ASA Quick Fire Questions Flashcards
(138 cards)
1
Q
What is a client? (Server)
A
A client is a person or computer that sends a request.
2
Q
What is a Server?
A
A server handling the requests is a computer, or collection of computers, connected to the internet serving websites to internet users.
3
Q
What does HTTP serves include?
A
Windows and Linux options
4
Q
At a fundamental level, what are the three types of compute options?
A
Virtual Machines (VMs), Containers and Serverless
5
Q
What is a Virtual Machine (VM)?
A
A VM emulates a physical server and allows you to install an HTTP server to run your application
6
Q
What is a HTTP?
A
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is a set of rules that define how data is transmitted over the internet. It is the foundation of data communication on the World Wide Web.
HTTP allows web browsers and servers to communicate and exchange data, such as web pages, images, videos, and other multimedia content.
7
Q
What is a hypervisor?
A
In its simplest form, a hypervisor is software or firmware that makes it possible to share physical hardware resources across one or more virtual machines. The hypervisor provisions the resources to create and run your VMs
8
Q
What is an EC2?
A
Is a resizable compute capacity in the cloud, in which you can provision virtual servers called EC2 instances.
9
Q
What’s three things you can do with EC2?
A
- Provision and launch one or more EC2 instances in minutes
- Stop or shut down EC2 instances when you finish running a workload
- Pay by the hour or second for each instance type (minimum of 60 seconds)
10
Q
To create an EC2 instance, what two things must you define?
A
- Hardware Specifications: CPU, memory, network and storage
- Local Configurations: Networking location, firewall rules, authentication, and the operating system of your choice
11
Q
When launching an EC2 instance, what do you first configure?
A
Amazon Machine Image (Operating Image)
12
Q
Whats the relationship between EC2 and AMI?
A
The AMI is the Operating System that sits under the EC2, the AMI is the blueprint and the EC2 instance is the product created and run through the AMI blueprint
13
Q
Whats an advantage of an AMI? (Give example)
A
They are reusable. you could create an another AMI through an EC2 instance, and repeat this process meaning you would have the same configurations as all AMI’s are the same.
14
Q
When updating an AMI, does it automatically update all other AMIs?
A
NO. AMIs are immutable, which means that once an AMI is created, its contents and configuration cannot be directly modified or updated. An AMI is a snapshot of the state of an instance at a specific point in time.
15
Q
What are five categories of AMIs, and what do they offer?
A
- Quick Start AMI - Pre-made AMIs created by AWS
- Marketplace AMIs - Open-source Third-party created
- My AMIs - Your library of AMIs created from your EC2
- Community AMIs - Provided by the AWS user community
- Custom Image - Build your own custom image with EC2 image builder
16
Q
What is open-source?
A
When code is publicly available and free to be used and modified
17
Q
What could be the primary reasons for taking a snapshot (AMI) of an EC2 instance?
A
For Backup and Recovery: have a backup of the instances root volume and any attached EBS volumes, just in case of any data loss or corruption
18
Q
What does the AMI include?
A
- Operating System
- Storage mapping
- Architecture type
- Launch Permissions
19
Q
What will instance sizing depend on?
A
demands of application and anticipated size of your user base
20
Q
What are EC2 instance made up of?
A
Virtual Processors, Memory, network, and in some cases instance storage and graphic processing units, which you choose how much you need of each when creating an instance.
21
Q
Instant types consist of a prefix identifying the type of workload they are optimized for, followed by size. How can instance size be broken down? For example ‘c5n.xlarge’
A
- First Position (C) - Instance family (Example indicates it is Compute Optimized)
- Second Position (5) - Generation of the instance
- Remaining letters before the period (n) Additional attributes such as NVMe storage
- After Period (xlarge) - Instance size
22
Q
What are the 6 EC2 Instance Families, with a overview and use case?
A
- General Purpose: These instances provide a balanced mix of compute, memory, and networking resources, suitable for various workloads like web servers and code repositories.
- Compute Optimized: Designed for compute-intensive applications like high-performance processors, such as batch processing, media transcoding, high performance web servers.
