Cloud Concepts (26%)

Question 1

thousands of servers grouped together

Answer 1

Data centers

Question 2

Compute services (2)

Answer 2

EC2, Lambda

Question 3

Storage services (2)

Answer 3

S3, EBS (Elastic Block Store)

Question 4

Analytics services (2)

Answer 4

Athena, Redshift

Question 5

Development services (2)

Answer 5

Cloud9, Code Commit

Question 6

What is the term for systems that are designed to operate continuously without failure for a long time. They avoid loss of service by reducing or managing failures?

Answer 6

High availability

Question 7

What is the term for… You don’t have to plan ahead how much capacity you need. You can provision only what you need and then grow and shrink based on demand.

Answer 7

Elasticity

Question 8

What is the term for the cloud helping you innovate faster, giving you speed to market?

Answer 8

Agility

Question 9

What is the term for long term data protection, guaranteeing your data will remain without corruption?

Answer 9

Durability

Question 10

What are upfront purchases toward fixed assets?

Answer 10

Capital expenditures (Capex)

Question 11

What are expenses that are funds used to run day-to-day operations?

Answer 11

Operating Expenses (OpEx)

Question 12

What are 6 advantages to cloud computing?

Answer 12

1. Go global in minutes
2. Stop spending money running & maintaining data centers
3. Benefit from massive economies of scale (cost advantages when companies become efficient)
4. Increased speed & agility
5. Stop guessing capacity
6. Trade capital expense for variable expense

Question 13

What are the Cloud Computing models? (3)

And what are they?

Answer 13

1) Infrastructure as a service (IAAS)
- Building blocks that can be rented (e.g. EC2 instance)
- Web hosting (where you pay a monthly hosting subscription)

2) Software as a service (SAAS)
- Complete application - on demand that someone offers to users (e.g. Sagemaker)
- email provider (personal email accessed through a web browser)

3) Platform as a service (PAAS)
- used by developers (develop software using web based tools without worrying about infrastructure)
- storefront website - tools provided to build a storefront app that runs on another company’s server

Question 14

Cloud Deployment Models (3)

and what are they?

Answer 14

1) Private cloud (on premises) - internal data center, doesn’t offer advantages of cloud computing, but has increased level of security and infrastructure resources are private using virtualization
2) Public Cloud – offered by AWS, not responsible for physical hardware, provides all advantages of cloud computing

3) Hybrid Cloud – combination of both hybrid & public cloud
- Companies like to keep highly sensitive data stored locally but their web app runs on AWS infrastructure and AWS provides tools so they can talk to each other (using DirectConnect).

Question 15

What is a collection of AZs in a physical location?

And what are two facts about them?

Answer 15

A region
Facts:
1) AWS logically groups its region into geographic locations for ease of management
2) When deploying apps, you want to select regions close to your users (faster downloads & response times)

Question 16

What are some region characteristics? (4)

Answer 16

1) Fully independent & isolated so if one region is impacted by a flood etc., the others will not be
2) Can make sense to deploy your app in multiple regions
3) Resource & service specific – isolated and resources aren’t automatically replicated across them
4) Global & contains two or more AZs

Question 17

Term for the thing that contains the servers you’re renting and where you deploy your apps?
And what are three facts?

Answer 17

Availability zones

Three facts:

1) Each zone has multiple data centers
2) Associated with a single region
3) Multiple AZ deployments provide high availability

Question 18

What are characteristics of Availability Zones? (4)

Answer 18

1. Physically separated
2. Connected through low-latency links
3. Fault tolerant
4. Allows for high availability

Question 19

What reduces latency & speeds up delivery?

And what are three facts?

Answer 19

Edge locations

Facts:

1. Way more edge locations than availability zones & regions
2. Used to cache content for fast delivery to users (through CloudFront)
3. It’s a mini data center but not used to launch resources like EC2 instances

Question 20

What is the term for the time that passes between a user request & the resulting response?
Is high or low better?

Answer 20

Latency.

Low latency is better than high latency.

Question 21

Which tool/service will help you access AWS services using programming language-specific APIs?

Answer 21

AWS Software Developer Kit (SDK)

Question 22

Under the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, which of the following is a shared responsibility of both AWS and the customer?

Answer 22

Configuration management -
AWS maintains the configuration of its infrastructure devices, but a customer is responsible for configuring their own guest operating systems, databases, and applications.