8/10/2020 Azure Fundamentals: Cloud Computing Transcript

Azure Fundamentals: Cloud Computing

In this 14-video course, learners can explore differences between cloud computing and traditional on-premises
computing. You will examine AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals, the entry level Microsoft Azure certification that
will introduce learners to Azure service offerings, including storage, virtual machines (VMs), databases, and
developer solutions. Microsoft Azure lets users leverage the infrastructure of an existing computing environment
to reduce, or even in some cases eliminate, on-premises solutions. You will learn that cloud computing depends
on virtualization, and hypervisors, the underlying physical server hardware that allows VMs to be deployed and
to run. Next, you will examine the components of Microsoft Azure include IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service),
which is basic computing and storage services such as VMs and network services. You will learn that Azure
includes PaaS (Platform as a Service), which is used for application hosting environment solutions such as web
hosting, messaging, and database hosting, and SaaS (Software as a Service) with on-demand applications.
Finally, the course compares traditional on-premises IT solutions to their cloud equivalents, and compares on-
premises to cloud migration strategies.

Table of Contents
1. Course Overview
2. The Cloud Defined
3. Virtualization and the Cloud
4. Cloud Computing and Economies of Scale
5. Public Clouds
6. Private Clouds
7. Hybrid Clouds
8. Community Clouds
9. Azure IaaS
10. Azure PaaS
11. Azure SaaS
12. On-Premises vs. Cloud
13. Cloud Migration
14. Exercise: Cloud Solutions and Business Objectives

Course Overview
[Video description begins] Topic title: Course Overview. Your host for this session is Dan Lachance. [Video
description ends]

Hi, I'm Dan Lachance. I've worked in various IT roles since 1993, including as a technical trainer with Global
Knowledge, as a programmer, as a consultant, and as well as an IT tech author and editor for McGraw-Hill and
Wiley Publishing. I've held IT certifications in Linux, Novel, Lotus, CompTIA, and Microsoft. Some of my
specialties over the years have included networking, IT security, Cloud solutions, Linux Management, and
configuration and troubleshooting across a wide array of Microsoft products.

AZ-900 is an entry level Microsoft Azure certification that will introduce learners to Azure service offerings,
including storage, virtual machines, databases, and developer solutions. Microsoft Azure lets you leverage the
infrastructure of an existing computing environment to reduce or even in some cases eliminate on-premises
solutions.

The architectural components of Microsoft Azure include Infrastructure as a Service, which is basic computing
and storage services like virtual machines and network services. Azure also includes Platform as a Service,

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which deals with application hosting environment solutions such as web hosting, messaging, and database
hosting. And also Azure offers Software as a Service. This is on-demand applications such as Office 365.

In this course, I will explore how cloud computing differs from traditional on-premises computing, as well as
learning about the variety of cloud models supported by Azure. I'll also describe the difference between
virtualization and cloud computing and various cloud computing models including public, private, hybrid, and
community clouds.

I will also describe cloud computing services such as Azure, Infrastructure as a Service, IaaS, Platform as a
Service, PaaS, and Software as a Service, SaaS. Lastly, I will compare traditional on-premises IT solutions to
their cloud equivalences and I'll also talk about on-premises to cloud migration strategies.

The Cloud Defined

[Video description begins] Topic title: The Cloud Defined. Your host for this session is Dan Lachance. [Video
description ends]

Cloud computing is very similar to traditional on-premises computing. It's a lot of the same technologies just
being used in a bit of a different way.

Some of the factors to think about when we compare cloud computing with on-premises computing is
availability. For example, imagine that you depend solely on services running out in the Microsoft Azure cloud,
yet you've only got a single Internet connection from your office. So if that link goes down, we lose access to
everything. All the systems, all the data that we've provisioned in the cloud, where if that was solely on-
premises, we would still have access to it. So the solution, of course, is to have redundant network connections
to the cloud provider environment.

When it comes to software and licensing and hardware, with an on-premises network, that is all the
responsibility of the private organization. Acquiring hardware and software and licensing the software,
configuring the hardware and software, and maintaining it over time. Whereas in the Microsoft Azure cloud
computing environment, that is the responsibility of Microsoft.

Then we have to think about the IT systems that we run in the cloud. Well when it comes to the underlying
infrastructure, that is the responsibility of Microsoft. But it would be the responsibility of us as a cloud customer
to deploy things like virtual machines on that infrastructure. The data that results from the use of cloud services
primarily falls under the responsibility of the cloud consumer, in terms of determining whether they want that
data encrypted and where it is stored. Although, there is a service level agreement, or SLA, that stipulates, in the
case of Microsoft Cloud Storage with Azure, that there was a certain amount of guaranteed uptime. But we'll
talk about service level agreements or SLAs in more detail later.

So you could define cloud computing, and these are my own words, as saying that it's computing services that
are made available over a network such as the Internet. You might wonder, isn't cloud computing only available
over the Internet? And the answer is no, because you could have a private cloud on-premises owned solely and
used only by a single organization. So in that case, it wouldn't be accessible over the Internet.

Cloud computing shares a number of characteristics, one of which is resource pooling. What this means is that
the cloud provider pools together infrastructure like storage that is made available to cloud customers, physical
servers that run hypervisors that allow virtual machines to run, and all of the networking that allows that to
communicate with one another. All of that is pooled together on a large scale and made available to cloud
customers.