- Memory Optimized: Ideal for memory-intensive applications like high-performance databases, in-memory caches, real-time analytics
- Accelerated Computing: These instances use hardware accelerators for efficient parallel processes making them suitable for machine learning, HPC, scientific simulations
- HPC Optimized: Purpose-built for running HPC workloads at scale on AWS, ideal for applications such as large scale simulations and deep learning workloads
- Storage Optimized: For workloads that require high sequential read and write access to large datasets on local storage, such as NoSQL databases, in-memory databases, data warehousing and analytics
23
Q
Where is a EC2 instanced default placed when created?
A
VPC. However any resource you put in the default will be public and accessible by the public so you shouldn’t place any customer data
24
Q
When architecting for high availability, what should you at least have?
A
two EC2 instances for two separate AZs
25
When you launch an EC2 instance, what lifecycle stage does it enter?
Pending. Billing has not started at this point, its where it performs all actions to set up an instance
26
What is the running stage of a lifecycle instance?
Its ready to use, and where billing begins. You are now able to take other actions such as reboot, terminate, etc
27
What is the Rebooting stage of a lifecycle instance?
Its like rebooting an operating system. The instance keeps its public DNS and private and public IPv4 addresses.
28
What is the stopping and stopped state of a lifecycle instance?
Similar to when you shut down your laptop. You can stop an instance if you have an EBS volume as its root device (as data will be lost otherwise) when you stop and start it can be placed on a new underlying physical server.
When you put the instance into stop-hibernate, it saves the last information or content into memory so the process starts faster
29
What is the terminate stage, in a instance lifecycle?
Charges are stopped and you no long have access to the machine. All is lost.
30
What is an On-Demand instance?
You per per second or per hour, depending on the instances your run. You can increase or decrease your compute capacity to meet demands of your application.
31
What use cases are On-Demand Instance for?
- Users who prefer low cost and flexibility of EC2 without long commitments or upfront payments
- Applications with short-term or spiky workloads that could be interrupted
- Applications being tested for the first time
32
What is a Spot Instance?
Applications that have flexible start and end times. You can request spare EC2 compute capacity for up to 90% off the on-demand price. You can set a cost limit for the instance hour which can gradually change based of long term trends in demand of spot instances
33
What use cases are for Spot Instances?
- Applications that have flexibility
- Applications that are cheaply feasible
- Users with fault tolerant or stateless workloads
34
What is Savings Plans?
Flexible pricing model that offers low usage prices for a 1-year or 3-year term commitment to a consistent amount of usage. It applies to EC2, Lambada and Fargate and provide up to 72% savings on AWS Compute usage
35
What use cases are for Savings Plans?
- Consistent and steady usage
- Customers who want to use different instance types and compute solutions across different locations
- Customers who can make 1-year to 3-year EC2 commitments
36
What is Reserved Instances?
Need for reserved capacity. You save up to 72% compared to on-demand. You can choose between; Upfront, partial upfront or no upfront payment (1-year or 3-year commitment)
37
What three type of Reserved Instances are there?
1. Standard: provide the most significant discount (Up to 72% off On-Demand pricing) and best suited for steady state usage
2. Convertible: Up to 54% discount and ability to change attributes of the reserved instance if the exchange results in creation of Reserved instances or equal or greater value
3. Scheduled: Available to launch within the time windows that you reserve, which you can match to a predictable recurring schedule that only requires a fraction of a day, a week or month
38
What is a dedicated host?
A EC2 server dedicated to you. They can be purchased on demand (hourly) and can be purchased as a reservation for up to 70% off
39
What use case are for Dedicated Host?
Customers who want to use their own, existing server licences such as Windows, SQL, Oracle and help meet compliance requirements.
40
What sort of workloads can Containers host?
web applications, lift and shift migrations, distributed applications, streamlining of development
41
What is a Container?
A standardized unit that packages your code and its dependencies which creates its own environment
42
What is Docker?
A container runtime that simplifies the management of the entire operating system required for container isolation, including networking and storage. It helps customers create, package, deploy and run containers
43
What's the difference between VMs and Containers?
1. Containers share the same operating system and kernel as the host that they exist on. But VMs contain their own operating system, in which each must maintain a copy of, resulting in wasted resources.
2. They are quicker and more lightweight, meaning a quicker spinup
3. containers provide speed but VMs provide full strength of an operating system and more resources such as package instillation and dedicated kernel
44
What is a Kernel?
