Understand Cloud Concepts Flashcards
Describe the benefits and considerations of using cloud services
It's cost-effective It's scalable It's elastic It's current It's reliable It's global It's secure
Describe Economies of scale
Economies of scale is the ability to do things more efficiently or at a lower-cost per unit when operating at a larger scale. This cost advantage is an important benefit in cloud computing.
Cloud providers such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are large businesses leveraging the benefits of economies of scale. These providers can then pass the savings on to their customers.
These savings are apparent to end users in a number of ways, one of which is the ability to acquire hardware at a lower cost. Cloud providers can also make deals with local governments and utilities to get tax savings, lowering the price of power, cooling, and high-speed network connectivity between sites. Cloud providers are then able to pass on these benefits to end users in the form of lower prices than what you could achieve on your own.
Describe Capital expenditure (CapEx) versus operational expenditure (OpEx)
Capital Expenditure (CapEx): CapEx is the spending of money on physical infrastructure up front, and then deducting that expense from your tax bill over time. CapEx is an upfront cost, which has a value that reduces over time.
Operational Expenditure (OpEx): OpEx is spending money on services or products now and being billed for them now. You can deduct this expense from your tax bill in the same year. There’s no upfront cost. You pay for a service or product as you use it.
Describe Elasticity
As your workload changes due to a spike or drop in demand, a cloud computing system can compensate by automatically adding or removing resources.
For example, imagine your website is featured in a news article, leading to a spike in traffic overnight. Since the cloud is elastic, it automatically allocates more computing resources to handle the increased traffic. When the traffic begins to normalize, the cloud automatically de-allocates the additional resources to minimize cost.
Another example is if you are running an application used by employees, you can have the cloud automatically add resources for the peak operating hours during which most people access the application, and remove the resources at the usual end of the day.
Describe Fault Tolerance
When you’re running a business, you want to be confident your data is always going to be there. Cloud computing providers offer data backup, disaster recovery, and data replication services to make sure your data is always safe. In addition, redundancy is often built into cloud services architecture so if one component fails, a backup component takes its place. This is referred to as fault tolerance and it ensures that your customers aren’t impacted when a disaster occurs.
Describe Scalability
You can increase or decrease the resources and services used based on the demand or workload at any given time. Cloud computing supports both vertical and horizontal scaling depending on your needs.
Vertical scaling, also known as “scaling up”, is the process of adding resources to increase the power of an existing server. Some examples of vertical scaling are: adding more CPUs, or adding more memory.
Horizontal scaling, also known as “scaling out”, is the process of adding more servers that function together as one unit. For example, you have more than one server processing incoming requests.
Scaling can be done manually or automatically based on specific triggers such as CPU utilization or the number of requests and resources that can be allocated or de-allocated in minutes.
Describe Consumption Based Model
Cloud computing provides a pay-as-you-go or consumption-based pricing model.
This consumption-based model brings with it many benefits, including:
No upfront infrastructure costs
No need to purchase and manage costly infrastructure that you may not use to its fullest
The ability to pay for additional resources only when they are needed
The ability to stop paying for resources that are no longer needed
This also allows for better cost prediction. Prices for individual resources and services are provided so you can predict how much you will spend in a given billing period based on your expected usage. You can also perform analysis based on future growth using historical usage data tracked by your cloud provider.
Describe the differences between public, private and hybrid cloud models
Public cloud
This is the most common deployment model. In this case, you have no local hardware to manage or keep up-to-date – everything runs on your cloud provider’s hardware. In some cases, you can save additional costs by sharing computing resources with other cloud users.
Businesses can use multiple public cloud providers of varying scale. Microsoft Azure is an example of a public cloud provider.
Advantages
High scalability/agility – you don’t have to buy a new server in order to scale
Pay-as-you-go pricing – you pay only for what you use, no CapEx costs
You’re not responsible for maintenance or updates of the hardware
Minimal technical knowledge to set up and use - you can leverage the skills and expertise of the cloud provider to ensure workloads are secure, safe, and highly available
A common use case scenario is deploying a web application or a blog site on hardware and resources that are owned by a cloud provider. Using a public cloud in this scenario allows cloud users to get their website or blog up quickly, and then focus on maintaining the site without having to worry about purchasing, managing or maintaining the hardware on which it runs.
Disadvantages
Not all scenarios fit the public cloud. Here are some disadvantages to think about:
There may be specific security requirements that cannot be met by using public cloud
There may be government policies, industry standards, or legal requirements which public clouds cannot meet
You don’t own the hardware or services and cannot manage them as you may want to
Unique business requirements, such as having to maintain a legacy application might be hard to mee
Private cloud icon
Advantages
This approach has several advantages:
You can ensure the configuration can support any scenario or legacy application
You have control (and responsibility) over security
Private clouds can meet strict security, compliance, or legal requirements
Disadvantages
Some reasons teams move away from the private cloud are:
You have some initial CapEx costs and must purchase the hardware for startup and maintenance
Owning the equipment limits the agility - to scale you must buy, install, and setup new hardware
Private clouds require IT skills and expertise that’s hard to come by
A use case scenario for a private cloud would be when an organization has data that cannot be put in the public cloud, perhaps for legal reasons. An example scenario may be where government policy requires specific data to be kept in-country or privately.