Rapid elasticity takes advantage of that resource pooling to allow cloud customers to implement or provision
resources on a moment's notice. Such as requiring more storage or wanting to fire up a virtual machine in the
cloud to test something at a moment's notice.
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Metered usage means that with cloud computing, the amount that you use something, how long a virtual
machine is running, or how much cloud storage space you're consuming, all of this is tracked kind of like a
utility, like power or electricity, and so you pay for what you use. So the more virtual machines you have
running in Azure, the longer they're running the more you pay than if you had fewer running for a less amount of
time.

Broad access means allowing access over a network. And in the case of Microsoft Azure, which is really a
public cloud computing solution, the broad access applies to everybody over the Internet that wants to sign up
with an account.

Self-provisioning is another cloud computing characteristic, whereby cloud customers can provision and manage
and also deprovision cloud resources, like storage. Like cloud hosted websites or cloud hosted virtual machines.
All of that should be provisionable by the end user. And it's often done through an easy to use graphical web
interface, although it can also be done programmatically, of course, if that need is available.

The other thing to consider is whether or not we've got cloud services available that actually meet our business
needs. So choosing the appropriate infrastructure like virtual machine types that will support workloads that we
need to run to support business processes.

We also have to consider whether we're going to be migrating systems that we currently run on-premises such as
a website, for example, or data that we want to migrate to the cloud. Either we want to run that in parallel while
we adopt cloud computing or we just want to use the cloud as an alternate storage location to run these systems
and to store data.

We also have to consider the technical expertise of our IT staff to make sure that they understand our chosen
cloud platform, such as Microsoft Azure and the service offerings that are available. And bear in mind that this
is a moving target, because Microsoft is constantly changing how things work in Azure. The interface, new
cmdlets available in PowerShell, and so on. So technical expertise is an ongoing type of task as it relates to
Microsoft Azure.

We should also consider the total cost of ownership or the TCO overtime of using cloud computing. We can't
necessarily say that cloud computing is always cheaper than just doing everything on-premises. Certainly, there
are no up-front costs with cloud computing as there would be if you did the equivalent on-premises where you
had to acquire hardware and so on. So we have to bear in mind that this is an ongoing type of operating expense
based on our usage. So it's important that we track our usage of cloud resources in Azure to make sure that we're
only using what we need to, to minimize costs.

The other consideration with cloud computing is data privacy laws and regulations. We have to think about
which ones apply to our specific industry and we have to determine whether or not data of certain types is
allowed to be stored in the cloud in certain data centers in certain regions around the planet.

Now certainly there are plenty of benefits when adopting cloud computing, one of which is there's no up-front
capital expenditure. Can you imagine having to buy 20 or 30 physical servers at the same time to handle
business workloads, versus simply deploying virtual machines in the cloud to do the same thing? Now that of
course is under the assumption that we are compliant with laws and regulations and that it makes sense to run
those business processes in the cloud.

We also have to consider the accreditations that various cloud providers acquire. [Video description begins] The
security accreditations of cloud providers need to be considered. [Video description ends] And normally they
will do this so that their customers have confidence in the security of their facilities and how things are managed
and secured.

Bear in mind that when you deploy something in the cloud, it often can be done very quickly. It really depends
on the expertise of who's deploying it. Certainly more quickly than us acquiring hardware on-premises and then
acquiring software and installing and configuring everything. So this can be done very quickly in the cloud, such
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as deploying a database or a cloud hosted website in moments. [Video description begins] IT solutions should be
deployed quickly. [Video description ends]

Another great thing about the cloud is that the underlying technical complexities are hidden. There's usually
some kind of a graphical frontend interface or programmatic access to cloud services that often hide the true
underlying complexities of the hardware used to support that infrastructure.

And finally, when we use cloud computing services ends up meaning that we are using less on-premises space in
our server rooms, in our data centers, in our offices. Less power draw and also less requirements for heating,
ventilation, and air conditioning since there is less physical computing hardware present on-premises. [Video
description begins] Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning is also known as HVAC. [Video description ends]

Virtualization and the Cloud

[Video description begins] Topic title: Virtualization and the Cloud. Your host for this session is Dan Lachance.
[Video description ends]

In the IT world, virtualization and cloud computing are not synonymous, they're not the same thing. So in other
words, in order to have a cloud computing environment, you need to be using virtualization. So yes, cloud
computing does depend on virtualization, but the opposite is not true. In other words, if you are using
virtualization. Let's say you've got a hypervisor that supports running multiple virtual machine guests
concurrently. That doesn't mean that you are using cloud computing, at least, not unto itself.

So let's talk about hypervisors for a second because this is an important part of cloud computing. Think about in
the cloud, where we can quickly deploy virtual machines on the Microsoft Azure platform. Well there needs to
be underlying physical server hardware that allows those virtual machines to be deployed and to run. And so
those are called hypervisors.

So we have physical hardware running a virtualization type of operating system, that's the hypervisor. And there
are two main types, Type 1 and Type 2. So where the hypervisor hosts virtual machines, otherwise called guests,
a Type 1 is a bare-metal hypervisor. And that means that it is the operating system that runs right on the physical
hardware that supports operating system virtualization.

Now compare that with the Type 2 hypervisor. This type of hypervisor is an app. It's a piece of software that
needs to be installed within an existing operating system like Linux, Windows or the Mac OS. So as you might
have guessed, running a Type 1, or bare-metal hypervisor provides more options and better performance than a
Type 2 hypervisor does. At least when it's used in the enterprise.

