AZ-900T01
Module 02:
Core Azure services
Lesson 01: Learning objectives
Module 2 – Learning objectives
• Understand and describe core Azure architectural components
• Understand and describe core Azure services and products
• Understand and describe Azure solutions
• Understand and describe Azure management tools
Lesson 02: Core Azure architectural components
Regions
• Azure is made up of datacenters located around the globe. These
datacentres are organized and made available to end users by
country/region
• In reference to datacentres, a region is a geographical area on the planet
containing at least one—but potentially multiple —datacentres that are in
close proximity and networked together with a low-latency network
Geographies
Discrete markets that preserve data residency and compliance boundaries.
Geography features:
• Typically contain two or more regions.
• Allow customers with specific data-residency and
compliance needs to keep their data and applications
in close proximity.
• Categorized as Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific,
Middle East, and Africa.
Availability zones
Physically separate locations within
an Azure region.
Made up of one or more datacenters,
equipped with independent power,
cooling, and networking.
Act as an isolation boundary.
If one availability zone goes down,
the other continues working.
Availability sets
Keep applications online during maintenance or hardware failure.
Comprised of:
• Update domains (UD): Scheduled
maintenance, performance or security
updates are sequenced through update
domains.
• Fault domains (FD): Provide a physical
separation of workloads across different
hardware in a data center.
Resource groups
A unit of management for resources in Azure.
Resource group features:
• Act as containers to
aggregate the resources
required by an application
into a single, manageable
unit.
• Every Azure resource must
exist in one (and only one)
Resource Group.
Azure Resource Manager
Provides a management layer in which resource groups and all the resources
within it are created, configured, managed, and deleted
With Azure Resource Manager, you can:
• Create, configure, manage and
delete resources and resource
groups
• Organize resources
• Control access and resources
• Automate using different tools
and SDKs
Lesson 03: Core Azure services and products
Azure compute services
On-demand computing service for running cloud-based applications.
Azure compute services features:
• provides computing resources such as disks,
processors, memory, networking, and
operating systems.
• makes resources available in minutes or
seconds.
• pay-per-use.
• common on-demand Azure services are : (a)
Virtual Machines, and (b) Containers.
Azure compute services – container services
Containers are a virtualization environment. However, unlike virtual
machines, they do not include an operating system. Containers are meant to
be lightweight, and are designed to be created, scaled out, and stopped
dynamically. Examples of Azure services for containers include:
• Azure Container Instances: A PaaS offering that allows you to
upload your containers, which it then will run for you
• Azure Kubernetes Service: A container orchestrator service for
managing large numbers of containers
Azure network services
Networking on Azure allows you to connect cloud and on-premises
infrastructure and services.
• Azure Virtual Network: An IaaS service to create and use VMs in the
cloud
• Azure Load Balancer: Designed for automatic scaling of identical
VMs
• VPN Gateway: A PaaS offering to build, deploy, and scale enterprise-
grade web, mobile, and API apps
• Azure Application Gateway: Creates infrastructure based on an event
• Content Delivery Network: Creates infrastructure based on an event
Azure storage services – Azure services
Azure Storage is a service that you can use to store files, messages, tables,
and other types of information.
• Blob storage: No restrictions on the kinds of data it can hold.
Blobs are highly scalable
• Disk storage: Provides disks for virtual machines, applications,
and other services
• File storage: Azure Files offers fully-managed file shares in the
cloud
• Archive storage: Storage facility for data that is rarely accessed
Azure database services
Azure database services are fully-managed PaaS database services that free
up valuable time you’d otherwise spend managing your database
• Azure Cosmos DB: A globally-distributed database service that
enables you to elastically and independently scale throughput and
storage
• Azure SQL Database: A relational database as a service (DaaS)
based on the latest stable version of the Microsoft SQL Server
database engine
• Azure Database Migration: A fully-managed service designed to
enable seamless migrations from multiple database sources to Azure
data platforms with minimal downtime
Azure Marketplace
Connects end users with Microsoft partners, Independent Software Vendors
(ISVs), and start-ups that offer solutions and services for Azure.
Azure customers, IT professionals and cloud developers can find, try,
purchase, and provision Azure applications and services from certified
service providers.
Includes close to 10,000 product listings.
Lesson 04: Azure solutions
Internet of Things
The internet allows any item that's online-capable to access valuable
information. This ability for devices to garner and then relay information for
data analysis is referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT)
• Microsoft IoT Central: A fully-managed global IoT
software as a service (SaaS) solution that makes it easy to
connect, monitor, and manage your IoT assets at scale
• Azure IoT Hub: A managed service hosted in the cloud that
acts as a central message hub for bidirectional
communication between your IoT application and the
devices it manages
Big data and analytics
Big data refers to large volumes of data that become increasingly hard to
make sense of, or consequently make decisions about. Some big data and
analytic services in Azure include:
• Azure SQL Data Warehouse: A cloud-based Enterprise Data
Warehouse that leverages massively parallel processing (mpp) to run
complex queries quickly across petabytes of data
• Azure HDInsight: A fully-managed, open-source analytics service
for enterprises. It is a cloud service that makes it easier, faster, and
more cost-effective to process massive amounts of data
• Azure Data Lake Analytics: An on-demand analytics job service
that simplifies big data. Instead of deploying and tuning hardware,
you write queries to transform your data and extract valuable insights.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI), in the context of cloud computing, is based
around a broad range of applications, including Machine Learning, which
use existing data to forecast future behaviors, outcomes, and trends. Using
machine learning, computers learn without being explicitly programmed.
Some AI services in Azure include:
• Azure Machine Learning service: provides a cloud-based
environment used to develop, train, test, deploy, manage, and track
machine learning models
• Azure Machine Learning Studio: A collaborative, drag-and-drop
visual workspace where you can build, test, and deploy machine
learning solutions without needing to write code
DevOps
DevOps allows you to create build and release pipelines that provide
continuous integration, delivery, and deployment for applications.
• Azure DevOps services: Provides development
collaboration tools including pipelines, Git repositories,
Kanban boards, and extensive automated and cloud-based
load testing.
• Azure DevTest Labs: Allows you to quickly create
environments in Azure while minimizing waste and
controlling cost
Lesson 05: Azure management solutions
Azure management tools
Configure and manage Azure using a broad range of tools and platforms.
Azure management tools include:
• Azure Portal : Management website accessed via a web browser.
• Azure PowerShell : Command shell scripting language.
• Azure Command-Line Interface (CLI) : Cross-platform,
command-line scripting program for Windows, Linux, or MacOS.
• Azure Cloud Shell : Browser-based scripting environment.
Azure Advisor
Analyzes your deployed Azure resources and recommends ways to improve
availability, security, performance, and costs.
With Azure Advisor, you can:
• Get proactive, actionable, and personalized best practice
recommendations.
• Improve the performance, security, and availability of your
resources.
• Identify opportunities to reduce your Azure costs.
Lesson 06: Module 2 review questions
Module 2 review questions
1. What are the core architectural components of Azure?
2. Every resource created in Azure must exist in one and only one what?
3. You need to deploy a legacy application in Azure that has some
customizations that are needed to ensure it runs successfully. The
application will run on a VM running the Windows operating system.
Which Azure service do you recommend running the virtual
machine in?
