Month: April 2022

Study Guide for AZ-305: Part 12 –Design for high availability

Hello friends!

Thank you for following series of blog posts on this Study Guide for AZ-305!

This is the final (Part 12/12) of blog post series to help you get ready for the latest AZ-305 exam.

Feel free to check the previous posts listed below, if you did not look into them yet 🙂

Table of content (blog series)

What is high availability ?

High availability (HA) is an important quality measure of computing infrastructure that is mission-critical for the customer facing applications and overall organization’s systems. High availability permits the computing infrastructure to continue functioning, even when certain components fail.

Thus, cloud solution providers (CSPs) are expected to deliver certain measures and guarantees to claim the high availability of the offered services.

Image showing availability zones that protect against localized disasters and regional or large geography disasters by using another region.
Azure Regions and Availability zones

The diagram below, equates Service Level Agreement (SLA) percentual to actual downtime, measured in seconds per week, month and year.

Measuring SLA table

How to achieve High Availability in Azure?

Azure infrastructure is composed of geographies, regions, and availability zones which in turn limits the impact of a physical server or Sofware update failure and therefore limit potential impact to customer applications and data.

The Azure availability zones construct was developed to provide a software and networking solution to protect against datacenter failures and to provide increased high availability (HA) to the Azure customers.

Infographic: Reliability with Microsoft Azure

Availability zones are playing very important role in designing your HA solution to meet customer needs. Please, read more about the Azure Regions and availability zones here.

High Availability in Azure: App Service, Function Apps | mithun shanbhag's blog

Part 12: Design for high availability

The references below are taken from official Microsoft docs and focused on designing HA solutions in Azure. You could also find it helpful to check the Microsoft docs and learning paths with [Tutorials] below 😉.

This collection of links is gathered with a focus on the exam objectives of the AZ-305 certification exam.

Regions and availability zones
Azure geographies
Azure services that support availability zones
[Article] Enabling Data Residency and Data Protection in Microsoft Azure Regions
Azure reliability Overview
Build solutions for high availability using availability zones

Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework
Reliability Patterns
High availability and disaster recovery scenarios for IaaS apps
Infographic: Reliability with Microsoft Azure
[Tutorial] Design for high availability
[Tutorial] Configure virtual machine availability

[Tutorial] Describe high availability and disaster recovery strategies
[Tutorial] Monitor the usage, performance, and availability of resources with Azure Monitor
[Tutorial] Plan and implement a high availability and disaster recovery environment
[Tutorial] Deploy highly available solutions by using Azure SQL

SUMMARY

This is it folk, we did it!!!

Thank you for visiting the AZ-305 Study Guide and checking the Part 12: Design a solution for backup and disaster recovery and completing your learning journey.

Looking forward and ask for feedback.

Study Guide AZ-305: Part 11 – Design for business continuity, backup and disaster recovery

Hi Cloud Marathoners!

Welcome to the 11th blog post (Part 11/12) of the Azure Architect series to help you get ready for the AZ-305 exam. This post starts the last section of this exam – Design Business Continuity Solutions.

And please feel free to check the previous sections & blog posts listed below if you landed on this page for the first time 🙂

Table of content (blog series)

What is Business Continuity Solutions ?

Simply put, a Business Continuity (aka, BC) solution is based on a plan 🙂
A BC plan is a predefined approach and procedure for how a business will continue to run when dealing with an emergency.

In another words, it is a process of creating systems of prevention and recovery to deal with any potential threats to your company.  These threats could be a natural disasters, such as hurricanes, fires, floods, power outages or an unintended misconfiguration of a system. It could also be a malicious cyberattack as well.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is where-is-server-it-is-crashed-w-backup.jpg

There are many benefits provided by BC planning and Disaster Recovering (aka, DR) planning to your organization when they are drafted and approved across the board, such as:

  • Improved decision-making
  • Risk Management
  • People and Property Protection
  • Morale boost 🙂

The “Morale boost” element is very important piece, because when employees know plans are in place, they may feel safer. Moreover, it does not just boost morale, but potentially increases the business value perception to customers who recognize the high preparedness and responsibilities of the company.

Top 13 Priorities for a Strong Business Continuity Plan

What are the Backups and Disaster Recovery solutions in Azure?

In the case of service disruption or accidental deletion or corruption of data, recover your business services in a timely and orchestrated manner. The Azure backup and disaster recovery solution is simple to architect, cloud-native, highly available, and resilient.

