About this video

• Video Title: AZ-104 Administrator Associate Study Cram v2
• Channel: John Savill's Technical Training
• Speakers: John Savill
• Duration: 04:01:34

Overview

This video is a comprehensive study guide for the AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate certification. John Savill covers a wide range of Azure services and concepts, explaining the theory behind them and providing practical examples. The goal is to help viewers prepare for the exam by understanding key functionalities and best practices for managing Azure resources.

Key takeaways

• Entra ID (formerly Azure AD): Covers identity management, synchronization from on-premises AD, users, groups, devices, licenses, and self-service password reset.
• Azure Subscriptions and Management Groups: Explains the hierarchy for organizing resources, applying policies, and managing costs through budgets and governance.
• Networking Fundamentals: Details virtual networks, subnets, peering, Network Security Groups, Azure Firewall, Azure DNS, and connectivity options like VPN and ExpressRoute.
• Storage Solutions: Discusses storage accounts, blob tiering, lifecycle management, Azure Files, and managed disks, including their types and encryption.
• Compute Resources: Covers virtual machines, availability sets and zones, virtual machine scale sets, containers, AKS, and App Service Plans.
• Monitoring and Alerting: Explains how to monitor resources using metrics and logs, configure alerts, and utilize tools like Log Analytics Workspace and Network Watcher.
• Resource Management: Highlights the importance of using ARM templates or Bicep for provisioning resources, understanding different service models (IaaS, PaaS), and implementing resource locking.

Azure Policy is a service that helps organizations enforce standards and maintain compliance across their Azure resources. It allows you to create, assign, and manage policies that govern resource creation and configuration, ensuring that resources deployed adhere to organizational requirements and best practices.

The video highlights the following aspects and examples of Azure Policy:

• Purpose: Azure Policy acts as guardrails for resource deployment, helping to enforce organizational requirements. It allows for both configuration of these requirements and tracking of compliance.
• Definitions: Policies are defined with specific conditions and effects.
• Effects: Common effects include:
  • Deny: Prevents a resource from being created or modified if it doesn't meet the policy. For example, a policy could deny the creation of resources in specific Azure regions.
  • Audit: Allows the resource to be created but flags it as non-compliant in monitoring reports. This is often used as a starting point before enforcing a 'Deny' effect.
  • Deploy If Not Exists: Automatically deploys a resource or configuration if it's missing. An example given is deploying a required agent to virtual machines.
• Initiatives: Policies can be grouped into initiatives, which are collections of related policies designed to achieve a broader compliance goal. This simplifies the management and assignment of multiple policies.
• Enforcement Scope: Policies and initiatives can be assigned at various management scopes, including Management Groups, subscriptions, and resource groups, with settings being inherited down the hierarchy.
• Built-in vs. Custom Policies: Azure provides a wide range of built-in policies and initiatives that cover common compliance scenarios. Users can also create custom policies to meet specific organizational needs.
• Compliance Tracking: Azure Policy provides compliance reporting, allowing administrators to see the compliance status of their resources against assigned policies and initiatives.
• Example Scenario (Allowed Locations): A policy example discussed is restricting resource deployment to a specific set of allowed Azure regions. If a user attempts to deploy a resource in a disallowed region, the policy (with a 'Deny' effect) would prevent the deployment.