AZURE FUNDAMENTALS

UNIT No.: 1 Cloud Concepts

Introduction to Microsoft Azure Fundamentals

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform with an ever-expanding set
of services to help you build solutions to meet your business goals. Azure
services support everything from simple to complex. Azure has simple web
services for hosting your business presence in the cloud. Azure also supports
running fully virtualized computers managing your custom software
solutions. Azure provides a wealth of cloud-based services like remote
storage, database hosting, and centralized account management. Azure also
offers new capabilities like artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things
(IoT) focused services.

What is Azure Fundamentals?

• Azure Fundamentals is a series of three learning paths that familiarize
you with Azure and its many services and features.
• Whether you're interested in compute, networking, or storage
services; learning about cloud security best practices; or exploring
governance and management options, think of Azure Fundamentals
as your curated guide to Azure.
• Azure Fundamentals includes interactive exercises that give you
hands-on experience with Azure. Many exercises provide a temporary
Azure portal environment called the sandbox, which allows you to
practice creating cloud resources for free at your own pace.
• Technical IT experience isn't required; however, having general IT
knowledge will help you get the most from your learning experience.

What is cloud computing

• Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services over the
internet. Computing services include common IT infrastructure such
as virtual machines, storage, databases, and networking. Cloud
services also expand the traditional IT offerings to include things like
Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning (ML), and artificial
intelligence (AI).
 • Because cloud computing uses the internet to deliver these services,
it doesn’t have to be constrained by physical infrastructure the same
way that a traditional datacenter is. That means if you need to
increase your IT infrastructure rapidly, you don’t have to wait to build
a new datacenter—you can use the cloud to rapidly expand your IT
footprint.

History of Cloud Computing

• Before emerging the cloud computing, there was Client/Server
computing which is basically a centralized storage in which all the
software applications, all the data and all the controls are resided on
the server side.
• If a single user wants to access specific data or run a program, he/she
need to connect to the server and then gain appropriate access, and
then he/she can do his/her business.
• Then after, distributed computing came into picture, where all the
computers are networked together and share their resources when
needed.
• On the basis of above computing, there was emerged of cloud
computing concepts that later implemented.
• At around in 1961, John MacCharty suggested in a speech at MIT that
computing can be sold like a utility, just like a water or electricity. It
was a brilliant idea, but like all brilliant ideas, it was ahead if its time,
as for the next few decades, despite interest in the model, the
technology simply was not ready for it.
• But ofcourse time has passed and the technology caught that idea and
after few years we mentioned that:
• In 1999, Salesforce.com started delivering of applications to users
using a simple website. The applications were delivered to enterprises
over the Internet, and this way the dream of computing sold as utility
were true.
• In 2002, Amazon started Amazon Web Services, providing services like
storage, computation and even human intelligence. However, only
starting with the launch of the Elastic Compute Cloud in 2006 a truly
commercial service open to everybody existed.
 • In 2009, Google Apps also started to provide cloud computing
enterprise applications.
• Of course, all the big players are present in the cloud computing
evolution, some were earlier, some were later. In
2009, Microsoft launched Windows Azure, and companies like Oracle
and HP have all joined the game. This proves that today, cloud
computing has become mainstream.

Basic Principle of Cloud Computing:

• Federation: A cloud computing environment must be capable of
providing federated service providers which means that, these providers,
must be capable of collaborating and resource sharing at any point
irrespective of their type. This is usually needed when an organization
extends its computing paradigm from the private to the public cloud.
Moreover, This federation must be kept transparent so that the virtual
application can be used on all the sites. This makes the application be
handled remotely and allows it to migrate from one site to another. Apart
from this, the federation must be carried out in a secure and independent
way.
• Independence: The user of cloud computing services must be
independent of the provider’s specific tool and the type of service.
According to this principle, a user must be allowed the required virtual
resource irrespective of the type of provider. Moreover, it is the
responsibility of service providers to handle infrastructure while hiding
confidential information.
• Isolation: According to this principle, a service provider must ensure the
user with respect to the isolation of their data from others. Even the data
in the same cloud must be separated from different users and therefore
should not be accessed.
• Elasticity: The user of cloud computing must be provided with ease of
accessing and releasing the resources as required. This is typically
referred to as elasticity. The rules associated with elasticity must be
included within the contract made between consumers and services
providers.
• Business Orientation: To develop a more efficient computing
environment, an efficient platform must be developed before the
 applications are included in the cloud. This typically ensures the quality
of services and assist SLA (Service-Level-Agreement).
• Trust: To build a successful cloud computing environment, one of the
major factors is trust between consumers and service providers.
Therefore, effective mechanisms must be included to develop a
trustworthy computing environment.

