Software Testing

In Compute category, we have learnt about Virtual Machines, Containers and App Services. In this article we will learn about server less computing which is the most efficient. Serverless Computing No upfront infrastructure cost  or maintenance needed Automatic scaling Code is written for custom bindings. Broadly categorised into Azure Functions Azure Logic Apps Depends upon the rate of incoming events Events includes triggers such as timer, for an example, a function needs to run at 10 AM daily Billing depends upon the time function is run, for example, a function runs once a day for two minutes, then you are charged for one execution and two minutes of computing time. Azure Functions Allow customers to deploy small pieces of code without worrying about the underlying infrastructure and platform. Code can be execute using any language Scale on demand Execute code Write code in any of supported language. open-source, can be deployed anywhere follows Code first approach broadly categ...

Azure app service comes under Compute like Containers and virtual machines. We have learnt about virtual machines and containers, In this article we will look into Azure App Service and its features. Azure App Service HTTP based PaaS Used to build, deploy and scale web apps Applications can be build and managed without any infrastructure cost. Enables you to build and host web apps, mobile back ends, and RESTful APIs in the programming language of your choice without managing infrastructure. Mainly consists of 2 components Packaged code Configuration Azure Marketplace Hosts thousands of third party vendors to avail the service Can avail Big Data, AI/ML or any service preferred Pricing Tiers Contains three different categories Dev/Test - ideal for less demanding workloads Production - ideal for more demanding workloads Isolated  Using Azure Dev/Test labs you can enable developers on teams to efficiently self manage virtual machines (VMs) and PaaS machines without waiting for approva...

We know about how containers work in Azure, we have gone through different practices one can opt for Virtual Machines(VMs), let us now look at containers and its architecture. Containers Unlike VM which uses OS, containers uses various applications hosted on one OS. Lightweight than VMs Respond to changes comparatively faster than VM Multiple containers can run on same OS, and it could run multiple applications Secured and isolated Containers in Azure Azure Container Instances(ACI) PaaS- Fastest and Simplest way to run containers Azure Kubernetes Service(AKS) Orchestration - Managing large number of containers To automate, manage and interact with containers.  Existing application could be migrated to AKS by publishing it through Azure Container Registry(ACR). Kubernetes Widely used service to manage containers Can run across different cloud platforms Combines container management automation with API Pod Management A pod is one or more containers in a node Micro Services Breaking t...

In previous article we have covered Azure Compliance, now we will learn about one of the prominent service of Azure known as 'Compute'. Azure Compute On demand service for running cloud based applications Provides virtual machines and containers with multi-core processors and super computers. No upfront cost required.  Pay only for the services used, pay-as-you-go model. Compute can be achieved using below services  Virtual Machines( Most controlled ) Containers Server less computing( Least controlled ) Azure App Service Most controlled as in user has to take control to perform desired operations. Server less computing takes minimal amount of time to perform the task. Virtual Machines Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS) Software emulation of physical computers A virtual machine contains OS, memory, processor, storage and networking resources Azure takes care of physical hardware, while user has to control the configuration, maintenance and updation of software. Could be shut dow...

In previous article, we learnt about Azure Resource manager, Azure resources, locking, Management group, Resource groups and tagging in Azure. Now we will learn about compliance in Azure. We already have covered some of the high level compliance introduction in previous articles. Azure Compliance  Microsoft Privacy statement Microsoft uses personal data of the user,  for what purpose and how it is using personal data is covered in Microsoft Privacy statement Microsoft Trust center Contains in depth information about security, privacy, compliance offering, features and practices Compliance Manager Assesses your usage and provides a dashboard with a summary and recommendations  Provides compliance score Includes below regulations HIPPA ISO 27001 EU GDPR ISO 27018 NIST Azure Security Centre Provides overall security score Assesses against Azure CIS 1.0.0 PCI DSS 3.2 ISO 27001 SOC TSP To help understand it better, we have provided a screen print below for the reference p...

Having gone through Azure Service Level Agreements(SLAs), we will learn about Azure Resource Manager(ARM) in this article. We already know what resources are, will look at tagging concept in Azure, Resource locks, Resource groups and Management groups. Azure Resource Manager(ARM) Like the name says it, Azure resource manager can help you create or manage resources in Azure under a subscription. Resource in Azure means purchased services. In simple words, Azure resource manager is a centralised management layer for managing all Azure resources. You may learn about assigning roles using RBAC. Let's go step by step on how it works. Some of the different ways to deploy resources using ARM - Azure Portal Powershell REST API/SDK CLI     Resources You might already know how to create resources in Azure, for instance, virtual machines, Application gateways and cosmosDB instances.  Resources can also be used to move into another resource group or subscription and can also be...

