The ________ helps you estimate the cost savings of operating your solution on Azure over time, instead of in your on-premises datacenter.
The term __________ is commonly used in finance involves identifying and understanding all costs related to operating a technology capability including software licenses and hardware. These costs include electricity, network maintenance, and IT labor.
total cost of ownership
True or false: You need an Azure subscription to work with the TCO Calculator.
False. You don’t need an Azure subscription to work with the TCO Calculator.
____________ can save you money by reusing those licenses on Azure.
__________ provides you with access to Azure resources, such as virtual machines (VMs), storage, and databases. The types of resources you use impact your monthly bill.
Azure subscription
True or false: Azure offers both free and paid subscription options to fit your needs and requirements.
True
Name the 3 types of Azure subscriptions.
- Free trial
- Pay-as-you-go
- Member offers
The _________ subscription provides you with 12 months of popular services at no cost, a credit to explore any Azure service for 30 days, and more than 25 services that are always at no cost. Your Azure services are disabled when the trial ends or when your credit expires for paid products, unless you upgrade to a paid subscription.
Free trial
A ___________ subscription subscription enables you to pay for what you use by attaching a credit or debit card to your account. Organizations can apply for volume discounts and prepaid invoicing.
pay-as-you-go
Visual Studio subscribers, Microsoft Partner Network members, Microsoft for Startups members, and Microsoft Imagine members license holders provides you with credits for your Azure account and reduced rates on Azure services in what subscription type?
Member offers
Name the three main ways to purchase services on Azure.
- Through an Enterprise Agreement
- Directly from the web
- Through a Cloud Solution Provider
Larger customers, known as enterprise customers, can sign an _____________ with Microsoft. This agreement commits them to spending a predetermined amount on Azure services over a period of three years. The service fee is typically paid annually. These customers receive the best customized pricing based on the kinds and amounts of services you plan on using.
Enterprise Agreement
Your company purchases Azure services directly from the Azure portal website and pay standard prices. You’re billed monthly, as a credit card payment or through an invoice. This purchasing method is known as ________.
Web Direct
True or false: A Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) is a Microsoft Partner who helps you build solutions on top of Azure. Your CSP bills you for your Azure usage at a price they determine. They also answer your support questions and escalate them to Microsoft, as needed.
True
True or false: You can bring up, or provision, Azure resources only from the Azure portal. The Azure portal arranges products and services by category. You select the services that fit your needs. Your account is billed according to Azure’s “pay for what you use” model.
False. You can bring up, or provision, Azure resources from the Azure portal or from the command line. The Azure portal arranges products and services by category. You select the services that fit your needs. Your account is billed according to Azure’s “pay for what you use” model.
Name the six primary factors that affect costs of Azure services.
- Resource type
- Services
- Location
- Bandwidth
- Reserved Instances
- Azure Hybrid Use Benefit
When you provision a resource, Azure creates ___________ to track usage of that resource. Azure uses these meters to generate a usage record that’s later used to help calculate your bill.
meters
One of the six primary factors affecting costs is __________ so the usage that a meter tracks and the number of meters associated with a resource depend on this.
Resource type
True or false: Costs are resource-specific so the usage that a meter tracks and the number of meters associated with a resource depend on the resource type.
True
One of the size primary factors affecting costs are ____________ as Azure usage rates and billing periods can differ between Enterprise, Web Direct, and CSP customers.
Services
One of the size primary factors affecting costs ____________ refers to the fact that the Azure infrastructure is globally distributed, and usage costs could vary as a result due to varying products, services, and resources offered.
Location
True or false: A general best practice is to deploy to the location with the highest cost because it will have the most bandwidth and best performing compute resources.
False. The recommendation is to deploy to the lowest cost location when possible.
With regards to ____________, one of the 6 primary factors affecting costs, some inbound data transfers are free such as data going into Azure. For outbound data transfers, such as data going out of Azure datacenters, pricing is based on Zones.
bandwidth
True or false: A general best practice is to try to keep all regions in a given billing zone to save on costs.
True
With _________________, you commit to buying in one-year or three-year plans for multiple products. These can significantly reduce your resource costs up to 72% over pay-as-you-go prices.
Azure Reservations aka Reserved Instances
For customers with Software Assurance, ___________ allows you to use your on-premise licenses on Azure at a reduced cost.
Azure Hybrid Benefit
True or false: Using reserved instances is a commitment to prepay.