Cloud Computing Architecture

As we know, cloud computing technology is used by both small and large

organizations to store the information in cloud and access it from
anywhere at anytime using the internet connection.
Cloud computing architecture is a combination of service-oriented
architecture and event-driven architecture.
Cloud computing architecture is divided into the following two parts -
• Front End
• Back End

❖ FRONT END
The front end is used by the client. It contains client-side interfaces and
applications that are required to access the cloud computing platforms.
The front end includes web servers (including Chrome, Firefox, internet
explorer, etc.), thin & fat clients, tablets, and mobile devices.
 ❖ BACK END
The back end is used by the service provider. It manages all the resources
that are required to provide cloud computing services. It includes a huge
amount of data storage, security mechanism, virtual machines, deploying
models, servers, traffic control mechanisms, etc.

There are the following components of cloud computing architecture –

1. Client Infrastructure
Client Infrastructure is a Front end component. It provides GUI (Graphical
User Interface) to interact with the cloud.

2. Application
The application may be any software or platform that a client wants to
access.

3. Service
A Cloud Services manages that which type of service you access according
to the client’s requirement.

Cloud computing offers the following three type of services:

i. Software as a Service (SaaS) – It is also known as cloud application services.
Mostly, SaaS applications run directly through the web browser means we
do not require to download and install these applications.

There are the following characteristics of SaaS -

o Managed from a central location

o Hosted on a remote server

o Accessible over the internet

o Users are not responsible for hardware and software updates.

Updates are applied automatically.
o The services are purchased on the pay-as-per-use basis

Example: BigCommerce, Google Apps, Salesforce, Dropbox, ZenDesk, Cisco

WebEx, ZenDesk, Slack, and GoToMeeting.
ii. Platform as a Service (PaaS) – It is also known as cloud platform services.
It is quite similar to SaaS, but the difference is that PaaS provides a platform
for software creation, but using SaaS, we can access software over the
internet without the need of any platform.

There are the following characteristics of PaaS -

o Accessible to various users via the same development application.
o Integrates with web services and databases.
o Builds on virtualization technology, so resources can easily be scaled
up or down as per the organization's need.
o Support multiple languages and frameworks.
o Provides an ability to "Auto-scale".

Example: AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Windows Azure, Heroku, Force.com,

Google App Engine, Apache Stratos, Magento Commerce Cloud, and
OpenShift.

iii. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – It is also known as cloud infrastructure

services. It is responsible for managing applications data, middleware, and
runtime environments.

There are the following characteristics of IaaS -

o Resources are available as a service

o Services are highly scalable

o Dynamic and flexible

o GUI and API-based access

o Automated administrative tasks

Example: DigitalOcean, Linode, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft

Azure, Google Compute Engine (GCE), Rackspace, and Cisco Metacloud.

4. Runtime Cloud
Runtime Cloud provides the execution and runtime environment to the
virtual machines.

5. Storage
Storage is one of the most important components of cloud computing. It
provides a huge amount of storage capacity in the cloud to store and
manage data.

6. Infrastructure
It provides services on the host level, application level, and network level.
Cloud infrastructure includes hardware and software components such as
servers, storage, network devices, virtualization software, and other storage
resources that are needed to support the cloud computing model.

7. Management
Management is used to manage components such as application, service,
runtime cloud, storage, infrastructure, and other security issues in the
backend and establish coordination between them.

8. Security
Security is an in-built back end component of cloud computing. It
implements a security mechanism in the back end.

9. Internet
The Internet is medium through which front end and back end can interact
and communicate with each other.

The shared responsibility model

You’ll always be responsible for:
• The information and data stored in the cloud
• Devices that are allowed to connect to your cloud (cell phones,
computers, and so on)
• The accounts and identities of the people, services, and devices within
your organization
The cloud provider is always responsible for:
• The physical datacenter
• The physical network
• The physical hosts
Your service model will determine responsibility for things like:
 • Operating systems
• Network controls
• Applications
• Identity and infrastructure

Define cloud models

What are cloud models?
The cloud models define the deployment type of cloud resources. The three
main cloud models are: private, public, and hybrid.

