Book Image

Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Certification and Beyond

By : Steve Miles
Book Image

Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Certification and Beyond

By: Steve Miles

Overview of this book

This is the digital and cloud era, and Microsoft Azure is one of the top cloud computing platforms. It’s now more important than ever to understand how the cloud functions and the different services that can be leveraged across the cloud. This book will give you a solid understanding of cloud concepts and Microsoft Azure, starting by taking you through cloud concepts in depth, then focusing on the core Azure architectural components, solutions, and management tools. Next, you will understand security concepts, defense-in-depth, and key security services such as Network Security Groups and Azure Firewall, as well as security operations tooling such as Azure Security Center and Azure Sentinel. As you progress, you will understand how identity, governance, privacy, and compliance are managed in Azure. Finally, you will get to grips with cost management, service-level agreements, and service life cycles. Throughout, the book features a number of hands-on exercises to support the concepts, services, and solutions discussed. This provides you with a glimpse of real-world scenarios, before finally concluding with practice questions for AZ-900 exam preparation. By the end of this Azure book, you will have a thorough understanding of cloud concepts and Azure fundamentals, enabling you to pass the AZ-900 certification exam easily.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Section 1: Cloud Concepts
4
Section 2: Core Azure Services
7
Section 3: Core Solutions and Management Tools
10
Section 4: Security
12
Section 5: Identity, Governance, Privacy, and Compliance
16
Section 6: Cost Management and Service-Level Agreements

Cloud computing hierarchy of needs

The IT services delivery model can draw parallels to Maslow's hierarchy of needs; this comes from a psychology theory, often represented in a hierarchical pyramid. In this model, the lower-level needs add no value or benefit, but each lower-level need must be met before the next-level needs can be met, leading to dependencies on the lower levels. The challenge is a very delicate balance in that any change in the lower levels affects the chances of success or failure of the required outcome; in this theory, the outcome to be achieved is self-actualization.

This idea can be applied to the IT services delivery model. In this model, the typical technology stack provides the outcome that needs to be met, such as an app, function, or code…:

  • …this must exist on a lower layer of software
  • …which needs to live on a lower layer of compute
  • …which needs to exist on a lower layer of hardware…...