Central of the operating system, it is the bridge between the hardware and software applications
45
How should you run containers in a high available and scalable manner?
Running many containers on many EC2 instances across several AZs
46
What two container management services are there?
1. ECS (Elastic Container Service)
2. EKS (Elastic Kurbernetes Service)
47
What is ECS?
Define containers in a task definition that you use to run an individual task or a task within a service.
48
How could you run a ECS?
1. Via AWS Fargate,, through a serverless infrastructure
2. EC2 instance cluster which you manage yourself (but must download an agent on your instances)
49
What is an EC2 instance with a container agent called?
Container instance
50
What actions can you perform on a ECS container instance?
1. Launching and stopping
2. Getting cluster state (running, pending, etc)
3. Scaling
4. scheduling placement of containers across your cluster
assigning permissions
5. meeting availability requirements
51
To prepare for your app to run on ECS, what should you do?
create a task definition (JSON format) that describes the containers, which are the blueprints describing the resources needed to run such as CPU, memory, etc
52
What are Kubernetes?
Kurbenetes is a portable, extensible, open-source platform for managing container workloads and services
53
What is EKS?
Manage kurbenetes on AWS without the need to install and operate
54
What is control plane?
The brain of the kurbenetes managing the state.
55
What is a node?
virtual machine that runs containerized workload
56
Whats the difference between ECS and EKS?
1. ECS the machine running the containers is an EC2 instance in EKS it is a worker or kubernetes node
2. ECS container is called a task and EKS is a pod
3. ECS runs on AWS native tech, EKS runs on kurbernets
57
What is Fargate?
A purpose-built serverless compute engine for containers, scaling and managing the infrastructure for you
58
Whats the benefits of fargate?
1. No need to manage EC2 instances
2. Manage cluster capacity
3. Manage scaling
59
What is Lambada?
Run code without provisioning or managing servers, virtually (Data processing. ML, IoT backends)
60
How can you configure your Lambda functions?
Lambda API, CloudFormation. AWS Serverless Application Management
61
What is Trigger (Lambda)?
When a Lambda function should run, such as service integrations
62
What is a function (Lambda)?
Invoke to run your code in Lambda, which processes events
63
What is an event (Lambda)?
The code for it to function, like blueprints (JSON-format)
64
What is an Application Environment (Lambda)?
Provides a secure and isolated runtime environment for your function. It manages the processes and resources that are required to run the function
65
What is an Deployment Package (Lambda)?
The code it uses. Either a .zip file archive which contains the fuction code and its dependencies, and Lambda provides the os and runtime. Container image which you ad the code, dependencies, os and runtime
66
What is runtime (Lambda)?
The language-specific environment (Python, node.js, java, etc)
67
What is an Function Handler (Lambda)?
The entry point in your code for the Lambda function
68
Whats the cost of Lambda?
Pay for what you use. you are charged for the number of times your code is requested and for the time that your code runs rounded up to the nearest 1 millisecond of duration
69
What is an IP address?
combination of street, city, state, zip code, country to route your users to the right site
70
What is CIDR, and what is it?
Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR): compressed way of representing a range of IP addresses for a network
71
What does example 192.168.1.0/24 CIDR notation mean?
It begins with a starting IP address and is seperated by a forward / followed by the number. the number represents how many of the bits of the IP address are fixed.
72
What are bits? (Networking)
Bits are the amount of memory or space is allocated to represent information allowing for organised data.
73
In the AWS Cloud what is the smallest IP range you can have?
/28 which provides 16 IP addresses
74
what does the number of IP addresses signal?
The different 0 and 1 binary combinations possible, which each represents an IP address
74
How many bits are in a IPv4 address
32
75
To create a region, what two things do you need? (Networking)
1. Region
2. IP Range
76
To create a subnet, what three things do you need?
1. VPC
2. AZ
3. IP Range
77
What is a subnet?
A smaller network inside your base network, which are called virtual local area networks (VLANs) in a traditional network. In a traditional network it helps optimize network traffic, however in AWS they provide high availability and connectivity for your resources.
78
When should you use a public and private subnet?
