This blog post will go through some quick tips including Q/A and related blog posts on the topics that we covered in the Azure Admin Day 4 Live Session which will help you gain a better understanding and make it easier for you to
In this blog, I am going to share some quick tips including Q/A and useful links from Day 4 of Azure Admin covering Module 5: Network Traffic Management where we have covered topics like Network Traffic Management, Availability Set, Azure Load Balancers, Azure Traffic Manager Domain Name System.
We also covered hands-on, Lab 9, Lab 10, and Lab11 out of our 35+ extensive labs.
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The previous week, In Day 3 session we got an overview of VNet-to-VNet, Virtual Network Peering, Point-to-Site, Site-to-Site, ExpressRoute, Azure Load Balancers, Traffic Manager.
So, here are some of the Q & As from the live class.
Network Traffic Management
Network Traffic Management uses network monitoring tools and management techniques such as bandwidth monitoring, deep packet inspection, and application-based routing to ensure optimal network operation.
In doing so it helps maximize the performance and security of existing networks. It also allows for the identification of network-intensive operations that can be incorporated into network planning and growth strategies.
Network Traffic Management is used alongside other optimization techniques like Application Traffic Management as part of an overall Application Delivery Network solution.
Check more on Network Traffic Management
Availability Set
Availability Set is a logical grouping capability for isolating VM resources from each other when they’re deployed. By deploying your VMs across multiple hardware nodes Azure ensures that if hardware or software failure happens within Azure, only a sub-set of your virtual machines is impacted and your overall solution is safe and in working condition.
It provides redundancy for your virtual machines. An Availability set spreads your virtual machines across multiple fault domains and update domains.
Fault Domain
- Azure Fault domains define the group of virtual machines that share a common power source and network switch.
- Each and every fault domain contains some racks and each rack contains a virtual machine.
- All the resources in the fault domain become unavailable when there is a failure in the fault domain.
Update Domain
- Virtual machines get update domains automatically once they are put inside the availability set.
- All virtual machines within that update domain will reboot together.
- They are used for patching virtual machines.
- Only one update domain can be updated at a time.
Check more on Azure Availability Set.
Q1: What is the main advantage of an availability set?
Ans. Availability set provides redundancy for your virtual machines. Availability set spreads your virtual machines across multiple fault domains and update domains. If you want to leverage Microsoft’s 99.95% SLA from Microsoft you must place your VMs inside the availability set except your VMs are having premium storage.
Q2: What is the maximum number of virtual machines we can have in an Azure Availability Set?
Ans. The max is 200 virtual machines per availability set, which is the same number of virtual machines that can be in a single cloud service. However, note that all virtual machines must reside in the same cloud service and therefore the same Azure scale unit (cluster).
Check more on Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine Limits page
Q3: How many Default Update domains and fault domains are present in an availability set?
Ans: When you place your VMs in an Availability Set, Azure guarantees to spread them across fault and update domains. By default, Azure will assign three fault domains and five update domains (which can be increased to a maximum of 20) to the Availability Set.
Azure Load Balancers
Azure load balancer allows you to distribute traffic to your backend virtual machines. An Azure load balancer provides high availability for your application. The Azure load balancer is a fully managed service.
An Azure load balancer is used to distribute traffic loads to backend virtual machines or virtual machine scale sets, by defining your own load balancing rules you can use a load balancer in a more flexible way.
Types of Azure Load Balancers
- Public Load Balancer: A public load balancer can be used to load balance internet traffic to virtual machines. It can provide outbound connections for virtual machines (VMs) inside your virtual network.
- Internal/ Private Load Balancer: An internal (or private) load balancer is used to balance traffic from within a virtual network.
Check more on Azure Load Balancers
Q4: Is load balancer a VM?
Ans: A Virtual Load Balancer provides more flexibility to balance the workload of a server by distributing traffic across multiple network servers. Virtual load balancing aims to mimic software-driven infrastructure through virtualization. It runs the software of a physical load balancing appliance on a virtual machine.
Q5: How many maximum VMs are supported in a basic load balancer?
Ans: Supports up to 300 instances. Any virtual machines or virtual machine scale sets in a single virtual network. Virtual machines in a single availability set or virtual machine scale set.
Q6: Is load balancer a server?
Answer: A load balancer is a device that acts as a reverse proxy and distributes network or application traffic across a number of servers. Load balancers are used to increase the capacity (concurrent users) and reliability of applications. They improve the overall performance of applications by decreasing the burden on servers associated with managing and maintaining application and network sessions, as well as by performing application-specific tasks.
Q7: What are the different load-balancing options in Azure?
Ans. Load balancing refers to the distribution of workloads across multiple computing resources. Load balancing aims to optimize resource use, maximize throughput, minimize response time, and avoid overloading any single resource. It can also improve availability by sharing a workload across redundant computing resources.
Azure provides various load balancing services that you can use to distribute your workloads across multiple computing resources – Application Gateway, Front Door, Load Balancer, and Traffic Manager.
Check more on: Load Balancer Technology guide
Azure Traffic Manager
Azure Traffic Manager allows you to regulate the distribution of user traffic by using DNS to direct requests to the most appropriate service endpoint supported on a traffic-routing method and therefore the health of the endpoints.