There are a number of different types of virtualization. We've just talked about operating system virtualization,
where we could deploy a Linux or a virtual machine running Windows in the Azure cloud. And it only takes a
few moments to do that, and it runs on physical Type 1 hypervisor hardware. Specifically, in Microsoft Azure,
it's running on Microsoft Hyper-V.

But we've also got other types of virtualization like application virtualization. Application virtualization means
that while we can run a specific app on a device, that app is not actually installed on that device. Instead, it's got
a virtualized environment, where things like, if it's a Windows virtualized app, registry entries and file system
files are not written to the real host. Instead, they're in this virtualized environment whereby the app appears to
be running and is running in the operating system. But it's just not been installed in it. And so the benefit of this
is portability. Now this is not a container. It sounds like container technology but application virtualization unto
itself isn't. It actually predates or precedes things like Docker containers.

We've also got network virtualization seen here in the bottom right. And a term that comes to mind in line with
that is software defined networking, or SDN, which is used extensively in cloud computing. Software defined
networking really means that we provide cloud customers with an easy way to configure virtual network settings
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and routing tables, and so on. Rather than have them actually make a connection to the underlying hardware like
routers that do that, we provide an easier interface.

And of course, there's also desktop virtualization, where an entire user desktop might run on a centralized server
that actually runs multiple user desktops concurrently. So the end user then would need a thin client device with
not a lot of processing and maybe not even any local storage. They would need network access to the server that
hosts the virtual desktops. So there's a lot of types virtualization that can be used, both on-premises and in the
cloud.

So what's the benefit then of virtualization in Microsoft Azure? One is cloud tenant isolation. By allowing
customers to provision their own separate virtual machines and Active Directory instances, those serve sort of as
security boundaries. So that one tenant can't access virtual machines and Active Directory instances that are
deployed by other tenants.

Virtualization allows for the rapid provisioning of virtual machines. [Video description begins] Virtual Machines
are also known as VMs. [Video description ends] So users can simply make a selection in the Azure portal to
deploy a Linux or a Windows virtual machine that perhaps has additional software like SQL Server installed. It
happens after just a few clicks or it can also be managed and deployed programmatically at the command line.

So rapid and easy provisioning of virtual machines is one of the great things about using cloud computing in
Azure. And a lot of the other services that are available in Azure, whether it comes to big data processing and
analytics, or whether we're talking about running databases of any type. Or whether we're talking about hosting
websites, all of that depends on virtual machines.

In some cases, some of these are called managed services, which means that we don't actually specify the virtual
machine deployment details, such as when we deploy a SQL Server database in the cloud. Instead, we just focus
on the database side and Azure takes care of the virtualization for us.

Cloud Computing and Economies of Scale

[Video description begins] Topic title: Cloud Computing and Economies of Scale. Your host for this session is
Dan Lachance. [Video description ends]

The economies of scale work great wonders in the Cloud. Have you ever wondered how can they get so much
storage available through Microsoft Azure for such a cheap cost?

Well, one of the reasons is because all of these pooled resources like storage erase, physical hypervisors that run
virtual machines, network equipment like routers and switches, and even inter-data center network links for
Azure, all of these are done on a very large scale. And this is the responsibility of Microsoft in the Azure data
centers.

However, one of the great things about economies of scale is that things are cheaper in bulk. And you can look
at this from a couple of different perspectives, one being from Microsoft's. So purchasing a large amount of
physical rack mount servers is going to end up being cheaper than buying one or two, especially over time. And
if you are a repeat customer, buy equipment from that hardware vendor.

At the same time because we've got numerous cloud tenants, in other words Microsoft Azure customers, and this
is on a very large scale, it means that Microsoft can afford to charge what they are charging for usage fees,
subscription costs in Azure because of the large volumes that they're dealing with with customers. So cloud
tenants or customers for Microsoft Azure will pay a monthly subscription cost. And depending on the cloud
service, there might be additional usage fees on top of that, such as charging for the amount of time that virtual
machines are running.

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The other consideration is that with an on-premises IT environment, the organization is responsible for all of the
upfront costs of setting up the network infrastructure, buying storage arrays and backup systems and servers, and
so on. So this is a capital expenditure, otherwise called Capex.

Now when we look at cloud computing, all of that stuff that we've just described at the hardware level is not the
responsibility of the cloud customer, but rather, the responsibility of the cloud provider, in this case, Microsoft
Azure. So that means as a Cloud customer that is using Microsoft Azure services, we have an ongoing operating
expenditure on a monthly basis to pay for our usage of Cloud services. And that's called Opex.

So with Cloud economies of scale, providers are able to allow Cloud customers to pay small fees for using
services that otherwise might not even be possible for smaller organizations on premises.

Public Clouds
[Video description begins] Topic title: Public Clouds. Your host for this session is Dan Lachance. [Video
description ends]

Public clouds share a lot of the same characteristics that other cloud types do. We'll talk about other cloud types
later.

So with the public cloud, one characteristic is broad access. In this context, we're talking about having access to
cloud services over a network, in this case, the Internet. Resource pooling means that the underlying hardware
infrastructure, so the network configuration, rough routers and switches, and also things like storage arrays,
physical storage, hypervisor service that run virtual machines. All of this is pooled together and made available
to be provisioned by Microsoft Azure customers.

