AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Exam Prep in 3 Days!

Understand cloud computing as on-demand delivery of IT resources over the internet from cloud providers, enabling you to spin up virtual machines, databases, IoT, and AI services with pay-as-you-go.

Understand the shared responsibility model in cloud computing, where security tasks are divided between the consumer and the provider, with data security, IAM, and configuration management handled by you.

Understand cloud service types—IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS—and how the shared responsibility model shifts control from customers to cloud service providers, depending on the use case.

Explore infrastructure as a service, a flexible cloud model that shifts the data center to the provider while you control the OS, networks, applications, identities, and data, enabling lift-and-shift migrations.

Explore platform as a service (PaaS), a middle ground between IaaS and SaaS with balanced responsibilities, enabling development and go-live while the provider handles infrastructure.

Explain software as a service as the complete cloud model, where the provider handles infrastructure while you manage data, applications, and access, with examples like Gmail, Microsoft 365, and iCloud.

Define private cloud as a single-organization, dedicated infrastructure with isolation, customization, and data security, and compare it to public cloud and hybrid cloud for compliant industries.

The public cloud model is owned by third-party providers and shared among many tenants over the internet. Users access services via a web browser and pay for what they use.

Explore hybrid cloud models that combine public and private clouds to balance regulatory data sovereignty, security, flexibility, and scalability, with data mobility across environments.

Define multi cloud as using multiple public providers like Azure, AWS, and GCP to avoid reliance on one platform and improve visibility with Azure Arc.

Azure Arc unifies management across on-prem, multi-cloud, and edge environments from a single portal, enabling unified governance, compliance, and resource visibility. Manage resources as native Azure with governance and automation.

Describe the consumption-based model in public cloud, contrasting CapEx for on-prem with OpEx pay-as-you-go, scales resources up or down as demand shifts, and pays for what you use.

Discover how cloud scalability enables on-demand resource provisioning with a consumption-based model in Azure. Understand vertical scaling up and horizontal scaling out, and when to use each to meet demand.

Discover how Azure's decentralized design prevents a single point of failure by distributing data centers worldwide, enabling automatic failover and quick recovery for reliable, continuous operation.

Learn how cloud predictability drives reliable performance and cost control through auto scaling, load balancing, and high availability, with SLAs, budgets, and the pricing calculator.

Explore manageability of cloud and in the cloud with Azure, showing manual web portal deployment or automated infrastructure as code, via command line interface or APIs, plus monitoring and alerts.

Azure cloud security features protect data with encryption and access controls, enable threat detection and regulatory compliance, and support privacy, audits, and auditable governance.

Understand the high level Azure hierarchy from account to subscriptions and resource groups. Also review the free Azure accounts and signup requirements.

Explore how Azure builds physical infrastructure through global data centers and dedicated power, networking, and cooling, enabling disaster recovery and proximity-based latency via regions and availability zones.

Explore how Azure availability zones group data centers within a region to deliver fault tolerance and disaster recovery, with independent cooling, power, and networking across zones.

Choose a region to meet data residency and compliance, since regions are data centers connected by low-latency networks. Note some resources are region-specific, while global services don't require a region.

Explore region pairs in Azure, linking regions with multiple availability zones to provide backups, fallback, and data residency within a geography.

Azure sovereign regions are isolated instances for compliance and regulatory purposes, operated by screened US personnel. China East and North are run by 21Vianet under a Microsoft partnership.

Resource groups are containers for resources; each resource belongs to a group and can be moved between groups. Policies affect resources, groups cannot be nested, and deletion removes group's resources.

Understand subscriptions as the parent of resource groups for department-based management and billing. See how access controls via Azure AD and RBAC protect resources.

Manage multiple subscriptions with management groups that serve as parents, inheriting policies and role-based access control across all child resources for scalable governance and visibility, nestable up to six levels.

Explore Azure virtual machines as an infrastructure-as-a-service solution, enabling scalable, pay-as-you-go hosting of apps and workloads with predefined images, via portal, CLI, or ARM templates.

Azure virtual machine scale sets automatically create and manage a group of identical load balanced virtual machines, enabling centralized configuration, updates, high availability, fault tolerance, and auto scaling.

Explore Azure virtual machine availability sets to achieve high availability and fault tolerance by using fault domains (power sources and network switches) and update domains to safely stagger updates.

Discover Azure virtual desktops, a cloud based solution that securely delivers remote access to cloud hosted Windows desktops via a web browser from anywhere.

Explore Azure containers and how lightweight, isolated processes share the host os kernel to run multiple app instances on one machine; Docker, microservices, container instances, container apps, and Kubernetes service.

