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  • Azure PaaS vs IaaS vs SaaS

    Azure PaaS vs IaaS vs SaaS

    Today a student in my 70-532 course, Pankaj, asked about the difference between Paas, IaaS, and SaaS within Azure. Specifically he wanted some examples, so let me list a few.

    I found this helpful diagram that might set up this discussion.

    This comes from Microsoft.

    To translate the above.

    • IaaS means that Microsoft takes care of the data center as a building, networking, firewalls, security, servers, storage, backup and recovery.
    • PaaS means that Microsoft takes care of maintaining the operating system, provides development tools, handles database management, and provides tools for business analytics. With IaaS, you’d be responsible for all of that.
    • SaaS covers the above plus Microsoft provides the application that you are just one customer (one tenant) inside.

     

    Infrastructure as a Service – IaaS

    One example of IaaS is any Virtual Machine product. Anything that gives you control of a piece of “hardware” (it’s not really control of hardware because a VM is virtual). Anything found under the Compute menu of Azure Portal can be counted as IaaS. Also networking pieces like VNets and storage pieces like Azure Storage.

    Examples include:

    • Virtual Machines
      • Windows Server 2016 Datacenter
      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
      • Ubuntu Server
      • Data Science Virtual Machine
      • SQL Server 2016 SP1 Enterprise on Windows Server 2016
      • Miscellaneous firewall and third-party network products
    • Virtual networks and subnets
    • Public IP
    • Load balancers
    • Traffic Manager
    • Azure Blob Storage
    • Azure File Storage

    These are the fundamental pieces of any network (self-hosted or cloud), and nothing else.

    Platform as a Service – PaaS

    Best known as the core Azure App Services, which is web apps, mobile apps, API apps, logic apps and function apps. If you think of what a “platform” means though, it means you can build your application on top of it. PaaS often runs inside an App Service Plan or an App Service Environment, but not always. But when you’re creating one of these, it’s clear you are creating an “app” and have to give it an “app name”.

    When working with platform as a service, you are creating your own “instance” of these services. You give them names, and you can start and stop them.

    • Web App
    • Web App + SQL
    • Mobile App
    • API App
    • Logic App
    • Function App
    • WordPress Web App
    • SiteCore Web App
    • Joomla! Web App

    Software as a Service – SaaS

    Finally, software as a service is an application which Microsoft Azure provides to you, which you can configure, but is a fully functioning application that you cannot modify the core features of. Often these have special and unique features. You are an tenant in these multi-tenant applications and are not running your own version of this.

    • Azure Search
    • SQL Database
    • HDInsight
    • Cosmos DB
    • Azure Active Directory

    Service Fabric

    I’ve seen Service Fabric described as PaaS.

    Basically, it’s a set of servers that you can provision but Microsoft provides a ton of functions on top of that to automatically management deployment and balancing of microservices, to give it automatic healing, etc. The Service Fabric is a platform on which you deploy your applications. You don’t control those servers and cannot remote into them.

    Hope that clears it up. Let me know if you have any questions.

     

  • Become an Enterprise Architect Through Udemy for Business

    Become an Enterprise Architect Through Udemy for Business

    Hundreds of companies provide their employees access to Udemy as part of their employee training benefits. Is yours one?

    If so, you already have access to my Enterprise Architecture and Microsoft Azure courses for free!

    All you need to do is log in to your company’s Udemy portal, and search for TOGAF or Azure using Udemy’s search tool. You’ll be shown a selection of my courses where you can sign up at no cost to you – since your employer already pays to be part of that program.

    But clicking the “sign up” button doesn’t teach you the skill. (We’re not in The Matrix yet. “I know Kung Fu.”)

    You will need to watch the videos and practice the skills, and this can be done a little at a time. Perhaps the smartest thing you can do is book yourself a meeting in your Office calendar every week where nobody else is able to reserve that time away from you. Whether it’s 30 minutes, or an hour, or more. Book yourself a meeting, and devote that time to taking some training such as my TOGAF courses that will help you attain the certification that can advance your skills and advance your career.

    Over 800 companies have this as a company benefit, and yours might be one of them. So check with HR on what training platforms you have available.

    And if you don’t see my courses on the training platform you have (whatever it is), do me a favor and ask that training platform to get in touch with me and get my courses there.

    Scott

     

  • What is a Cloud Architect?

    What is a Cloud Architect?

    I came across this slide today, and it made me think. “What is a cloud architect, really?”

    It says, “A cloud architect is an IT professional who is responsible for overseeing a company’s cloud computing strategy. This includes cloud adoption plans, cloud application design, and cloud management and monitoring.”

    Do you agree? Is a cloud architect responsible for strategy? Or does strategy come from management? And is the architect involved in operations too?

    How do you define cloud architect? Let me know in the comments.

     

     

  • 5 Design Patterns for AI in the Cloud – Microsoft Video

    “We are still in the first minutes of the first day of the Intelligence revolution. In this keynote, Dr. Joseph Sirosh will present 5 solutions (and their implementations) that the intelligent cloud delivers. Join us in this keynote to learn how these solutions can help any organization, from a startup to an enterprise, better handle uncertainty, reduce risks, build intelligent applications that deliver better services faster, grow customer loyalty, help businesses become more proactive with respect to customer needs and differentiate themselves from intensifying competition.”

    Source: Video: Azure – the Cloud Supercomputer for AI – insideHPC

  • A Close Look At Microsoft’s Azure Cloud, Part 1: Cloud Computing

    Interesting Forbes article about Azure:

    Azure, currently, is the only major cloud platform that is consistently ranked as a leader for infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS).

    Source: A Close Look At Microsoft’s Azure Cloud, Part 1: Cloud Computing