Private cloud
A private cloud is, in some ways, the natural evolution from a corporate
datacenter. It’s a cloud (delivering IT services over the internet) that’s used
by a single entity. Private cloud provides much greater control for the
company and its IT department. However, it also comes with greater cost
and fewer of the benefits of a public cloud deployment. Finally, a private
cloud may be hosted from your on site datacenter. It may also be hosted in
a dedicated datacenter offsite, potentially even by a third party that has
dedicated that datacenter to your company.
Private cloud is also known as an internal cloud or corporate cloud. It is used
by organizations to build and manage their own data centers internally or
by the third party. It can be deployed using Opensource tools such as
Openstack and Eucalyptus.

Based on the location and management, National Institute of Standards and

Technology (NIST) divide private cloud into the following two parts-
• On-premise private cloud
• Outsourced private cloud

Advantages of Private Cloud

There are the following advantages of the Private Cloud -

o Private cloud provides a high level of security and privacy to the users.

o Private cloud offers better performance with improved speed and

space capacity.
o It allows the IT team to quickly allocate and deliver on-demand IT
resources.
o The organization has full control over the cloud because it is managed
by the organization itself. So, there is no need for the organization to
depends on anybody.
o It is suitable for organizations that require a separate cloud for their
personal use and data security is the first priority.

Disadvantages of Private Cloud

o Skilled people are required to manage and operate cloud services.

o Private cloud is accessible within the organization, so the area of

operations is limited.
Private cloud is not suitable for organizations that have a high user base,
and organizations that do not have the prebuilt infrastructure, sufficient
manpower to maintain and manage the cloud.
 Public cloud
• A public cloud is built, controlled, and maintained by a third-party
cloud provider. With a public cloud, anyone that wants to purchase
cloud services can access and use resources. The general public
availability is a key difference between public and private clouds.
• Public cloud is open to all to store and access information via the
Internet using the pay-per-usage method.
• In public cloud, computing resources are managed and operated by
the Cloud Service Provider (CSP).
• Example: Amazon elastic compute cloud (EC2), IBM SmartCloud
Enterprise, Microsoft, Google App Engine, Windows Azure Services
Platform.

Advantages of Public Cloud

There are the following advantages of Public Cloud -

o Public cloud is owned at a lower cost than the private and hybrid
cloud.
o Public cloud is maintained by the cloud service provider, so do not
need to worry about the maintenance.
o Public cloud is easier to integrate. Hence it offers a better flexibility
approach to consumers.
o Public cloud is location independent because its services are delivered
through the internet.
o Public cloud is highly scalable as per the requirement of computing
resources.
 o It is accessible by the general public, so there is no limit to the number
of users.

Disadvantages of Public Cloud

o Public Cloud is less secure because resources are shared publicly.

o Performance depends upon the high-speed internet network link to

the cloud provider.
o The Client has no control of data.

Hybrid cloud
A hybrid cloud is a computing environment that uses both public and private
clouds in an inter-connected environment. A hybrid cloud environment can
be used to allow a private cloud to surge for increased, temporary demand
by deploying public cloud resources. Hybrid cloud can be used to provide an
extra layer of security. For example, users can flexibly choose which services
to keep in public cloud and which to deploy to their private cloud
infrastructure.

Advantages of Hybrid Cloud

There are the following advantages of Hybrid Cloud -
o Hybrid cloud is suitable for organizations that require more security
than the public cloud.
o Hybrid cloud helps you to deliver new products and services more
quickly.
o Hybrid cloud provides an excellent way to reduce the risk.
o Hybrid cloud offers flexible resources because of the public cloud and
secure resources because of the private cloud.

Disadvantages of Hybrid Cloud

o In Hybrid Cloud, security feature is not as good as the private cloud.
 o Managing a hybrid cloud is complex because it is difficult to manage
more than one type of deployment model.
o In the hybrid cloud, the reliability of the services depends on cloud
service providers.

Community Cloud

Community cloud allows systems and services to be accessible by a group

of several organizations to share the information between the organization
and a specific community. It is owned, managed, and operated by one or
more organizations in the community, a third party, or a combination of
them.
Example: Health Care community cloud

Advantages of Community Cloud

There are the following advantages of Community Cloud -

o Community cloud is cost-effective because the whole cloud is being
shared by several organizations or communities.
o Community cloud is suitable for organizations that want to have a
collaborative cloud with more security features than the public cloud.
o It provides better security than the public cloud.
 o It provides collaborative and distributive environment.
o Community cloud allows us to share cloud resources, infrastructure,
and other capabilities among various organizations.