Azure traffic manager selects an endpoint based on the configured routing method. It supports a variety of traffic-routing methods to suit different application needs. After the selection of endpoints, the client is connected directly to the appropriate service point. It also provides endpoint health checks and automatic failover. It also enables you to build a highly available application that is resilient to failure, including the failure of an entire Azure region.
Check more on Azure Traffic Manager Overview
Q8: Is Azure Traffic Manager a load balancer?
Ans: Azure Traffic Manager is a DNS-based traffic load balancer. This service allows you to distribute traffic to your public-facing applications across the global Azure regions. Traffic Manager also provides your public endpoints with high availability and quick responsiveness.
Q9: Why do we use Traffic Manager?
Ans. Traffic Manager uses DNS to direct client requests to the most appropriate service endpoint based on a traffic-routing method and the health of the endpoints. An endpoint is any Internet-facing service hosted inside or outside of Azure. It provides a range of traffic-routing methods and endpoint monitoring options to suit different application needs and automatic failover models. It is resilient to failure, including the failure of an entire Azure region.
Q10: What is the difference between Azure Traffic Manager and load balancer?
Ans: The job of Azure Load Balancer is to direct traffic inside a region. This is combined with Azure Traffic Manager, where the traffic manager routes interior to a region between virtual machines. If you combine the two you get global traffic management combined with local failover.
Q11: How does the Azure load balancer distribute the load?
Ans: Load balancer distributes inbound flows that arrive at the load balancer’s front end to backend pool instances. These flows are according to configured load-balancing rules and health probes. The backend pool instances can be Azure Virtual Machines or instances in a virtual machine scale set.
Domain Name System (DNS)
A Domain Name System (DNS) is essentially the ‘phonebook’ of the Internet. DNS is an elaborate, fault-tolerant way of connecting people to resources online.
DNS is a directory service that provides a mapping between the name of a host on the network and its numerical address. Allows the users of networks to utilize user-friendly names when looking for other hosts instead of remembering the IP addresses.
Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the industry-standard suites of protocols that comprise TCP/IP, and together the DNS Client and DNS Server provide computer name-to-IP address mapping name resolution services to computers and users.
Read more on Domain Name System
Categories of Domain Name System (DNS)
DNS is divided into two categories:
External or Public DNS
A server to be accessible on the public internet needs a public DNS record, and its IP address needs to be reachable on the internet – that means it’s not blocked by a firewall. Public DNS servers are accessible to anyone that can connect to them and don’t require authentication.
Internal or Private DNS
Computers that live behind a firewall or on an internal network use a private DNS record so that local computers can identify them by name. Outside users on the internet will not have direct access to those computers.
Q12. What is a DNS zone? Is it the same as a DNS domain?
Ans. A domain is a unique name in the domain name system. An example is K21Academy.com.
A DNS zone is used to host the DNS records for a particular domain. For example, the domain K21Academy.com might contain several DNS records. The records might include mail.K21Academy.com for a mail server and www.K21Academy.com for a website. These records are hosted in the DNS zone K21Academy.com.
A domain name is just a name. A DNS zone is a data resource that contains the DNS records for a domain name. You can use Azure DNS to host a DNS zone and manage the DNS records for a domain in Azure. It also provides DNS name servers to answer DNS queries from the Internet.
Read more on Overview of DNS zones and records
Q13. Do I need to buy a DNS domain name to use Azure DNS?
Ans. Not necessarily.
You don’t need to buy a domain to host a DNS zone in Azure DNS. You can create a DNS zone at any time without owning the domain name. DNS queries for this zone resolve only if they’re directed to the Azure DNS name servers assigned to the zone.
To link your DNS zone into the global DNS hierarchy, you must buy the domain name. Then, DNS queries from anywhere in the world find your DNS zone and answer with your DNS records.
Quiz Time (Sample Exam Questions)!
With our Microsoft Azure Administrator training program, we cover 150+ sample exam questions to help you prepare for the certification AZ-104.
Check out one of the questions and see if you can crack this…
Ques: How many virtual machines can be deployed into a cloud service?
A. Unlimited
B. 25
C. 50
D. 1
The right answer will be revealed in my next week’s email.
Here is the answer to the question shared last week (Scroll down at the end of this post for the question).
Ques: Is it possible to add an existing VM to an availability set?
A. Yes, VM can be added
B. No, VM cannot be added
C. Not Sure
Answer: B
A VM can only be added to an availability set when it is created. To change the availability set, you need to delete and then recreate the virtual machine
Related/References
- Domain Name System
- Overview of DNS zones and records
- Network Traffic Management
- Load Balancer Technology guide
- Azure Traffic Manager Overview
- Azure Load Balancers
- Azure Availability Set.
- [Recap] Day 1: Azure Administration & Governance and Compliance [Azure Administrator] [AZ-104]
- [Recap] Day 2: Azure Virtual Networking [Azure Administrator] [AZ-104]
- [Recap] Day 3: Azure Intersite Connectivity [Azure Administrator] [AZ-104]
Next Task For You
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