Azure Fundamentals AZ900
A closer look on Cloud world
Remember that magic trick of a hat, where the magician could get some endless things from it, and you keep looking amazed, saying he can fit a whole world in it! Hey what if i told you we have that kind of magic in cloud ?
WHAT SHOULD YOU EXPECT FROM THIS BLOG ? 🤔
So, let’s dive right in
Introducing Cloud Computing Concept
Why Cloud ?
Because it is great choice, if you want a secure place where you can store, and maintain your data, without spending any money on building expensive infrastructure and wasting your precious time on exhausting tasks.
It just lets you focus on what matters. Which is making your App accessible to most of your Users, and to keep up with your demands.
What’s Cloud ?
Is simply on demand delivery of IT resources ( like VM, more Storage and CPU cycles) from a Cloud Provider (Microsoft Azure, AWS, GCP ), via the Internet with Pay As You Go.
What’s Cool about Azure ?
- Takes the second place in the market
- Azure have 58 regions and 140 available Country
- Azure provides >100 services
- Trusted by 500 companies ( Boeing, Adobe, HP, eBay, Samsung)..
Two most common Services of Cloud
Okay so Azure provides on demand IT resources means different services. So here you will see the two most common services that all cloud providers provide 👉 which are compute power and storage.
When we talk about compute power there are three approaches : Virtual Machines, Containers and Serverless. SO it is important to understand These approaches. So let’s jump right in.
Virtual Machine 💻
With easy words it simulates physical computers. So Instead of buying new expensive Laptop, you can just rent a VM to run the wanted image (means the OS ) you need and install the software you want to use.
And That is exactly what Cloud provider do for you, let’s you rent a VM of your choice and give you the right to run any wanted OS and software.
Finally It let that VM run on a physical server in their datacenter.
Container 📦
So Container is made to solve developers problem it works on my machine.
okay in More Details : Docker package the App and all its dependencies in a container and then execute it in a standard runtime environment. So the Container will start the App very fast, because there is no OS to boot or initialize, only App to launch.
WHY DOCKER ? Because Docker is the most leading platforms for managing containers.
Serverless
Serverless is perfect fit for automatic tasks (Such as confirmation mail after purchase, validation mail
after signup)
Just deploy your code, and it will run !
OK HOW ?
So the App is divided into different functions that they work when triggered.
Storage
As most devices are Read And/or write data.
Client can use a file on disk to store unstructured data like text, movie clip, etc, and if he/she want to set structured data then can use Database.
Azure Benefits
Cost Effective
Cloud takes care of your infrastructure, hardware and software, setting and running on-site datacenters.
Scalable
it allows you to pay only for the for the resources you need, or to stop paying for resources you no more need.
Here Cloud supports both Vertical and Horizontal Scaling.
Vertical Scaling (known also as “scaling up”) which is the process of adding resources to increase the power of an existing server, like adding more CPU or memory..
Horizontal scaling (known as “scaling out”) And it is the pcoess of adding more servers that function together as 1 unit. Such as getting another server to proceed your incoming requests.
Elastic
Which means Dynamically scalable, for example, As workload changes due to a spike or drop in demand a cloud computing system can compenseate by adding or removing ressources.
Reliable
Putting your private and sensitive data in cloud you want to feel safe and secure and mostly sure that your data are there, that is why Cloud Computing provides data backup, disaster recovery and data replication services.
Secure
Cloud really invest in Security and that is why it offers a broad set of policies, technologies, helping protect your data, Apps and infrastructure from potential threats.
Cloud deployment models
Not all clouds are the same and not one type of cloud computing is right for everyone. Several different models, types and services have evolved to help offer the right solution for your needs.
There are three different ways to deploy cloud services: on a public cloud, private cloud or hybrid cloud.
Public Cloud 🧑🏿🤝🧑🏻
It is the most common way of deploying Cloud Computing. All cloud
ressources are owned and managed by a third-party cloud provider, so they decide where to store your data and where it runs. You access these services and manage your account using a web browser.
