Microsoft 365 Certified Fundamentals MS-900 Exam Guide

Aaron Guilmette, Yura Lee, Marcos Zanre

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781803243153
• Topic: Informatik
• Subtopic: Systemverwaltung

Explore the latest MS-900 exam skills and concepts with this updated second edition

Key Features

• Work with self-assessment questions, exam tips, and mock tests based on the latest exam pattern
• This updated second edition covers concepts including Microsoft Forms, Microsoft 365 Security Center, and more
• Understand the security considerations and benefits of adopting different types of cloud services

Book Description

Microsoft 365 Certified Fundamentals certification demonstrates your foundational knowledge of adopting cloud services, specifically the software as a service (SaaS) model. Exam MS-900 tests your understanding of Microsoft 365 services, components, their implementation, security, licensing, and general cloud concepts. This updated second edition covers all the recent and important changes in the examination in detail to help you achieve certification.You'll begin by exploring key topics such as Microsoft security and compliance policies, pricing and support, and cloud concepts. The book helps you to understand these concepts with the help of real-world scenarios, learning about platform services such as Microsoft Windows, SharePoint, Microsoft 365 apps, Teams, and Exchange. The content has been updated to include Microsoft Forms, Power Platform, Microsoft 365 Security Center, Windows Virtual Desktop, and Insider Risk Management. Each chapter contains a section that will test your knowledge of the core concepts covered. Finally, you'll take a practice exam with extra questions to help prepare you for the actual test.By the end of this MS-900 book, you'll be well-equipped to confidently pass the MS-900 certification exam with the help of the updated exam pattern.

What you will learn

• Understand cloud services and deployment models, including public and private clouds
• Find out the differences between SaaS and IaaS consumption models, and where Microsoft services fit in
• Explore the reporting and analytics capabilities of Microsoft 365
• Use Compliance Manager and Security Center to audit your organization
• Discover and implement best practices for licensing options available in Microsoft 365
• Gain insights into the exam objectives and knowledge required before taking the MS-900 exam

Who this book is for

This book is for intermediate as well as experienced administrators and individuals looking for tips and tricks to pass the latest MS-900 exam and achieve Microsoft 365 certification. Basic knowledge of Microsoft services and cloud concepts is assumed in order to get the most out of this book.

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Section 1:Understanding Cloud Concepts

In this section, you'll discover the three types of clouds and learn about the different types of cloud computing services that are available.

This section comprises the following chapters:

• Chapter 1, Introduction to Cloud Computing
• Chapter 2, Cloud Deployment Models and Services

Chapter 1: Introduction to Cloud Computing

Microsoft 365 Certified Fundamentals: Exam MS-900 Guide, Second Edition is for individuals looking to prove their foundational knowledge of the considerations and benefits of cloud services and cloud models. This exam, revised in April 2021, primarily goes into the details of Microsoft 365 as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, its implementation options, and its benefits. It also covers some fundamentals of cloud services.

To cover all the topics of the MS-900 exam, this book will start by discussing cloud computing concepts. It is critical to understand that cloud computing is not only prevalent in everyday use but also has potential impacts at the enterprise level. The shift to cloud computing changes how technology is acquired, deployed, secured, and managed.

This foundation will also set you up for success in further certifications, should you choose to take more related technology exams. After going through this book, you will be well positioned to not only pass this exam but also, more importantly, demonstrate basic knowledge of the Microsoft 365 platform.

First, we will start with cloud computing by looking at how cloud computing is already part of your daily personal use. Then, we will expand to enterprise scenarios.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• What is cloud computing?
• Benefits of cloud computing
• Uses of cloud computing

On to the basics!

What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing is everywhere. You use it daily for personal use – we can explore this a little bit, but we will also discuss cloud computing at an enterprise level. By the end of this chapter, you'll be able to clearly explain the benefits of cloud computing and provide some real-life examples. Microsoft 365 is an example of cloud computing. But before we discuss all that, we should explain what cloud computing is first.

The concept of cloud computing has been evolving over decades to help everyone, from daily, personal use cases to those of businesses.

Originally, you could think of cloud computing as the shared computer infrastructure on college campuses. Students and faculty would use dumb terminals to connect to a mainframe or minicomputer, and each user would share the resources of a large system. In today's terms, though, cloud computing refers to using internet-connected devices to consume services provided elsewhere, typically in some sort of shared environment.

