaS”. What is IaaS commonly used for?

Answer 10

The cloud provider gives you virtualization, servers, storage and networking. You manage the OS, applications and data.

It is commonly used for:

1. Test and development since you can customize and turn on/off resources as needed.
2. Storage and backups since cold storage is very cheap.
3. High performance computing/big data analysis. Only need to run once, but you need lots of compute.

Question 11

Describe the data center balance of what you manage versus what the cloud provider manages in “PaaS”. What is PaaS commonly used for?

Answer 11

The cloud provider gives you virtualization, servers, storage, networking and OS. You manage the application and data.

It is commonly used by developers to deploy applications.

Question 12

Describe the data center balance of what you manage versus what the cloud provider manages in “SaaS”.

Answer 12

The cloud provides manages everything for you. You consume the service.

Question 13

Name the cloud computing deployment models.

Answer 13

1. Public cloud
2. Private cloud
3. Hybrid cloud
4. Community cloud

Question 14

Describe the public cloud.

Answer 14

Public cloud is a cloud service provided by a third-party provider. Hardware is shared amongst multiple clients.

Question 15

Describe the private cloud.

Answer 15

Private cloud - Hardware is only used by a single company which owns the hardware and datacenter.

Question 16

Describe a hybrid cloud.

Answer 16

Hybrid cloud - Combination of public and private cloud. There is some type of automation between the two.

Question 17

Describe a community cloud.

Answer 17

Community cloud - Infrastructure is shared between different organizations with common security concerns.