Cloud Fundamentals Flashcards
(30 cards)
What is a server?
A dedicated computer for serving requests over a network.
What is the Cloud?
Servers that are accessible over the internet, often stored in large data centres around the world.
What are some benefits of using managed data centres over your own?
Primarily, it’s cheaper and faster to do so. You pay for what you use, and data closer to a user takes less time to reach them.
Name the three biggest cloud providers.
Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure.
What is Infrastructure as a Service? (IaaS)
IaaS refers to using a major cloud provider directly (such as AWS).
What is Platform as a Service? (PaaS)
PaaS often abstracts a layer of complexity from an IaaS tool, to make it easier for developers to develop on the cloud (Automating deployment, less code required). Examples are: Heroku, Vercel.
What is Software as a Service? (SaaS)
A layer of abstraction on top of IaaS and Paas, referring to a single app that uses cloud functionality to benefit users or developers. Examples are: Google Workspace, Dropbox.
What is a VPC on AWS?
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud allows you to launch AWS resources in a logically isolated virtual network that you’ve defined.
What is an EC2 instance on AWS?
A virtual computer hosted by AWS, of which direct access can be sold to a developer.
What is SSH?
Secure Socket Shell is a network protocol that gives users a secure way to access a computer over a unsecured network.
What is CI?
Continuous Integration is a DevOps software development practice where developers regularly merge their code changes to a central repository, and can automate builds and run unit tests.
What is CD?
Can refer to continuous delivery and/or continuous deployment. It means having merged code on push ready to be deployed to a live production environment, and then automating the release of the new developer changes.
What is a development environment?
A workspace where software developers create, test and debug applications without impacting live users or production systems.
What is GitHub Actions?
A continuous integration and continuous delivery platform that allows users to automate their build, test and deployment pipeline.
What is YAML?
A human-readable data serialisation language. It is commonly used for configuration files and in applications where data is being stored or transmitted.
What are secrets used for in GitHub Actions?
Secrets allow developers to store sensitive information in their organisation, repository, or repository environments.
How can you transfer a file to a remote instance from your local machine? (AWS)
You can use the Secure Copy Protocol (SCP). Example:
scp -i /path/key-pair-name.pem /path/my-file.txt ec2-user@instance-public-dns-name:path/
On AWS, what is RDS?
Amazon Relational Database Service is a web service that makes it easier to set up, operate and scale a relational database in AWS.
On AWS, what is IAM?
Identity and Access Management helps you securely control access to AWS resources, and manage permissions that control which AWS resources users can access.
What are some advantages of RDS on AWS?
1) Use database engines you are familiar with.
2) Backups, patching, failure detection, recovery all handled for you.
3) High availability with a primary and secondary database instance.
4) Controlled using AWS IAM, for clear definitions of users and permissions.
In AWS, what is a security group?
A security group controls the traffic that is allowed to reach and leave the resources that it is associated with.
What is a load balancer on AWS?
A load balancer serves as the single point of contact for clients. It distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets, such as EC2 instances, in multiple Availability Zones.
What are the role of ports on the cloud?
Ports serve as communication gateways for your applications and resources to interact with the world, and each other.
Why would you want to run a script as a background task?
Running Python scripts on a remote server can stop when the SSH connection closes. This issue stops long-running scripts from finishing their tasks, unless they are run as a background task.