We have gone through how to interact with Azure using different means, such as GUI, CLI,  powershell, bash and other features. In this article we will learn about Service Level Agreements provided by Azure to its customers, that mostly is the commitment from Microsoft of uptime and availability, any commitment which falls short of its SLA, customer is rewarded by Microsoft. Let's learn more about Azure SLAs. Azure Service Level Agreements(SLAs) With the service, there are SLAs associated with it. SLAs are performance standards defined by Microsoft. There are SLAs for individual products and services offered by Microsoft It is not imperative each and every service has SLAs attached to it, for example, free or Shared tiers doesn't have any SLAs or Azure advisor. Most prominent feature of SLA of Microsoft is uptime guarantee and believe me, it ranges from 99.9 to 99.999 For Azure cosmos DB, we have SLA of 99.999%, that is 5 minutes of downtime in an year. Monthly uptime is calcula...

We have gone through the basics, the layout, the data centres of Azure in our previous articles. We will be covering as how to interact with Azure, be it a UI or a CLI. Please go through previous articles if you want to learn more about Azure basics and the services it is offering to different companies. Interacting with Azure Azure could be interacted with a lot of different ways, which depends upon the user expertise, it could be with the help of GUI, CLI or even APIs, let's look into some of the ways to interact with Azure Azure portal(GUI) Azure Powershell Azure Command Line interface(CLI) Azure SDKs Azure Cloud Shell Azure Mobile app Azure Portal More of a GUI portal. Those who are not much comfortable with SDKs, CLI, bash commands can go for GUI and create or maintain resources initially to start with. You can customise the GUI as per your needs Provides Dashboard to user keep track of the activities Dashboard could be shared with multiple team members Roles could be provided...

Having covered Azure billing, subscription, licensing, purchasing, support in previous articles. We will learn about Azure Data centres in this article. Azure Data Centres Azure Data centres allows you to be global. Let's look at the holistic view of a data centre     World Geography Region Availability Zone Data center It is possible to choose availability alone and region to deploy the resource. Azure Regions Consists of at least one or more data centres that are networked together with a low-latency network. Some of the specific resources may or may not be available in all the data centres. Regions enhances scalability, redundancy. Microsoft has 54 region distributed worldwide. Maintains data security and residency.  Meets compliance and resilience requirements for your customers. Special Regions   Special regions as the name goes are for government or official use It maintains compliance policies, such as Azure government It has private network isolated from the...

We now know about different licensing and Purchasing Azure could provide. We will go through Azure accounts, subscriptions, support and billing provided by Microsoft. Firstly, we you want to use these services, you got to have a phone number, credit card, Microsoft or GitHub account. Azure Subscription When you create any resource, you have to tag a subscription to it so that you get billed for the resources used in that subscription. You can create multiple subscription and each subscription can have its own billing associated with it Few subscription limits are there for Azure such as  Max number of Express Route circuits per subscription is 100 Azure Billing Azure charges you Monthly for the services you use It provides  great features to customise your billing(invoices). Moreover, you can opt for multiple bills, for example monthly bills for different departments, teams and so on. Billing structure consists of  Billing Account Billing profile Invoice section Azure sub...

Having gone through different Azure Services, we will be learning about Azure purchasing and different licensing options you can opt for. Azure have so many plans for different organisations - be it small scale or large scale or individual freelancer, we will dive deep into it and learn. Azure Purchasing & Licensing Options There are 3 ways of purchasing Azure Subscription  Signing up from Azure Through a Microsoft representative Through a Microsoft Partner, Cloud Solution Provider(CSP) Licensing Free trial You get 200$ which needs to be spend on the first 30 days Free access to various services for 12 months If your subscription expires, you lose access to all the resources associated with the subscription. Pay as you go     Gets charged for the services used Cloud Solution Provider(CSP) Get the licensing from Microsoft partner. You will be billed by the Microsoft partner organization Support will be provided by partner organization Azure in open licensing Buy the li...