True
True or false: In Azure, you’re always charged based on what you use.
True
True or false: Deallocating a VM means that the VM is no longer running, which also removes associated hard disks and data from your subscription.
False. Deallocating a VM means that the VM is no longer running. But the associated hard disks and data are still kept in Azure. The VM isn’t assigned to a CPU or network in Azure’s datacenter, so it doesn’t generate the costs associated with compute time or the VM’s IP address. Because the disks and data are still stored, and the resource is present in your Azure subscription, you’re still billed for disk storage.
True or false: If you deallocate a VM it isn’t assigned to a CPU or network in Azure’s datacenter, so it doesn’t generate the costs associated with compute time or the VM’s IP address. Because the disks and data are still stored, and the resource is present in your Azure subscription, you’re still billed for disk storage.
True
True or false: A good strategy to reduce costs is to deallocate a VM you use for testing purposes on weekends when your testing team isn’t using them.
True
True or false: You can also purchase Azure-based solutions and services from third-party vendors through Azure Marketplace. Examples include managed network firewall appliances or connectors to third-party backup services. Billing structures are set by the vendor.
True
When you provision a resource in Azure, you need to define the ____________ of where it will be deployed.
location (known as the Azure region)
A __________ is a geographical grouping of Azure regions for billing purposes.
zone
The ____________ is a tool that helps you estimate the cost of Azure products. The options that you can configure vary between products, but include:
- Region
- Tier
- Billing Options
- Support Options
- Azure dev/test
Pricing Calculator
True or false: The Pricing Calculator will provide you the exact costs you should expect to be billed.
False. It’s an estimate and not an invoice, so actual costs could differ.
In what product would you access pricing details, product details, and documentation for each product?
Pricing calculator.
Which of the following is not an options that you can configure in the Pricing calculator?
- Region
- Tier
- Competitor pricing such as AWS
- Billing options
Competitor pricing
True or false: Azure doesn’t differentiate pricing for development or test workloads.
False. This pricing calculator lists the available prices for development and test workloads. Dev/Test pricing applies when you run resources within an Azure subscription that’s based on a Dev/Test offer.
Which of the following is not a recommended practices that can help you minimize your costs?
- Understand estimated costs before you deploy
- Use Azure Advisor to monitor your usage
- Use spending limits to restrict your spending
- Avoid the use Azure Reservations
Avoid the use Azure Reservations.
Use Azure Reservations to prepay
Azure Reservations offers discounted prices on certain Azure services. Azure Reservations can save you up to 72 percent as compared to pay-as-you-go prices. To receive a discount, you reserve services and resources by paying in advance.
True or false: If you have a free trial or a credit-based Azure subscription, you can use spending limits to prevent accidental overrun.
True
True or false: As a best practice to help you manage costs, you should understand estimated costs before you deploy by carefully consider the products, services, and resources you need. Calculate your projected costs by using the Pricing calculator and the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator. Only add the products, services, and resources that you need for your solution.
True
_____________ identifies unused or underutilized resources and recommends unused resources that you can remove.
Azure Advisor
True or false: You don’t need to worry about outgoing (egress) network bandwidth when provisioning services as provisioning to different regions is a best practices for resiliency.
False. Some resources are metered and billed according to how much outgoing (egress) network bandwidth they consume. You should provision connected resources that are metered by bandwidth in the same Azure region to reduce egress traffic between them.
______________ is a free service that helps you understand your Azure bill, manage your account and subscriptions, monitor and control Azure spending, and optimize resource use.
Azure Cost Management
A best practice is to apply _________ to identify cost owners as these can help you manage costs associated with the different groups of Azure products and resources. You can apply these to groups of Azure resources to organize billing data.
tags
What would you use if you run several VMs for different teams and to categorize costs by department, such as Human Resources, Marketing, or Finance, or by environment, such as Test or Production?
tags
True or false: A common recommendation that you’ll find from Azure Cost Management + Billing and Azure Advisor is to resize or shut down VMs that are underutilized or idle. As an example, say you have a VM whose size is Standard_D4_v4, a general-purpose VM type with four vCPUs and 16 GB of memory. You might discover that this VM is idle 90 percent of the time. Virtual machine costs are nonlinear so if you reduce the VM’s size from Standard_D4_v4 to Standard_D2_v4, which is the next size lower, your compute cost will lower by no more than 20 percent.
