What are two characteristics of the public cloud? Each correct answer presents a complete solution. NOTE: Each correct selection is worth one point.

The public cloud is defined by several key characteristics. Metered pricing, often referred to as pay-as-you-go, is a fundamental financial model where customers are billed only for the resources they consume, providing cost-effectiveness and scalability. Self-service management is another core tenet, empowering users to provision, configure, and manage computing resources on-demand through a web-based portal or APIs without requiring human intervention from the provider. These two features are essential to the agility and economic benefits offered by public cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure.

A. dedicated hardware: This is a feature of private clouds or dedicated hosting, not the shared, multi-tenant infrastructure typical of a public cloud.

B. unsecured connections: Public cloud providers prioritize security, offering multiple secure connectivity options. Security is a shared responsibility, not an inherent weakness.

C. limited storage: Public clouds offer vast, highly scalable, and seemingly limitless storage capacity, which is one of their primary advantages.

1. Microsoft Learn, AZ-900: Describe cloud computing. In the "What is cloud computing?" unit, it lists key characteristics including "On-demand self-service" and "Pay-as-you-go pricing," where you pay only for what you use.

Source: Microsoft Learn, "Describe core concepts of cloud computing," Module: "Describe cloud computing."

2. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-145, "The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing." This foundational document defines the essential characteristics of cloud computing.

Source: NIST SP 800-145, Section 2, "Definition of Cloud Computing," lists "On-demand self-service" and "Measured service" (the principle behind metered pricing) as two of the five essential characteristics.

3. Microsoft Azure Documentation, "What is a public cloud?". This document explicitly describes the public cloud model.

Source: Microsoft Azure, "Overview of cloud computing services," Section: "What is a public cloud?". It states, "With a public cloud, you have access to self-service provisioning, and all the services are pay-as-you-go."