The blueprint
A mock exam here has 40 questions in 45 minutes, split across the domains in the same proportions as the official exam guide. The official pass mark is 700 of 1,000 (scaled). FixOps scores practice against a target of 72%.
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01
Cloud Concepts
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02
Azure Architecture and Services
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03
Azure Management and Governance
Sample questions
Three of the 10 questions in the free diagnostic. Open one to see the answer and why.
Which statement best defines cloud computing?
- Buying servers and placing them in a company-owned data centre
- Running every application on employees' own laptops
- Storing backups on tape in a second office
- Using computing services delivered over the internet
Answer: Using computing services delivered over the internet. Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services such as servers, storage, databases and networking over the internet, paid for as they are used. Owning servers, running everything on laptops and keeping tapes are all forms of running your own infrastructure.
Under the shared responsibility model, which item is always the customer's responsibility, whatever service type is used?
- The information and data stored in the cloud
- The physical data centre
- The physical hosts
- The physical network
Answer: The information and data stored in the cloud. The customer always remains responsible for its data, for the devices that connect to the cloud, and for its accounts and identities. The physical data centre, network and hosts are always the cloud provider's responsibility.
A bank must keep customer records in its own data centre for legal reasons but wants to run its public website in Azure. Which cloud model does this describe?
- Hybrid cloud
- Multi-tenant cloud
- Private cloud
- Public cloud
Answer: Hybrid cloud. A hybrid cloud uses a private environment and a public cloud together, letting an organisation decide where each workload runs, for example to meet legal requirements. Using only one of the two would not satisfy both needs, and multi-tenant describes how resources are shared rather than a cloud model.
Revision notes: Cloud Concepts
The notes for one domain, free to read here and in the app. FixOps Pro has them for all 3 domains.
What cloud computing is, who is responsible for what, the public, private and hybrid models, the benefits the cloud brings, and the difference between IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.
Cloud computing and its models
- Cloud computing delivers compute, storage, networking and software over the internet, paid for as it is used.
- A public cloud is owned by a provider and shared by customers; a private cloud is used by one organisation; a hybrid cloud connects the two.
- Multi-cloud means using more than one public cloud provider.
- Azure Arc manages resources that run outside Azure; Azure VMware Solution runs VMware workloads in Azure.
Shared responsibility
- The provider always looks after the physical data centre, network and hosts.
- The customer always looks after their data, the devices that connect, and the accounts and identities.
- In between it depends on the service type: with IaaS the customer manages the operating system; with PaaS the provider does; with SaaS the provider manages nearly everything.
Consumption-based pricing
- Capital expenditure is money spent up front on assets; operational expenditure is paid as services are used.
- The cloud is an operational expenditure: no up-front cost, pay for what you use, stop paying when you stop using.
- You do not have to predict capacity years ahead or run your own data centres.
Benefits
- High availability: services stay reachable, backed by service-level agreements.
- Scalability: vertical scaling makes a resource bigger, horizontal scaling adds more of them. Elasticity does it automatically with demand.
- Reliability is the ability to recover from failure; predictability covers both performance and cost.
- Security and governance: templates and policies keep deployments to the organisation's standards.
- Manageability: resources are managed through the portal, the command line, APIs and templates, and can scale, heal and alert automatically.
Service types
- IaaS rents infrastructure such as virtual machines and networks: the most control and the most to manage.
- PaaS provides a managed platform for building applications, such as Azure App Service and Azure SQL Database.
- SaaS is finished software used over the internet, such as Microsoft 365.
- Lift-and-shift migrations usually land on IaaS; new applications often start on PaaS.
Easy to mix up
- Scaling up (vertical) makes one machine bigger; scaling out (horizontal) adds machines.
- High availability is about staying up; reliability is about recovering; scalability is about handling more load.
- With IaaS you patch the operating system; with PaaS you do not.
- CapEx is paid up front and owned; OpEx is paid as you go.