False. Virtual machine costs are linear and double for each size larger in the same series. So in this case, if you reduce the VM’s size from Standard_D4_v4 to Standard_D2_v4, which is the next size lower, you reduce your compute cost by 50 percent.
True or false: Resizing a VM requires it to be stopped, resized, and then restarted.
True. Keep in mind that resizing a VM requires it to be stopped, resized, and then restarted. This process might take a few minutes depending on how significant the size change is. Be sure to properly plan for an outage, or shift your traffic to another instance while you perform resize operations.
True or false: With regards to cost, you don’t need to worry because if you aren’t using a resource, Azure will automatically shut it down. Therefore, you don’t need to worry about nonproduction or proof-of-concept systems that are no longer needed following the completion of a project.
False. This recommendation might sound obvious, but if you aren’t using a resource, you should shut it down. It’s not uncommon to find nonproduction or proof-of-concept systems that are no longer needed following the completion of a project.
Regularly review your environment, and work to identify these systems. Shutting down these systems can have a dual benefit by saving you on infrastructure costs and potential savings on licensing and operating costs.
True or false: Over time, one way to reduce costs is to gradually move IaaS workloads to run on platform as a service (PaaS) services. While you can think of IaaS as direct access to compute infrastructure, PaaS provides ready-made development and deployment environments that are managed for you.
True
True or false: Not only are PaaS services such as Azure SQL Database often less expensive to run, but because they’re managed for you, you don’t need to worry about software updates, security patches, or optimizing physical storage for read and write operations.
True
Name 2 ways you can Save on licensing costs.
* Choose cost-effective operating systems
Many Azure services provide a choice of running on Windows or Linux. In some cases, the cost depends on which you choose. When you have a choice, and your application doesn’t depend on the underlying operating system, it’s useful to compare pricing to see whether you can save money.
- Use Azure Hybrid Benefit to repurpose software licenses on Azure
If you’ve purchased licenses for Windows Server or SQL Server, and your licenses are covered by Software Assurance, you might be able to repurpose those licenses on VMs on Azure.
True or false: If you’ve purchased licenses for Windows Server or SQL Server, and your licenses are covered by Software Assurance, you might be able to repurpose those licenses on VMs on Azure.
True
Describe how you can minimize costs.
- Perform cost analysis before you deploy.
- Use Azure Advisor to monitor your usage.
- Use spending limits to prevent accidental spending.
- Use Azure Reservations to prepay.
- Choose low-cost locations and regions.
- Research available cost-saving offers.
- Apply tags to identify cost owners.
Refer to the attached. Which is the best first step the team should take to compare the cost of running these environments on Azure versus in their datacenter?
- They’re just test environments. Spin them up and check the bill at the end of the month.
- Assume that running in the cloud costs about the same as running in the datacenter.
- Run the Total Cost of Ownership Calculator.
Run the Total Cost of Ownership Calculator.
Running the Total Cost of Ownership Calculator is a great first step because it can provide an accurate comparison of running workloads in the datacenter versus on Azure, certified by an independent research company.
Refer to the attached. What’s the best way to ensure that the development team doesn’t provision too many virtual machines at the same time?
- Do nothing. Let the development team use what they need.
- Apply spending limits to the development team’s Azure subscription.
- Verbally give the development lead a budget and hold them accountable for overages.
Apply spending limits to the development team’s Azure subscription.
If you exceed your spending limit, active resources are deallocated. You can then decide whether to increase your limit or provision fewer resources.
Refer to the attached. Which is the most efficient way for the testing team to save costs on virtual machines on weekends, when testers are not at work?
- Delete the virtual machines before the weekend and create a new set the following week.
- Deallocate virtual machines when they’re not in use.
- Just let everything run. Azure bills you only for the CPU time that you use.
Deallocate virtual machines when they’re not in use.
When you deallocate virtual machines, the associated hard disks and data are still kept in Azure. But you don’t pay for CPU or network consumption, which can help save costs.
Refer to the attached. Resources in the Dev and Test environments are each paid for by different departments. What’s the best way to categorize costs by department?
- Apply a tag to each virtual machine that identifies the appropriate billing department.
- Split the cost evenly between departments.
- Keep a spreadsheet that lists each team’s resources.
Apply a tag to each virtual machine that identifies the appropriate billing department.
You can apply tags to groups of Azure resources to organize billing data.
