Designing an Infrastructure Strategy

About This Course

Welcome to Designing an Infrastructure Strategy (AZ-301t04). This course is part of a series of four courses to help students prepare for Microsoft’s Azure Solutions Architect technical certification exam AZ-301: Microsoft Azure Architect Design. These courses are designed for IT professionals and developers with experience and knowledge across various aspects of IT operations, including networking, virtualization, identity, security, business continuity, disaster recovery, data management, budgeting, and governance.

Requirements

Create resources and resource group in Azure.
Manage users, groups, and subscriptions in an Azure Active Directory instance.
Build an Azure Virtual Machine with related resources.
Manage containers and blobs stored in an Azure Storage account.
Create App Service Plans and manage apps related to the plan.
Configure an Azure Virtual Network and enable S2S and P2S connectivity.
Protect networked application components using Network Security Groups.
Automate everyday Azure resource tasks using Azure CLI or Azure PowerShell.
Deploy an Azure SQL, MySQL, Postgres or Cosmos database instance.
Monitor existing Azure solutions using built-in metrics, Application Insights, or Operational Insights.

Course Syllabus

This course contains the following four modules:

Module 1 - Application Architecture Patterns in Azure

This module introduces, and reviews common Azure patterns and architectures as prescribed by the Microsoft Patterns & Practices team. Each pattern is grouped into performance, resiliency, and scalability categories and described in the context of similar patterns within the category.

After completing this module, students will be able to:

Locate and reference the Cloud Design Patterns documentation.
Locate and reference the Azure Architecture Center.
Describe various patterns pulled from the Cloud Design Patterns.

Module 2 - Building Azure IaaS-Based Server Applications (ADSK)

This module identifies workloads that are ideally deployed using Infrastructure-as-a-Service services in Azure. The module focuses on the VM Scale Sets and Virtual Machine services in Azure and how to best deploy workloads to these services using best practices and features such as Availability Sets.

This module contains the hands-on online lab entitled Building Azure IaaS-Based Server Applications.

After completing this module, students will be able to:

Design an availability set for one or more virtual machines.
Describe the differences between fault and update domains.
Author a VM Scale Set ARM template.
Join a virtualized machine to a domain either in Azure or on a hybrid network.

Module 3 - Networking Azure Application Components

This module describes the various networking and connectivity options available for solutions deployed on Azure. The module explores connectivity options ranging from ad-hoc connections to long-term hybrid connectivity scenarios. The module also discusses some of the performance and security concerns related to balancing workloads across multiple compute instances, connecting on-premise infrastructure to the cloud and creating gateways for on-premise data.

This module contains the hands-on online lab entitled Deploying Network Infrastructure for Use in Azure Solutions.

fter completing this module, students will be able to:

Describe DNS and IP strategies for VNETs in Azure.
Compare connectivity options for ad-hoc and hybrid connectivity.
Distribute network traffic across multiple loads using load balancers.
Design a hybrid connectivity scenario between cloud and on-premise.

Module 4 - Integrating Azure Solution Components Using Messaging Services

This module describes and compares the integration and messaging services available for solutions hosted on the Azure platform. Messaging services described include Azure Storage Queues, Service Bus Queues, Service Bus Relay, IoT Hubs, Event Hubs, and Notification Hubs. Integration services include Azure Functions and Logic Apps.

This module contains the hands-on online lab entitled Integrating Azure Solution Components using Messaging Services.

After completing this module, students will be able to:

Compare Storage Queues to Service Bus Queues.
Identify when to use Azure Functions or Logic Apps for integration components in a solution.
Describe the differences between IoT Hubs, Event Hubs and Time Series Insights.