AWS Storage Flashcards by Kalyan Dasika

EBS Volumes are locked to an AZ True or False?

True
e.g. An EBS volume of us-east-1a cannot be attached to us-east-ab

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When an EC2 instance is terminated, by default the root EBS volume is deleted and any other attached EBS volume is not deleted. True or False ?

True

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What does AMI stand for?

Amazon Machine Image

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What does an AMI contain?

An AMI contains the software configuration (for example, an operating system, an application server, and applications) required for the creation of EC2 instances. When you launch an instance, you must specify an AMI.

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AMIs are categorized by the storage for the root device of an instance launched from the AMI. Name the categories.

EBS backed AMI - created from EBS snapshot
Instance store backed AMI - created from a template stored in S3

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What is one good reason why you would create your own AMI?

To pre-install all required software and speed up boot up time

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EC2 Instance Store is used for better I/O performance and has ephemeral storage. True or False

True

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EC2 Instance store is good for permanent storage and there is no risk of data loss if hardware fails. True or False

False

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Local EC2 Instance stores usually has very low read performance compared to writes. (Random Read IOPS vs Write IOPS). True or False

False
e.g
i3.metal has 3.3 million random read IOPS and 1.4 million Write IOPS

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What does IOPS stand for?

Input/Output Operations Per Second

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Only gp2/gp3 and io1/io2 EBS volume types can be used as boot volumes (root OS is going to be running). True or False

True

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What are the characteristics of a General Purpose SSD boot volume type?

General Purpose SSD EBS volume type is generally a cost effective storage, has low-latency and is used as System boot volumes, virtual desktops, development and test environmens.

1 GB - 16 GB

gp3: baseline 3000 IOPS and throughput of 125 MBPS
scaled to 16000 IOPS and 1000 MBPS independently

gp2: small volumes can burse IOPS to 3000
max IOPSis 16000 and size of volume and IOPS are linked
3 IOPS per GB .. so max 5.3 GB

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What are the characteristics of a Provisioned IOPS SSD ?

critical business applications with sustained IOPS performance
> 16000 IOPS
great for DB workloads
io1/io2 (4 GB - 16 GB)
io2 Block Express (4 GB - 64 GB) IOPS:GB ratio 1000:1
Supports EBS multi attach

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What are the characteristics of a Hard Disk Drive (HDD) EBS volume type?

cannot be a boot volume
125 GB - 16 TB
- Big data, DW, log processing
- 500 MBPS - 500 IOPS

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If you want a throughput of over 32000 IOPS which EBS volume type would you choose?

EC2 Nitro instance with io1 or io2

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The multi attach feature is available only to the io1 and io2 family of EBS boot volume types. True or False

True
The EMS Multi-Attach - io1/io2 family attach the same EBS volume to multiple EC2 instances in the same AZ
Each instance has full read & write permissions to the high-performance volume
Use case:
Achieve higher availability in clustered Linux apps
Apps must manage concurrent write operations

How many EC2 instances can be attached using the multi attach feature of the io1/io2 family of EBS boot volume types?
a) 8
b)16
c) 32
d) there is no limit

b) 16

EBS Encryption leverages keys from KMS (AES-256) True or False

True

What does EFS stand for?

Elastic File System

An EFS must be attached to a Security Group. True or False

True

An EFS is restricted to only one AZ. True or False

False. EFS can be mounted on many EC2 instances in various AZs.
The Elastic nature of the managed network file system makes it highly available, scalable and expensive (3 x gp2), and it is a pay per use

What are the characteristics of EFS?

Use cases: content management, web serving, data sharing, word press etc.
NFSv4.1 protocol
Uses Security Group to control access to EFS
Compatible with Linux AMIs (not Windows)
Encryption at rest using KMS
POSIX file system
no capacity planning

What are the performance characteristics of EFS?

