Microsoft Azure Fundamentals
Microsoft Azure Fundamentals
(AZ-900)
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS):Platform layer means
all the supporting software and the operating system
required to host the application
Infrastructure-as-a-
Service (IaaS):Infrastructure layer consists hardware
the infrastructure and virtualization required to host the
platform
What is Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing is the delivery of different services
through the Internet. These resources include tools and
applications like data storage, servers, databases,
networking, and software. ...
elasticity is
the ability to scale dynamically
agility is
the ability to react fast (scale quickly)
fault
tolerance is the ability to maintain system uptime while physical and service
component failures happen
disaster recovery is
the process and design principle which allows a system to recovers
from natural or human induced disasters
high
availability is the agreed level of operational uptime for the system. It is a simple
calculation of system uptime versus whole lifetime of the system.
availability = uptime/(uptime + downtime)
Capital Expenditure vs Operational
consumption-based model
Region
Geographical area on the planet
One but usually more datacenters connected with low-latency network (<2
milliseconds)
Location for your services
Some services are available only in certain regions
Some services are global services, as such are not assigned/deployed in specific region
Globally available with **50+ regions **
Special government regions (US DoD Central, US Gov Virginia, etc.)
Special partnered regions (China East, China North)
Availability Zone
Regional feature
Grouping of physically separate facilities
Designed to protect from data center failures
If zone goes down others continue working
Two service categories
Zonal services (Virtual Machines, Disks, etc.)
Zone-redundant services (SQL, Storage, etc.)
Not all regions are supported
Supported region has **three or more zones **
A zone is one or more data centers
Region Pair
Discrete market
Typically contains two or more regions
Ensures data residency, sovereignty, resiliency,
and compliance requirements are met
Fault tolerant to protect from region wide failures
Broken up into areas
Americas,
Europe,
Asia Pacific,
Middle East and Africa
Each region belongs only to one Geography
Azure Resource
Define content
Minimize latency
POP (points of presence) with many locations
STORAGE
Group of services which include
blob storage,
queue storage,
table storage, and
file storage
Used to store
files,
messages, and
semi-structured data
Highly scalable (up to petabytes of data)
Highly durable (99.999999999% - 11 nines, up to 16 nines)
Cheapest per GB storage
Blob Storage
Table Storage
Storage for semi-structured data (NoSQL)
No need for foreign joins, foreign keys, relationships or
strict schema
Designed for fast access
Many programming interfaces and SDKs
FILE & DISK Storage
File Storage
Storage for files accessed via shared drive protocols
Designed to extend on-premise file shares or implement lift-and-shift
scenarios
Disk Storage
Disk emulation in the cloud
Persistent storage for Virtual Machines
Different
sizes,
types (SSD, HDD)
performance tiers
Disk can be unmanaged or managed
DATABASE SERVICE
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
Azure SQL-Database
SQL Database
Relational database service in the cloud (PaaS)
(DBaaS - Database as a Service)
Structured data service defined using schema and
relationships
Rich Query Capabilities (SQL)
High-performance, reliable, fully managed and
secure database for building - applications
Azure SQL product family
What is a Role?
Role (role definition) is a collection of actions that the assigned identity will
be able to perform.
Role definition is an answer to a question “What can be done?”
What is a Security Principal?
Security Principal is an Azure object (identity) that
can be assigned to a role (ex. users, groups or applications).
Security Principal assignment is an answer to a question “Who can do it?”
What is a Scope?
Scope is one or more Azure resources that the access applies to.
Scope assignment is an answer to a question “Where can it be done?”
What is a Role Assignment?
Role assignment is a combination of the role definition, security
principal and scope.
RBAC
Authorization system built on Azure Resource Manager (ARM)
Designed for fine-grained access management of Azure Resources
Role assignment is combination of
Role definition – list of permissions like create VM, delete SQL,
assign permissions, etc.
Security Principal – user, group, service principal and managed
identity and
Scope – resource, resource groups, subscription, management group
Hierarchical
Management Groups > Subscriptions > Resource Groups > Resources
Built-in and Custom roles are supported
Azure Security Center
Identity
Centralized/unified infrastructure and platform security
management service
Natively embedded in Azure services
Integrated with Azure Advisor
Two tiers
Free (Azure Defender OFF) – included in all Azure services,
provides continuous assessments, security score, and actionable
security recommendations
Paid (Azure Defender ON) – hybrid security, threat protection
alerts, vulnerability scanning, just in time (JIT) VM access, etc.
Azure Key Vault