Azure Fundamentals Part 2

Editor's Notes

• #2: Welcome to Fundamentals of Azure. This is Part 2: Azure Core Services of our three part series.
• #3: We have a lot to cover and may not get to live questions at the end. Please send your questions to Sami, and I will get back to you after the webinar. Provided is my contact information and reach out any time. I do provide half day and full day workshops for this course. The workshops are more hands on and we do more live demos within the product. Something to note if interested.
• #4: Quick recap, this is what we covered in Part 1 of our 3 part series. If you would like access to a recording or access to the PPT, contact Sami and she will get that over to you. In today’s agenda, we will be covering…
• #5: Once again, here is the exam layout. In part two of our three part series, we will be focusing on understanding core Azure services, which is 30-35% of the exam. Part III will be covered on Tuesday 5/26 (May 26) from 12-1.
• #6: As mentioned in part 1, I used 2 resources and spent around $16 combined for those resources. The exam itself is $99. This is the same study plan I used for the AZ-900 exam: Microsoft Learn Platform (about 10 hours total). I highly recommend because although there is more reading involved than videos like Whizlabs provides, you can access a sandbox environment and get some hands on experience. Whizlabs. 7 sections tests (5 questions each), 5 practice tests (55 questions each), and a free practice test of 15 questions. They also have an online video course if you want to watch videos instead of reading through the Learn Platform course. And I determined I was ready for the exam when I consistently received 85% and up on the practice tests.
• #7: 1)Azure is a cloud platform that provides the compute, storage, and networking resources needed to build cloud-hosted applications. 2)As a new user, the Azure portal is likely to be the primary way you will interact with Azure. The Azure portal lets you create and manage all your Azure resources. For example, you can set up a new database, increase the compute power of your virtual machines, and monitor your monthly costs. 3)You can configure and manage Azure using a broad range of tools and platforms. There are tools available for the command line, language-specific Software Development Kits (SDKs), developer tools, tools for migration, and many others. 4. For the exam, it is important to note, you do not need a deep understanding of creating and running powershell scripts, CLI, and Cloud Shell. Your understanding will need to be more beginner or introductory.
• #8: Click show image.Azure Portal Layout is the primary graphical user interface (GUI) for controlling Microsoft Azure. It is a public website that you can access with any web browser. Once you sign in with your Azure account, you can create, manage, and monitor any available Azure services. Best interface for carrying out single tasks or where you want to look at the configuration options in detail. Click (show image) The Azure portal uses a panes model for navigation (resource panel). Each pane contains some information and configurable options which some options generate another pane, which reveals itself to the right of any existing pane. As you see here, we are in Azure Marketplace – this often where you will start when creating new resources in Azure and allows customers to find, try, purchase, and provision applications and services from hundreds of leading service providers. You can see how this option generates another pane. Disadvantages: The portal doesn't provide any way to automate repetitive tasks. For example, to set up multiple VMs, you would need to create them one at a time by completing the wizard for each VM. This process makes the portal approach time-consuming and error-prone for complex tasks.
• #9: PowerShell first version 1.0 was released in 2006. Today, PowerShell is at version 5.1. As the year and version gone by, PowerShell's capabilities and hosting environments grew significantly. Is a cross-platform version of PowerShell that runs on Windows, Linux, or macOS. Most of the PowerShell functionality comes from Cmdlet's which is always in verb-noun format and not plural. Moreover, Cmdlet's return objects not text. A cmdlet is a series of commands, which is more than one line, stored in a text file. A cmdlet always consists of a verb and a noun, separated with a hyphen. Some of the verbs use for you to learn PowerShell is: The ”New” verb is used to create a new resource. Example: Azure PowerShell provides the New-AzVM command that creates a virtual machine for you inside your Azure subscription. Other common verbs for PowerShell include Find, Set, Get, Invoke, Test. And you can see the others here. An understanding of these is about the extent of the knowledge you need for the exam for Powershell commands and cmdlets
• #10: The Azure command-line interface (Azure CLI) is a set of commands used to create and manage Azure resources. The Azure CLI is available across Azure services and is designed to get you working quickly with Azure, with an emphasis on automation. Example: To create a VM, you would open a command prompt window, sign in to Azure using the command az login, create a resource group, then use a command such as: Can also be run in Docker and Azure Cloud Shell. Today, with graphical user interfaces (GUI), most users never use command-line interfaces (CLI). However, CLI is still used by software developers and system administrators to configure computers, install software, and access features that are not available in the graphical interface.
