Solomon Stroup AWS Solutions Architect Associate Study Guide

Power Query is a data connection technology used in Power BI, Excel, and Microsoft Dataverse to prepare data for analysis. It follows an ETL workflow:

• Extract: Retrieve data from various sources.
• Transform: Clean, shape, and refine data (e.g., fixing abbreviations, removing columns, filtering rows, changing data types, and performing aggregations).
• Load: Load the transformed data into a destination such as a Semantic Model, pivot table, or data lake.

Azure Container Apps (ACA) is a serverless container service positioned between Azure Container Instances (minimal features) and Azure Kubernetes Service (advanced features).

Key characteristics:

• Serverless: Can scale down to zero (though cold starts may occur).
• No K8s API: Provides no direct Kubernetes API or control plane access.
• Built-in Technologies: Leverages KEDA (autoscaling), Dapr (distributed applications), and Envoy (proxy).
• Key Components:
  • Environment: Defines the boundary for logging (Log Analytics workspace) and networking (VNet).
  • Container App: One or more containers forming the application.
  • Revision: Immutable snapshots of the app (e.g., v1, v2). Supports traffic splitting (e.g., 50/50 split) and rollbacks.

Meta arguments are special arguments available in all resource and module blocks that control the behavior of the resource or module rather than its specific configuration. Key meta arguments include:

• depends_on: Handles hidden dependencies between resources or modules.
• count: Creates multiple instances of a resource based on a numeric value.
• for_each: Creates multiple instances based on a map or set of strings.
• provider: Selects a non-default provider configuration.
• lifecycle: Alters resource behavior (e.g., preventing accidental destruction).
• provisioners and connections: Performs extra actions after resource creation (e.g., installing software).

Meta arguments are special arguments available in all resource and module blocks that control the behavior of the resource or module rather than its specific configuration. Key meta arguments include:

• depends_on: Handles hidden dependencies between resources or modules.
• count: Creates multiple instances of a resource based on a numeric value.
• for_each: Creates multiple instances based on a map or a set of strings.
• provider: Selects a non-default provider configuration.
• lifecycle: Alters the behavior of a resource (e.g., preventing accidental deletion).
• provisioners: Executes extra actions after resource creation (e.g., installing software).

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a managed container orchestration service that supports both Windows (.NET) and Linux (Node.js, Python) applications. It consists of two primary components:

1. Control Plane (AKS Service): Managed by Azure. Components include:

   • etcd: Key-value store for cluster state and configuration.
   • kube-scheduler: Schedules pods to worker nodes.
   • kube-apiserver: The API endpoint for cluster management.
   • kube-controller-manager: Manages controllers for cluster state.
   • Container runtime (Docker).

2. Worker Nodes (Node Pools): The machines where containers run. Components include:

   • kubelet: Agent that communicates with the control plane to manage pods.
   • kube-proxy: Manages network communication between pods and services.
   • Container runtime (Docker).

Power Query is a data connection technology used in Power BI, Excel, and Microsoft Dataverse to discover, connect, combine, and refine data. It follows a three-step ETL process:

1. Extract: Retrieve data from a wide variety of sources.
2. Transform: Clean, shape, and transform data (e.g., fixing abbreviations, removing columns, filtering rows, changing data types, and performing aggregations).
3. Load: Load the transformed data into a destination such as a Semantic Model, pivot table, or data lake.

Azure Monitor provides tools to track the health and security of Azure applications. Key capabilities include:

• Defining and tracking specific metrics and logs for applications.
• Connecting various data sources to and configuring Log Analytics.
• Creating and monitoring security-related alerts for deployed solutions.
• Exporting monitor data to a SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) system, specifically Microsoft Sentinel.