Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services over the Internet. These services include essential IT infrastructure such as virtual machines, storage, databases, and networking. Moreover, cloud computing enhances traditional IT services by incorporating technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI).
One of the main advantages of cloud computing is its scalability, which allows users to rapidly increase their IT infrastructure without the constraints of physical data centers.
Cloud Service Providers
SOME POPULAR CLOUD SERVICE PROVIDERS ARE:
AWS(AMAZON WEB SERVICE). (launched in 2006)
MICROSOFT AZURE. (launched in feb 2010)
GCP(GOOGLE CLOUD PLATFORM).
What is Azure
Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform with an ever expanding set of services to help you build solutions to meet your business goals.
Azure supports Infrastructure platforms and software as a service computing with services such as virtual machines running in the cloud website and database hosting and advanced computing services like Artificial intelligence machine learning and IOT.
Most of the azure services are pay-as-you-go you only pay for the computing time that you use.
The Shared Responsibility Model
In traditional corporate data centers, organizations are responsible for managing physical infrastructure, security, and maintaining server operations. With the shared responsibility model in the cloud, responsibilities are divided between the cloud provider and the consumer.
The cloud provider is responsible for physical infrastructure (such as data centers, power, cooling, and network connectivity), while consumers are responsible for their data, access management, and security settings. This model ensures that cloud services are secure and reliable.
Cloud Service Models
There are several cloud service models, each offering different levels of control, flexibility, and management:
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Provides virtualized computing resources over the internet, allowing businesses to manage their applications and data but leaving infrastructure maintenance to the cloud provider.
Platform as a Service (PaaS): Enables users to build, manage, and deploy applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.
Software as a Service (SaaS): Delivers software applications over the internet, where the cloud provider manages both the application and infrastructure.
Cloud Deployment Models
Azure supports several cloud deployment models, allowing businesses to choose the best setup for their needs:
Public Cloud: Resources are owned and operated by a third-party cloud provider like Azure.
Private Cloud: Resources are used exclusively by a single organization and can be hosted on-premises or by a third-party provider.
Hybrid Cloud: Combines public and private clouds, allowing for data and applications to be shared between them.
Azure Physical Infrastructure
As a global cloud provider, Azure has data centers around the world. However, these individual data centers aren’t directly accessible. Datacenters are grouped into Azure Regions or Azure Availability Zones that are designed to help you achieve resiliency and reliability for your business-critical workloads.
A region is a geographical area on the planet that contains at least one, but potentially multiple datacenters that are nearby and networked together with a low-latency network. Azure intelligently assigns and controls the resources within each region to ensure workloads are appropriately balanced.
When you deploy a resource in Azure, you'll often need to choose the region where you want your resource deployed.
Availability Zones:
Availability zones are physically separate data centers within an Azure region. Each availability zone is made up of one or more data centers equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking. An availability zone is set up to be an isolation boundary. If one zone goes down, the other continues working. Availability zones are connected through high-speed, private fiber-optic networks.
Region pairs
Most Azure regions are paired with another region within the same geography (such as the US, Europe, or Asia) at least 300 miles away. This approach allows for the replication of resources across a geography that helps reduce the likelihood of interruptions because of events such as natural disasters, civil unrest, power outages, or physical network outages that affect an entire region. For example, if a region in a pair was affected by a natural disaster, services would automatically failover to the other region in its region pair.
Content Delivery Network
To frequently access data in a few countries Azure has made an Edge server.
It stores Frequently access resources in cache memory and provides to the customer
Describe the consumption-based model:
When comparing IT infrastructure models, there are two types of expenses to consider. Capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational expenditure (OpEx).
CapEx is typically a one-time, up-front expenditure to purchase or secure tangible resources. A new building, repaving the parking lot, building a data center, or buying a company vehicle are examples of CapEx.
In contrast, OpEx is spending money on services or products over time. Renting a convention center, leasing a company vehicle, or signing up for cloud services are all examples of OpEx.
Cloud computing falls under OpEx because cloud computing operates on a consumption-based model. With cloud computing, you don’t pay for the physical infrastructure, the electricity, the security, or anything else associated with maintaining a data center. Instead, you pay for the IT resources you use. If you don’t use any IT resources this month, you don’t pay for any IT resources.
This consumption-based model has many benefits, including:
No upfront costs.
No need to purchase and manage costly infrastructure that users might not use to its fullest potential.
The ability to pay for more resources when they're needed.
The ability to stop paying for resources that are no longer needed.
Describe the benefits of using cloud services
High availability
When you’re deploying an application, a service, or any IT resources, the resources must be available when needed. High availability focuses on ensuring maximum availability, regardless of disruptions or events that may occur.
When you’re architecting your solution, you’ll need to account for service availability guarantees. Azure is a highly available cloud environment with uptime guarantees depending on the service. These guarantees are part of the service-level agreements (SLAs).
Scalability
The other benefit of scalability is that you aren't overpaying for services. Because the cloud is a consumption-based model, you only pay for what you use. If demand drops off, you can reduce your resources and thereby reduce your costs.
Scaling generally comes in two varieties: vertical and horizontal. Vertical scaling is focused on increasing or decreasing the capabilities of resources. Horizontal scaling is adding or subtracting the number of resources.
Vertical scaling
With vertical scaling, if you were developing an app and you needed more processing power, you could vertically scale up to add more CPUs or RAM to the virtual machine. Conversely, if you realized you had over-specified the needs, you could vertically scale down by lowering the CPU or RAM specifications.
Horizontal scaling
With horizontal scaling, if you suddenly experience a steep jump in demand, your deployed resources could be scaled out (either automatically or manually). For example, you could add additional virtual machines or containers, scaling out. In the same manner, if there was a significant drop in demand, deployed resources could be scaled in (either automatically or manually), scaling in.
Reliability or Fault Tolerance
Reliability is the ability of a system to recover from failures and continue to function. It's also one of the pillars of the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework.
The cloud, by its decentralized design, naturally supports a reliable and resilient infrastructure. With a decentralized design, the cloud enables you to have resources deployed in regions around the world.
With this global scale, even if one region has a catastrophic event other regions are still up and running. You can design your applications to automatically take advantage of this increased reliability.
In some cases, your cloud environment itself will automatically shift to a different region for you, with no action needed on your part.
Disaster Recovery:
Azure provides built-in disaster recovery solutions by enabling the replication of data across regions, ensuring minimal downtime during disruptions.
MICROSOFT AZURE FAMOUS CERTIFICATIONS:
YOU CAN EXPLORE MORE CERTIFICATION HERE
Azure Training + Certification Guide (microsoft.com)
https://aka.ms/AzureTrainCertDeck?WT.mc_id=Azure_BoM-wwl
Summary:
Learning objectives
You should now be able to:
Define cloud computing.
Describe the shared responsibility model.
Define cloud models, including public, private, and hybrid.
Identify appropriate use cases for each cloud model.
Describe the consumption-based model.
Compare cloud pricing models
Describe Azure Global Infrastructure
Different Azure Certification and roles.
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