AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator

Chapter 5 - Azure Compute

Copyright © CareerAcademy.com, Inc.

Slide 1

◆ Designing and Planning for Azure Virtual Machines

◆ Creating Virtual Machines
◆ Configuring Availability
◆ Advanced Virtual Machine Management
◆ Azure App Services and Service Plans
◆ Additional PaaS Options

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 2

◆ Designing and Planning for Azure Virtual Machines

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 3

◆ As with any infrastructure the deployment of compute resources such as virtual

machines, application service plans, and container services requires adequate
design and planning
◆ A function of IaaS solutions is the shared responsibility between the provider and
the customer
◆ Customer manages
o Operating systems
o Network controls
o Applications
o Identity infrastructure
o Information and data

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 4

◆ Prior to determining specifics for individual compute resources, you should diagram
the proposed network solution and ensure components are created
◆ Recommended steps
o Naming convention for VMs
o Determine the location of compute resources
o Get familiar with pricing options
• Compute costs
• Storage costs
o Size the virtual machines appropriately
• Performance
• Cost

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 5

◆ Storage
o Operating system disks
o Data disks
o Temporary disks
o Unmanaged vs. managed
◆ Operating systems
o Windows Server
o Linux
◆ Connections to virtual machines

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 6

◆ Creating Virtual Machines

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 7

◆ Virtual machines can be created in numerous ways

o Azure portal
o Azure CLI
o Azure PowerShell
o ARM templates
◆ The method you choose will depend on the number and type of virtual machines
being deployed with most leaning towards the GUI the Azure Portal provides
◆ Considerations
o Region
o Image type
o VM size
o Availability options

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 8

◆ Configuring Availability

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 9

◆ A primary benefit of cloud computing is enhanced availability options that are

available to companies of all sizes
◆ Designers and administrators need to be aware of these options as well as potential
downtime
◆ Types of downtime
o Planned Maintenance
o Unexpected Downtime
o Unplanned Hardware Maintenance

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 10

◆ Availability sets are a critical component to high availability in cloud environments

◆ Features
o VMs in the same availability set will run across multiple physical resources
o If hardware or software failures occur only a subset of VMs in the availability set are unavailable
◆ Best practices
o VMs in an availability set should be identical
o Different application tiers should use different availability sets
o Consider combining availability sets with a load balancer
o Always use managed disks for your VMs
o VMs must be placed in an availability set at time of creation

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 11

◆ In addition to Availability sets created in Azure, two other options play a part in
ensuring the appropriate level of uptime
◆ Fault domains
o A group of nodes that represent a physical unit of failure
o Availability sets will use at least 2 fault domains to mitigate the risk of hardware failures
◆ Update domain
o A group of nodes that are updated together
o Updates and rolling upgrades will require reboots and the update domain determines the
systems that can be rebooted at the same time

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 12

◆ Availability zones are a step above the sets because they represent physically
separated datacenters in the same Azure region
o Zones correspond to update and fault domains
o VMs in three different zones would be in three different update and fault domains
◆ Considerations
o Each zone is made up of one or more datacenters
o In enabled regions there are a minimum of 3 availability zones
o Offers the best SLA of 99.99%

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 13

◆ Scalability is another feature of cloud computing providing the ability to increase or

decrease compute power on-demand
◆ Options in Azure
o Vertical scaling
o Horizontal scaling
o Scale sets
• Provide horizontal scaling for multiple identical VMs
• Typically combined with layer 4 load balancer or layer 7 application gateway
• Can be manually or automatically scaled (autoscale)

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 14

◆ Advanced Virtual Machine Management

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 15

◆ Azure virtual machine extensions are small applications that provide post-
deployment configuration and automation tasks on Azure VMs
o Managed by Azure CLI, PowerShell, ARM Templates, or the Azure portal
o Bundled with new VM deployments
o Run against any existing system
o Multiple extensions exist to choose from

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 16

◆ The custom script extension (CSE) is used to launch and configure any post
deployment tasks that are necessary on a VM
o Starting and stopping VMs
o Performing software installations and updates
o Creating directories and temp files for applications
o And more…
◆ You can utilize your own PowerShell scripts or utilize public scripts available in
GitHub and other repositories
◆ Considerations include timeouts, dependencies, failure events, and sensitive data