Disadvantages of Community Cloud

o Community cloud is not a good choice for every organization.

o Security features are not as good as the private cloud.

o It is not suitable if there is no collaboration.

o The fixed amount of data storage and bandwidth is shared among all
community members.

Cloud models
• Multi-cloud
A fourth, and increasingly likely scenario is a multi-cloud scenario. In a
multi-cloud scenario, you use multiple public cloud providers. Maybe you
use different features from different cloud providers. Or maybe you
started your cloud journey with one provider and are in the process of
migrating to a different provider. Regardless, in a multi-cloud
environment you deal with two (or more) public cloud providers and
manage resources and security in both environments.
• Azure Arc
Azure Arc is a set of technologies that helps manage your cloud
environment. Azure Arc can help manage your cloud environment,
whether it's a public cloud solely on Azure, a private cloud in your
datacenter, a hybrid configuration, or even a multi-cloud environment
running on multiple cloud providers at once.
• Azure VMware Solution
What if you’re already established with VMware in a private cloud
environment but want to migrate to a public or hybrid cloud? Azure
VMware Solution lets you run your VMware workloads in Azure with
seamless integration and scalability.
Describe the consumption-based model
• When comparing IT infrastructure models, there are two types of
expenses to consider. Capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational
expenditure (OpEx).
• CapEx is typically a one-time, up-front expenditure to purchase or
secure tangible resources. A new building, repaving the parking lot,
building a datacenter, or buying a company vehicle are examples of
CapEx.
• In contrast, OpEx is spending money on services or products over
time. Renting a convention center, leasing a company vehicle, or
signing up for cloud services are all examples of OpEx.
• Cloud computing falls under OpEx because cloud computing operates
on a consumption-based model. With cloud computing, you don’t pay
for the physical infrastructure, the electricity, the security, or anything
else associated with maintaining a datacenter. Instead, you pay for the
IT resources you use. If you don’t use any IT resources this month, you
don’t pay for any IT resources.
• This consumption-based model has many benefits, including:
• No upfront costs.
• No need to purchase and manage costly infrastructure that users
might not use to its fullest potential.
• The ability to pay for more resources when they're needed.
• The ability to stop paying for resources that are no longer needed.
• With a traditional datacenter, you try to estimate the future resource
needs. If you overestimate, you spend more on your datacenter than
you need to and potentially waste money. If you underestimate, your
datacenter will quickly reach capacity and your applications and
services may suffer from decreased performance. Fixing an under-
provisioned datacenter can take a long time. You may need to order,
receive, and install more hardware. You'll also need to add power,
cooling, and networking for the extra hardware.
• In a cloud-based model, you don’t have to worry about getting the
resource needs just right. If you find that you need more virtual
machines, you add more. If the demand drops and you don’t need as
many virtual machines, you remove machines as needed. Either way,
you’re only paying for the virtual machines that you use, not the “extra
capacity” that the cloud provider has on hand.
Compare cloud pricing models
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services over the internet
by using a pay-as-you-go pricing model. You typically pay only for the
cloud services you use, which helps you:
• Plan and manage your operating costs.
• Run your infrastructure more efficiently.
• Scale as your business needs change.
• To put it another way, cloud computing is a way to rent compute
power and storage from someone else’s datacenter. You can treat
cloud resources like you would resources in your own datacenter.
However, unlike in your own datacenter, when you're done using
cloud resources, you give them back. You’re billed only for what you
use.
• Instead of maintaining CPUs and storage in your datacenter, you rent
them for the time that you need them. The cloud provider takes care
of maintaining the underlying infrastructure for you. The cloud
enables you to quickly solve your toughest business challenges and
bring cutting-edge solutions to your users.

