Microsoft Certified Azure Fundamentals Study Guide

Exam AZ-900

James Boyce, Jim Boyce

• Publisher: Sybex
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781119770923
• eBook ISBN: 9781119771159
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Cloud Computing
• Index: Computer Science

Quickly preps technical and non-technical readers to pass the Microsoft AZ-900 certification exam

Microsoft Certified Azure Fundamentals Study Guide: Exam AZ-900 is your complete resource for preparing for the AZ-900 exam. Microsoft Azure is a major component of Microsoft's cloud computing model, enabling organizations to host their applications and related services in Microsoft's data centers, eliminating the need for those organizations to purchase and manage their own computer hardware. In addition, serverless computing enables organizations to quickly and easily deploy data services without the need for servers, operating systems, and supporting systems. This book is targeted at anyone who is seeking AZ-900 certification or simply wants to understand the fundamentals of Microsoft Azure. Whatever your role in business or education, you will benefit from an understanding of Microsoft Azure fundamentals.

Readers will also get one year of FREE access to Sybex's superior online interactive learning environment and test bank, including hundreds of questions, a practice exam, electronic flashcards, and a glossary of key terms. This book will help you master the following topics covered in the AZ-900 certification exam:

• Cloud concepts
• Cloud types (Public, Private, Hybrid)
• Azure service types (IaaS, SaaS, PaaS)
• Core Azure services
• Security, compliance, privacy, and trust
• Azure pricing levels
• Legacy and modern lifecycles

Growth in the cloud market continues to be very strong, and Microsoft is poised to see rapid and sustained growth in its cloud share. Written by a long-time Microsoft insider who helps customers move their workloads to and manage them in Azure on a daily basis, this book will help you break into the growing Azure space to take advantage of cloud technologies.

Chapter 1
Cloud Concepts

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MICROSOFT EXAM OBJECTIVES COVERED IN THIS CHAPTER:

DESCRIBE CLOUD SERVICES

• Identify the benefits and considerations of using cloud services
  • Identify the benefits of cloud computing, such as High Availability, Scalability, Elasticity, Agility, and Disaster Recovery
  • Identify the differences between Capital Expenditure (CapEx) and Operational Expenditure (OpEx)
  • Describe the consumption‐based model

DESCRIBE CLOUD SERVICES

• Describe the differences between categories of cloud services
  • Describe the shared responsibility model
  • Describe Infrastructure‐as‐a‐Service (IaaS)
  • Describe Platform‐as‐a‐Service (PaaS)
  • Describe Software‐as‐a‐Service (SaaS)
  • Identify a service type based on a use case

DESCRIBE CLOUD OBJECTIVES

• Describe the differences between types of cloud computing
  • Describe cloud computing
  • Describe Public cloud
  • Describe Private cloud
  • Describe Hybrid cloud
  • Compare and contrast the three types of cloud computing

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The first objective in the Microsoft Azure AZ‐900 Certification Exam covers basic cloud concepts. These concepts lay a foundation for understanding why companies choose cloud computing and what types of services are available in Azure. These concepts include the various cloud computing models in Azure, the economic benefits of using Azure, and the three primary service categories in Azure—software‐as‐a‐service (SaaS), infrastructure‐as‐a‐service (IaaS), and platform‐as‐a‐service (PaaS).

First, we'll explore cloud computing.

Understanding Cloud Computing

Microsoft currently offers three cloud computing solutions: Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Dynamics 365. Azure, which is covered on the AZ‐900 Certification Exam, provides a broad spectrum of cloud services. These services encompass both server‐based and end user–based computing services, along with database services and analytics, artificial intelligence, networking, infrastructure, and much more.

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The second Microsoft cloud offering, Microsoft 365, is geared primarily toward providing end‐user SaaS solutions like Windows, Office, SharePoint, and OneDrive. Microsoft Dynamics 365 encompasses enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management applications. Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Dynamics 365 are not covered on the AZ‐900 exam.

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Both Microsoft cloud offerings enable organizations to eliminate computing infrastructure that they might normally host themselves. Larger organizations typically host their own servers, networking equipment, and other IT resources in a data center, which is a facility specifically designed and constructed to house servers and other IT hardware and related infrastructure. Some organizations maintain their own data centers, whereas others contract with a third‐party data center provider to host their IT equipment and resources.

Smaller organizations generally either use a third‐party data center or place their servers and other IT infrastructure in one or more server rooms, which are essentially very small data centers housed inside the company's facility.

A cloud offering such as Azure enables organizations to move some—if not all—of their servers, networking equipment, and other IT resources into a data center managed by another company. In the case of Azure, Microsoft owns and maintains numerous data centers around the world to host these resources for all sizes of organizations. Managing these resources then becomes a shared responsibility between the organization and Microsoft. The extent of that shared management depends on the scope of what Microsoft is hosting and the services the organization is using in Azure.

Figure 1.1 shows an example of an organization that is hosting some of its IT infrastructure and services in Azure. As Figure 1.1 illustrates, some of the organization's IT resources remain on site in their own data center, whereas other resources are hosted in Azure, and services interact between the two environments.

FIGURE 1.1 A hybrid cloud scenario

Whatever the case or the extent of services hosted in the cloud, offloading these resources to a cloud provider like Microsoft offers several benefits, which are discussed in the next section.

Benefits of Cloud Computing

Leveraging a cloud computing model offers several benefits, both in financial cost and human resources. This section explores these primary benefits.

Economic Benefits

IT hardware, infrastructure, and related resources can be extremely expensive. In an on‐premises model where an organization hosts its own IT infrastructure, whether in its own data center or a third‐party data center, the organization bears the cost of the hardware, shipping, support, and related costs. The cost is amortized over several years, sometimes longer than the useful life of the hardware. This type of purchase is a capital expenditure (CapEx), which is money spent by an organization to acquire or maintain fixed assets. Most organizations carefully budget their capital expenditures and require a yearlong budgeting process to set the CapEx budget, and then hold strictly to the budget.

With Azure, Microsoft handles the capital expenditures necessary to maintain and grow the service. An organization using Azure services therefore eliminates those capital expenditures and replaces them with operational expenditures (OpEx), which are monthly expenditures that the organization uses to run its operation. For example, rather than purchasing a license for Microsoft Office for each user (which would be a capital expense), the organization pays a monthly per‐user fee for Microsoft 365 (an operational expense). Instead of incurring a relatively large up‐front cost for the perpetual license, the organization spreads out the cost on a monthly basis.

The move from a capital to an operational expenditure model can eliminate very large up‐front costs to deploy hardware, licenses, support contracts, and other resources. The operational model not only avoids those large up‐front expenditures, but also enables the organization to spread the cost throughout the year. It also allows the organization to tie the cost to headcount, so if an individual leaves the organization, the corresponding operational cost also goes away (or is simply reallocated to an incoming resource).

Another economic benefit to cloud computing is economy of scale, in which a cloud provider can purchase large amounts of hardware at a discount and pass that discount along to its customers.

For example, if your organization needed to replace five aging servers, the cost to purchase tho...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• About the Technical Editor
• Introductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroductionintroduction
• Chapter 1: Cloud Concepts
• Chapter 2: Azure Core Services
• Chapter 3: Azure Core Networking Services
• Chapter 4: Security, Compliance, Privacy, and Trust
• Chapter 5: Azure Solutions
• Chapter 6: Azure Pricing, Service Levels, and Lifecycle
• Chapter 7: Creating and Managing Azure Resources
• Appendix: Answers to Review Questions
• Index
• Online Test Bank
• End User License Agreement