Backup and Disaster Recovery in azure

Azure Backup and Disaster Recovery (DR) services are important services that help you to achieve your company’s reliability goals for all of the system workloads in the cloud or on-premises. It is very important when CSP (Cloud Solution Provider) prioritizes transparency and keep it’s customers informed during and after the service issues.

You could easily target following goals when planning to deliver your Backup and DR services to your most critical customers:

  • Simplified Management across environments
  • Azure built-in security controls
  • Reduced complexity and cost
  • Extent solutions to Azure with our partners
Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery with Microsoft Azure - PEI

Part 11: Design a business continuity solution

The references below are taken from official Microsoft docs and focused on designing solutions in Azure. You could also find it helpful to check the Microsoft docs and learning paths with [Tutorials] below 😉.

This collection of links is gathered with a focus on the exam objectives of the AZ-305 certification exam.

What is the Azure Backup service?
Overview of operational backup for Azure Blobs
About Azure file share backup
Back up Azure file shares
Full Database Backups (SQL Server)
Differential Backups (SQL Server)

Enable and manage soft delete for containers
Enable soft delete for blobs
Point-in-time restore for block blobs
Lock resources to prevent unexpected changes

Overview of share snapshots for Azure Files
Recover using automated database backups – Azure SQL Database & SQL Managed Instance
Long-term retention – Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance
Auto-failover groups overview & best practices (Azure SQL Database)

An overview of Azure VM backup
About Site Recovery
Azure Site Recovery documentation
Azure Backup service documentation

Recovery Services vaults overview
Azure to Azure disaster recovery architecture
Support matrix for Azure VM disaster recovery between Azure regions
[Tutorial] : Set up disaster recovery for Azure VMs

[Tutorial] : Disaster recovery and backup
[Tutorial] : Design your site recovery solution in Azure
[Tutorial] : Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework – Reliability
[Tutorial] : Describe high availability and disaster recovery strategies
[Tutorial] : Protect your virtual machines by using Azure Backup

How to restore Azure VM data in Azure portal
Recover files from Azure virtual machine backup

[Blog] : Understanding Azure Availability Sets and Availability Zones
Availability options for Azure Virtual Machines
Regions and availability zones

SUMMARY

Thank you for visiting the AZ-305 Study Guide and checking the Part 11: Design a business continuity solution.

The next blog post will be continuation with Part 12: Design a solution for backup and disaster recovery.

Study Guide AZ-305: Part 10 – Design a data integration solution

Hi Cloud Marathoners!

Welcome to the 10th blog post (Part 10/12) of the Azure Architect series to help you get ready for the AZ-305 exam. This post finalizes the third section of this exam – Design Data Storage Solutions.

Our next post will be discussing the last section of this exam – Design Business Continuity Solutions.

And please feel free to check the previous blog posts listed below if you landed on this page for the first time 🙂

Table of content (blog series)

What is the Data Integration ?

It is very natural to wonder – “what is the meaning of data integration”?
In a nutshell, it is a combination of differently sourced data for a high-level overview and analysis. In other words, “Data Integration” – is a common term referring to the requirement to combine data from multiple separate business systems into a single unified view, also known as a single view of the truth.

This unified view is typically stored in a central data repository known as a data warehouse.

Data integration can serve your organization some short- and long-term benefits, including the followings:

✔️ Better Data
✔️ Better Collaboration
✔️ Fast connections between Data Storage
✔️ Increased efficiency and ROI
✔️ Better customer and partner experiences
✔️ A more comprehensive view of your business

Trinamix Cloud Integration solutions with third party software and Oracle Cloud SaaS applications. - Trinamix

What are the Data Integration solutions in Microsoft Azure?

Application integration often requires connecting multiple independent systems, often in complex ways. This white paper explains how the components of Azure Integration Services—API Management, Logic Apps, Service Bus, and Event Grid—work together to provide a complete solution for integrating both cloud and on-premises applications.

Azure Integration Services


There are several Azure services such as Azure Functions, Azure Data Factory, and Azure Logic Apps are just a few of the services that can help you efficiently solve complex data challenges.


Check out the Overview of Data Integration in Azure from this official resource.

Basic enterprise integration on Azure - Azure Architecture Center | Microsoft Docs

Part 10: Design a data integration solution

The references below are taken from official Microsoft docs and focused on designing Data Integration solutions in Azure. You could also find it helpful to check the Microsoft docs and learning paths with [Tutorials] below 😉.

This collection of links is gathered with a focus on the exam objectives of the AZ-305 certification exam.