A ____________ is a formal agreement between a service company and the customer. For Azure, this agreement defines the performance standards that Microsoft commits to for you, the customer.
service-level agreement (SLA)
True or false: Service Level Agreements describe Microsoft’s commitments for uptime and connectivity.
True
True or false: SLAs provided by Microsoft are applied at the top layer of a service and will not specify commitments on individual products.
False. SLAs provided by Microsoft are based on services and individual products.
True or false: You can commit to your business and customers for stability and availability when using Azure free and preview features/services.
False. Free and preview features/services do not offer SLAs.
True or false: You don’t need an Azure subscription to review service SLAs.
True
Many decisions can raise or lower your SLA. Describe what can lower your SLA.
- Adding more services as this creates a “product of 2 or more” SLAs called a composite SLA
- Choosing free or non-SLA services
Many decisions can raise or lower your SLA. Describe what can improve your SLA.
- Use of Availability Zones
- Use of Redundant Systems
Name the 3 sections typical to a SLA.
- Introduction
- General Terms
- SLA Details
In what section of the SLA document would you find the terms that define what’s meant by downtime, incidents, and error codes?
General terms
True or false: The Introduction section of an SLA document provides the general terms of the agreement, including how to submit a claim, receive credit for any performance or availability issues, and limitations of the agreement.
False: Those are contained in the General Terms section.
The primary performance commitment typically focuses on ___________, or the percentage of time that a product or service is successfully operational.
uptime
Some SLAs focus on other factors, including ____________, or how fast the service must respond to a request.
latency
____________ refers to the time duration that the service is unavailable.
Downtime
True or false: A monthly SLA is not cumulative, which means that the duration of multiple different service outages in a month would be independent and not combined.
False. These amounts are cumulative, which means that the duration of multiple different service outages would be combined, or added together.
A ____________ is the percentage of the fees you paid that are credited back to you according to the claim approval process.
service credit
True or false: An SLA describes how Microsoft responds when an Azure service fails to perform to its specification.
True
True or false: Credits typically increase as uptime decreases.
True. Here’s how credits are applied for Azure Database for MySQL according to uptime:
Monthly uptime percentage / Service credit percentage
< 99.99 / 10
< 99 / 25
< 95 / 100
___________ provides a global view of the health of Azure services and regions. If you suspect there’s an outage, this is often a good place to start your investigation.
____________ provides a personalized view of the health of the Azure services and regions that you’re using, directly from the Azure portal.
Azure Service Health
True or false: Typically, you need to file a claim with Microsoft to receive a service credit. If you purchase Azure services from a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partner, your CSP typically manages the claims process.
True
True or false: Each SLA specifies the timeline by which you must submit your claim and when Microsoft processes your claim. For many services, you must submit your claim by the end of the calendar month following the month in which the incident occurred.
True
True or false: An application SLA defines the SLA requirements for a specific application typically refering to an application that you build on Azure.
True
Name 3 considerations when you define your application SLA.
- Business impact
If the Special Orders application goes down, what would the business impact be? In this case, customers can’t place new orders through the store and staff can’t check the status of existing orders. Customers will either need to try again later or possibly go to a competitor.
- Effect on other business operations
The Special Orders application doesn’t affect other operations. So the majority of the Tailwind Traders business will continue to function normally if the Special Orders application went down.
- Usage patterns
- Usage patterns* define when and how users access your application.
One question to consider is whether the availability requirement differs between critical and non-critical time periods. For example, a tax-filing application can’t fail during a filing deadline.
____________ define when and how users access your application.
Usage patterns
A ____________ is a distinct capability or task that’s logically separated from other tasks, in terms of business logic and data storage requirements. Each defines a set of requirements for availability, scalability, data consistency, and disaster recovery.
workload
True or false: Computing the composite SLA requires that you multiply the SLA of each individual service.
True.
Refer to the attached to compute the application SLA for an application that is deployed with:
- Two virtual machines.
- One instance of Azure SQL Database.
- One instance of Azure Load Balancer.
The composite SLA would be:
- 9%×99.9%×99.99%×99.99%=
- 999×0.999×0.9999×0.9999=
- 9978=99.78%
Recall that you need two virtual machines. Therefore, you include the Virtual Machines SLA of 99.9 percent two times in the formula.
Note that even though all of the individual services have SLAs equal to or better than the application SLA, combining them results in an overall number that’s lower than the 99.9 percent you need. Why? Because using multiple services adds an extra level of complexity and slightly increases the risk of failure.