Explore Azure container instances, container apps, and Azure Kubernetes Service to run and manage containers as platform as a service. Learn auto scaling, load balancing, and reduced container management overhead.

Explore how to deploy and run web apps, APIs, and mobile backends with Azure App Service, featuring autoscaling, high availability, and integrated CI/CD across languages.

Explore Azure Functions, an event-driven, serverless compute option that requires no virtual machines or containers and charges only for the cpu time your code executes, while scaling automatically.

Define Azure virtual networks (vnets) to isolate resources and organize them with subnets. Establish connectivity, security, and traffic control for resources across Azure, internet, and on prem.

Learn how Azure resources communicate through vnets using private service endpoints for SQL and storage, and vnet peering to connect networks across regions without the public internet.

Explore how VNet communication with on-prem resources occurs through point-to-site and site-to-site VPNs, establishing encrypted tunnels between on-prem networks and the Azure virtual network, and preview Azure Express Route.

Azure ExpressRoute creates a private, dedicated connection from on-prem networks to Azure, bypassing the public internet for lower latency, higher security, and more reliable performance.

Learn how to use network security groups as virtual walls to filter traffic, allowing or denying access based on source and destination IP addresses, ports, and protocols.

Explore Azure DNS, a global dynamic anycast service that translates website names to ip addresses for fast domain resolution, and note that registration requires a registrar such as GoDaddy.

Explore how an Azure storage account acts as a unique namespace with an endpoint to store and access data from files, images, logs, and backups via http or https.

Understand locally redundant storage, which replicates data three times within the primary region. This cheapest option is least secure and creates a single point of failure.

Explore zone redundant storage (zrs) in azure, copying data across three availability zones within one region to achieve 12 nines durability and keep data available in the same country.

Learn how Azure region pairs enable secondary regions paired with a primary region to enable automatic failover, improve durability, and manage recovery point objective with read access options like GRS.

Replicate data across two Azure regions with geo-redundant storage, synchronously in the primary region and asynchronously to the secondary, boosting durability from 12 to 16 nines.

Explain geo zone redundant storage (gzrs) by distributing three copies across three availability zones in the primary region and mirroring them to a separate secondary region, achieving maximum durability.

Explore Azure blob storage as cloud object storage for unstructured and structured data, with hot, cool, cold, and archive tiers to optimize cost and access.

Azure files acts as a cloud filing cabinet, with folders and files accessible anywhere via SMB or NFS, across Windows, macOS, and Linux, featuring RBAC and backups for hybrid use.

Discover how Azure File Sync centralizes your file shares in Azure, enabling bidirectional, multi-site synchronization with local caches and cloud tiering for efficient access.

Explore Azure queues as an asynchronous backlog that decouples components and enables resilience. See how 64 KB messages, HTTP/HTTPS protocols, and time-to-live support millions of queued tasks and event-driven processing.

Azure disks provide persistent storage for virtual machines, ensuring data stays after shutdowns. Choose standard or managed disks, with Azure handling replication, backups, and availability as the VM storage backbone.

Azure Tables provide a schema-less NoSQL store for devices and users data as key-value pairs, offering scalable, pay-as-you-go storage with storage accounts, tables, and entities.

Use Azure Migrate to assess on-prem workloads, map dependencies, and right-size before migrating to Azure, via discovery and assessment, server migration, and database and web app migration tools.

Learn about Azure data box, an 80 TB encrypted offline transfer device shipped to your data center to copy data to and from Azure, ideal for migrations and disaster recovery.

Master AzCopy, a command-line tool to copy data to and from Azure Storage and other clouds, with unidirectional sync, enabling automation, scripting, and seamless workflow integration.

Use Azure Storage Explorer to manage blob storage, queues, storage files, adls, and table storage with a cross-platform GUI. Connect multiple subscriptions and perform drag-and-drop uploads and downloads.

Azure Active Directory serves as the foundation for authentication and access management in the cloud, enabling single sign-on, hybrid identities, device management, and role-based access control with app integration.

Learn how to connect and synchronize on-prem active directories with Azure Active Directory using Azure AD Connect, enabling single sign-on and multifactor authentication across cloud and on-prem resources.

Learn to use Azure Active Directory Domain Services to extend your on-premises credentials to the cloud without managing domain controllers, applying the same policies and authentication methods.

Explore how Azure Active Directory enables secure authentication and single sign-on across apps, reducing the number of passwords and boosting productivity.