What is Azure Logic Apps?
Azure Logic Apps documentation
What is Azure Service Bus?
Azure Service Bus Messaging documentation
[Tutorials] Azure Logic Apps on Microsoft Learn
[Tutorials] Azure Service Bus on Microsoft Learn
Introduction to Azure Functions
Azure Functions documentation
[Tutorials] Azure Functions on Microsoft Learn

About API Management
API Management documentation
[Tutorials] API Management on Microsoft learn
What is Azure Event Grid?
Azure Event Grid documentation
[Tutorials] Azure Event Grid on Microsoft Learn

Azure Data Factory
Azure Data Factory documentation
[Tutorials] Azure Data Factory on Microsoft Learn
Introduction to Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2
Overview of Azure Stream Analytics Cluster
Azure Stream Analytics documentation

Transact-SQL features supported in Azure Synapse SQL
Introducing data virtualization with PolyBase
Azure Data Lake
Analytics end-to-end with Azure Synapse
[Tutorial] Implement a Data Streaming Solution with Azure Streaming Analytics
Azure Synapse SQL architecture
What is Azure Synapse Analytics?

[Tutorial] Explore Azure database and analytics services
[Tutorial] Data integration at scale with Azure Data Factory or Azure Synapse Pipeline
What is Azure Databricks?
[Blog] 4 common analytics scenarios to build business agility

SUMMARY

Thank you for visiting the AZ-305 Study Guide and checking the Part 10: Design a data integration solution.

The next blog post will be continuation with Part 11: Design a business continuity solution.

Study Guide AZ-305: Part 9 – Design a data storage solution for relational data

Hi Cloud Marathoners!

Welcome to the next blog post (Part 9/12) from the Az-305 series to help you get ready for the AZ-305 exam.

Please, check the previous blog posts listed below, if you landed on this page for the first time 🙂

Table of content (blog series)

What is a relational data?

A relational data is a set of data that have a certain pre-defined structure. Once this data structure (aka, data schema) is enforced on data then we can start talking about a relational database.

Thus, a relational database (DB) is a collection of data items with some pre-defined relationships. These data items are organized as a set of tables with columns and rows. The tables are used to hold a similar type of information object to be represented in the database.

Explore fundamental relational data concepts - Learn | Microsoft Docs

WHAT is relational data storage in azure?

In Microsoft Azure, relational data could be stored in different forms and shapes. The early approach of storing and running relational databases has been accomplished through Virtual Machine (VM) instances. However, this approach brought a certain operational overhead and required specialized skills within the team to manage those VMs properly.

Nowadays, we could run the relational databases as a managed service (aka, PAAS) in the cloud. In other words, Microsoft Azure helped to offload operational overhead associated with the management of VMs that are assigned to run your database services. All this became possible by the introduction of managed relational Azure Database services like SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB.

In this study guide, you will learn about these managed, relational DB services in depth.

Microsoft's Azure SQL Database named among the top 3 databases of 2020 - MSPoweruser

Part 9: Design a data storage solution for relational data

The references below are taken from official Microsoft docs and focused on designing Data Storage solutions for Relational data in Azure. You could also find it helpful to check the Microsoft docs and learning paths with [Tutorials] below 😉.

This collection of links is gathered with a focus on the exam objectives of the AZ-305 certification exam.

Elastic pools help you manage and scale multiple databases in Azure SQL Database
DTU-based purchasing model overview
Scale elastic pool resources in Azure SQL Database
Always On availability group on SQL Server on Azure VMs
Transparent data encryption (TDE)
Dynamic Data Masking
Auditing for Azure SQL Database and Azure Synapse Analytics
SQL vulnerability assessment helps you identify database vulnerabilities

[Tutorial] Explore relational data in Azure
[Tutorial] Provision Azure relational database services
[Tutorial] Query relational data in Azure
[Tutorial] Design a data storage solution for relational data
[Tutorial] Provision an Azure SQL database to store application data
[Tutorial]: Manually configure an availability group (SQL Server on Azure VMs)

[Tutorial] Work with relational data in Azure
[Tutorial] Introduction to Azure Database for MySQL
[Tutorial] Introduction to Azure Database for MariaDB
[Tutorial] Create and connect to an Azure Database for PostgreSQL
[Tutorial] Migrate your relational data stored in SQL Server to Azure SQL Database

SUMMARY

Thank you for visiting the AZ-305 Study Guide and checking the Part 9: Design a data storage solution for relational data.

The next blog post will be continuation with Part 10: Design a data integration solution.