The rapid elasticity side really reflects how quickly and easy it is to provision these cloud resources such as
virtual machines or a new storage account. It can be done in moments, using a variety of different methods. Of
course, self-provisioning refers to the fact that the cloud customer is the one that provisions resources. So for
instance, if we want to deploy a new Linux virtual machine in Microsoft Azure, we don't need to contact a
Microsoft Azure data center IT technician to do that for us. We do it ourselves, and we're going to learn about all
the different ways that that can be done.

Metered usage reflects the fact that we are charged based on what we are using in Microsoft Azure. So the more
data that you have stored and the more often it's accessed, the more it will cost. The more virtual machines you
have deployed in Azure and the longer they're kept running, the more you will be charged.

Public clouds are available to anybody that has access to the Internet. In order to work with Microsoft Azure,
you are going to need to create an account. But bear in mind that with the public cloud computing environment,
the cloud provider owns the underlying IT infrastructure.

When it comes to cloud resource management, so working with things like Azure Virtual Machines, or web
applications running in Azure or databases, those are resources, they can be managed using a web browser
interface. That would be the Azure Portal, we're going spend a lot of time there.

We can also use other GUI tools, such as those that are available from Microsoft, like the Storage Explorer tool.
It's just another way to reach out to your cloud subscription and work with things like storage accounts. We can
use command line tools to manage Azure resources.

We'll be learning about how to use PowerShell cmdlets to do that as well as how to use the Azure CLI. And of
course, developers will be interested in hooking into exposed APIs, Application Programming Interfaces, which
really just allow developers to work with cloud services at a programmatic level. Even for example, if we've got
a component of an application running on premises, you can reach out to the cloud and talk to cloud services
programmatically.

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With public clouds, the responsibility for the IT configuration and ongoing management could be split between
the cloud provider and the cloud customer depending on the specific service being used. So for example, if we
deploy a Linux virtual machine manually in the Azure cloud, then we are the ones that are responsible for
applying updates to that virtualized Linux operating system. And it's up to us to determine how that virtual
machine is configured and what software is installed within it. But at the same time, if we look at the underlying
physical hypervisor server that runs virtual machines, that would be the responsibility of Microsoft in Azure data
centers to make sure that hardware's kept up and running and kept patched at the firmware level, and so on.

The other thing to bear in mind in Azure is some cloud service offerings. An example of this might be a certain
type of virtual machine size that determines the horsepower of that virtual machine. Some of those, as well as
other services, might only be available in some Azure geographical regions and not others.

Private Clouds
[Video description begins] Topic title: Private Clouds. Your host for this session is Dan Lachance. [Video
description ends]

Another type of cloud is a private cloud. It shares the same characteristics as other types of clouds such as public
clouds, however, from a different perspective.

One of the cloud characteristics we have to consider is broad access. In the case of a private cloud, we're talking
about access to cloud services over a network. But in this case, the network is limited in scope. It's not accessible
by all users over the Internet that want to sign up with an account. That's a public cloud. A private cloud instead,
uses equipment that is owned by and used by only a private organization.

So the resource pooling really boils down to being the underlying hardware infrastructure owned by the
organization. Whether it's on a small scale, such as a very tiny private cloud defined on perhaps a couple of rack
mount servers in a small server closet to a larger enterprise that has offices in different countries that has its own
data centers. And again with its own private cloud services available.

Yet another characteristic of a cloud is rapid elasticity, which would allow, in this case, only people within the
organization to use private cloud services. Self-provisioning means that the users of cloud services can provision
or de-provision cloud resources at will. So for example, if you're a department manager within an organization
using a private cloud and you decide you need another virtual machine to support business processes used by
your department, then you might access some kind of a web portal. Or perhaps there's an automated template
that's been prepared to be used in this context to quickly deploy that type of virtual machine.

And finally, metered usage means that all of the usage of private cloud resources are being tracked. They might
wonder why is that within a single organization. Well, within a single organization, we might charge how many
cloud resources in our private cloud are being consumed by various departments within the company. And then
we might track that and on a monthly or quarterly basis, we might charge back the cost of those resources that
were consumed back to that department within the organization.

So if I have a cloud then, we'll use virtualization, because that is one of the aspects of cloud computing. But
remember that just because virtualization is used on-premises, it doesn't mean that we have a private cloud. So
let's say you've got a Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor on-premises running on a server. And from it you're running
a bunch of virtual machines. Or maybe you're using VMware ESXi hosts, and you've got a couple of virtual
machines running. Does that mean we have a cloud? No, it does not because if we go back here, we can see that
these are the characteristics that must be met in order to say that we have a cloud. It's not just virtualization,
which really falls under resource pooling, but also these other characteristics.

So with a private cloud we know now that the organization owns the IT infrastructure and whatever cloud
services that the organization has deemed should be available, are available only to that organization. And not to
anyone over the Internet that wants to subscribe. From a responsibility standpoint, this means that all of the IT
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responsibility, starting with determining what kind of hardware we need and acquiring it, and then applying
firmware updates and installing operating systems, installing software, getting licenses, configuring software,
troubleshooting and updating software. All of that falls under the responsibility of the organization that owns the
private cloud. And we talked about departmental chargeback, which falls under the cloud characteristic of
metered usage.