The benefits of high availability and scalability in the cloud

• When building or deploying a cloud application, two of the biggest
considerations are uptime (or availability) and the ability to handle
demand (or scale).
High availability
• When you’re deploying an application, a service, or any IT resources,
it’s important the resources are available when needed. High
availability focuses on ensuring maximum availability, regardless of
disruptions or events that may occur.
• When you’re architecting your solution, you’ll need to account for
service availability guarantees. Azure is a highly available cloud
environment with uptime guarantees depending on the service.
These guarantees are part of the service-level agreements (SLAs).
 Scalability
• Another major benefit of cloud computing is the scalability of cloud
resources. Scalability refers to the ability to adjust resources to meet
demand. If you suddenly experience peak traffic and your systems are
overwhelmed, the ability to scale means you can add more resources
to better handle the increased demand.
• The other benefit of scalability is that you aren't overpaying for
services. Because the cloud is a consumption-based model, you only
pay for what you use. If demand drops off, you can reduce your
resources and thereby reduce your costs.
• Scaling generally comes in two varieties: vertical and horizontal.
Vertical scaling is focused on increasing or decreasing the capabilities
of resources. Horizontal scaling is adding or subtracting the number
of resources.
Vertical scaling
• With vertical scaling, if you were developing an app and you needed
more processing power, you could vertically scale up to add more
CPUs or RAM to the virtual machine. Conversely, if you realized you
had over-specified the needs, you could vertically scale down by
lowering the CPU or RAM specifications.
Horizontal scaling
• With horizontal scaling, if you suddenly experienced a steep jump in
demand, your deployed resources could be scaled out (either
automatically or manually). For example, you could add additional
virtual machines or containers, scaling out. In the same manner, if
there was a significant drop in demand, deployed resources could be
scaled in (either automatically or manually), scaling in.

The benefits of reliability and predictability in the cloud

Reliability and predictability are two crucial cloud benefits that help you
develop solutions with confidence.
• Reliability
Reliability is the ability of a system to recover from failures and continue
to function. It's also one of the pillars of the Microsoft Azure Well-
Architected Framework.
The cloud, by virtue of its decentralized design, naturally supports a
reliable and resilient infrastructure. With a decentralized design, the
cloud enables you to have resources deployed in regions around the
world. With this global scale, even if one region has a catastrophic event
other regions are still up and running. You can design your applications
to automatically take advantage of this increased reliability. In some
cases, your cloud environment itself will automatically shift to a different
region for you, with no action needed on your part.

• Predictability
Predictability in the cloud lets you move forward with confidence.
Predictability can be focused on performance predictability or cost
predictability. Both performance and cost predictability are heavily
influenced by the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework. Deploy
a solution that’s built around this framework and you have a solution
whose cost and performance are predictable.
• Performance
Performance predictability focuses on predicting the resources needed
to deliver a positive experience for your customers. Autoscaling, load
balancing, and high availability are just some of the cloud concepts that
support performance predictability. If you suddenly need more
resources, autoscaling can deploy additional resources to meet the
demand, and then scale back when the demand drops. Or if the traffic is
heavily focused on one area, load balancing will help redirect some of the
overload to less stressed areas.
• Cost
Cost predictability is focused on predicting or forecasting the cost of the
cloud spend. With the cloud, you can track your resource use in real time,
monitor resources to ensure that you’re using them in the most efficient
way, and apply data analytics to find patterns and trends that help better
plan resource deployments. By operating in the cloud and using cloud
analytics and information, you can predict future costs and adjust your
resources as needed. You can even use tools like the Total Cost of
Ownership (TCO) or Pricing Calculator to get an estimate of potential
cloud spend.
The benefits of security and governance in the cloud
• Whether you’re deploying infrastructure as a service or software as a
service, cloud features support governance and compliance. Things
like set templates help ensure that all your deployed resources meet
corporate standards and government regulatory requirements. Plus,
you can update all your deployed resources to new standards as
standards change. Cloud-based auditing helps flag any resource that’s
out of compliance with your corporate standards and provides
mitigation strategies. Depending on your operating model, software
patches and updates may also automatically be applied, which helps
with both governance and security.
• On the security side, you can find a cloud solution that matches your
security needs. If you want maximum control of security,
infrastructure as a service provides you with physical resources but
lets you manage the operating systems and installed software,
including patches and maintenance. If you want patches and
maintenance taken care of automatically, platform as a service or
software as a service deployments may be the best cloud strategies
for you.
• And because the cloud is intended as an over-the-internet delivery of
IT resources, cloud providers are typically well suited to handle things
like distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, making your network
more robust and secure.
• By establishing a good governance footprint early, you can keep your
cloud footprint updated, secure, and well managed.

The benefits of manageability in the cloud

Management of the cloud
• Management of the cloud speaks to managing your cloud resources.
In the cloud, you can:
• Automatically scale resource deployment based on need.
• Deploy resources based on a preconfigured template, removing the
need for manual configuration.
• Monitor the health of resources and automatically replace failing
resources.
• Receive automatic alerts based on configured metrics, so you’re
aware of performance in real time.
• Management in the cloud speaks to how you’re able to manage your
cloud environment and resources. You can manage these:
• Through a web portal.
• Using a command line interface.
• Using APIs.
• Using PowerShell.