• #11: Azure Cloud Shell is a browser-based shell experience to manage and develop Azure resources. Cloud Shell offers a browser-accessible, pre-configured shell experience for managing Azure resources without the overhead of installing, versioning, and maintaining a machine yourself. Provides the flexibility of choosing the shell experience that best suits the way you work, either Bash or PowerShell. Use the Azure Cloud Shell to run saved scripts or perform ad hoc administrative tasks. So for the exam, they will say, where can you access Cloud Shell within the portal. Here is the icon and where you can access. The exam will show you the icon and you will select the correct response. I had two icon questions, one for CloudShell and one for Directory + Subscription. So the icons are Cloudshell, Directory + Subscription, Notifications, Settings, Help, and Feedback.
• #12: Read Slide. Then….So these are some of your day to day management tools. Lets better understand Azure’s compute options.
• #14: Azure Compute provides serverless computing to run apps without requiring infrastructure setup or configuration. So another way of saying it, Azure compute provides the infrastructure you need to run your apps. Important to note, resources are available on-demand and can typically be created in minutes or even seconds. Also, pay only for the resources you use and only for as long as you're using them.
• #15: Deploying server applications has always been complicated. This complexity pushed system admins to start looking for virtualization techniques like virtual machines and containers. Think of a Virtual Machine as a computer within a computer, VMs imitate the behavior of another computer. They provide an abstraction layer for CPU, memory, and storage. With VM’s, you are in control, you decide the operating system, you install the tools and packages. VM apps run in isolation or with other apps you install. When to use a VM: During testing and development When running applications in the cloud When extending your datacenter to the cloud During disaster recovery Moving from a physical server to the cloud ("lift and shift") Create an image of the physical server and host it within a VM with little or no changes. Just like a physical on-premises server, you must maintain the VM. You update the installed OS and the software it runs. There are downsides to using VMs, VMs can only run one operating system at a time, so if you have multiple server apps that require different runtime environments, multiple VMs may be required to execute correctly. This is where containers come in. Containers are…
• #16: Read definition. Click. Read bullets. When I say an instance, an instance in Azure can be understood as a Virtual Machine. With virtualization environment, I am referring to the act of creating a virtual version of something, including virtual computer hardware platforms, storage devices, and computer network resources. And Image (metadata). Two key terms that you may see on the exam and should be noted here : Azure supports Docker containers (a standardized container model), which includes: Azure Container Instances (ACI) offers the fastest and simplest way to run a container in Azure. You don't have to manage any virtual machines or configure any additional services. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) orchestration automates, manages, and interacts with a large number of containers. Whether to use VM or Container? For flexibility and complete control, use a VM, but for portability, performance characteristics and management capabilities, use containers. One other thing to note, I found this on the Microsoft site. These are some good Azure service definitions.
• #17: Let’s dig into other compute options. he easiest way of running an application in Azure is on Azure App Service. Read slide and bullets. Image then In 2012. In 2012, Microsoft added Azure Web Sites to its Azure services portfolio. This service was created specifically for people that wanted to run web applications in Azure. This service was very popular but missed specific features for other developers that were creating mobile applications and APIs. So Mobile Services was added for the mobile app developers. And after that both services were renamed to Web Apps and Mobile Apps. As developers requested even more specific features, Microsoft added API Apps (for running APIs) and Logic Apps (for running workflows) to the service offering. As all these services were related, Microsoft added them into one big family of services, called Azure App Service. Later, in 2016, Function Apps were added to App Service. Also, Logic Apps were removed from the App Service family, as Microsoft rebranded Logic Apps to be the go-to service for doing integration and workflow tasks (think BizTalk) in Azure. Azure App Service is meant to be a single product, that has capabilities for whatever you need, mobile, web or api. But in practice, it is a family of several services, that each bring something unique to the table. Currently, the Azure App Service platform contains these services: Web Apps For running web and api applications in Azure Mobile Apps For running the backend for mobile applications in Azure Function Apps For running small blocks of code in Azure that can be triggered by outside sources, like a message on a queue API Apps - Much like hosting a website, you can build REST-based Web APIs using your choice of language and framework. Lets dig into this a little further.
• #19: There are a couple of options to host web applications in Azure. I want to call out one of my exam questions. As you can see, there is a Monthly fee for all but Free option. IF deploying a public website, consider using Basic App service plan or higher.
• #20: Azure Service fabric keeps your App Service running. For instance, when you have a Web App that is running a website, Service Fabric makes sure that it runs on a VM, in a Microsoft datacenter. And if that VM fails, or if the underlying hardware fails, Service Fabric moves the Web App to another VM and/or physical server, so that it continues to run. Service Fabric also takes care of scaling for you. When you scale your Web App, by, for instance scaling it out over multiple instances, Service Fabric replicates your Web App over multiple VMs and keeps those running. You just deploy a Web App and it runs and keeps running because of service fabric.