Hybrid Clouds
[Video description begins] Topic title: Hybrid Clouds. Your host for this session is Dan Lachance. [Video
description ends]

Like public and private cloud computing, a hybrid cloud shares the same types of cloud characteristics, one of
which is broad access. In the context of a hybrid cloud, we're really talking about using IT systems or services
on-premises and in the cloud or combining cloud types like public and private. So the broad access will vary
depending on what type of a hybrid cloud we're talking about. But generally speaking, broad access means
allowing access IT services that are available in the cloud, over a network.

The resource pooling aspect means having all of the underlying hardware infrastructure that makes these cloud
services available to cloud consumers. Whether that's in the public cloud or the private cloud, whether it's public
cloud and on-premises systems, and so on.

The rapid elasticity cloud characteristic means that we can quickly deploy or provision and deprovision cloud
resources as we need them and alternatively as we don't need them.

Self-provisioning means that we have the ability to deploy services like virtual machines and databases, whether
it's in a private cloud, a public cloud, and in this context with a hybrid, it really could be a combination of both.

The metered usage would apply certainly to public cloud computing, where as a cloud customer, we are charged
based on our consumption of public cloud services. In the case of a hybrid cloud which could also involve a
private cloud, we might also be charged by the IT department in our organization for the amount of resources
that were used by a specific department within the company. Or maybe not even a department, perhaps a specific
project team. We want to build costs for our private cloud based on what was used for a particular project.

With a hybrid cloud, we're talking about the use of more than one type of IT computing environment, hence the
word hybrid or combination thereof. So the use of public cloud services through Microsoft Azure. The use of
private cloud services if we've got an on-premises dedicated cloud. And even perhaps the use of on-premises
services that aren't even in a cloud environment. An example of that might be replicating an on-premises SQL
database into the Azure cloud to increase availability.

Hybrid clouds are also often used when companies are adopting cloud computing. So where we've got the on-
premises migration of either IT systems like websites or servers that we want to move into the cloud, as well as
the migration of data that currently might reside on-premises and moving that into the cloud.

Often during the migration, we have what we call a hybrid cloud computing environment because some of our
IT systems or services and data are on-premises, some are in the public cloud. And you could run that for an
extended period of time, maybe that's your design. Maybe you're using the cloud as an alternative site in case
something happens to your on-premises location. Or you might only do with this during migration to the cloud.

So we could have parallel systems running in both locations on-premises and in the cloud, or we might over the
long term keep this as a permanent solution. And commonly, this is done with things like on-premises data that
gets replicated to the public cloud. That could be in the form of as we discussed a SQL database or we might
simply be using Microsoft Azure as an off site backup storage location.

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So we could look at things like database replicas that might exist in different parts of our networks such as on-
premises, in the public cloud, even in the public cloud in different geographical regions. However, that unto
itself would still be public cloud, and therefore not considered a hybrid type of cloud solution.

We've discussed how cloud storage could be considered a hybrid type of solution if we've got cloud data stored
on-premises and in the cloud. And as we mentioned, it might be replicated or just periodically backed up for safe
keeping.

Community Clouds
[Video description begins] Topic title: Community Clouds. Your host for this session is Dan Lachance. [Video
description ends]

Community clouds are an interesting cloud type. Like public clouds, private clouds, and hybrid clouds,
community clouds adhere to the standard cloud computing characteristics such as broad access. In this context,
we're talking about accessing community cloud services over a network such as the Internet, but it's limited. For
example, we might only have certain specific cloud IT services that are geared towards the finance industry, or
specific governments in countries, or maybe to the medicinal and hospitalization type of industries.

Resource pooling means putting all of the underlying infrastructure resources together that allow cloud
computing services to be available to customers. In this context, if we, for example, need to adhere to certain US
government standards, there might be certain hardware security modules that deal with the cryptographic key
storage that are used in terms of underlying resources that are required for compliance in order for specific
government agencies to even use cloud computing in the first place.

Rapid elasticity means the same thing in the community cloud as it would, for instance, with the public cloud. It
means that we have the ability as a cloud customer to quickly provision or deprovision cloud services as we need
them. And the self-provisioning would be the same, whereby we might have a web interface through which we
provision these community cloud services. And it might also be available at the command-line level and
programmatically through exposed APIs from the cloud provider.

Metered usage would apply the same in that we are charged for our use of community cloud service offerings
based on a certain fee. And that fee might be, for example, virtual machines that are running on an hourly basis.
Or it could be the amount of storage that we're using and how often we put data into storage in the cloud and
read data from that storage in the cloud.

Community clouds have limited access. For example, Microsoft Azure has specific government cloud options
that are supported for the US government, and also, for example, for specific countries like Germany. It can also
be used for specific industries that need certain regulatory compliance in place, such as the medical industry.

Community clouds are really for groups that have the same IT computing requirements and often that deals with
laws and regulations related to data privacy. It can also deal with things like the physical location of data. In
other words, where are the Azure data centers that will be housing this information and running these cloud-
based systems?

We could also require specific security controls be put in place, as we mentioned earlier. HSM or hardware
security module types of devices are used to store cryptographic keys for safekeeping. And that might be
required by laws or regulations to be used in conjunction with IT services in the cloud.

There might also be industry-specific cloud software that needs to be used. For example, maybe only certain
approved software can be used by US government agencies in the cloud.