Public: resources that need to be connected over the internet
Private: resources that wont be connected over the internet
79
How should you create high availability with a VPC?
create at least two subnets configured in two AZs
80
What are reserved IPs
For AWS to configure your VPC appropriately, AWS reserves five IP addresses in each subnet. These IP addresses are used for routing, Domain Name System (DNS), and network management.
81
What would be recommended for someone new to AWS, designing their network?
Create a VPC with a /16 IP range and a subnet range of /24 so you have a large amount of IP addresses to work with at both VPC and subnet level
82
What is an internet gateway?
the gateway connects your VPC to the internet, which you connect after you have created it making it more available and tolerant unlike a modem
83
What is a Virtual Private Gateway?
connects your VPC to another private network, it acts as anchor on the AWS side of the connection, which you then connect your customer gateway device to the other private network.
84
What is a customer gateway device?
a physical device or software application on your side of the connection which helps create an encrypted VPN connection between the two sides
85
What is Direct Connect?
A way to establish a physical connection between your on-prem data centre and your amazon VPC. Your internal network is linked to AWS Direct Connect location over a standard ethernet cable.
86
When you create a VPC what does AWS create (Routing)
Main Route table
87
What is a route table?
A set of rules which directs traffic
88
What is the default setting for an AWS route table
main route table is to allow traffic between all subnets in the local network
89
What five rules apply to the main route table
1. You can not delete the main route table
2. you cannot set a gateway route table as a main route table
3. you can replace it with a custom subnet route table
4. you can add, remove, and modify routes within the main route table
5. You can explicitly associate a subnet with the main route table
90
If a customer wants traffic to access outside of the VPC, what could they do?
You can create different subnets for various resources and create different routes for them
91
How can you protect your VPC with route tables?
By associating each new subnet with a custom route table and leaving the main route table in its original default state
92
What is a Network Access Control List?
lets you control what traffic you either let in or out through setting up rules
93
What level does Security Groups cover?
EC2
94
What does the default network ACL allow to do traffic wise?
allow all traffic in and out of the subnet. To allow data to roam freely
95
When might you want to restrict data at the subnet level?
If you have a web app, you might restrict your network to allow HTTPS traffic and Remote Desktop Protocol traffic to your web servers
96
What does stateless mean in networking?
When the system treats each request as an independent action without maintaining any info or context about previous interactions (only bases it off the data in the request rather then other data from previous data)
97
What port does HTTPS use to initiate a connection?
433
98
What do you have to do when setting up a Network ACL?
include the inbound and outbound ports used for the protocol, as id you don't include the outbound range the traffic will enter the subnet but not leave
99
Whats the default configuration for a security group?
blocks all inbound traffic and allows all outbound traffic
100
Security groups can be used in the same way as to subnets in segregating traffic (True or False)
True. A common design is to organise resources into different groups and create security groups for each to control network communication between them
101
What does VLAN stand for?
Virtual Local Area Network
102
How many internet gateways can be connected to a VPC?
1
103
A network ACL filters traffic at the Amazon EC2 instance level? (True or False)
False. A network ACL secures subnets. A security group is responsible for securing EC2 instances
104
What four things should you take into account when picking a Region?
1. Latency
2. Price
3. Service Availability
4. Data Compliance
105
How does AWS charge each Region?
Charges vary in each Region, and AWS charges based on the financial factors specific to each region
106
What is Amazon CloudFront?
A delivery service of cached content, taking you to the best edge location
107
What is AWS CLI?
AWS Command Line Interface. Write scripts that collects all the data you need from multiple servers without the need to login into each one manually
108
What is a SDK?
Software Development Kit. Supports you in writing code in your preferred language to control and manage AWS services
109
What is the route user?
The first AWS account, in which you begin with a single sign-in that has complete access to all services and resources. (Via an email and password)
110
What two sets of credentials associated with the root user?
1. Email and Password
2. access keys (which allow you to make programmatic requests from the CLI or API
111
What are the 5 best practices for a root user?
1. use a strong password
2. enable MFA
3. never share your password or access keys
4. disable or delete access keys
5. create IAM user for admin tasks
112
What is an IAM user?
represents a person or service that interacts with AWS. When you create a user, that user can sign in to gain access to the AWS resources inside your account
113
What two types of access can you provide a user with?
1. AWS Management Console (your provided username and password)
2. Programmatic access to the CLI and API (provided access keys)
114
What is an IAM Group?