Strengthen account security with multi-factor authentication by requiring something you know, something you have, and something you are, such as a one-time password, an authenticator app, or biometrics.

Azure Passwordless offers secure sign-in by enrolling your device and notifying you on login attempts, authenticating with Face ID or fingerprint, with Windows Hello as a key option for login.

Explore how the Microsoft Authenticator app delivers passwordless login with a random one-time code and biometric verification, and how it compares to Google Authenticator in a BYOD context.

Explore external identities and guests in Azure Active Directory for business-to-business collaboration, inviting partners to access resources securely with controlled access through guest accounts.

Learn how B2B Direct Connect creates mutual trust between partner and your Azure Active Directory, enabling external collaborators to log in with their own credentials and collaborate in Teams channels.

Master Azure AD B2C for external identities in customer-facing apps, enabling social logins, customizable sign-in, access to your Azure environment, and MFA with self-service password reset.

Guard your cloud by applying conditional access rules that evaluate device health, location, user identity, and app sensitivity, block unusual requests, and enforce MFA with limited access.

Master Azure RBAC and least privilege by assigning owner, contributor, or reader roles, and manage scope, inheritance, custom roles, and auditing for governance.

Learn the zero trust model: never trust, always verify; enforce identity-centric access with MFA, apply least privileges, implement micro-segmentation, and continuously monitor and verify trust across resources.

Defense in depth uses layered security across physical, identity and access, perimeter, network, compute, and application layers to slow attackers and protect data confidentiality and integrity.

Monitor security posture across on-prem, cloud, and multi-cloud deployments with Defender for Cloud, using a log analytics agent to aggregate data and deliver continuous assessments, recommendations, and alerts.

Understand how subscription type, resource type, virtual machine size, licensing, and access tier shape costs. Explore pay-as-you-go costs, region geography, replication, data transfer, and archiving options to optimize Azure spend.

Explore how the Azure pricing calculator, a free web tool, estimates monthly costs for Azure services like virtual machines and databases before deployment across configurations and regions.

Explore the Azure pricing calculator to estimate hourly or monthly costs across Azure services by region, Linux vs Windows licensing, and vm series such as D2 v3 with reserved instances.

Use the Azure total cost of ownership calculator to estimate savings when migrating on-prem workloads to Azure, by inputting your current infrastructure.

Demonstrates the Azure TCO calculator to estimate cost savings of migrating on-prem infrastructure to Azure, by inputting servers, SQL Server workloads, storage, and networking, and exporting management reports.

Explore how the Azure cost management tool provides visibility into cloud spending across resources and departments, with budgets, forecasting, analysis, and optimization.

Explore how Azure tags categorize resources like virtual machines and databases to support cost allocation, resource management, and RBAC access control, using portal, CLI, ARM templates, or REST APIs.

Learn how Azure policy enforces resource rules across subscriptions and resource groups, using built-in and custom policies and policy initiatives to ensure compliance, governance, and security with monitoring and auditing.

Use Azure blueprints to create repeatable environments by packaging resources, configurations, policies, and RBAC. Assign to subscriptions for quick, compliant copies with versioning and artifacts.

Use Azure resource locks to protect critical resources. Lock types include cannot delete and read only, applied via Azure portal at resource or resource group level, unlock when needed.

Explore how the Azure service trust portal acts as a one-stop mission control for security, compliance, and privacy, delivering compliance reports, safe data centers, and privacy shields with certifications.

Explore how to interact with Azure using the portal, Azure Cloud Shell with PowerShell or CLI; deploy, manage, and automate resources via commandlets and REST API.

Explore azure resource manager (arm) as a management service that coordinates resources with json templates, groups them, defines relationships, and enables tagging for cost management via portal, sdk, or cli.

Define and automate Azure resources with ARM templates or Bicep, enabling infrastructure as code that deploys resources in parallel, delivering repeatable results through declarative, modular configurations.

Discover Azure Advisor, a cloud guru that delivers cost, operational excellence, performance, security, and reliability recommendations via portal or api, with notifications and filtering.

Monitor your multi cloud environment with Azure Monitor and Log Analytics, collecting metrics and logs from VMs, containers, and apps to create dashboards, gain real time insights, and receive alerts.

Explore how Azure Monitor alerts track metrics, set thresholds (such as 85% capacity), and notify via action groups to trigger corrective actions.

Explore Azure Application Insights for web apps, using an SDK or agent to monitor KPIs like response rate, page load, and demography or geography with rich dashboards and end-to-end tracing.

Learn how Azure Service Health acts as a doctor for your resources, detailing Azure status, service health, and resource health across regions and the global infrastructure.