Azure IaaS
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[Video description begins] Topic title: Azure IaaS. Your host for this session is Dan Lachance. [Video
description ends]

Infrastructure as a Service is a type of cloud service model. It's a term that's often simply referred to as IaaS and
it really applies to IT administrators that want to deploy some kind of infrastructure components in a cloud
computing environment. And that is certainly something that we can do with Microsoft Azure.

Examples of Microsoft Azure Infrastructure as a Service items include things like storage, so building a storage
account in Azure. Deploying Linux or Windows Virtual machines in the Azure cloud. Or configuring virtual
network items like, VNets and subnets into which we can then deploy things like virtual machines and Azure.
Load balancers so that we can take incoming client requests for an application and distribute it among a number
of backend hosts that support that application.

We can configure IP addresses. For instance, we might want to make sure that we have a public IP address
assigned to an Azure IaaS virtual machine, so that we can reach into it from outside of the cloud, over the
Internet. So maybe we want to be able to manage a Linux virtual machine from our on-premises environment
through an SSH connection. We can also configure route tables to control traffic flow in the cloud. All of these
are examples of Infrastructure as a Service type of items available in Azure.

With Azure Infrastructure as a Service, we have to think about who is responsible for these components.
Whether it be Microsoft at the Azure data center side or whether it's us as a cloud customer. [Video description
begins] IaaS can be a shared responsibility. [Video description ends] So Microsoft Azure, the cloud provider is
going to be responsible for things like the physical hypervisor servers on which our virtual machine guests run.
Microsoft is also responsible for the underlying network hardware, the routers, and the switches, and the
network connections, as well as physical storage being made available.

As cloud customers, what are we responsible for? Well, it's up to us to deploy Linux or Windows virtual
machines, [Video description begins] A virtual machine is also known as a VM. [Video description ends]to
configure virtual networks in the Azure cloud appropriately, with the correct IP address ranges for subnets in the
VNets, [Video description begins] A virtual network is also known as a VNet. [Video description ends] into
which we would deploy things like virtual machines. It's also up to us to determine how we want to provision
our cloud storage. So how many cloud storage accounts we want to build in Azure? How their properties are
configured? And also whether data is encrypted, whether it's replicated across regions, and so on. That becomes
our responsibility as customers.

We can manage Azure Infrastructure as a Service items that we've discussed, like virtual machines and storage
accounts, using the Azure portal. That's something we're going to take a look at, it's essentially the web graphical
user interface to manage Azure resources. We can use the Azure CLI, we can use Azure PowerShell cmdlets.
And for developers, the Azure REST API can be used to communicate with APIs that are exposed for all Azure
services.

Azure PaaS
[Video description begins] Topic title: Azure PaaS. Your host for this session is Dan Lachance. [Video
description ends]

Azure Platform as a Service, otherwise called PaaS, applies to IT administrators and developers. These are the
types of IT people that would be interested in Platform as a Service offerings.

Now let's find out why that is because there are many examples of Platform as a Service in Azure, the first of
which is Azure Active Directory, otherwise called AAD. Normally, we might have an on-premises Active
Directory domain controller that has a replica of the Active Directory domain database. That would contain
things like user accounts, computers, for those computers joined to the domain, groups, and so on.

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Well, instead of provisioning a virtual machine and installing the Active Directory services role and all of that
manual work, we can simply deploy a new instance of Azure Active Directory very quickly in the Azure Cloud.
We don't have to worry about the underlying virtual machines, because if we were manually deploying virtual
machines, it wouldn't be Platform as a Service. It would be Infrastructure as a Service.

Other examples of Platform as a Service include deploying Azure SQL databases in the Azure Cloud. Deploying
the Azure Search solution or the Azure Content Delivery Network or CDN, which is used to place content
geographically nearest users that will be requesting it to speed up the experience. So these are all examples of
things that we could deploy very quickly without having to manually deploy the underlying virtual machines
that would support these services. So in other words, these are examples also of managed services.

With Platform as a Service in Azure, there is shared responsibility where the cloud provider, Microsoft, is
responsible for the underlying servers that will run things like Active Directory and Microsoft SQL Server. But
we as the cloud customers have a different type of responsibility. We would be responsible, for instance, for the
contents that would be stored within Azure Active Directory, such as user accounts that we might create for
authentication and groups and the privileges they have through role-based access control. We would be
responsible for that.

Also, if we were deploying Azure SQL databases, we would be responsible for the specific configuration of how
that works and whether we've got replicas. And also, of course, the data that's stored within those Azure SQL
databases.

Like pretty much everything in Azure, Platform as a Service offerings can be accessed in a number of ways
when it comes to deploying, configuring, and just ongoing management. We can use the Azure Portal, the web
GUI. We can use Azure CLI commands. We can use Azure PowerShell cmdlets to talk to Platform as a Service
offerings. And of course, at the development level, developers can talk to Platform as a Service items such as
Azure SQL databases through exposed APIs, and they can do that using the REST API.

Azure SaaS
[Video description begins] Topic title: Azure SaaS. Your host for this session is Dan Lachance. [Video
description ends]

Software as a Service, otherwise called SaaS, is one of those cloud service models that applies primarily to end
users.

What does that mean using the word primarily? What it really means, is that end users benefit from the use of
Software as a Service, such as office productivity tools that are cloud based. However, IT technicians are still
responsible for making configuration changes or applying security settings that will influence how end users use
those solutions.

