Freshness & technical review

Author: Orin-Thomas

learn-pr/advocates/improve-reliability-scaling/1-introduction.yml

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ title: "Introduction"
 metadata:
   title: "Introduction"
   description: "Introduction"
-  ms.date: 06/23/2023
+  ms.date: 04/12/2026
   author: dnblankedelman
   ms.author: dnb
   ms.topic: unit

learn-pr/advocates/improve-reliability-scaling/2-definition.yml

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ title: "What is scalability?"
 metadata:
   title: "What is scalability?"
   description: "What is scalability?"
-  ms.date: 06/23/2023
+  ms.date: 04/12/2026
   author: dnblankedelman
   ms.author: dnb
   ms.topic: unit
@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ quiz:
       explanation: "With scaling, especially when scaling out, there's often an increase in complexity."
     - content: 'more reliable'
       isCorrect: true
-      explanation: 'Correct.'
+      explanation: 'Correct. Scaling out adds redundancy, and autoscaling can automatically replace failed instances, both of which improve reliability.'
     - content: 'easier to troubleshoot'
       isCorrect: false
       explanation: 'Because (especially when scaling out) there are more moving parts, it may not be easier to troubleshoot.'

learn-pr/advocates/improve-reliability-scaling/3-growth.yml

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ title: "Prepare for growth"
 metadata:
   title: "Prepare for growth"
   description: "Prepare for growth"
-  ms.date: 06/23/2023
+  ms.date: 04/12/2026
   author: dnblankedelman
   ms.author: dnb
   ms.topic: unit
@@ -24,25 +24,25 @@ quiz:
       explanation: 'Correct. This description is the definition of organic growth.'
     - content: 'inorganic growth'
       isCorrect: false
-      explanation: 'This description is the definition of organic growth.'
+      explanation: 'Inorganic growth arises from external factors, such as a marketing event or acquisition, rather than a natural expansion of business activity.'
     - content: 'capacity planning'
       isCorrect: false
-      explanation: 'This description is the definition of organic growth.'
+      explanation: 'Capacity planning is the process of determining the resources needed to meet present and future demands, not the growth pattern itself.'
 
   - content: 'With Cosmos DB, which of these metrics are incorporated into a request unit?'
     choices:
     - content: 'memory'
       isCorrect: false
-      explanation: 'Request Units (RUs) are a mixture of Memory, CPU, and IOPS.'
+      explanation: 'Request Units (RUs) are a blended measure of memory, CPU, and IOPS.'
     - content: 'CPU'
       isCorrect: false
-      explanation: 'Request Units (RUs) are a mixture of Memory, CPU, and IOPS'
+      explanation: 'Request Units (RUs) are a blended measure of memory, CPU, and IOPS.'
     - content: 'IOPS'
       isCorrect: false
-      explanation: 'Request Units (RUs) are a mixture of Memory, CPU, and IOPS'
+      explanation: 'Request Units (RUs) are a blended measure of memory, CPU, and IOPS.'
     - content: 'All of these metrics.'
       isCorrect: true
-      explanation: 'Correct. Request Units (RUs) are a mixture of memory, CPU, and IOPS'
+      explanation: 'Correct. Request Units (RUs) are a blended measure of memory, CPU, and IOPS.'
 
   - content: 'Which of the following options is _not_ a business metric you should correlate your resource usage to when planning for capacity?'
     choices:

learn-pr/advocates/improve-reliability-scaling/4-considerations.yml

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ title: "Capacity planning considerations"
 metadata:
   title: "Capacity planning considerations"
   description: "Capacity planning considerations"
-  ms.date: 06/23/2023
+  ms.date: 04/12/2026
   author: dnblankedelman
   ms.author: dnb
   ms.topic: unit

learn-pr/advocates/improve-reliability-scaling/5-applications.yml

@@ -4,13 +4,11 @@ title: "Make applications scalable"
 metadata:
   title: "Make applications scalable"
   description: "Make applications scalable"
-  ms.date: 06/23/2023
+  ms.date: 04/12/2026
   author: dnblankedelman
   ms.author: dnb
   ms.topic: unit
-  ms.custom:
-    - sfi-ropc-nochange
-    - team=cloud_advocates
+  ms.custom: team=cloud_advocates
   ms.contributors: dnb-04282021
 durationInMinutes: 8
 content: |
@@ -42,4 +40,16 @@ quiz:
     - content: 'SignalR'
       isCorrect: false
       explanation: 'SignalR is an open-source library that simplifies adding real-time web functionality to apps.'
+
+  - content: "If after scaling up or implementing read replicas, your database resources still don't meet the needs of your system, what is the next option?"
+    choices:
+    - content: 'in-memory caching'
+      isCorrect: false
+      explanation: "In-memory caching can improve performance, but it doesn't increase your database resources."
+    - content: 'decoupling'
+      isCorrect: false
+      explanation: 'Decoupling is a change that can help with differing resource needs between different dependent services.'
+    - content: 'sharding'
+      isCorrect: true
+      explanation: 'Correct. Sharding distributes data across multiple independent databases, enabling you to scale beyond the constraints of an individual database.'
 

learn-pr/advocates/improve-reliability-scaling/6-global.yml

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ title: "Go global"
 metadata:
   title: "Go global"
   description: "Go global"
-  ms.date: 06/23/2023
+  ms.date: 04/12/2026
   author: dnblankedelman
   ms.author: dnb
   ms.topic: unit
@@ -17,17 +17,17 @@ quiz:
   title: Check your knowledge
   questions:
 