A private cloud can provide cloud functionality to external customers as well, or to specific internal departments such as Accounting or Human Resources.
Hybrid cloud
A hybrid cloud combines public and private clouds, allowing you to run your applications in the most appropriate location. For example, you could host a website in the public cloud and link it to a highly secure database hosted in your private cloud (or on-premises datacenter).
Hybrid cloud icon
This is helpful when you have some things that cannot be put in the cloud, maybe for legal reasons. For example, you may have some specific pieces of data that cannot be exposed publicly (such as medical data) which needs to be held in your private datacenter. Another example is one or more applications that run on old hardware that can’t be updated. In this case, you can keep the old system running locally, and connect it to the public cloud for authorization or storage.
Advantages
Some advantages of a hybrid cloud are:
You can keep any systems running and accessible that use out-of-date hardware or an out-of-date operating system
You have flexibility with what you run locally versus in the cloud
You can take advantage of economies of scale from public cloud providers for services and resources where it’s cheaper, and then supplement with your own equipment when it’s not
You can use your own equipment to meet security, compliance, or legacy scenarios where you need to completely control the environment
Disadvantages
Some concerns you’ll need to watch out for are:
It can be more expensive than selecting one deployment model since it involves some CapEx cost up front
It can be more complicated to set up and manage
Describe Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
Infrastructure as a Service is the most flexible category of cloud services. It aims to give you complete control over the hardware that runs your application (IT infrastructure servers and virtual machines (VMs), storage, networks, and operating systems). Instead of buying hardware, with IaaS, you rent it. It’s an instant computing infrastructure, provisioned and managed over the internet.
IaaS is commonly used in the following scenarios:
Migrating workloads. Typically, IaaS facilities are managed in a similar way as on-premises infrastructure and provide an easy migration path for moving existing applications to the cloud.
Test and development. Teams can quickly set up and dismantle test and development environments, bringing new applications to market faster. IaaS makes scaling development and testing environments, fast and economical.
Storage, backup, and recovery. Organizations avoid the capital outlay and complexity of storage management, which typically requires skilled staff to manage data and meet legal and compliance requirements. IaaS is useful for managing unpredictable demand and steadily growing storage needs. IaaS can also simplify the planning and management of backup and recovery systems.
Describe Platform as a service (PaaS)
PaaS provides an environment for building, testing, and deploying software applications. The goal of PaaS is to help you create an application quickly without managing the underlying infrastructure. For example, when deploying a web application using PaaS, you don’t have to install an operating system, web server, or even system updates.
PaaS is a complete development and deployment environment in the cloud, with resources that enable organizations to deliver everything from simple cloud-based apps to sophisticated cloud-enabled enterprise applications. Resources are purchased from a cloud service provider on a pay-as-you-go basis and accessed over a secure Internet connection.
PaaS is commonly used in the following scenarios:
Development framework. PaaS provides a framework that developers can build upon to develop or customize cloud-based applications. Just like Microsoft Excel macro, PaaS lets developers create applications using built-in software components. Cloud features such as scalability, high-availability, and multi-tenant capability are included, reducing the amount of coding that developers must do.
Analytics or business intelligence. Tools provided as a service with PaaS allow organizations to analyze and mine their data. They can find insights and patterns, and predict outcomes to improve business decisions such as forecasting, product design, and investment returns.
Describe Software as a service (SaaS)
SaaS is software that is centrally hosted and managed for the end customer. It is usually based on an architecture where one version of the application is used for all customers, and licensed through a monthly or annual subscription. Office 365, Skype, and Dynamics CRM Online are perfect examples of SaaS software.
Compare & Contrasts 3 diff service types
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/principles-cloud-computing/5-types-of-cloud-services
Describe HA
Availability refers to how long your service is up and running without interruption. High availability, or highly available, refers to a service that’s up and running for a long period of time.
Describe Agility
Requirements and technologies change. For an on-premises deployment, these changes may mean provisioning and deploying new servers and infrastructure pieces, which is a time consuming and expensive activity.
Azure data storage gives you the flexibility to create new services in minutes. This flexibility allows you to change storage back-ends quickly without needing a significant hardware investment.
The following illustration shows differences between on-premises storage and Azure data storage.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/intro-to-data-in-azure/4-comparison-azure-and-on-prem-storage
