Microsoft Azure Fundamentals: Describe Core Solutions and Management Tools on Azure (copy)

Resource Type

The type of resource, setting, and region affect cost. Azure creates metered instances for resources that are provisioned and the meters track usage & generate a usage record that is used to calculate the bill.

Pay-as-you-go

Users pay for the resources used during the billing cycle.

Reserving Capacity

Users commit to using a set amount of resources in advance for a given period and receive a “discount” on the reserved resources. Option also offers pay-as-you-go as a backup in case additional resources must be added.

Maintenance

Important to maintain and keep an eye on resources to avoid paying for things that are not being used; resource groups make this easier.

Geography

Users must specify which region they want a resource to deploy to, as there are changes based on the location due to cost of power, labour, taxes and fees.

Network Traffic

Billing zones impact the cost of Azure services, as data transfer pricing out of Azure data centres is based on zones.

Bandwidth

Refers to data moving in and out of Azure data centres.

Zone

A geographical grouping of Azure regions for billing purposes.

Ingress Data

Data coming into an Azure data centre.

Egress Data

Data going out of an Azure data centre.

Subscription Type

Some subscriptions have usage allowances which affect costs.

Azure Marketplace

Allows users to buy Azure based solutions and services from third party vendors. Users pay for the Azure services being used and the services/expertise of the vendor.

Pricing Calculator

Gives an estimated cost for provisioning resources in Azure. Users can estimate the costs of compute, storage and associated network costs.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator

Lets users compare the costs for running on-premises infrastructure compared to Azure cloud infrastructure.

Cost Management

Provides the ability to check Azure resource costs, create alerts based on resource spend and create budgets that can automate management of resources. An Enterprise Agreement (EA) is required to use Azure Cost Management.

Cost Analysis

A subset of Cost Management; provides a visual for Azure costs. User can view the costs in a variety of ways, including billing cycle, region and resource.

Cost Alerts

Allows the user to look at the alerts that show up in the Cost Management service. Alerts include: budget alerts, credit alerts and department spending quota alerts.

Budget Alerts

Notifies the user when spending reaches/exceeds the amount defined in the alert condition.

Credit Alerts

Notifies the user when their Azure credit monetary commitments are consumed. For organizations with an EA.

Department Spending Quota Alerts

Notifies the user when their department spending reaches a fixed threshold.

Budgets

Where the user sets a spending limit for Azure. Can be based on subscription, resource group, service type…

Program can be designed so that reaching the budget will trigger a budget alert or the suspension/modification of resources.

Tags

Used to organize resources; they provide extra information about resources. Tags assigned to a resource group are not inherited by the resources.

Managing Resource Tags

Tags can be added, modified or deleted using Windows PowerShell, Azure CLI, Azure Resource Manager Templates, REST API or the Azure portal. Azure Policy can be used to enforce tagging rules and conventions. Tags are not inherited.

Azure Blueprints

Allows the user to standardize cloud subscription/environment deployments. The user can define repeatable settings and policies that are applied as new subscriptions are created.

Artifacts

Components in the blueprint definition. Can have no additional parameters, or can have multiple. Can include things like role assignments, policy assignments, Azure Resource Manager templates and resource groups.

Resource Group

A container holding related resources for an Azure solution. Resources in a single group do not necessarily have to share the same Azure region. Permissions assigned to a resource group are inherited by the resources in that group.

Management Groups

Facilitate the hierarchical ordering of Azure resources into collections at a level of scope above subscriptions. Distinct governance conditions can be applied to each management group. Resources and subscriptions assigned to a management group automatically inherit the conditions applied to the management group.

Monitoring Deployments with Azure Blueprints

Can use version-able aspect of Blueprints to create an initial configuration and then make small updates.

Azure Policy

An Azure service that allows users to create, assign and manage policies that they control or audit their resources. The policies enforce different rules across resource configurations, so the configurations stay compliant with corporate standards.

Azure Policy Initiatives

A way of grouping policies together; contains all policy definitions.

Resource Locks

Prevents resources from accidentally being being changed, updated or deleted.

Can Not Delete Lock

Authorized users can read and modify a resource, but not delete it.

Read Only Lock

Authorized users can read a resource, but not update or delete it.