-  - content: 'If after scaling up or implementing read replicas, your database resources still don’t meet the needs of your system, what is the next option?'
+  - content: 'Which Azure service acts as a global HTTP-based load balancer that can also provide caching and Web Application Firewall capabilities?'
     choices:
-    - content: 'in-memory caching'
+    - content: 'Azure Traffic Manager'
       isCorrect: false
-      explanation: "In-memory caching can improve performance, but it doesn't increase your database resources."
-    - content: 'decoupling'
-      isCorrect: false
-      explanation: 'Decoupling is a change that can help with differing resource needs between different dependent services.'
-    - content: 'sharding'
+      explanation: 'Traffic Manager is a DNS-based load balancer. Because it uses DNS routing, it cannot proxy connections or provide caching or WAF capabilities.'
+    - content: 'Azure Front Door'
       isCorrect: true
-      explanation: 'Correct. This technique is a way to scale out our database resources.'
+      explanation: 'Correct. Azure Front Door proxies connections, enabling advanced features such as caching and Web Application Firewall.'
+    - content: 'Azure Load Balancer'
+      isCorrect: false
+      explanation: 'Azure Load Balancer operates at Layer 4 within a region and does not provide global HTTP-based load balancing, caching, or WAF.'
 
   - content: 'What consistency model offers a linearizability guarantee?'
     choices:

learn-pr/advocates/improve-reliability-scaling/7-summary.yml

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ title: "Summary"
 metadata:
   title: "Summary"
   description: "Summary"
-  ms.date: 06/23/2023
+  ms.date: 04/12/2026
   author: dnblankedelman
   ms.author: dnb
   ms.topic: unit

learn-pr/advocates/improve-reliability-scaling/includes/1-introduction.md

@@ -1,6 +1,4 @@
-The Dickerson hierarchy of reliability has served as the roadmap for this learning path. Over the course of the previous five modules, we have come up through the levels from the foundational step of monitoring to incident response, post-incident review, and deployment.
-
-In this final module, you complete your journey at the capacity and scale level. You learn how to handle the threat to reliability that comes with growth, ensuring that your solutions can scale.
+In this module you will learn how to handle the threat to reliability that comes with growth, ensuring that your solutions can scale.
 
 When you have completed this module, you'll:
 
@@ -12,5 +10,5 @@ When you have completed this module, you'll:
 - Be able to measure capacity in the cloud.
 - Use Azure tools to catch issues with service limits and quotas before they emerge.
 - Understand important steps to take before beginning work on scaling.
-- List techniques for making an application more scalable. Including, decoupling, queues, in-memory caching, and database sharding.
+- List techniques for making an application more scalable, including decoupling, queues, in-memory caching, and database sharding.
 - Learn about the Azure tools that make it possible to take your application or service global.

learn-pr/advocates/improve-reliability-scaling/includes/2-definition.md

@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ In this module, we're going to use an example architecture from a fictional hard
 
 :::image type="content" source="../media/application-diagram.png" alt-text="Full architecture diagram of applications with frontend, backend and other components.":::
 
-This diagram is fairly complex at first glance, so let's walk through it. The website has a front end. that's what you talk to if you go to tailwindtraders.com.
+This diagram is fairly complex at first glance, so let's walk through it. The website has a front end. That's what you talk to if you go to tailwindtraders.com.
 
 :::image type="content" source="../media/application-diagram-frontend.png" alt-text="Full architecture diagram of application with frontend component highlighted.":::
 
@@ -60,17 +60,17 @@ Now that you have seen the whole architecture, let's take a moment to examine th
 
 :::image type="content" source="../media/application-diagram-failure-points.png" alt-text="Full architecture diagram of application with backend components and SQL DB highlighted.":::
 
-All of these services are a single point of failure - they’re not built for resiliency, or for scale. If one of them gets overloaded, it’s likely to crash, and there's no easy way to resolve that in the moment.
+Each of these services is a single point of failure - they’re not built for resiliency, or for scale. If one of them gets overloaded, it’s likely to crash, and there's no easy way to resolve that in the moment.
 
-Later in this module, we look at other ways to design theses service to be more scalable and reliable.
+Later in this module, we look at other ways to design these services to be more scalable and reliable.
 
 ### Pre-provisioned capacity
 
 Let's take a look at another issue that could prove troublesome. Here are the services/components that require us to pre-provision capacity:
 
-:::image type="content" source="../media/application-diagram-provisioned.png" alt-text="Full architecture diagram of application with Azure AI services, Cosmos DB, and SQL DB highlighted":::
+:::image type="content" source="../media/application-diagram-provisioned.png" alt-text="Full architecture diagram of application with Azure AI services, Cosmos DB, and SQL DB highlighted.":::
 
-For example, with Cosmos DB, we pre-provision the throughput. If we exceed those limits, we’re going to start returning error messages to our customers. With Azure AI services, we select the tier and that tier has a maximum number of requests per second. After we reach either of limits, clients are going to be throttled.
+For example, with Cosmos DB, we pre-provision the throughput. If we exceed those limits, we’re going to start returning error messages to our customers. With Azure AI services, we select the tier and that tier has a maximum number of requests per second. After we reach either of these limits, clients are going to be throttled.
 
 Will a significant spike in traffic, like launching a new product, make us hit these limits? Right now, we don’t know. This matter is another that we review later in this module.