AZ-900: Azure Fundamentals Exam Preparation
/Having recently just passed AZ-900: Azure Fundamentals, I thought it would be a good idea to share my approach, collection of reference material, and collated study notes.
If you are preparing for this exam, the Azure Fundamentals Learning Path on Microsoft Learn is a fantastic resource that aligns very closely to the skills measured. Note: If you completed the Azure Fundamentals Learning Path a while ago, it may be worth revisiting as the underlying modules and units continue to change to remain relevant and current.
My Approach
Review the skills measured (within exam details).
Highlight key phrases.
Draw lineage between the key phrases and Microsoft Learn modules.
Complete the Azure Fundamentals Learning Path.
Collate study notes.
Resources
| Resource | Title |
|---|---|
| Exam Details | AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals |
| Certification | Microsoft Certified Azure Fundamentals |
| Learning Path | MS Learn: Azure Fundamentals |
Microsoft Learn Modules Aligned to AZ-900
| Skill Measured | Microsoft Learn Module |
|---|---|
| 1. Understand Cloud Concepts | Cloud Concepts - Principles of Cloud Computing |
| 2. Understand Core Azure Services | Core Cloud Services - Introduction to Azure |
| Core Cloud Services - Azure architecture and service guarantees | |
| Core Cloud Services - Azure compute options | |
| Core Cloud Services - Azure data storage options | |
| Core Cloud Services - Azure networking options | |
| 3. Understand Security, Privacy, Compliance, and Trust | Security, responsibility and trust in Azure |
| Control and organize Azure resources with Azure Resource Manager | |
| Apply and monitor infrastructure standards with Azure Policy | |
| 4. Understand Azure Pricing and Support | Create an Azure account |
| Core Cloud Services - Manage services with the Azure portal | |
| Core Cloud Services - Azure architecture and service guarantees | |
| Predict costs and optimize spending for Azure |
Key Phrases
| 1. Understand Cloud Concepts (15-20%) |
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Describe the benefits and considerations of using cloud services
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| 2. Understand Core Azure Services (30-35%) |
Understand the core Azure architectural components
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| 3. Understand Security, Privacy, Compliance, and Trust (25-30%) |
Understand securing network connectivity in Azure
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| 4. Understand Azure Pricing and Support (25-30%) |
Understand Azure subscriptions
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Study Notes
| 1. Understand Cloud Concepts (15-20%) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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High Availability (HA) The ability of the application to continue running in a healthy state, without significant downtime. By "healthy state," we mean the application is responsive, and users can connect to the application and interact with it. Scalability Increase or decrease the resources and services used based on the demand or workload at any given time. Vertical Scaling (aka "scaling up) - add more resources to existing servers. Horizontal Scaling (aka "scaling out) - add more servers. Vertical Scaling (aka "scaling up") The process of adding resources to increase the power of an existing server (e.g. adding a faster CPU, additional CPUs, more memory). Horizontal Scaling (aka "scaling out") The process of adding more servers that function together as one unit (e.g. adding more servers). Elasticity Automatically add or remove resources based on demand. Cloud Agility Cloud agility is the ability to rapidly change an IT infrastructure in order to adapt to the evolving needs of the business (e.g. if your service peaks one month, you can scale to demand and pay a larger bill for the month. If the following month the demand drops, you can reduce the used resources and be charged less). Fault Tolerance Redundancy is often built into cloud services architecture so if one component fails, a backup component takes its place. This is referred to as fault tolerance and it ensures that your customers aren't impacted when an unexpected accident occurs. Disaster Recovery The ability to recover from rare but major incidents: non-transient, wide-scale failures, such as service disruption that affects an entire region. Disaster recovery includes data backup and archiving, and may include manual intervention, such as restoring a database from backup. Economies of Scale Economies of scale is the ability to do things more efficiently or at a lower-cost per unit when operating at a larger scale (e.g. the ability to acquire hardware at a lower cost than if a single user or smaller business were purchasing it, cloud providers can also make deals with local governments and utilities to get tax savings, lower pricing on power, cooling, and high-speed network connectivity between sites). Capital Expenditure (CapEx) CapEx is the spending of money on physical infrastructure up front, and then deducting that expense from your tax bill over time. CapEx is an upfront cost, which has a value that reduces over time. Operational Expenditure (OpEx) OpEx is spending money on services or products now and being billed for them now. You can deduct this expense from your tax bill in the same year. There is no upfront cost, you pay for a service or product as you use it. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) (shared responsibility model) Infrastructure as a Service is the most flexible category of cloud services. It aims to give you complete control over the hardware that runs your application (IT infrastructure servers and virtual machines (VMs), storage, networks, and operating systems). Instead of buying hardware, with IaaS, you rent it. It's an instant computing infrastructure, provisioned and managed over the internet. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) PaaS provides an environment for building, testing, and deploying software applications. The goal of PaaS is to help you create an application quickly without managing the underlying infrastructure. For example, when deploying a web application using PaaS, you don't have to install an operating system, web server, or even system updates. PaaS is a complete development and deployment environment in the cloud. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) SaaS is software that is centrally hosted and managed for the end customer. It is usually based on an architecture where one version of the application is used for all customers, and licensed through a monthly or annual subscription. Office 365, Skype, and Dynamics CRM Online are perfect examples of SaaS software. Compare & Contrast (Responsibilities)
This is the most common deployment model. In this case, you have no local hardware to manage or keep up-to-date – everything runs on your cloud provider’s hardware. Private Cloud (2nd most common) In a private cloud, you create a cloud environment in your own datacenter and provide self-service access to compute resources to users in your organization. Hybrid Cloud (stepping stone to cloud, segmenting work, cloud bursting) A hybrid cloud combines public and private clouds, allowing you to run your applications in the most appropriate location. Compare & Contrast (Advantages & Disadvantages)
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| 2. Understand Core Azure Services (30-35%) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Geography (Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa) An Azure geography is a discrete market typically containing two or more regions that preserve data residency and compliance boundaries. Region (e.g. North Europe, West Europe, Germany North, Germany West Central) A region is a geographical area on the planet containing at least one, but potentially multiple datacenters that are nearby and networked together with a low-latency network. Availability Zone (e.g. Zone 1, Zone 2, Zone 3 - within a particular region) Availability Zones are physically separate datacenters within an Azure region. Each Availability Zone is made up of one or more datacenters equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking. Availability Sets Availability Sets comprise of update and fault domains. Update Domain: When a maintenance event occurs, the update is sequenced through update domains. Fault Domain: Fault domains provide for the physical separation of a workload across different hardware in the datacenter. Hierarchy: Geography > Region > Availability Zone > Availability Set > Fault Domain/Update Domain Region Pair Each Azure region is always paired with another region within the same geography (such as US, Europe, or Asia) at least 300 miles away. This approach allows for the replication of resources (such as virtual machine storage) across a geography that helps reduce the likelihood of interruptions due to events such as natural disasters, civil unrest, power outages, or physical network outages affecting both regions at once. Resource Group Resource groups are a fundamental element of the Azure platform. A resource group is a logical container for resources deployed on Azure. Azure Resource Manager Azure Resource Manager is the interface for managing and organizing cloud resources. Think of Resource Manager as a way to deploy cloud resources. Compute
The Marketplace allows customers to find, try, purchase, and provision applications and services from hundreds of leading service providers, all certified to run on Azure. Azure Marketplace is a service on Azure that helps connect end users with Microsoft partners, independent software vendors (ISVs), and start-ups that are offering their solutions and services, which are optimized to run on Azure. Internet of Things (IoT)
Azure CLI is a cross-platform command-line program that connects to Azure and executes administrative commands on Azure resources. Cross-platform means that it can be run on Windows, Linux, or macOS. PowerShell Azure PowerShell is a module that you add to Windows PowerShell or PowerShell Core that enables you to connect to your Azure subscription and manage resources. Azure Portal The Azure portal is a website that you can access with a web browser, by going to the URL https://portal.azure.com. From here, you can interact manually with all the Azure services. The portal is a web-based administration site that lets you interact with all of your subscriptions and resources you have created. Azure Advisor Azure Advisor is a free service built into Azure that provides recommendations on high availability, security, performance, and cost. Advisor analyzes your deployed services and looks for ways to improve your environment across those four areas. |
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| 3. Understand Security, Privacy, Compliance, and Trust (25-30%) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Azure Firewall Azure Firewall is a managed, cloud-based, network security service that protects your Azure Virtual Network resources. It is a fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability. Azure Firewall provides inbound protection for non-HTTP/S protocols. Examples of non-HTTP/S protocols include: Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), Secure Shell (SSH), and File Transfer Protocol (FTP). It also.provides outbound, network-level protection for all ports and protocols, and application-level protection for outbound HTTP/S. Azure DDoS Protection DDoS Protection leverages the scale and elasticity of Microsoft’s global network to bring DDoS mitigation capacity to every Azure region. The Azure DDoS Protection service protects your Azure applications by scrubbing traffic at the Azure network edge before it can impact your service's