Service Trust Portal

A portal providing access to content, tools and other resources about Microsoft security, privacy and compliance practices. Microsoft’s public site for publishing audit reports and other compliance-related information relevant to its cloud services.

Trust Center

Allows users to access information about how the Microsoft cloud helps secure sensitive data and comply with applicable laws and regulations.

Azure Compliance Documentation

Provides reference blueprints, or policy definitions for common standards that can be applied to Azure subscriptions.

Azure Portal

A web-based, unified console that provides an alternative to command-line tools. Allows the user to manage their subscription using a graphical user interface.

Azure Cloud Shell

A browser-based tool that allows users to create, configure and manage Azure resources using a shell. It supports Azure PowerShell and Azure Command Line Interface (CLI)

Azure PowerShell

A shell that can be used to run command-lets.

Azure CLI

Functionally equivalent to Azure PowerShell, with the main difference being the syntax of commands. CLI uses Bash commands instead of PowerShell commands.

Azure Arc

Lets the user extend their Azure compliance and monitoring to their hybrid and multi-cloud configurations. Can manage servers, Kubernetes clusters, Azure data services, SQL Servers and virtual machines.

Azure Resource Manager (ARM)

The deployment and management service for Azure. Its management layers allow users to create, update and delete resources in Azure.

ARM Templates

These templates can be used to describe the resources wanted in a declarative JSON format.

Azure Machine Learning Studio

Lets users build, test and deploy predictive analytics solutions in Azure. Accelerates time to value with industry-leading machine learning operations, open-source interoperability and integrated tools. Azure Machine Learning uses past trainings to provide predictions that have a high probability.

Azure Cognitive Services

Enables developers to easily add cognitive features into their applications. Goal is to help developers create applications that can see, hear, speak, understand and begin to reason.

Azure Bot Services

Provides a digital online assistant offering speech support.

Azure Content Delivery Network

A distributed network of servers that can efficiently deliver content to users.

Azure DevOps Services

Includes developmental collaboration tools including high performance pipelines, free private Git repositories and configurable Kanban boards.

Azure Databricks

An Apache-spark based analytics platform. Consists of several components, including a Machine Learning library consisting of common learning algorithms and utilities including classification, regression, clustering, collaborative filtering, dimensionality reduction, as well as underlying optimization primitives.

Azure DevTest Labs

Creates labs consisting of preconfigured bases or ARM templates.

Azure Maps

A suite of geospatial mapping services that enable developers and enterprise organizations to build intelligent location-enabled and map-based experiences.

IoT Hub

A managed service that provides bidirectional communication between IoT devices and Azure. Provides data from millions of sensors.

IoT Central

A fully managed SaaS solution to connect, monitor and manage IoT devices at scale.

Azure Sphere

A hardware and software solution that provides communication and security features for IoT devices.

Azure Time Series Insights

A fully managed analytics, storage and visualization service that makes it simple to explore and analyze billions of IoT events simultaneously. Provides a global view of user’s data, allowing them to quickly validate their IoT solution and avoid costly downtime to mission critical devices.

Azure Advisor

Evaluates Azure resources and makes recommendations to improve high availability, reliability, security, performance, operational excellence and costs. Can also estimate the cost of an Azure solution.

Azure Service Health

Helps keep track of Azure resources, including deployed resources and overall Azure status. A combination of three Azure services: Azure Status, Service Health and Resource Health.

Azure Status

A broad picture of the status of Azure globally, informs of any services outages.

Service Health

Focuses on the Azure services and regions a user is in. Good reference when looking for information on outages, planned maintenance activities and other health advisories.

Resource Health

A tailored view of a user’s actual Azure resources. Provides information about the health of individual cloud resources.

Azure Monitor

A platform for collecting data on resources, analyzing the data, visualizing the information and acting on the results.

Azure Log Analytics

A tool to write and run log queries on the data gathered by Azure Monitor. Can be used to correlate events from multiple resources into a centralized repository.

Azure Monitor Alerts

An automated way to stay informed when Azure Monitor detects a threshold being crossed. Program can be set up to trigger with certain log events or when certain metrics are crossed.

Azure Application Insights

Detects and diagnoses anomalies in web apps and monitors web applications and information. Is a feature of Azure Monitor and is an extensible Application Performance Management (APM) service for developers. Looks at request rates, response times, failure rates, page views, load performance, AJAX calls from webpages, user and session counts.