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 17

◆ Desired State Configuration (DSC) is a management platform based on PowerShell

that provides an easy method of deploying and managing configuration data for
operating systems and software services
◆ The fundamental component is a configuration
o Easy-to-read script
o Describes the environment of computers with specific configurations
◆ Primary components
o Configuration block
o Node block
o One or more resource blocks

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 18

◆ Azure App Services and Service Plans

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 19

◆ Microsoft Azure provides both IaaS and PaaS capabilities

◆ App services and app service plans define compute resources that are utilized by
web applications
◆ In PaaS environments the customer does not control that the underlying virtual
machines are storage as they would with IaaS, providing a platform on which you
can easily deploy, manage, and scale web applications
◆ These applications still require a certain level of power and availability to service
the needs of the organization

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 20

◆ App services run within an app service plan

o App service plans contain one or more web applications
o App service plans define the set of compute resources for those applications
◆ App service plans define
o Region
o Number and size of VMs
◆ Considerations
o The pricing tier will determine functionality available
o All apps in the service plan run on all VM instances
o Combining apps in a service plan can provide cost savings
o Overloading a service plan can cause unwanted downtime

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 21

◆ App services provide platforms that developers can utilize to deploy web
applications of all varieties in an efficient manner
◆ Types
o .NET
o Node.js
o PHP
o Java
o Python

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 22

◆ Multiple languages and frameworks supported

◆ Security and compliance
◆ Application templates
◆ Deploy on a global scale with infinite scalability
◆ Highly available web applications
◆ DevOps optimization

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 23

◆ Deployment slots provide the ability to isolate web applications in slots that are
separate from production Internet-facing slots
◆ Provides the ability to stage applications and perform deployment testing prior to
moving to production
◆ Manual and automatic swapping options are available

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 24

◆ Securing services is important to ensure the privacy of your data

o App service provides built-in authentication and authorization support
o Integration with popular identity providers is available in addition to App Services authentication
o Authorization behavior
o Logging and tracing
◆ Backup and Restore
o Easily create backups manually or automatically based on a schedule
o Backs up
• Application configuration
• File content
• Connected databases
o Requires Standard or Premium tier

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 25

◆ Additional PaaS Options

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 26

◆ Containers represent a further evolution of hardware virtualization technologies

◆ Containers differ from virtual machines in various ways
o Provides lightweight isolation from host and other containers
o Does not run a complete operating system; only user mode
o Deploy individual containers using Docker or use an orchestration service such as Kubernetes
o Persistent storage provided by Azure files
o Automatic fault tolerance

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 27

◆ Container instances
o Fast startup times
o Public IP connectivity and DNS names
o Custom sizes
o Persistent storage
o Platform compatibility
◆ Container groups
o Collections of containers scheduled on the same host
o Assigned a single DNS label and single public IP
o Used to divide functionality into multiple manageable containers
o Deployed with resource templates or YAML files

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 28

◆ Docker is a platform that provides developers with the ability to host applications
within containers and is available for both Linux and Windows
◆ Provides a guarantee that containers and their software will always run the same
◆ Terminology
o Container
o Container image
o Build
o Pull
o Push
o Dockerfile

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 29

◆ Kubernetes is an open-source system developed to automate the deployment,

scaling, and management of containerized applications
◆ Groups containers that make up applications into logical units, providing easy
management and discovery
◆ Provides orchestration systems and was originally designed by Google

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 30

◆ Concepts of building blocks or primitives that provide deployment and scalability

◆ Control plane
o Etcd
o API server
o Scheduler
o Controller manager
◆ Nodes
o Kubelet
o Kube-proxy
o Container runtime
◆ Pods

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 31

POOLS CONTAINER DEPLOYMENT MANIFEST

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Slide 32

◆ Designing and Planning for Azure Virtual Machines

◆ Creating Virtual Machines
◆ Configuring Availability
◆ Advanced Virtual Machine Management
◆ Azure App Services and Service Plans
◆ Additional PaaS Options

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Review Questions:

1. You host a service with two Azure virtual machines. You discover that occasional
outages cause your service to fail. What two actions can you do to minimize the
impact of the outages? (Choose two)
A. Add a load balancer
B. Put the virtual machines in an availability set
C. Put the virtual machines in a scale set
D. Add a third instance of the virtual machine

2. You are planning the implementation of deploying Windows-based VMs in Azure.

It is your responsibility to document configuration options that can save the
organization money in relation to these virtual machines. Which options should
you choose to document? (Choose all that apply)
A. Use HDD instead of SSD
B. Provide your own Windows licenses
C. Choose the region based on cost
D. Place all VMs in the same resource group

3. You are planning to deploy several Linux VMs in Azure. The security team issues
a policy that Linux VMs must use an authentication system other than
passwords. You need to deploy an authentication method for the Linux VMs to
meet the requirement. Which authentication method should you use?
A. SSH key pair
B. Azure MFA
C. Access keys
D. Shared access signatures

4. Your company has Windows Server VMs and Ubuntu Linux VMs in Microsoft
Azure. The company has a new project to standardize the configuration of
servers across the Azure environment. The company opts to use Desired State
Configuration across all VMs. You need to ensure that DSC can be used across
all the VMs. What two things should you do? (Choose two)
A. Replace the Ubuntu VMs with Red Hat Enterprise Linux
B. Deploy the DSC extension for the Windows Server VMs
C. Deploy the DSC extension for the Linux VMs
D. Use an automation script to install the DSC agent on both VMs
5. Another employee in your company deployed Azure VMs in a scale set with five
virtual machines. You notice during monitoring that all VMs are running at max
capacity in terms of CPU utilization and new virtual machines are not being
created in the scale set. You need to ensure this happens at 70% capacity on the
VMs. What should you do?
A. Increase the instance count
B. Add the scale set automation script to the library
C. Deploy the scale set automation script
D. Enable the autoscale option

6. You are implementing a web app in Azure with the following requirements from
your development team. If the CPU percentage goes above 80% across all
servers, a new virtual machine should be created for additional resources. If the
CPU across all servers drops below 15%, an Azure VM running the web app
should be deallocated. You need to implement this while reducing administrative
overhead. What should you do?
A. Deploy the app in a scale set
B. Deploy the app in an availability set
C. Deploy the app using an ARM template
D. Deploy the app and use custom VM extensions

7. Your organization has a security policy that prohibits exposing SSH ports to the
outside world. You need to connect to an Azure Linux virtual machine to install
software. What should you do?
A. Configure the Bastion service
B. Configure a guest configuration on the VM
C. Create custom script extensions
D. None of the above

8. True or False: You have multiple apps running in a single App Service plan. In
this configuration each app can have different scaling rules.
A. True
B. False
9. You are administering a production web app. The app requires scaling to five
instances, 40GB of storage, and a custom domain name. Which App Service
plan should you select?
A. Free
B. Shared
C. Basic
D. Standard
E. Premium

10. You need to back up your App Service. Which of the following would be included
in that backup? (Choose all that apply)
A. Files and database content up to 20GB
B. Firewall-enabled storage account
C. App configuration
D. Azure database for MySQL
Answer Key:

1. A, B
Both of these options provide high availability and should be used to minimize
the impact of outages.

2. A, B, C
The place of VMs in resource groups has nothing to do with costs, but the other
options will all save money.

3. A
Azure only supports two methods for authentication to Linux-based VMs. They
are passwords and SSH.

4. B, C
A bit of a trick question, DSC is provided for both Linux and Windows VMs.

5. D
When enabling autoscale, you define the conditions that cause the systems to
scale out, which in this case would be CPU capacity at 70%.

6. A
Scale sets can scale up or down, based on defined criteria like CPU utilization.

7. A
The Azure Bastion service is a new fully platform-managed PaaS service that
you provision inside your virtual network.

8. B
False. The App Service plan is the scale unit of the App Service apps. If the plan
is configured to run five VM instances, then all apps in the plan run on all five
instances. If the plan is configured for autoscaling, then all apps in the plan are
scaled out together based on the autoscale settings.

9. D
The Standard app will meet all the requirements at the least cost. Usually Free
and Shared will not meet the requirements of a production application.
10. C, D
App Service can back up: app configuration, file content, and a database
connected to your app.