• #21: Serverless computing is the abstraction of servers, infrastructure, and operating systems. Azure takes care of managing the server infrastructure and allocation/deallocation of resources based on demand. Benefits: No infrastructure management: you run the code and its automatically runs with high availability. Scalability Only pay for what you use
• #22: Alright, so remember when I said, in 2016, Function Apps were added to App Service. Also, Logic Apps were removed from the App Service family, as Microsoft rebranded Logic Apps to be the go-to service for doing integration and workflow tasks (think BizTalk) in Azure. Well, they are both part of serverless compute and lets discuss their differences. Azure Functions - execute code in almost any modern language. Azure Logic Apps - designed in a web-based designer and can execute logic triggered by Azure services without writing any code.
• #23: You want to be able to access, update, and share data regardless of data type. You want to access data quickly and securely. Cloud based storage helps make this easier.
• #24: Automated backup and recovery: mitigates the risk of losing data if there is any unforeseen failure or interruption. Replication across the globe: creates copies data to protect it against any planned or unplanned events, such as scheduled maintenance or hardware failures. Also numerous data centers throughout the world, so you can storage data close to users, lowering latency. Support for data analytics: supports performing analytics on data consumption. Encryption capabilities: data is encrypted to make it highly secure Multiple data types: Azure can store almost any type of data (you may need to storge large video data or highly structure data, with Azure you can have multiple storage strategies at the same time. Data storage in virtual disks: Store up to 32 TB of data in its virtual disks. Storage tiers: storage tiers to prioritize access to data based on frequently used versus rarely used information.
• #25: Structured data is highly organized and easily understood by machine language. Those working within relational databases can input, search, and manipulate structured data relatively quickly. Examples: names, dates, addresses, credit card numbers, stock information, geolocation, and more.  Semi structured data does not have the same level of organization and predictability of structured data. The data does not reside in fixed fields or records, but does contain elements that can separate the data into various hierarchies. Exampes include JSON, XML, .csv files, tab delimited files. Unstructured data files often include text and multimedia content. Examples include e-mail messages, word processing documents, videos, photos, audio files, presentations, webpages and many other kinds of business documents.
• #26: General-purpose v2 accounts: Basic storage account type for blobs, files, queues, and tables. Recommended for most scenarios using Azure Storage. General-purpose v1 accounts: Legacy account type for blobs, files, queues, and tables. Use general-purpose v2 accounts instead when possible. BlockBlobStorage accounts: Storage accounts with premium performance characteristics for block blobs and append blobs. Recommended for scenarios with high transactions rates, or scenarios that use smaller objects or require consistently low storage latency. FileStorage accounts: Files-only storage accounts with premium performance characteristics. Recommended for enterprise or high performance scale applications. BlobStorage accounts: Legacy Blob-only storage accounts. Use general-purpose v2 accounts instead when possible.
• #27: So we discussed types of azure storage accounts and types of data for azure storage. Lets now discuss services within the storage accounts. File Service: Creating file shares on the cloud Mount files share from cloud based or on-prem machines that can be running on Windows, Linux, macOS. Queue Service: Used for storing large number of messages Ideal store for exchange of messages between components of an application. Table Service: Can be used to storage structured NoSQL data in the cloud Ideal for storage accessed by web applications Ideal for datasets that don’t require complex joins, foreigh keys or stored procedures. Blob Service: Storing objects on the cloud and large amounts of unstructured data If need to store data such as images, video, audio files
• #28: Moving from services within the storage accounts, lets discuss some storage services within Azure. 1. Read Slide. 2. You can migrate existing SQL Server databases with minimal downtime using the Azure Database Migration Service.  3. An Azure Database Migration Service migrates existing SQL Server databases, the service uses the Microsoft Data Migration Assistant to generate assessment reports that provide recommendations to help guide users through required changes prior to performing a migration. 
• #29: Next, Azure Cosmos DB. Read slide. Use this feature to store data that is updated and maintained by users around the world. 3. The following illustrations shows a sample Azure Cosmos DB database that’s used to store data that’s accessed by people located across the globe.
• #30: 1. Read slide. 2. Important to note, store up to 8 TB of data for virtual machines. Azure Blob storage allows streaming of large video or audio files directly to the user's browser from anywhere in the world. The following illustration shows an example usage of Azure blob storage. Azure offers three storage tiers for blob object storage: 1. Hot storage tier: accessed frequently. 2. Cool storage tier: accessed and stored for at least 30 days. 3. Archive storage tier: accessed and stored for at least 180 days with flexible latency requirements.