EFS Scale: 1000s of concurrent NFS clients, 10 GB+ /s through put
Grows to PB scale NFS
Bursting Throughput Mode
Unpredictable workloads e.g. 3 GBPS reads and 1 GBPS writes

There is a life cycle policy that can be attached to an EFS that would move an infrequently accessed file from EFS standard to EFA IA storage class. True or False

True
The storage tiers that are available for EFS are standard (frequently accessed files) and Infrequent Access (IA)
for IA, there is a cost to retrieve files, lower price to store.
Standard: Multi-AZ great for prod
One Zone: One AZ, great for dev, backup enabled by default, compatible with IA

You have just terminated an EC2 instance in us-east-1a, and its attached EBS volume is now available. Your teammate tries to attach it to an EC2 instance in us-east-1b but he can't. What is a possible cause for this? a) He's missing IAM permissions b) EBS volumes are locked to an AWS region c) EBS volumes are locked to an AZ

C) EBS Volumes are created for a specific AZ. It is possible to migrate them between different AZs using EBS Snapshots.

You have launched an EC2 instance with two EBS volumes, Root volume type and the other EBS volume type to store the data. A month later you are planning to terminate the EC2 instance. What's the default behavior that will happen to each EBS volume? a) Both the root volume type and the EBS volume type will be deleted b) The root volume type will be deleted and the EBS volume type will not be deleted c) The root volume type will not be deleted and the EBS volume type will be deleted d) Both the root volume type and the EBS volume type will not be deleted

B) By default, the Root volume type will be deleted as its "Delete On Termination" attribute checked by default. Any other EBS volume types will not be deleted as its "Delete On Termination" attribute disabled by default.

You can use an AMI in N.Virginia Region us-east-1 to launch an EC2 instance in any AWS Region. True or False?

False AMIs are built for a specific AWS Region, they're unique for each AWS Region. You can't launch an EC2 instance using an AMI in another AWS Region, but you can copy the AMI to the target AWS Region and then use it to create your EC2 instances.

Which of the following EBS volume types can be used as boot volumes when you create EC2 instances? a) gp2, gp3, st1, sc1 b) gp2, gp3, io1, io2 c) io1, io2, st1, sc1

b) When creating EC2 instances, you can only use the following EBS volume types as boot volumes: gp2, gp3, io1, io2, and Magnetic (Standard).

What is EBS Multi-Attach? a) Attach the same EBS volume to multiple EC2 instances in multiple AZs b) Attach multiple EBS volumes in the same AZ to the same EC2 instance c) Attach the same EBS volume to multiple EC2 instances in the same AZ d) Attach multiple EBS volumes in multiple AZs to the same EC2 instance

c) Using EBS Multi-Attach, you can attach the same EBS volume to multiple EC2 instances in the same AZ. Each EC2 instance has full read/write permissions.

You would like to encrypt an unencrypted EBS volume attached to your EC2 instance. What should you do? a) Create an EBS snapshot of your EBS volume. Copy the snapshot and tick the option to encrypt the copied snapshot. Then, use the encrypted snapshot to create a new EBS volume b) Select your EBS volume, choose Edit attributes, then tick the Encrypt using KMS option c) Create a new encrypted EBS volume, then copy data from your unencrypted EBS volume to the new EBS volume d) Submit a request to AWS support to encrypt EBS volume

You have a fleet of EC2 instances distributes across AZs that process a large data set. What do you recommend to make the same data to be accessible as an NFS drive to all of your EC2 instances? a) use EBS b) use EFS c) Use an instance store

b) EFS is a network file system (NFS) that allows you to mount the same file system on EC2 instances that are in different AZs.

You would like to have a high-performance local cache for your application hosted on an EC2 instance. You don't mind losing the cache upon the termination of your EC2 instance. Which storage mechanism do you recommend as a Solutions Architect? a) EBS b) EFS c) Instance store

C) EC2 Instance Store provides the best disk I/O performance.

You are running a high-performance database that requires an IOPS of 310,000 for its underlying storage. What do you recommend? a) Use an EBS gp2 drive b) Use an EBS io1 drive c) Use an EC2 instance store d) Use an EBS io2 Block Express drive

c) You can run a database on an EC2 instance that uses an Instance Store, but you'll have a problem that the data will be lost if the EC2 instance is stopped (it can be restarted without problems). One solution is that you can set up a replication mechanism on another EC2 instance with an Instance Store to have a standby copy. Another solution is to set up backup mechanisms for your data. It's all up to you how you want to set up your architecture to validate your requirements. In this use case, it's around IOPS, so we have to choose an EC2 Instance Store.