Having gone through the Azure Services in the high level in previous article, let's look at some of the Azure services in detail. As already mentioned we have more than 1000 Azure services today, it offers third party softwares, easy to manage, maintain and deploy applications. It saves you a lot of time as well as effort. Azure Services Azure Services are broadly categorised into following areas - Compute Networking Storage Mobile  Databases Web Internet of Things Big Data Artificial Intelligence DevOps Compute Includes allocations of Virtual Machines, Containers, server less computing. Includes Services such as - Azure Virtual Machines Azure Virtual Machines scale sets Azure Kubernetes Services(AKS) Azure Service Fabric Azure Batch Azure Container Instance(ACI) Azure Functions Networking Helps optimise performance and scalability connects compute resources Configures inbound and outbound traffic, between Azure resource and On-prem Services includes - Azure Virtual Network - conne...

We have been learning about clouds so far in all our tutorials, now once you are familiar about cloud concepts and its benefits, we can go ahead and cover Azure series and its benefits, we have already given you an idea about few of the cost management services of Azure such as Azure advisor, Azure TCO calculator. Let's learn some more concepts about Azure. Azure Basics Microsoft Azure provides public and private cloud at a reasonable rate Provides access to third party tools with one bill. Easy for developers and IT operators to manage, build, test and deploy applications with faster pace. Azure Services Covers plethora of services. Majorly categorised services are - Compute services - containers and VMs that helps you to run your applications Database services - provides relational and NoSQL choices Identity services - Such as IAM helps protect and authenticate the identity of users Networking services - network configurations such as firewall, DNS, controlled traffic. Stora...

Having gone through the Scaling concept in previous article, we know that by using few services such as Azure advisor or Azure Cost management, we could reduce the cost by significant margin, it could save you extra bucks from which you can buy any other resource or Service. In this article we would look at some of the best optimisation practices when you are working on Azure. Best Optimisation Practices Infrastructure Saving Use Azure Credits Use spending limits Using reserved instances Choose low cost locations and regions Resizing VMs using Azure Advisor and Azure Cost Management Schedule automated shutdowns of the VMs using Azure Resource Manager(ARM) Delete unused VMs Migrate to PaaS or SaaS services. Save on Licensing Costs Select OS wisely Bring your own license(BYOL) Use SQL server developer edition Use Dev/Test Subscription offers If you are on Enterprise Agreement(EA) ,use Enterprise Dev/Test else Pay-as-you-go Dev/Test No license charges for windows Let's see some more i...

Cloud services comes with a lot of advantages, one of the most important advantage of using cloud services is Scaling . If you know how scaling works, it can save you a lot of resources as well as money. We have already covered Scaling in detailed level in the previous articles. Let's dive deep in to learn more about scaling and its advantages. Scaling Consider an example of Facebook, it started with its reach in one of the college, then it got scaled to the city, country and then globally. Had it been crashed after getting popular in earlier days, would it been so popular today? We would still be using Orkut or maybe any other social platform if not Facebook. That is what scaling is, if any point of the time your website has started gaining lot of traffic, you need to increase server's hardware capacity. Scaling refers to adding networks, storage, compute, bandwidth to achieve better performance. Scaling can be of various type depending upon the requirement - Vertical Scaling ...

By now, we already know the basics of cloud, cloud deployment models, different sections of cloud services such as IaaS, PaaS or Saas. In this article we will learn about the compliance's that Cloud service provider follows. Cloud Compliance There are certain sets of guidelines and standards every cloud provider has to take care while providing its services to the customers. For instance, sensitive data which is hosted on the cloud servers by secret agencies could not be leaked. Whatever personal data user is hosting on cloud should be kept intact. We will be going through such standards and compliance's in this article Criminal Justice Information Services(CJIS) FBI maintains a CJIS database and if any US state or local agency wants to access it has to adhere CJIS security policy Cloud Security Alliance(CSA) Star Certification Independent third party assessment of cloud service provider General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR) Came into the act in 2018 European policy law appl...

We already have covered Public vs Private vs Hybrid differentiation in the previous article. In this article we will be covering three categories of cloud computing with relevant examples and details. Most of you might already be using these services in your daily day-to-day tasks unaware of the face that your organisation has already started the transition into the cloud. For an example, Office 365 is a active SaaS(Software as a service) that most of us uses, VMs are examples of IaaS(Infrastructure as a service) and Azure SQL Database is PaaS(Platform as a service). Now how do we differentiate between the three categories as a user? Will cover the details below. Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS) Service provider provides you the hardware User gets some control over the hardware, can customise operating system, storage and VMs. Ensuring service is up and running is shared responsibility While cloud provider makes sure that the hardware is functioning correctly, user needs to make sure ...

