The Bottom Line
Explain the difference between platform as a service and infrastructure
as a service. The key difference relates to who is responsible for which elements
of the solution. With platform as a service, solutions are written for a supplied
platform within certain guidelines. The platform then ensures availability and
protection for the application, and no operating system or fabric management is
required. The key point is that the application must be written to work with the
PaaS platform. With infrastructure as a service, a virtual machine is provided,
which means that the provider manages the compute, storage, and network fabric,
but the user of the virtual machine is responsible for the operating system and
everything within it as well as patching it. The benefit of IaaS is that you have
complete access to the operating system, so normal applications can run in IaaS
without requiring customization. A key principal of IaaS is that you should not
have to modify the application to work on it.
Master It What is software as a service?
Connect Microsoft Azure to your on-premises network. Creating
connectivity between Microsoft Azure and your local network has several
requirements. First, virtual networks need to be defined in Microsoft Azure within
a region. Virtual machines are created and configured at the time of creation to use
a specific subnet in the virtual network. A site-to-site gateway is created between
Microsoft Azure and your on-premises network, which permits seamless
connectivity via a site-to-site VPN or ExpressRoute.
Master It Can Windows Server 2012 RRAS be used on the local premises side
of the VPN gateway?
Move data between on-premises and Microsoft Azure. Microsoft Azure is
built on Windows Server Hyper-V and specifically leverages the VHD format
currently. A virtual machine that uses VHD can be copied to Microsoft Azure
storage and used with a new Microsoft Azure virtual machine or added to an
existing virtual machine. Similarly, VHD files used in Microsoft Azure virtual
machines can be downloaded to on-premises and used with Hyper-V virtual
machines.
Master It What PowerShell cmdlets are used to copy VHDs to and from
Microsoft Azure?
Master It Can dynamic VHDs be used in Microsoft Azure?