Azure AZ-900 Fundamentals Exam

Navigate and Search within the Azure Portal

The Azure portal is a web-based interface that allows users to manage and deploy Azure resources. It provides a comprehensive and user-friendly experience for navigating and searching through various Azure services. Understanding how to effectively use the Azure portal is crucial for managing resources efficiently. To navigate the Azure portal, users can utilize the search bar at the top of the page. This search bar is a powerful tool that helps locate resources, services, and documentation quickly. By typing keywords or resource names, users can access the desired information without having to browse through multiple menus. Resource groups are another essential feature in the Azure portal. They help organize and manage resources that share the same lifecycle. By grouping related resources, users can easily manage permissions, monitor costs, and apply policies. This organization simplifies the management of complex environments. The Azure portal also categorizes services into different service categories. These categories, such as Compute, Networking, and Storage, help users find and manage services related to specific areas. This categorization enhances the user experience by providing a structured way to access various Azure services. Tags and filters play a significant role in organizing and retrieving information within the Azure portal. Tags are metadata elements that can be applied to resources to categorize and identify them. Filters allow users to narrow down search results based on specific criteria, making it easier to find relevant resources quickly.

In summary, the Azure portal's navigation and search functionalities, including the search bar, resource groups, service categories, tags, and filters, are designed to enhance the user experience. These features help users efficiently locate, manage, and organize their Azure resources, ensuring a streamlined and effective management process.

Monitor and Analyze Resource Usage and Performance

The Azure portal is a central hub for managing and deploying Azure resources. It provides a user-friendly interface to navigate and access various tools and features. One of the key functionalities of the Azure portal is its ability to monitor and analyze resource usage and performance, ensuring optimal utilization of resources. Azure offers several monitoring and diagnostic tools within the portal, such as Azure Monitor, Activity Log, and Metrics Explorer. These tools help track the performance and health of your resources. For instance, Azure Monitor collects and analyzes metrics and logs, providing insights into resource operations and performance. The Activity Log tracks subscription-level events, while Metrics Explorer allows you to visualize and analyze metrics data. To ensure resources are performing optimally, you can set up alerts in the Azure portal. Alerts notify you of any issues or performance degradation, allowing for timely intervention. Additionally, you can use tools like Log Analytics to run queries and analyze log data using the Kusto Query Language (KQL). This helps in identifying trends and troubleshooting issues effectively. The Azure portal allows you to customize your monitoring setup. You can create dashboards to combine different data types into a single view, making it easier to monitor multiple resources simultaneously. Workbooks provide customizable reports that can include text, metrics, and log queries, offering a comprehensive view of resource performance. Azure Monitor supports exporting data to other tools for further analysis. You can use REST APIs to extract metric data or send logs to external services like Azure Storage or Event Hubs. For advanced visualization, tools like Power BI and Grafana can be integrated to create interactive and detailed reports. Resource logs provide detailed insights into operations performed by Azure resources. These logs are automatically generated but need to be routed to Azure Monitor Logs for storage and querying. You can configure diagnostic settings to specify which logs to collect and where to send them, ensuring you have all the necessary data for monitoring and analysis.

By leveraging these tools and features in the Azure portal, you can effectively monitor and analyze the usage and performance of your Azure resources, ensuring they operate efficiently and reliably.

Implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) via the Azure Portal

Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is a system that helps manage access to Azure resources by assigning roles to users, groups, service principals, or managed identities. This ensures that only authorized individuals can perform specific actions on Azure resources, enhancing security and efficiency.

Step 1: Determine Who Needs Access

The first step in implementing RBAC is to identify who needs access. This could be a user, a group of users, a service principal (an identity used by applications), or a managed identity (an automatically managed identity in Azure). Each of these is known as a security principal. For example, a user might be an individual with a profile in Microsoft Entra ID, while a group could be a set of users created in Microsoft Entra ID.