availability. Within a few minutes of attack detection, you are notified using Azure Monitor metrics. Network Security Group (NSG) NSGs operate at layers 3 & 4, and provide a list of allowed and denied communication to and from network interfaces and subnets. NSGs are fully customizable, and give you the ability to fully lock down network communication to and from your virtual machines. By using NSGs, you can isolate applications between environments, tiers, and services. Authentication (Who are you?) Authentication is the process of establishing the identity of a person or service looking to access a resource. It involves the act of challenging a party for legitimate credentials, and provides the basis for creating a security principal for identity and access control use. It establishes if they are who they say they are. Authorization (What are you allowed to do?) Authorization is the process of establishing what level of access an authenticated person or service has. It specifies what data they're allowed to access and what they can do with it. Azure Active Directory (Authentication, SSO, Application Management, B2B Identity Services, Device Management) Azure AD is a cloud-based identity service. It has built in support for synchronizing with your existing on-premises Active Directory or can be used stand-alone. This means that all your applications, whether on-premises, in the cloud (including Office 365), or even mobile can share the same credentials. Administrators and developers can control access to internal and external data and applications using centralized rules and policies configured in Azure AD.
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) provides additional security for your identities by requiring two or more elements for full authentication. These elements fall into three categories:
Security Center is a monitoring service that provides threat protection across all of your services both in Azure, and on-premises. Available in two tiers, Free (limited to assessments and recommendations only); Standard (full suite of security-related services including continious monitoring, threat detection and just-in-time access control) Azure Security Center - Usage Scenarios
Azure Key Vault is a secret store: a centralized cloud service for storing application secrets. Key Vault helps you control your applications' secrets by keeping them in a single central location and providing secure access, permissions control, and access logging. Microsoft Azure Information Protection (MSIP) A cloud-based solution that helps organizations classify and optionally protect documents and emails by applying labels. Analyse data flows, detect risky behaviour, track access to documents, prevent data leakage or misuse of confidential informatioon. Azure Advanced Threat Protection (Azure ATP) A cloud-based security solution that identifies, detects, and helps you investigate advanced threats, compromised identities, and malicious insider actions directed at your organization. Azure ATP is capable of detecting known malicious attacks and techniques, security issues, and risks against your network. Azure Policies Azure Policy is a service you can use to create, assign, and manage policies. These policies apply and enforce rules that your resources need to follow. These policies can enforce these rules when resources are created, and can be evaluated against existing resources to give visibility into compliance. Initiatives Initiatives work alongside policies in Azure Policy. An initiative definition is a set or group of policy definitions to help track your compliance state for a larger goal. Role-Based Access Control RBAC provides fine-grained access management for Azure resources, enabling you to grant users the specific rights they need to perform their jobs. RBAC is considered a core service and is included with all subscription levels at no cost. Resource Locks Resource locks are a setting that can be applied to any resource to block modification or deletion. Resource locks can set to either Delete or Read-only. Delete will allow all operations against the resource but block the ability to delete it. Read-only will only allow read activities to be performed against it, blocking any modification or deletion of the resource. Resource locks can be applied to subscriptions, resource groups, and to individual resources, and are inherited when applied at higher levels. Azure Monitor Azure Monitor maximizes the availability and performance of your applications by delivering a comprehensive solution for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from your cloud and on-premises environments. It helps you understand how your applications are performing and proactively identifies issues affecting them and the resources they depend on. Azure Service Health Azure Service Health is a suite of experiences that provide personalized guidance and support when issues with Azure services affect you. It can notify you, help you understand the impact of issues, and keep you updated as the issue is resolved. Azure Service Health can also help you prepare for planned maintenance and changes that could affect the availability of your resources. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) As of May 25, 2018, a European privacy law — GDPR — is in effect. GDPR imposes new rules on companies, government agencies, non-profits, and other organizations that offer goods and services to people in the European Union (EU), or that collect and analyze data tied to EU residents. The GDPR applies no matter where you are located. ISO/IEC 27018 Microsoft is the first cloud provider to have adopted the ISO/IEC 27018 code of practice, covering the processing of personal information by cloud service providers. