Book Image

Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions AZ-400 Exam Guide - Second Edition

By : Subhajit Chatterjee, Swapneel Deshpande, Henry Been, Maik van der Gaag
Book Image

Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions AZ-400 Exam Guide - Second Edition

By: Subhajit Chatterjee, Swapneel Deshpande, Henry Been, Maik van der Gaag

Overview of this book

The AZ-400 Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions certification helps DevOps engineers and administrators get to grips with practices such as continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), containerization, and zero downtime deployments using Azure DevOps Services. This new edition is updated with advanced topics such as site reliability engineering (SRE), continuous improvement, and planning your cloud transformation journey. The book begins with the basics of CI/CD and automated deployments, and then moves ahead to show you how to apply configuration management and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) along with managing databases in DevOps scenarios. As you make progress, you’ll explore fitting security and compliance with DevOps and find out how to instrument applications and gather metrics to understand application usage and user behavior. This book will also help you implement a container build strategy and manage Azure Kubernetes Services. Lastly, you’ll discover quick tips and tricks to confidently apply effective DevOps practices and learn to create your own Azure DevOps organization. By the end of this DevOps book, you'll have gained the knowledge needed to ensure seamless application deployments and business continuity.

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Table of Contents (27 chapters)
Preface
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Download the example code files
Download the color images
Conventions used
Get in touch
Share Your Thoughts
1
Part 1 – Digital Transformation through DevOps
Part 1 – Digital Transformation through DevOps
Free Chapter
2
Chapter 1: Introduction to DevOps
Chapter 1: Introduction to DevOps
Technical requirements
What is DevOps?
Creating your ideal DevOps organization
Exploring DevOps practices and habits
The five stages of the DevOps evolution
Summary
Self-practice exercise
Questions
Further reading
3
Chapter 2: Site Reliability Engineering Fundamentals
Chapter 2: Site Reliability Engineering Fundamentals
Technical requirements
Introduction to SRE
Key principles and practices
Summary
Self-practice exercises
Questions
Further reading
4
Chapter 3: Getting the Best Out of DevOps Tools
Chapter 3: Getting the Best Out of DevOps Tools
SDLC and DevOps tools
Azure DevOps and GitHub
Azure DevTest Labs
Azure Monitor
Visual Studio Code
Summary
Self-practice exercises
Questions
Further reading
5
Part 2 – Getting to Continuous Delivery
Part 2 – Getting to Continuous Delivery
6
Chapter 4: Everything Starts with Source Control
Chapter 4: Everything Starts with Source Control
Technical requirements
Types of source control in Azure DevOps
Selecting a branching and merging strategy
Managing repositories
Other tools for source control
Summary
Questions
Exercises
Further reading
7
Chapter 5: Moving to Continuous Integration
Chapter 5: Moving to Continuous Integration
Technical requirements
Introducing continuous integration
Creating a build definition in Azure DevOps
Running a build
Working with YAML pipelines
Agents and agent queues
Automating CI builds using GitHub Actions
Other tools
Summary
Questions
Exercises
Further reading
8
Chapter 6: Implementing Continuous Deployment and Release Management
Chapter 6: Implementing Continuous Deployment and Release Management
Technical requirements
Continuous delivery and continuous deployment
Working with Azure DevOps releases
Writing multi-stage YAML pipelines
Implementing CD strategies
Deploying mobile applications
Automating release notes
Other tools
Summary
Questions
Exercises
Further reading
9
Part 3 – Expanding Your DevOps Pipeline
Part 3 – Expanding Your DevOps Pipeline
10
Chapter 7: Dependency Management
Chapter 7: Dependency Management
Technical requirements
Identifying shared components
Creating a feed
Publishing packages
Restoring packages
Working with Universal Packages
Exploring other tools
Summary
Questions
Exercises
Further reading
11
Chapter 8: Implement Infrastructure and Configuration as Code
Chapter 8: Implement Infrastructure and Configuration as Code
Technical requirements
Having everything as code
Working with ARM templates
Deploying ARM templates
Reverse engineering a template
Using Azure Automation
Managing application settings
Other tools
Summary
Activity
Questions
Further reading
12
Chapter 9: Dealing with Databases in DevOps Scenarios