Step 2: Select the Appropriate Role

Next, you need to select the appropriate role for the security principal. Roles are collections of permissions that define what actions can be performed on Azure resources. Azure provides several built-in roles, such as Virtual Machine Contributor or Storage Blob Data Reader. If the built-in roles do not meet your needs, you can create custom roles. It is best practice to assign the least privilege necessary to perform the required tasks.

Step 3: Identify the Needed Scope

The scope defines the set of resources that the access applies to. In Azure, scopes can be specified at four levels: management group, subscription, resource group, and resource. The scope is structured in a parent-child relationship, where permissions assigned at a higher level (parent) are inherited by lower levels (children). For example, assigning a role at the subscription level will apply to all resource groups and resources within that subscription.

Step 4: Check Your Prerequisites

Before assigning roles, ensure that you have the necessary permissions. You must be signed in with a user account that has role assignment write permissions, such as a Role Based Access Control Administrator. If you do not have the required permissions, you will need to contact your subscription administrators to grant them on your behalf.

Step 5: Assign the Role

Finally, you can assign the role using the Azure portal, Azure PowerShell, Azure CLI, or REST APIs. This involves specifying the security principal, the role, and the scope. Azure allows up to 4000 role assignments per subscription, ensuring that you can manage access for a large number of users and resources efficiently.

By following these steps, you can effectively implement RBAC in Azure, ensuring secure and efficient management of access to your Azure resources.

Understand the Azure Portal Interface

The Azure portal is a web-based interface that allows users to manage and deploy Azure resources. It provides a centralized platform where you can access and manage all your Azure services. The portal is designed to be user-friendly, with a clear layout and intuitive navigation, making it easier for users to find and use the tools they need. One of the key features of the Azure portal is the dashboard. The dashboard is customizable, allowing users to add, remove, and rearrange tiles to suit their workflow. This customization helps users quickly access the resources and information they use most frequently, improving efficiency and productivity. The navigation bar on the left side of the portal provides quick access to various Azure services and resources. It includes links to essential tools such as resource groups, virtual machines, and storage accounts. Users can also pin their most-used services to the navigation bar for even quicker access. Another important aspect of the Azure portal is its resource management tools. These tools allow users to create, configure, and manage Azure resources easily. The portal provides detailed information and options for each resource, helping users to monitor performance, set up alerts, and manage costs effectively. Overall, the Azure portal is a powerful tool for managing and deploying Azure resources. Its user-friendly interface, customizable dashboard, and comprehensive resource management tools make it an essential platform for anyone working with Azure.

By understanding how to navigate and use the portal effectively, users can streamline their workflows and make the most of their Azure services.

Utilize Azure Portal Features for Resource Management

The Azure portal is a comprehensive tool for managing Azure resources, including SQL resources like SQL Server on Azure VMs, Azure SQL Database, and Azure SQL Managed Instances. To access these resources, you can navigate through the Azure portal menu or use the search function. The portal provides a unified interface to manage, create, and configure these resources efficiently.

To create new Azure SQL resources, you can select the "Create" button and view detailed options by selecting "Show details" on any tile. This allows you to create single databases, elastic pools, managed instances, and SQL virtual machines. For managing existing resources, you simply select the desired item from the list. The Azure portal also supports exporting custom templates for resource management. You can generate an ARM template based on the current state of your resource group, which can be downloaded and modified for future deployments. This feature simplifies the process of replicating resource configurations and ensures consistency across deployments.

For managing servers, databases, and firewalls, the Azure portal offers various tools. You can navigate to specific database pages, SQL servers, or the "All resources" page to manage existing resources. The portal also allows you to configure firewall rules, set performance properties, and manage other settings through a user-friendly interface. In addition to resource management, the Azure portal provides options for cleaning up resources. When resources are no longer needed, you can delete them by removing the associated resource group. This helps in avoiding unnecessary charges and maintaining an organized resource environment.

Overall, the Azure portal is a powerful tool for managing and deploying Azure resources, offering a range of functionalities to create, configure, monitor, and clean up resources efficiently. It is designed to be user-friendly, making it accessible for users with varying levels of expertise.