• #31: Read slide. Includes all the capabilities required to make it easy for developers, data scientists, and analysts to store data of any size, shape, and speed. It removes the complexities of ingesting and storing all of your data while making it faster to get up and running with batch, streaming, and interactive analytics.  The following illustration shows how Azure Data Lake storage all your business data and makes it available for analysis.
• #32: Read slide. Azure file shares can be mounted concurrently by cloud or on-premises. Any number of Azure virtual machines or roles can mount and access the file storage share simultaneously. Typical usage scenarios: Share files anywhere in the world, diagnostic data, or application data sharing. The following illustration shows Azure Files being used to share data between two geographical locations. Azure Files uses the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol that ensures the data is encrypted at rest and in transit.
• #33: Read slide. When application components are decoupled, they can scale independently. The following illustration shows multiple sender applications adding messages to the Azure Queue and one receiver application retrieving the messages.
• #34: Read slide. Disk storage allows data to be persistently stored and accessed from an attached virtual hard disk. Typical scenarios: “Lift and shift” applications that read and write data to persistent disks Storing data that is not required to be accessed from outside the virtual machine to which the disk is attached. The following illustration shows an Azure virtual machine using separate disks to store different data. Note: Azure Disks have consistently delivered enterprise-grade durability, with an industry-leading ZERO% annualized failure rate.
• #36: Cost Effectiveness  Provides a pay-as-you-go pricing model, which is often appealing to businesses as an operating expense instead of an upfront capital cost. Reliability Provides data backup, load balancing, disaster recovery, and data replication as services to ensure data safety and high availability. Storage Types Provides a variety of different storage options including distributed access and tiered storage.  Agility  Flexibility to create new services in minutes Whizlabs: https://www.whizlabs.com/learn/course/microsoft-azure-az-900/quiz/15008
• #37: With networking, you can connect cloud and on-premises infrastructure and services, providing customers and users the best possible experience. Users can take advantage of: The global network Secure apps and infrastructure Private and reliable connections Easily and intelligently monitor resources Let’s discuss networking at the most basic and physical level. In this picture, you will see a representation of the Azure global footprint. It is so vast that it includes 100K+ miles of fiber and subsea cables, and 130 edge locations connecting over 50 regions worldwide. We leverage Azure’s global infrastructure to improve network performance and resilience of your applications, regardless of whether the apps are hosted in Azure or not.
• #39: You have likely seen these messages online shopping during the holidays. (DDoS) attack is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources So availability is extremely important so we do not have this issue.
• #40: Load Balancer distributes traffic evenly among each system in a pool. Helps achieve both high availability and resiliency Becomes the entry point to the user Load balancing enables you to run maintenance tasks without interrupting service.  If a VM is unavailable or stops responding, the load balancer stops sending traffic to it, then directs traffic to one of the responsive servers. Illustration shows the role of Azure load balancers in a multi-tier architecture Downside: Manually configuring typical load balancer software on a virtual machine you now have an additional system that you need to maintain. If your load balancer goes down or needs routine maintenance, you're back to your original problem.
• #41: Benefits of using Azure Application Gateway over a simple load balancer: Cookie affinity SSL termination Web application firewall URL rule-based routes. Rewrite HTTP headers
• #42: Routes traffic in a few different ways, such as to the endpoint with the lowest latency. A DNS server (domain name system) is a computer server that contains a database of public IP addresses and their associated hostnames, and in most cases serves to resolve, or translate, those names to IP addresses as requested.
• #43: When Load Balancer detects an unresponsive VM, it directs traffic to other VMs in the pool. Traffic Manager monitors the health of your endpoints. When Traffic Manager finds an unresponsive endpoint, it directs traffic to the next closest endpoint that is responsive.
• #44: I have included some other key terms you may want to become familiar with. Unfortunately, I do not have time to cover all of these during this webinar, but I highly recommend reviewing these terms on your own.
• #45: B. A new data disk because these disks have a maximum capacity of around 32 TB.
• #46: A. Yes this is possible.
• #47: B. Platform as a Service.
• #48: A. Azure storage has a high limit on the amount that can be stored and no limit on the number of files.
• #49: B. The cost for a virtual machine depends on the region where it is hosted.
• #50: That brings us to the end. I hope this webinar has been helpful and has encouraged you to continue pursuing this certification. Our final webinar, Part III will be next Tuesday from 12-1 and we will be covering Azure Security. Feel free to email me anytime with questions and I will be happy to respond. Have a wonderful day everyone! Over to Sami to discuss next steps.