Chapter 9: Dealing with Databases in DevOps Scenarios
Technical requirements
Managing a database schema as code
Applying database schema changes
Going schema-less
Other approaches and concerns
Summary
Questions
Further reading
13
Chapter 10: Integrating Continuous Testing
Chapter 10: Integrating Continuous Testing
Technical requirements
Defining quality
Understanding test types
Executing tests in a pipeline
Maintaining quality
Summary
Questions
Self exercise
Further reading
14
Chapter 11: Managing Security and Compliance
Chapter 11: Managing Security and Compliance
Technical requirements
Applying DevOps principles to security and compliance
Working with secrets
Detecting application code vulnerabilities
Working with dependencies
Ensuring infrastructure compliance
Monitoring and detecting runtime security risks 
and threats
Other tools you can use
Summary
Questions
Further reading
15
Part 4 – Closing the Loop
Part 4 – Closing the Loop
16
Chapter 12: Application Monitoring
Chapter 12: Application Monitoring
Technical requirements
Investigating application crashes
Instrumenting web applications
Integrating with other tools
Summary
Questions
Further reading
17
Chapter 13: Gathering User Feedback
Chapter 13: Gathering User Feedback
Understanding continuous feedback
Gathering indirect feedback
Implementing hypothesis-driven development
Summary
Questions
Further reading
18
Part 5 – Advanced Topics
Part 5 – Advanced Topics
19
Chapter 14: Adopting the Culture of Continuous Improvement
Chapter 14: Adopting the Culture of Continuous Improvement
Measuring your DevOps success
Value stream mapping
A data-driven approach
Operationalizing the feedback loop
Summary
Activity
Further reading
20
Chapter 15: Accelerate Cloud Adoption through DevOps
Chapter 15: Accelerate Cloud Adoption through DevOps
The role of DevOps in digital transformation
Modernization and cloud adoption
Managing software delivery modernization
Agile transformation and iterative planning
Integrating DevOps in your cloud adoption plan
Summary
Additional reading
21
Chapter 16: Containers
Chapter 16: Containers
Technical requirements
An introduction to containers
Building a container image
Building images in Azure DevOps and running them 
in Azure
An introduction to Kubernetes
Kubernetes in action
Upgrading containers
Scaling containers and Kubernetes
Deploying to Kubernetes with Azure DevOps
Summary
Questions
Exercises
Further reading
22
Chapter 17: Planning Your Azure DevOps Organization
Chapter 17: Planning Your Azure DevOps Organization
Technical requirements
Setting up an Azure DevOps organization
Ensuring traceability
Accepting there is no end state
Summary
Questions
Activity
Further reading
23
Chapter 18: AZ-400 Mock Exam
Designing a DevOps Strategy
Implementing DevOps Development Processes
Implementing Continuous Integration
Implementing Continuous Delivery
Implementing Dependency Management
Implementing Application Infrastructure
Implementing Continuous Feedback
Answers
24
Assessments
Chapter 1, Introduction to DevOps
Chapter 2, Site Reliability Engineering Fundamentals
Chapter 3, Getting the Best Out of DevOps Tools
Chapter 4, Everything Starts with Source Control
Chapter 5, Moving to Continuous Integration
Chapter 6, Implementing Continuous Deployment and Release Management
Chapter 7, Dependency Management
Chapter 8, Implement Infrastructure and Configuration 
as Code
Chapter 9, Dealing with Databases in DevOps Scenarios
Chapter 10, Integrating Continuous Testing
Chapter 11, Managing Security and Compliance
Chapter 12, Application Monitoring
Chapter 13, Gathering User Feedback
Chapter 16, Containers
Chapter 17, Planning Your Azure DevOps Organization
25
Index
Index
Why subscribe?
26
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Agents and agent queues

The build definitions that you have created so far can contain agent jobs, which in turn contain tasks. These tasks are not executed within your Azure DevOps organization directly but are instead executed by agents that run on VMs or in containers. In turn, agents are grouped in agent pools. There are two types of agent pools that you can work with:

  • Built-in agent pools
  • Self-hosted agent pools

Let’s go through them one by one.

Built-in agent pools

Built-in agent pools are managed by Microsoft and are made available to you as part of the Azure DevOps product itself. There are different agent pools available, depending on your needs. Pools run different versions of Windows and Visual Studio, and there are also pools available that run Linux (Ubuntu) and macOS.

The disadvantage of these managed pools is that you cannot install extra software on the machines or containers that host the agents if you need to. This means that, in...

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