After going through the benefits of cloud computing in previous article, let's understand different cloud deployment models such as Public, Private or Hybrid model.  What are cloud deployment models? Your data can be stored and accessed by your customers in various ways, you can make it secure, scalable, maintain and adjust as per your budget. Any cloud provider will probably ask you basic questions such as how do you want to manage your data? Do you need your own infrastructure support or rely upon our services completely? Well, both options are possible or you can adjust even more using the cloud deployment models - Public, Private or Hybrid. Public Cloud Hosted on Service provider's hardware completely No need to worry about physical maintenance High scalability and agility No capital cost or infrastructure upfront needed Service provide will take care of maintenance and other software patches Minimal technical expertise needed in terms of hardware, only sound knowledge coul...

Now we know what is cloud and why do we use them as already covered in the previous article. We would learn new terminologies in this article related to the cloud. Benefits of Cloud Computing Cloud services provides a lot of benefits to its consumers. As an IT consultant you spend a lot of time on the software portal of it instead of going into the hardware. The companies which still uses legacy mainframe systems cannot move to the cloud thinking overnight, I mean the transition needs to be gradual here which is often termed as ' lift and shift' . Now let's see what are the benefits of cloud computing! Cost effective Provides Pay-as-you-go or consumption based pricing model. No upfront infrastructure cost Ability to scale up or scale in when needed Usage of Artificial intelligence tools to predict future estimate. Scalable Ability to increase or decrease the resources or Services based upon workload at any given time 2 terms are related here Scaling up - also called vertica...

We have already started with Azure tutorials in our blog, before we dive deep into Azure, let's understand few cloud concepts to familiarise our readers and boost some confidence. What is a Cloud? Delivery of computing services over the internet using pay-as-you-go model. In other words, to rent computer power and storage to others. As the term pay-as-you-go goes, it's like to pay for the services for the duration of time you use them. The biggest advantage of using cloud is that you don't need to work about infrastructure cost like RAM or CPUs or data centres, you get this service from different service provider such as Google, Microsoft or Amazon. And believe me the services are really worth it, it saves you a lot of upfront cost and boosts your business.  Why move to the cloud? In fast paced modern world, every big service provider companies are competing with each other in delivering the solution to their customers. The most important factor being the speed here. So usi...

Having covered the basics of Azure and cloud in our previous article. We will be learning about Azure Storage products in this article. Azure Storage - Secure, Durable, scalable and easily accessible Benefits includes Automated backup and Recovery Replication across the globe Support for data analytics Encryption capabilities Supports multiple data types Data storage in virtual disks Storage tiers- categories data such as frequently used or rarely used. There are 4 storage account in Microsoft Azure  - Blob Service(also known as Containers)  - Stores Unstructured or binary data. Blob is a binary large object, It could be a log, .doc, .pdf, img, .exe file.    File Service - Highly available file shares. It uses Blobs but handles them differently, it could be like say one drive or dropbox. We can say it is a File based cloud location in Azure. Table service - Pre-dominantly available for Application developers, majorly available in Key-value pairs. It consists of Str...

We have already covered basic core Java concepts in our previous articles. Now we will be sharing few Java interview questions that can trick you in an interview. This is the most common mistakes usually students do. They do study basic core concepts of Java but do no go through tricky interview questions which is necessary to grab a job offer. What is the difference between JDK, JRE and JVM? JDK -Development kit required by a java developer. It consisted of various APIs through which you can write your code. JDK contains various packages for ex - java.io, java.util. Other than this, java and java is also used for execution and compilation of the byte code. JRE -  is a Runtime environment, JVM uses JRE. JRE is a set of libraries required by JVM to execute your code. JVM - It is an abstract machine. It is a software which is already provided by the platform, whenever we write a Java source code, it gets compiled into the byte code. JVM is that layer which is going to execute your ...

Hi guys! With this post, we will be diving deep into understanding the various terminologies and practices used in the Azure platform of Microsoft. I have been going through a lot of Azure training recently, where I have learned lots of standard cloud practices implemented by Microsoft through Azure. We will be covering all the basics of Azure, and by the end of this series, you should be good to undergo AZ-900 certification offered by Microsoft, which is a value add in your resume. I have gone through rigorous training of 16 hours and some more personal training. Let it be a platform to document everything I have learned. If you have any questions feel free to drop it in the comment box, we will be more than happy to help. What does the cloud platform do? It provides high availability, scalability, elasticity, agility, fault tolerance, and disaster recovery to your business. Now, what are these terms? We will discuss every feature in the upcoming articles. Introduction to cloud comput...