Is a collection of users, who all have the same permissions.summar
115
What is an IAM Policy
when a IAM Identity requests to access outside of their controlled access then AWS evaluates the policy and allows or denies
116
What are the 6 best practices for IAM
1. Lock root user
2. Follow the principle of least privilege
3. Use IAM appropriately
4. Use IAM roles when possible
5. Continue using an identity provider
6. Regularly review and remover unused IAMs
117
What are the three categorised storage services? (What do each mean?)
1. File - Like folders and subfolders, seen in windows file explorer
2. Block - Splits files into fixed-size chunks of data called blocks that have their own addresses
3. Object - files are stored as objects, they are treated as one single unit of data when stored
118
What use cases are used for File storage?
1. Web Serving: cloud file storage solutions allow integration with web applications due to their adherence to common file-level protocols, naming conventions, and permissions
2. Analytics: supports analytics workflows by providing scalable capacity, performance and compatibility with file-level protocols and features like file locking
3. Media: enables integration for content production, media streaming, analytics and archiving in hybrid cloud deployments
4. Home Directories: storage systems support standard permissions models and protocols, allowing businesses to lift and shift applications requiring home directory access to the cloud
119
What is a home directory?
A central file system directory for multi-user operating systems
120
What use cases are used for block storage?
1. Transactional workloads: scalable and efficient transactional databases by leveraging self-contained blocks for optimal performance as data grows
2. Containers: facilitates flexible, scalable, and efficient storage for containerized applications, allowing seamless migration across environments
3. Virtual Machines: Block supports VM hypervisors, allowing installation of operating systems and resources on resizable, transferable volumes
121
What use cases are used for object storage?
1. Data Archiving: cost-effective, long-term data retention for rich media content and regulatory data, with enhanced durability, retrieval times, security, compliance and accessibility compared to on-prem tape and disk archives
2. Backup and Recovery: Replicate content across devices, data centres and regions
3. Rich Media: accelerates rich media applications and reduces storage costs for different media types by leveraging storage classes
122
What is the traditional Block Storage option?
Direct -attached storage (DAS) or a storage area network (SAN)
123
What is the traditional file storage option?
network-attached storage (NAS) server
124
What is the problem with traditional storage systems?
Is a rigid process, must be purchased, installed and configured. Whereas with cloud you can create, delete and modify storage solutions within minutes
125
What is Amazon EFS? (What is it for)
Elastic File System. automatically grows and shrinks as you add and remove files, no need to manage. It can be used with AWS compute services and on-prem resources. You can connect multiple instances to EFS at the same time, all with consistent performance
126
What can you do with the EFS web interface?
create and configure file systems quickly without any setup cost, you only pay for the storage used and you can choose from a range of storage classes
127
What does standard storage classes offer?
EFS Standard and EFS Standard-Infrequent Access offer Multi-AZ resilience and the highest levels of durability and availability
128
What does one zone storage classes offer?
EFS One Zone and EFS One Zone-Infrequent Access provide additional savings by saving your data in one single AZ
129
What is Amazon FSx?
Fully managed, offering reliability, security, and broad set of capabilities that make it convienenant and cost-effective to launch, run, and scale high-performance file systems in the cloud.
130
What four file systems can you use via FSx?
1. Lustre
2. NetApp ONTAP
3. OpenZFS
4. Windows file systems
131
What is FSx for OpenZFS?
Allows you to move on-prem ZSF or Linux-based file server data to AWS without charging your application code or data management practices. Stops the need to set up and provision files, storage volumes, data replication, software patching, etc
132
What is FSx for NetApp ONTAP?
combines the features, performance, and API operations of on-prem NetApp file systems with the agility, scalibilty of an AWS service. Provides rich data management features and flexible storage accessible
133
What is FSx for Microsoft Windows File?
Highly reliable and scalable Microsoft windows file, backed by a native one, eliminates the admin overhead of setting up and provisioning file servers and storage volumes, meaning easy mangement
134
What are mapping templates?
Can be used to transform request from frontend to backend
135
What is Amazon Eventbridge?
Used to build applications that start processing after any changes to objects stored in S3
136
What is Resource Access Management
Mange access to resources by creating a resource share
137