What strategies should you consider when the composite SLA doesn’t meet your needs?
* Choose customization options that fit your required SLA
- Build availability requirements into your design (for example: you can deploy one or more extra instances of the same virtual machine across the different availability zones in the same Azure region.)
- Include redundancy to increase availability
An ____________ is a unique physical location within an Azure region. Each is made up of one or more datacenters equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking. These use different schedules for maintenance, so if one is affected, your virtual machine instance in the other is unaffected.
availability zone
True or false: Deploying two or more instances of an Azure virtual machine across two or more availability zones raises the virtual machine SLA to 99.99 percent.
True
Refer to the attached to compute the application SLA for an application that is deployed with:
- Two virtual machines.
- One instance of Azure SQL Database.
- One instance of Azure Load Balancer.
But this provides only a 99.78% application SLA when you need 99.9% or better. What could you do to get it above 99.9%
Deploying two or more instances of an Azure virtual machine across two or more availability zones raises the virtual machine SLA to 99.99 percent. Recalculating your composite SLA above with this Virtual Machines SLA gives you an application SLA of:
99.99%×99.99%×99.99%×99.99%
=99.96%
To ensure high availability, you might plan for your application to have duplicate components across several regions, known as __________.
redundancy
True or false: To achieve maximum availability in your application, add redundancy to every single part of the application. This redundancy includes the application itself, as well as the underlying services and infrastructure.
True
The __________ defines how every Azure service is released for public use.
service lifecycle
The service lifecycle defines how every Azure service is released for public use. Name the 3 phases.
Every Azure service starts in the development phase. In this phase, the Azure team collects and defines its requirements, and begins to build the service.
Next, the service is released to the public preview phase. During this phase, the public can access and experiment with it and provide real-world feedback. Your feedback helps Microsoft improve services. More importantly, providing feedback gives you the opportunity to request new or different capabilities so that services better meet your needs.
After a new Azure service has been validated and tested, it’s released to all customers as a production-ready service. This is known as general availability (GA).
In what phase of a service lifecycle is the service first made available to the public?
Next, the service is released to the public preview phase. During this phase, the public can access and experiment with it and provide real-world feedback. Your feedback helps Microsoft improve services. More importantly, providing feedback gives you the opportunity to request new or different capabilities so that services better meet your needs.
At what phase in the service lifecycle is it considered production ready with SLAs provided?
After a new Azure service has been validated and tested, it’s released to all customers as a production-ready service. This is known as general availability (GA).
True or false: Previews are great for business-critical workloads giving you the opportunity to offer new features ahead of your competitors.
Flase. Some previews may not be covered by customer support, and may be subject to reduced or different security, compliance, and privacy commitments. For these reasons, previews are not recommended for business-critical workloads.
How can you access preview services?
You can access preview services from the Azure portal.
How can you stay updated on the latest announcements?
The Azure updates page provides information about the latest updates to Azure products, services, and features, and product roadmaps and announcements.
Refer to the attached, What’s the SLA for Azure Maps in terms of guaranteed uptime?
99 percent
- 9 percent
- 99 percent
99.9 percent
Refer to the attached, What’s the new composite SLA? Remember, the new SLA includes a third virtual machine and Azure Maps.
- 99.58 percent
- 99.78 percent
- 99.99 percent
99.58 percent
Refer to the attached, Adding a third virtual machine reduces the composite SLA. How can Tailwind Traders offset this reduction?
- Increase the size of each virtual machine.
- Deploy extra instances of the same virtual machines across the different availability zones in the same Azure region.
- Do nothing. Using Azure Load Balancer increases the SLA for virtual machines.
Deploy extra instances of the same virtual machines across the different availability zones in the same Azure region.
If one availability zone is affected, your virtual machine instance in the other availability zone should be unaffected.
Refer to the attached, What approach might the company take in adding the augmented reality (AR) preview service to its architecture?
- The Special Orders app is already in production. The company shouldn’t look into the AR service until the service reaches general availability (GA).
- The Special Orders app is mainly for use by retail employees. The company can integrate the AR service now because potential downtime or failures aren’t an important factor.
- The development team can create a prototype version of the app that includes the AR service that it tests out with select retail employees.
The development team can create a prototype version of the app that includes the AR service that it tests out with select retail employees.
