Microsoft Azure Architect Technologies: Exam Guide AZ-300

A guide to preparing for the AZ-300 Microsoft Azure Architect Technologies certification exam

Sjoukje Zaal

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781838551414
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Certification Guides in Computer Science
• Index: Computer Science

Become a certified Azure Architect and learn to design effective solutions that span compute, security, networking, and development

Key Features

• Learn to successfully design and architect powerful and cost-effective solutions on Microsoft Azure
• Prepare to gain AZ-300 certification with the help of mock tests and practice questions
• Enhance your computing, networking, storage, and security skills to design modern cloud-based solutions

Book Description

From designing solutions on Azure to configuring and managing virtual networks, AZ-300 certification can help you achieve all this and more. Whether you want to get certified or gain hands-on experience in administering, developing, and architecting Azure solutions, this study guide will help you get started. The book features not only the different exam objectives, but also guides you through configuring, managing, securing, and architecting Azure resources.

Divided into five modules, this book will systematically take you through the different concepts and features as you advance through the sections. The first module demonstrates how to deploy and configure infrastructure. You will cover techniques related to implementing workloads and security, before learning how to create and deploy apps in the next module. To build on your knowledge, the final two modules will get you up to speed with implementing authentication, data security, and application and platform monitoring, along with covering Azure storage, alerting, and automation strategies. Finally, you'll work through exam-based mock tests with answers to boost your confidence in passing the exam.

By the end of this book, you'll have learned the concepts and techniques you need to know in order to prepare for the AZ-300 exam, along with the skills to design effective solutions on Microsoft Azure.

What you will learn

• Manage Azure subscriptions and resources
• Understand how to migrate servers to Azure
• Configure and manage virtual networks
• Monitor and troubleshoot virtual network connectivity
• Manage Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Connect and implement multi-factor authentication
• Implement and manage hybrid identities
• Develop solutions that use Cosmos DB and the Azure SQL Database
• Get to grips with implementing secure data solutions

Who this book is for

This book is for solution architects and experienced developers who advise stakeholders and translate business requirements into secure, scalable, and reliable solutions. Technical architects interested in learning more about designing cloud solutions will also find this book useful. Some experience and knowledge of various aspects of IT operations, including networking, security, business continuity, disaster recovery, budgeting, and governance are required to grasp the concepts covered in the book effectively.

Section 1: Deploying and Configuring Infrastructure

As this section's objective, you will learn how to deploy and configure an infrastructure in Azure.

This section will contain the following chapters:

• Chapter 1, Analyzing Resource Utilization and Consumption
• Chapter 2, Creating and Configuring Storage Accounts
• Chapter 3, Implementing and Managing Virtual Machines
• Chapter 4, Implementing and Managing Virtual Networking
• Chapter 5, Creating Connectivity between Virtual Networks
• Chapter 6, Managing Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)
• Chapter 7, Implementing and Managing Hybrid Identities

Analyzing Resource Utilization and Consumption

This book will cover all of the exam objectives for the AZ-300 exam. When relevant, we will provide you with extra information and further reading guidance about the different topics of this book.

This chapter introduces the first objective, which is going to cover the Deploy and Configure Infrastructure. It will cover Azure Monitor and the various aspects of it. You will learn how to create and analyze metrics and alerts and how to create a baseline for resources. We are going to look at how to create action groups and how to configure diagnostic settings on resources. Finally, we are going to cover Azure Log Analytics and how to utilize log search query functions.

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

• Understanding Azure Monitor
• Creating and analyzing metrics and alerts
• Creating a baseline for resources
• Configuring diagnostic settings on resources
• Viewing alerts in Log Analytics
• Utilizing log search query functions

The demos in this chapter use an Azure Windows VM. To create a Windows VM in Azure, you can refer to the following walk-through: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/quick-create-powershell.

Understanding Azure Monitor

Azure Monitor is a monitoring solution in the Azure portal that delivers a comprehensive solution for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from the cloud and on-premises environments. It can be used to monitor various aspects (for instance, the performance of applications) and identify issues affecting those applications and other resources that depend on them.

The data that is collected by Azure Monitor fits into two fundamental types: metrics and logs. Metrics describe an aspect of a system at a particular point in time and are displayed in numerical values. They are capable of supporting near real-time scenarios. Logs are different from metrics. They contain data that is organized into records, with different sets of properties for each type. Data such as events, traces, and performance data are stored as logs. They can then be combined for analysis purposes.

Azure Monitor supports data collection from a variety of Azure resources, which are all displayed on the overview page in the Azure portal. Azure Monitor provides the following metrics and logs:

• Application monitoring data: This will consist of data about the functionality and performance of the application and the code that is written, regardless of its platform.
• Guest OS monitoring data: This will consist of data about the operating system on which your application is running. This could be running in any cloud or on-premises environment.
• Azure resource monitoring data: This will consist of data about the operation of an Azure resource.
• Azure subscription monitoring data: This will consist of data about the operation and management of an Azure subscription, as well as data about the health and operation of Azure itself.
• Azure tenant monitoring data: This will consist of data about the operation of tenant-level Azure services, such as Azure Active Directory.

Azure Monitor now integrates the capabilities of Log Analytics and Application Insights together. You can also keep using Log Analytics and Application Insights on their own.

The following diagram gives a high-level view of Azure Monitor. On the left, there are the sources of monitoring data, in the center are the data stores, and on the right are the different functions that Azure Monitor performs with this collected data, such as analysis, alerting, and streaming to external systems:

Overview of Azure Monitor capabilities

Now that we have some basic knowledge about Azure Monitor, we are going to look at how to analyze alerts and metrics across subscriptions.

Creating and analyzing metrics and alerts

To analyze alerts and metrics across Azure Monitor, we need to go to the monitoring resource inside the Azure portal. In the upcoming sections, we will set up metrics and alerts and show you how to analyze them.

Metrics

Met...