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) NIST CSF is a voluntary Framework that consists of standards, guidelines, and best practices to manage cybersecurity-related risks. Microsoft cloud services have undergone independent, third-party Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Moderate and High Baseline audits, and are certified according to the FedRAMP standards. Additionally, through a validated assessment performed by the Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST), a leading security and privacy standards development and accreditation organization, Office 365 is certified to the objectives specified in the NIST CSF. Microsoft Privacy Statement The Microsoft privacy statement explains what personal data Microsoft processes, how Microsoft processes it, and for what purposes. Trust Center Trust Center is a website resource containing information and details about how Microsoft implements and supports security, privacy, compliance, and transparency in all Microsoft cloud products and services. The Trust Center is an important part of the Microsoft Trusted Cloud Initiative, and provides support and resources for the legal and compliance community. Service Trust Portal The Service Trust Portal (STP) hosts the Compliance Manager service, and is the Microsoft public site for publishing audit reports and other compliance-related information relevant to Microsoft’s cloud services. Compliance Manager Compliance Manager is a workflow-based risk assessment dashboard within the Trust Portal that enables you to track, assign, and verify your organization's regulatory compliance activities related to Microsoft professional services and Microsoft cloud services such as Office 365, Dynamics 365, and Azure. Azure Government Services Azure Government is a cloud environment specifically built to meet compliance and security requirements for US government. Physically separated instance of Microsoft Azure, specifically for U.S. Government, meets complex compliance standards, designed to exceed U.S. Government requirements. |
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| 4. Understand Azure Pricing and Support (25-30%) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Azure Account An Azure account is tied to a specific identity and holds information like: Name, email, and contact preferences; Billing information such as a credit card. An Azure account is what you use to sign in to the Azure website and administer or deploy services. Every Azure account is associated with one or more subscriptions. Azure Free Account
An Azure subscription is a logical container used to provision resources in Microsoft Azure. It holds the details of all your resources like virtual machines, databases, etc. Azure Subscription - Use and Options Azure offers free and paid subscription options to suit different needs and requirements. The most commonly used subscriptions are:
A Zone is a geographical grouping of Azure Regions for billing purposes. The following zones exist and include the listed countries (regions) listed.
The Azure pricing calculator is a free web-based tool that allows you to input Azure services and modify properties and options of the services. It outputs the costs per service and total cost for the full estimate. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator If you are starting to migrate to the cloud, a useful tool you can use to predict your cost savings is the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculator. TCO helps you estimate cost savings realized by mirating to Azure. Best Practices for Minimizing Azure Costs
Azure Cost Management is another free, built-in Azure tool that can be used to gain greater insights into where your cloud money is going. You can see historical breakdowns of what services you are spending your money on and how it is tracking against budgets that you have set. You can set budgets, schedule reports, and analyze your cost areas. Support Plans
Azure Portal > Help + Support > New Support Request Knowledge Center The Azure Knowledge Center is a searchable database that contains answers to common support questions, from a community of Azure experts, developers, customers, and users. You can browse through all responses within the Azure Knowledge Center. Find specific solutions by entering keyword search terms into the text-entry field and further refine your search results by selecting products or tags from the lists provided by two dropdown lists. Service Level Agreement (SLA) Formal documents called Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) capture the specific terms that define the performance standards that apply to Azure.
Determine SLA for a particular Azure product or service There are three key characteristics of SLAs for Azure products and services:
This means that an Azure feature is available to * specific* Azure customers for evaluation purposes. This is typically by invite only and issued directly by the product team responsible for the feature or service. Public Preview This means that an Azure feature is available to all Azure customers for evaluation purposes. These previews can be turned on through the preview features page as detailed below. How to Access Preview Features You can activate specific preview features through the preview features page (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/preview/). This page lists the preview features that are available for evaluation. To preview a feature, select the Try it button for the relevant feature. Another preview area you can try is the next version of the Azure portal. Use the URL https://preview.portal.azure.com General Availability (GA) Once a feature has been evaluated and tested successfully, it might be released to customers as part of Azure's default product set. This release is referred to as General Availability (GA). Monitor Feature Updates The Azure portal "What's New" link on the ? help menu provides a list of recent updates you can periodically check to see what's changed in Azure. Alternatively, you can use the Azure Updates page (https://azure.microsoft.com/updates/). |