SUBJECT NAME: Programming Foundation

SUBJECT CODE:Cf412

I declare that I am Examiner:

familiar with, and will Moderator:
Summative Project
abide to the
Examination rules of Duration: Days
CTU Date:11/08/2023

Total Marks: 84

Total pages:

Student number
2 0 2 3 2 1 5 3
T.Sithole
Surname: Sithole Initials: T
Signature
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Question 1
Scenario:

You have been recruited as a cloud solutions architect for a leading IT consulting firm. The company is
experiencing
a surge in demand for cloud-based solutions and has chosen Microsoft Azure as the primary cloud
platform. As a
cloud solutions architect, you need to demonstrate a strong understanding of cloud concepts, Azure
core services,
and management tools to design efficient and scalable solutions for clients.

Unit 1: Understand Cloud Concepts (Total Marks: 30)

• Define cloud computing and explain its benefits for businesses. Provide three real-world examples of
cloud-based services. (8 marks)

Cloud computing is the delivery of compute services over the internet, these services include things like
storage, software, analytics etc. With the use of cloud computing businesses are able to scale up or
down as needed without having to invest in expensive hardware. It can also reduce costs because
businesses only pay for what they use. Examples of cloud-based services include: Google Drive, Amazon
EC2 and Microsoft Azure storage

• Compare and contrast public, private, and hybrid cloud deployment models, highlighting the
advantages and disadvantages of each. (10 marks)

Private

Private cloud is a cloud that is used by a single entity. An advantage of private cloud is that
organizations have complete control over resources and security. The downside of private cloud
is that it is very costly and has fewer benefits of a public cloud deployment

Public

It is a cloud that is built, controlled, and maintained by a third-party cloud provider. An

advantage of using public is that Applications can be quickly provisioned and deprovisioned.
However, the disadvantage is that organizations do not have complete control over resources
and security

Hybrid

It is a computing environment that uses both public and private clouds in an in interconnected
environment. The advantage of using hybrid clous is that it provides the most flexibility by
allowing a private cloud to surge for increased, temporary demand by deploying public cloud
 services. However, the downside of this is complexity. Since hybrid cloud uses both public and
private cloud, it can be more complex to set up and manage than a single deployment model

• Discuss the importance of scalability and elasticity in the cloud and how these features impact
resource management.

The importance of both these features is that they allow businesses to easily adjust to the changing
needs and avoid disruptions in service. Scalability ensures that you do not overpay for services by
allowing you to pay only for what you use. This ensures good management of resources. With elasticity,
resources can be added or removed based on demand, so there is no need to over provision resources

• Evaluate the security concerns associated with cloud computing and propose three measures to
enhance cloud security.

Data leakage (when sensitive data is exposed) – To prevent this, the company should use strong access
controls such as multi factor authentication, to limit access to only authorized users

Account hijackings (gaining access to a cloud account by stealing credentials or exploiting a vulnerability)
– to prevent it, strong, unique passwords must be used for all cloud accounts. Also monitor the activity
on all accounts to quickly detect and respond to any signs of compromise
Unit 2: Understand Core Azure Services (Total Marks: 24)

• Explain the concept of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software
as a Service (SaaS). Provide an example of each service from the Azure platform. (12 marks)

Infrastructure as a service: It is a cloud computing service that provides access to basic computing
infrastructure such as virtual machines, networking and storage. This is done on a pay as you go basis. It
is mostly used for development and testing environments.

Example: Azure Virtual Machine (Provides access to virtual machines that can be used to run any type of
application)

Platform as a service: It is a cloud computing service that provides users with an access to a platform to
which they have the ability to develop run and manage applications, this allows the user to focus on
their core business and not worry about managing the infrastructure because the PaaS provider
manages the underlying infrastructure such as servers , storage, networking etc.

Example: Azure App Services (Allows users to host and develop applications)

Software as a service: It is a cloud computing service that provides a specific software application or a
suite of applications such as office 365 which are accessed online and users do not need to install or
manage the underlying infrastructure / software

Example: Azure SQL database( provides fully relational database service)

• Describe the key features and use cases of Azure Virtual Machines, Azure App Service, and Azure SQL

Azure Virtual Machine

Key features: Is the ability to scale up or down when needed.

They have a wide range of different virtual machine sizes so users have a pool of choices for
their desired VM

Use cases: Azure Virtual Machines can be used to run web, application and database servers

Azure App Service

Key features: It has a built in load balancing that distributes traffic across multiple instances of the
instances to ensure high availability of services. Can also deploy, develop, and scale applications quickly

Use cases: Can develop and host web applications . Users can create a web application and deploy it to
the cloud and make it available for everyone

Azure SQL
Key features: it’s has a built in high availability and disaster recovery capabilities that ensure that data is
always available even in the even of failure . It ensures this through its advanced security features such
as data encryption.

Use cases: Can be used for OLTP online transaction processing, data warehousing and analytics
Unit 3: Understand Core Solutions and Management Tools (Total Marks: 30

• Explore the capabilities of Azure Monitor and Azure Log Analytics in monitoring and managing
resources deployed in Azure. (10 marks)

Azure Monitor: Azure Monitor tools can be used to monitor and manage resources deployed in Azure. It
includes features such as metrics logs and alerts. It is a platform for collecting data on your resources,
analyzing it and the visualizing the information. It can help you react to critical events in real time

Azure Log Analytics: It is a log management and analysis service that allows users to collect search and
analyze logs from Azure and other. If you work with the results of your queries interactively or you use
them with other Azure Monitor features , log analytics is the tool that will help you to write and test
those queries.

• Describe the purpose and benefits of Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates in automating
resource deployment and management.

Azure Resource Manager is Azure’s deployment and management service that provides a management
layer that enables you to create , update and delete resources in your Azure account.

Benefits include:

You can apply access control to all services because RBAC is natively integrated into the management
platform

You can apply tags to resources to organize all the resources in your subscription logically

You can deploy, manage and monitor all resources for your solution as a group, rather than handling
these resources individually

Benefits of using ARM templates

They have declarative syntax. Let’s you declare what you want to deploy but do not need to write the
actual programming commands and sequence to deploy the resources

Extensibility. Allows you to add PowerShell or Bash scripts to templates. These in turn extend your ability
to set up resources during deployment. They also give you the ability to complete your end to end
environment setup in a single ARM template

• Propose a disaster recovery strategy using Azure Site Recovery for an on-premises application
deployed in a hybrid cloud setup.

An alternative way to protect an on premise application in a cloud set up is “ failover to a different

region”. This strategy includes ASR replicating the application to a virtual machine in the same region as
the primary site
I Thandazo Sithole hereby
 declare that the contents of this assignment are entirely my own work except for the following
documents: (List the documents and page numbers of work in this portfolio

that were generated in a group)

Member Date

Signature: Date: 10/08/2023