Case Study
This is a case study. In the real exam, case studies are not timed separately. You can use as much exam time as you would like to complete each case. However, there may be additional case studies and sections on this exam. You must manage your time to ensure that you are able to complete all questions included on this exam in the time provided.
To answer the questions included in a case study, you will need to reference information that is provided in the case study. Case studies might contain exhibits and other resources that provide more information about the scenario that is described in the case study. Each question is independent of the other questions in this case study.
Overview
Contoso, Ltd, is a US-based financial services company that has a main office in New York and a branch office in San Francisco.
➡️ Existing Environment
▩ Payment Processing System
✪ Contoso hosts a business-critical payment processing system in its New York data center. The system has three tiers: a front-end web app, a middle-tier web API, and a back-end data store implemented as a Microsoft SQL Server 2014 database. All servers run Windows Server 2012 R2.
✪ The front-end and middle-tier components are hosted by using Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS). The application code is written in C# and ASP.NET.
✪ The middle-tier API uses the Entity Framework to communicate to the SQL Server database. Maintenance of the database is performed by using SQL Server Agent jobs.
✪ The database is currently 2 TB and is not expected to grow beyond 3 TB.
✪ The payment processing system has the following compliance-related requirements:
⊙ Encrypt data in transit and at rest. Only the front-end and middle-tier components must be able to access the encryption keys that protect the data store.
⊙ Keep backups of the data in two separate physical locations that are at least 200 miles apart and can be restored for up to seven years.
⊙ Support blocking inbound and outbound traffic based on the source IP address, the destination IP address, and the port number.
⊙ Collect Windows security logs from all the middle-tier servers and retain the logs for a period of seven years.
⊙ Inspect inbound and outbound traffic from the front-end tier by using highly available network appliances.
⊙ Only allow all access to all the tiers from the internal network of Contoso.
⊙ Tape backups are configured by using an on-premises deployment of Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM), and then shipped offsite for long term storage.
▩ Historical Transaction Query System
Contoso recently migrated a business-critical workload to Azure. The workload contains a .NET web service for querying the historical transaction data residing in Azure Table Storage. The .NET web service is accessible from a client app that was developed in-house and runs on the client computers in the New York office.
The data in the table storage is 50 GB and is not expected to increase.
▩ Current Issues
The Contoso IT team discovers poor performance of the historical transaction query system, as the queries frequently cause table scans.
➡️ Requirements
▩ Planned Changes
✪ Contoso plans to implement the following changes:
✪ Migrate the payment processing system to Azure.
✪ Migrate the historical transaction data to Azure Cosmos DB to address the performance issues.
▩ Migration Requirements
✪ Contoso identifies the following general migration requirements:
⊙ Infrastructure services must remain available if a region or a data center fails. Failover must occur without any administrative intervention.
⊙ Whenever possible, Azure managed services must be used to minimize management overhead.
⊙ Whenever possible, costs must be minimized.
✪ Contoso identifies the following requirements for the payment processing system:
⊙ If a data center fails, ensure that the payment processing system remains available without any administrative intervention. The middle-tier and the web front end must continue to operate without any additional configurations.
⊙ Ensure that the number of compute nodes of the front-end and the middle tiers of the payment processing system can increase or decrease automatically based on CPU utilization.
⊙ Ensure that each tier of the payment processing system is subject to a Service Level Agreement (SLA) of 99.99 percent availabilty.
⊙ Minimize the effort required to modify the middle-tier API and the back-end tier of the payment processing system.
⊙ Payment processing system must be able to use grouping and joining tables on encrypted columns.
⊙ Generate alerts when unauthorized login attempts occur on the middle-tier virtual machines.
⊙ Ensure that the payment processing system preserves its current compliance status.
⊙ Host the middle tier of the payment processing system on a virtual machine
✪ Contoso identifies the following requirements for the historical transaction query system:
⊙ Minimize the use of on-premises infrastructure services.
⊙ Minimize the effort required to modify the .NET web service querying Azure Cosmos DB.
⊙ Minimize the frequency of table scans.
⊙ If a region fails, ensure that the historical transaction query system remains available without any administrative intervention.
▩ Information Security Requirements
✪ The IT security team wants to ensure that identity management is performed by using Active Directory. Password hashes must be stored on-premises only.
✪ Access to all business-critical systems must rely on Active Directory credentials. Any suspicious authentication attempts must trigger a multi-factor authentication prompt automatically.
Question
You need to recommend a solution for implementing the back-end tier of the payment processing system in Azure.
What should you include in the recommendation?