So examples of Software as a Service would include cloud-based solutions related to things like email, or
calendaring, office productivity tool such as Office 365, which can also include things like SharePoint Online.

With Software as a Service, the shared responsibility is split between the cloud provider and the cloud consumer.
So the cloud provider is responsible for all of the underlying hardware to make those services available. So the
underlying servers that might run Microsoft Exchange Mail Server software, so it's available for cloud-based
mail, and office productivity software.

But we as the cloud customer, we're SaaS end users, Software as a Service, we're responsible for configuring the
behavior of those solutions, including some security settings, whatever is available with the specific solution
we're talking about, and also the data that results from it. So we would be responsible, for example, for how data
is treated or backed up, archived, or replicated that we might be working with, in SharePoint Online, for
example.
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So we can manage Software as a Service settings using a web browser, for example, using the Office 365 web
portal to provision users or control what they can access. We can also use command line tools to do the same
things. For instance, we might use PowerShell cmdlets to authenticate to Azure Active Directory which is used
by Office 365. We might also use separate PowerShell cmdlets to make a connection to SharePoint Online, so
we begin managing that aspect of the Office 365.

On-Premises vs. Cloud

[Video description begins] Topic title: On-Premises vs. Cloud. Your host for this session is Dan Lachance.
[Video description ends]

Years ago, when cloud computing was a newer thing, there were a lot of comparisons made as to how we could
use cloud computing or on-premises IT solutions, one or the other, not both together. But the reality is we can
use a hybrid of both. It doesn't necessarily have to be just black and white.

So let's talk about on-premises IT computing versus cloud computing. And we'll start from the context of
hardware. With on-premises IT systems, we as the private organization are entirely responsible for selecting,
then acquiring and waiting for hardware to be shipped. Including things like racks for server rooms or data
centers, rack-mount servers, UPS battery systems, storage appliances, firewall appliances, routers, switches, the
list goes on and on. In the cloud, that's the provider's problem, not us as a cloud consumer.

The same goes for the configuration of that hardware, the ongoing management, firmware updates that need to
be applied perhaps over time, and the eventual decommissioning of it and finding replacement hardware. On-
premises that would fall entirely on the organization, but in the cloud, that responsibility falls on the cloud
provider.

If we look at the same type of thing but from a software perspective, on-premises, private organization is
responsible. The selection, the acquisition and the licensing of whatever software solutions are needed to meet
business needs. Now in the cloud, the acquisition part isn't a big deal because the cloud provider will have
something available such as Office 365 and its variety of options. However, licensing is an interesting topic,
because if we've already purchased licenses, let's say for the Windows Server operating system or maybe for
Microsoft SQL Server and we're running all that on-premises, when we migrate to the cloud some Azure Cloud
offerings will allow us to bring our own license, BYOL. So we can reuse our investment in licenses and not have
to pay for it all over again, just because we're migrating to the cloud.

The configuration of software, the ongoing management, the application of updates, and the eventual
decommissioning of software, all of this is our responsibility if we are doing all of this on-premises. However, in
the cloud, depending on the specific cloud service model you're talking about, most or all of this could be the
cloud provider's responsibility. The reason I say it may or may not be the cloud provider's responsibility is,
imagine that you're deploying software in the form of a Linux virtual machine in Azure. So you're manually
deploying that. That's Infrastructure as a Service. You as the cloud customer, then, are responsible for updating
that operating system and installing software in that virtual machine and updating it as well. So it really depends
on the specific cloud service model that you're talking about when it comes to software and who is responsible
for what.

The next thing to consider is that if we've got a physical disaster, when we have an on-premises environment, it
might be beneficial to use the cloud as an alternate site. Now that means that we could have IT systems that run
on-premises. So web applications, database servers and so on, that could be duplicated and left running in the
cloud. And depending on our requirements, we might even have continuous data replication to the cloud, so in
the event of a physical disaster, everything is ready to go in the cloud.

The other thing to consider is the responsibilities, as we mentioned. On-premises really means that the private
organization is pretty much responsible for everything. In the cloud, generally speaking, the cloud provider is
responsible for a lot of the infrastructure, certainly when it comes to hardware.
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We also have to think about the cost. We want to make sure that we dispel the myth that cloud computing is
always cheaper than the alternative, which would be to host everything yourself on-premises. That's not always
the case necessarily. It's not as simple as that. We have to consider the fact, though, that we've got capital
expenditures when it comes to purchasing and paying upfront for all of this hardware that we're running on-
premises. We don't have that Capex or that capital expenditure, when it comes to exclusively using cloud
computing. In that case, we've got an operating expense over time with a monthly subscription and usage
payment. So that's Opex, or operating expenditures. [Video description begins] With the cost of cloud computing,
Capex vs Opex needs to be considered. [Video description ends]

And in the cloud, we can also configure billing alert so that we can be notified when a certain cost threshold is
exceeded. So that we can go take a look and perhaps realize that we left databases running in the cloud for a test
environment when we're actually finished with them. And remember, when you leave things running in the
cloud, you're still paying for them, so very important to watch that. And we'll focus on that in more detail later
when we talk about cost management.

Cloud Migration
[Video description begins] Topic title: Cloud Migration. Your host for this session is Dan Lachance. [Video
description ends]

Cloud migration deals with migrating on-premises IT environments into the Azure cloud. Things like specific IT
systems, such as servers, or even specific IT workloads running on a server. So imagine that you've got an on-
premises file server, that's also doubling as a database server. And so you might choose the database workload as
something you might migrate into the Azure cloud, while leaving the file server on-premises.