Private Cloud 🤵 🔐
Consists of Computing resources used exclusively by one business or
organization at your organization’s on-site datacenter, or it can be hosted by a third-party service provider.
Means that you can control all your private data safely without worrying who will touch it or see it, I’d like to point that the services and infrastructure are maintained on a private network.
So we said that it is used by one organization and it stores sensitive data, so obviously Bank,CIA, government agencies, financial institutions use it so they can have full control.
Hybrid Cloud 🧑🏿🤝🧑🏻 🔐🤵
Is beautiful mix of on-premises infrastructure, or private clouds, with public
clouds so organizations can reap the advantages of both, allowing data to move between them.
Expl : Healthcare: When hospitals send patient data to insurance providers
Cloud Services
Let’s start with 👇
Saas : Software as a Service, it is used by an end customer, like us, and it is something you can use without having any control on structure, you can JUST Consume (Office 365, Gmail).
Paas : Platform as a service used by developers, make them focus only on developing and deploying their App in the Cloud, because everythings is pre-configured for them (prorgamming language, execution environment, OS, web server and database) so they only need to Build. (Heroku)
Iaas : Infrastructure as a Service, as the name suggests, provides you the computing infrastructure, means you can RENT physical or (quite often) virtual machines and other resources like virtual-machine disk image library, block and file-based storage, firewalls, load balancers, IP addresses, virtual local area networks etc.
Microsoft Azure Regions
Now What about more details to reveal the meaning of each key Term?
Single VM ; Running a VM on Azure with no replication
Availability set ;
is a logical grouping of 2 or more VMs that helps keep your app available during planned and unplanned maintenance ,
SLA (Service-Level Agreements) provide you with 99.95% uptime guarantee (Uptime is the % of time of system is up and running without interruption)
Availability zones ;
Running a VM with one or multiple replicated copies on a different Availability zone, providing resiliency against data center failure.
⚠️ Resiliency ! Is to recover from a failure
Region pairs ;
Running a VM with one or more replicated copis on different azure regions (but always same country), protecting against natural disaster and large scale outage (cut down).
Each azure region is always paired with another region in same geography at least 300 miles away.
Availability set In more DETAILS 🤩
Update Domain >> related to planned maintenance, When the underlying Azure Fabric that host VM is updated by MS.
Fault Domain >> unplanned maintenance is everything related to the Rack, hardware failure, Power or Network.
Cost >> There is no cost for availability set, you only pay for the VM’s.
How It Works ?
Each server includes a hypervisor to run multiple VM, a Network switch to provides connectivity to the servers.
One server in each rack runs a software called Fabric Controller, and each Fabric Controller connected to another Software called Orchestrator (It is responsible for everything happens in Azure and responding to user requests).
⚙ Users make requests using web orchestrator API , the web API ⚙ can be called by many tools including the UI of Azure Portal So when ⚙user ask to create a VM, ⚙The orchestrator package everything needed, ⚙picks the suitable server rack and then ⚙sends The package and the request to the Fabric Controller. Once ⚙ the Fabric Controller create the VM, the user can connect to it.
Understand Azure billing
Azure Subscription is like a Subscription in real life for electricity , you can enjoy every electric thing in your house, use it as you wish and get a monthly bill to pay depending on your use. ( could be high or low)
Example of how basic Subscription looks like (for users like us)
Recap
So that was your first baby step into Cloud World, where we’ve seen together what is Cloud Computing, Cloud Models ( Public, Private, Hybrid), Cloud Services (Iaas, Paas, Saas), Azure Architecture (Regions, Region Pairs, Availability Zones, Availability Sets, Single VM, SLA), How Azure Works ( the component and how How your request is preceded from Azure Portal to the Cloud back to your machine and finally Azure 4 types of Billing.
See Here i’m just mentioning some of the keywords we’ve seen on top, so if you were wondering what one of them means, i recommand you to read again the blog, so you can undrestand better the meaning, and Best of LUCK.
Don’t forget to Clap if you like it.
~ Ahed Bahri ~
