Azure

How to crack the Azure AZ-900 exam in 7 days – Part1

by arvindshrivastava

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Hi,

I have cracked the Azure AZ-900 exam in 7 days. I will share the plan and tutorials to crack the exam.

I will also provide several tips and tricks to remember and draw analogy to understand the concepts.

The exam is divided into four categories: –

  1. Understand cloud concepts (15-20%) – Day 1
  2. Understand core Azure services (30-35%) – Day 2 and Day 3
  3. Understand security, privacy, compliance, and trust (25-30%) – Day 4 and Day 5
  4. Understand Azure pricing and support (20-25%)- Day 6 and Day 7

1 day is enough for the cloud concept.

Let’s cover the category 1: –

SYLLABUS ( Understand cloud concepts )

• Describe the benefits and considerations of using cloud services

• Understand terms such as high availability, scalability, elasticity, agility, fault tolerance, and disaster recovery

•Understand the principles of economies of scale

•Understand the differences between Capital Expenditure (CapEx) and Operational Expenditure (OpEx)

•Understand the consumption-based model

Tutorials

  • Cloud Computing: – Cloud computing is like renting a computer system which can be easily accessible through the internet. The best thing of cloud computing is pay-you-go model. You can easily increase and decrease the configuration of cloud computing as per your need. Cloud computing is very flexible and cost-effective.
  • High Availability: – It is the duration for which cloud computers are ready for use. The outage time is very minimal.
  • Scalable: – The configurations of the cloud can easily be modified. There are two ways to scale the system configuration.
  • Vertical Scaling – Increase of resource power of existing server
    • Horizontal Scaling – Add more servers in the exiting server.

Tips and Tricks: – Assume Vertical Scaling is stacking more CPU on one another connected in series connection. The size occupied on a table is same because the new servers are on the existing server. Assume Horizontal scaling as keeping new server next to the existing server. This will occupy more space on the table.

Elastic: – Automatically adding or removing new resources (e.g. server) based on the spike or drop in demand.

  • Fault tolerance: – Ensures no impact due to disaster occurs. Cloud Computing offers Data backup, disaster recovery, and data replication services.

Cloud services can be used across the world and it is fast and secure.

Compliance Country/Remarks
§  Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS)  US state
§  Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) STAR Certification.  Rigorous independent third-party assessment of a cloud provider’s security posture.
§  General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) European Union (EU)
§  Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) US Federal Law
§  International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 27018  ISO/IEC 27018 code of practice 
§  Multi-Tier Cloud Security (MTCS) Singapore Singapore
§  Service Organization Controls (SOC) 1, 2, and 3  SOC report framework by independent third-party auditors
§  National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) Best practices to manage cybersecurity-related risks
§  UK Government G-CloudUK Government Pan Government Accreditor.
  • Capital Expenditure (CapEx): Invest money on infrastructure first and then reduce expense from the bill over time.

Tips and Tricks: – CapEx is just like buy a laptop/computer with heavy configuration first and perform your business and then earn from business then.

  • Operational Expenditure (OpEx):- Spending money for services now and billed for them now.

Advantages of CapEx:- When need to predict the expense before the start of the project.

Advantages of OpEx:- When demand is fluctuating.

Public versus Private versus Hybrid

Public Cloud :- Azure is a public Cloud provider.

  • Advantages:-
    • PAY-GO Model (Pay-as-you-Go). Reasonable pricing
    • High scalability/agility 
    • No Hardware maintenance required.
  • Disadvantages
    • Can not manage hardware as per personal requirement
    • Do not apply project-specific security

Private cloud:- You create a cloud environment in your own datacentre.

  • Advantages:-
    • Keep any project-specific configuration
    • Control over security
  • Disadvantages:-
    • Initial CapEx costs
    • Need Expert to maintain hardware and software.

Hybrid Cloud:– Combines public and private clouds

  • Advantages:-
    • use out-of-date hardware or operating system.
    • Flexibility to run locally versus cloud
  • Disadvantages
    • more expensive
    • More complicated to set up and manage.

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