We can also migrate data that's currently housed on-premises into the cloud as long as it meets specific security
requirements that might be applicable based on the industry we're in or the government agency that we might
doing this for.

We have to also consider the suitability of on-premises IT solutions for migration into the Azure cloud. We need
to make sure that we can map existing on-premises services to an equivalent solution in the cloud. Now in some
cases you might simply be able to take what you're running on-premises and move it essentially into the cloud.
Or, in other cases you might have to find a functional equivalent that is already made available through Azure
service offerings. Then you need to consider security standards, such as whether or not you need to encrypt data
at rest, such as data stored in a storage account in the Azure cloud.

With cloud migration, an important term to be aware of is lift and shift migration. What this means is we're
taking an existing IT solution, and we're migrating it to the cloud without changing it. [Video description begins]
The IT solution is migrated to the cloud without any changes made to the source. [Video description ends] So an
example of this might be migrating a physical or a virtual server that we currently have running on-premises and
migrating it to Azure. So really, we're changing the hosting environment in which that virtual machine or maybe
we're converting a physical to a virtual. We're changing the hosting environment, but the operating system and
its configuration remains exactly as it was on-premises, unchanged.

The Azure Migrate Service is an offering that can help with such types of migrations. It allows us to evaluate the
migration suitability for things like virtual machines that we currently have running on-premises, and the
workloads that they support. [Video description begins] Virtual Machines are also known as VMs. [Video
description ends]

It can also take a look at IT system dependencies. For instance, you might have a front end web application that
depends on a back end data base running in a different virtual machine. So that kind of system dependency
would be caught by the Azure Migrate Service, because you don't want to be in a situation where you're only
migrating one part of the solution to the cloud, only to realize it then doesn't work in the cloud.

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The Azure Migrate Service can also provide cost estimations as to what you might be looking at for monthly
charges on a recurrent basis after you've migrated specific workloads to the cloud.

So the Azure Migration Service Process begins with creating what's called a project. It then requires running an
on-premises collector virtual machine. And this is designed to run in a VMware vCenter type of environment.
Now that collector virtual machine will then gather data from on-premises and that gets sent to the Azure
project.

Next, that discovered data is organized into specific groups. And this discovered data really comes from on-
premises virtual machines that we're considering migrating to the Azure cloud. [Video description begins] The
groups consist of the VMs that were discovered. [Video description ends]

Finally, the last step of working with the Azure Migration Service Process is to assess the results, to determine in
fact if it is a migration that will take place. [Video description begins] The assessment needs to be viewed or
downloaded. [Video description ends]

Exercise: Cloud Solutions and Business Objectives

[Video description begins] Topic title: Exercise: Cloud Solutions and Business Objectives. Your host for this
session is Dan Lachance. [Video description ends]

In this exercise, the first thing you will do is list cloud computing characteristics, followed by defining the
correlation between cloud computing and virtualization. What is the relationship? Next, you're going to explain
the difference between public and private clouds. And finally, you'll provide examples of when to use hybrid
cloud solutions.

At this point, pause the video, think about these four items, and then come back to view the solutions.

[Video description begins] The solution starts. [Video description ends]

Cloud computing encompasses a number of defining characteristics including broad access. This means that
cloud computing IT services are made available over a network, such as the Internet as in the case of a public
cloud, or even an intranet, an internal network in the case of a private cloud. Resource pooling means the cloud
provider is pooling together all of the underlying hardware infrastructure that makes all of these cloud
computing services available. Things like hypervisor servers, things like physical storage arrays, routers, and
switches.

Rapid elasticity is another cloud characteristic which really means that using, more often than not, a self-
provisioning portal or commands that cloud consumers can rapidly deploy or provision cloud resources as
needed. In the same way, they can rapidly deprovision them when they're no longer needed to save on costs. In
the cloud, another characteristic is metered usage, which means that our usage of cloud services is tracked and
we pay for what we use.

A private cloud means that the organization owns the IT infrastructure and that those cloud services running on
that IT infrastructure are available to that organization. It's a private cloud. However, a public cloud means that
the cloud provider owns the IT infrastructure and the public cloud provider services are available to anybody
over the Internet that wants to sign up. [Video description begins] These are the differences between a private
and a public cloud. [Video description ends] With either type of cloud, the same cloud characteristics such as
broad access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and so on would apply.

There is definitely a relationship between virtualization and cloud computing. And that relationship is such that
cloud computing depends on virtualization. However, if you're using virtualization, such as running a hypervisor
on-premises, that itself does not mean that you've got a cloud. You have to really meet the cloud characteristics,

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which would include the items that we discussed, like broad access over a network, resource pooling, metered
usage, self-provisioning, and so on.

With hybrid cloud computing, we are combining a couple of cloud computing and IT system models, such as
combining a public and a private cloud, or public cloud computing along with on-premises systems that talk to
the public cloud.

Common uses for this would be when we are migrating on-premises systems and data to the cloud. So therefore,
the hybrid solution could be only temporary in that type of a case. Or it could be more permanent where we are
depending on the cloud as an alternate location to run our IT systems and perhaps replicate data to. So we would
do it perhaps for reasons of high availability, which would be perhaps for the longer term.

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