Section 2 Planning Cloud Services

Cloud-native design

Calls for loosely coupled components that developers deploy in smaller units, improving their speed, flexibility, and scalability. These applications take advantage of cloud service delivery models

Potential advantages of cloud-native designs:

Improved scalability, Quicker changes/innovation, Platform portability, Lower cost, Higher availability, Improved compliance, Increased security

Potential disadvantages of cloud-native designs

Cost infrastructure changes, Development processes must exist to maximize the potential, Appropriate developer technical skills, Cultural resistance/buy-in

Cloud-first

Refers to a business and development decision that assumes any new software will be cloud-native

Serverless

Does not mean servers aren't involved; it means your team isn't responsible for managing those servers. Your cloud service provider offers server functionality as one of its subscription services

Microservices

Consist of a series of independent components that provide a single function. The components are small, self-contained, and can be modified separately from the other

Not coded ahead of time with the location of other microservices, leaving them "loosely coupled."

Microservices benefits

Easier scalability

Quicker build times

Easier service improvement

Service discovery

Refers to how these dynamically created microservices find each other

ex. Service providers update a service registry with their functionality. Service consumers query this registry to discover service providers

Functions

A single programmatic capability triggered by an event. It does not maintain data and is started/destroyed on demand. Typically satisfy one purpose

function chain

Consists of multiple functions executing serially

fan-out/fan-in

Runs multiple functions simultaneously and then aggregates the results

What are the three main components in a cloud services solution?

The client device, the data center, and the network that links them together

Cloud service provider (CSP) data center

Hosts cloud services

Client

Means of access for cloud services to consumer

Network

Path between cloud services and client devices

Public cloud

A CSP owns the cloud deployment and allocates its resources to external, unaffiliated customers. Those customers share the public cloud’s resources without knowing precisely where their data is in relation to that of any other organization

Private cloud

A single organization provides services via an on-premises data center

Community cloud

Several autonomous organizations with similar service needs maintain cloud service

Ex. Healthcare organizations sharing patient medical records & Research institutions conducting joint studies

Hybrid cloud

There is a combination of two or more private, public, or community deployments

Ideal for organizations with a mix of security requirements

Ex. Disaster recovery

Multi-cloud

Organizations use features of more than one cloud service provider to avoid vendor lock-in, maximize service offerings, and reduce costs.

Ex. Several cloud apps deployed in Microsoft Azure and various database services deployed in AWS

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

A private network segment made available to a single cloud consumer on a public cloud.

Logical isolation of the cloud deployment that resides on a CSP's infrastructure (and is therefore scalable)

Multitenancy

The concept behind public cloud deployments. Multiple consumers, known as tenants, share computing resources owned and managed by the cloud service provider (CSP)

Google Workspace

Formerly known as G Suite and Google Apps, Google Workspace provides word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software, and other services. An example of SaaS.

Office 365

Microsoft’s Office suite is available online as a Software as a Service (SaaS) product. Office 365 provides great flexibility, platform independence, and ease of installation and support.

Salesforce

Common SaaS customer relationship management (CRM) solution that supports marketing, sales, and service for customer accounts

Dropbox

Remains a strong cross-platform Storage as a Service (STaaS) solution enabling online data storage and access

The most successful cloud deployments are aligned with what?

Business goals and requirements. Gather the requirements before the deployment or migration. Consider how cloud services can help the business reach its goals

What are common examples of sperating IT environments?

A development environment, a staging environment, and a production environment

development environment

Where programmers code projects, detect bugs, manage code versions, and implement code-level security

cloud deployment

This environment may combine Platform as a Service (PaaS) (for actual development work) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) (for testing)

The staging environment

Where QA testers validate cloud applications and services. This validation may include security and performance testing. The tests may be automated or manual (or both)

The production environment

Refers to the live, operational environment where applications, services, and workloads run for end-users

right-sizing

Selecting and adjusting the compute capabilities of the VM instance to match its workload.

Docker

A container virtualization engine that can be installed on Linux, Windows, macOS, and other platforms to run containers.

Git

Type of version tracking software used primarily with collaborative development projects to ensure integrity and version control.

Automation

Using scripts and APIs to provision and deprovision systems without manual intervention.

It helps avoid human error, offers flexible options, and follows a consistent pattern

Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)

A software development method combining app and platform updates (rapidly committed to production) with code updates (rapidly committed to a code repository or build server).

Yet Another Markup Language (YAML)

Language for configuration files and applications such as Netplan and Ansible.

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON).

A file format that uses attribute-value pairs to define configurations in a structure that is easy for both humans and machines to read and consume.

Four common application release strategies exist. They are what?

Blue-green model

Canary model

Rolling model

In-place model

business impact analysis (BIA)

Systematic activity that identifies organizational risks and determines their effect on ongoing, mission-critical operations.

Blue-Green Deployment Strategy

Two identical environments are available, one labeled as “blue” and the other as “green.” Only one of these is hosting the production environment at any given time. The idle environment serves as the staging area for the next release of the software or service

Goal is achieving zero downtime during deployment

Canary Deployment Strategy

The deployment model that gradually moves users from an old deployment to a new one, rather than an immediate switchover of all users

Common attribute of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) structures. There is no downtime

Rolling Deployment Strategy

Use a gradual approach to migrating applications. Individual instances or small batches of servers are migrated, followed by testing and analysis to ensure availability

Easier rollback in case of a problem, minimized disruption during the update process, monitoring during the migration to ensure reliability, and greater overall control

In-Place Deployment Strategy

The original application service is stopped, the new application is installed and started, and users are given access. The IT team does not need to invest resources in infrastructure support as the underlying server and network fabric is not changed or upgraded

Results in downtime, needs to be carefully planned, and users must be warned ahead of time

A cloud service provider has a simplified business model that only allows their customers to share resources. Since customers share resources, the costs are extremely low.

What kind of cloud option would a customer of this cloud service provider use?

Multitenancy