A few years ago, you might have used portable USB devices or an external hard drive to store or back up your documents, pictures, or music files. That way, you had your files with you if you were carrying that physical device. Devices with large storage capacities or small physical devices generally cost significant amounts of money, but they have fallen in price over the years.

Now, you may use a cloud storage space such as a OneDrive account for documents, images, and other files. You may be using a certain amount of storage at no cost, and perhaps you can purchase more at a small price. Cloud capabilities allow you to eliminate the need for physical storage items such as hard drives. So long as you are connected to the internet, you can access your data.

Let's switch gears to the enterprise level and see how cloud computing fits there. Cloud computing allows users to access applications and data quickly and efficiently using a service provider's data storage space and computing power. When a service provider builds out a network of computing devices, storage, or applications, a customer can pay to use these resources instead of having to build an infrastructure of their own. You could say that it is like the customer renting these resources from the service provider. Microsoft Azure is an example of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), where customers can build entire computing environments using the service provider's hardware, software, network, and storage resources.

Once built, a user can access these resources from anywhere, using any supported internet-connected device. Cloud computing allows organizations to outsource operational tasks such as updating servers and maintaining storage to service providers.

Now that you have a solid idea of cloud computing, we'll explore its benefits in the next section. Understanding the benefits of cloud computing will strengthen your core concepts for the exam and will help you answer any MS-900 exam questions that may come up.

Benefits of cloud computing

You already know how cloud computing can help reduce costs in maintaining your files and data, while also making them easier to access. Now, imagine that at the enterprise level, where an Information Technology (IT) department has to support thousands of users and their data. IT departments have a lot more to worry about than just cost and accessibility. Companies use a lot of applications and data as integral parts of their operations.

Important data assets such as Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in healthcare companies or Intellectual Property (IP) can make up a lot of an organization's data. Therefore, all of the business requirements must be met. Cloud service providers build infrastructure to address these important needs and considerations.

Cloud computing provides a lot of benefits to an organization, including any of the following:

• Cost-effective
• Scalable
• Quick
• Reliable
• Secure
• Current

Let's take a look at each benefit in more detail.

Cost-effective

In many cases, cloud services can help save a lot of operating IT costs. Usually, businesses allocate a budget on a yearly or fiscal basis. This may or may not work out, depending on market changes or large unplanned increases or decreases in business volume. Since Microsoft is a subscription-based service, it is easy to predict how your business expenditure may increase or decrease based on the number of users you need to purchase licenses for.

Business expenditures typically fall into two categories: Capital Expenditure or Capital Expense (CapEx) and Operational Expenditure or Operational Expense (OpEx). CapEx is an upfront cost, such as purchasing a server, a desktop computer, or a network switch. CapEx is frequently for physical items. Additionally, CapEx is frequently amortized over an ownership period.

OpEx, by contrast, is ongoing or recurring costs, such as maintenance or subscription fees, or other operating costs, such as electricity. MS-900 will contain questions about both types of expenditure, so make sure you are familiar with this vocabulary. Microsoft's cloud offerings fall into the OpEx category.

In terms of cloud services' cost-effectiveness, consider this: on-premises infrastructure requires purchasing and maintaining CapEx such as hardware, building space, security systems, and a host of other items. To that, add other OpEx, such as engineers, consultants, and project managers, that are necessary to support the infrastructure. Organizations frequently have trouble determining how much equipment to purchase, especially if their business model has large activity swings. An organization might have to purchase an incredibly expensive and powerful system to ensure they can meet a peak demand or load situation that might only occur once a month or once a quarter, resulting in a system that will likely sit underutilized much of the time.

If you want to fulfill a demanding need with a cloud services model, you can rent capacity from a provider as you need it. With a subscription such as Microsoft 365, if your organization brings on seasonal workers, depending on your license agreement with Microsoft, you may be able to increase or decrease the number of licenses as your headcount changes. You're only paying for what you need.

Scalable

Cloud service providers typically allow you to immediately increase or decrease resources or services, depending on demand.

Let's look at some examples:

• You host a website and, based on your usage metrics, you know that the busiest time is 9 A.M.–5 P.M. during weekdays. During the weekend, however, it is much less active. In this instance, you want to make sure you have enough servers or service instances to support your website visitors during specific busy times. You also want to decrease the server capacity outside of the busy hours to match your business demand. With the scalability...