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AWS - Solutions Architect Associate > EC2 > Flashcards

EC2 Flashcards

1
Q

What does EC2 stand for?

A

Elastic Cloud Compute

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2
Q

What is EC2?

A

A web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud

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3
Q

What are the benefits of EC2? (2)

A
  • Reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes
  • Scale capacity as your computing requirements change
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4
Q

What are the five EC2 pricing models? (5)

A
  • On Demand
  • Reserved
  • Spot
  • Savings Plans
  • Dedicated Hosts
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5
Q

What are the features of the EC2 On Demand pricing model? (2)

A
  • Pay a fixed rate by the hour (or second) with no commitment
  • No up-front payment
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6
Q

Which use cases work well under the EC2 On Demand pricing model? (2)

A
  • Applications with short term, spiky or unpredictable workloads that cannot be interrupted
  • Applications being developed or tested on Amazon EC2 for the first time
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7
Q

What are the features of the EC2 Reserved pricing model? (3)

A
  • Provides a capacity reservation
  • Offers a significant discount on the hourly charge for an instance
  • Contract terms of 1 or 3 years
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8
Q

Which use cases work well under the EC2 Reserved pricing model? (3)

A
  • Applications with steady state or predictable usage
  • Applications that require reserved capacity
  • Users able to make upfront payments to reduce their total computing costs
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9
Q

What are the three types of EC2 Reserved pricing? (3)

A
  • Standard reserved instances
  • Convertible reserved instances
  • Scheduled reserved instances
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10
Q

What are the features of standard reserved instances? (2)

A
  • Offer up to 75% off On-Demand instances

- Standard RIs can only be modified, not exchanged

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11
Q

What are the features of convertible reserved instances? (2)

A
  • Offer up to 54% off On-Demand instances

- Convertible RIs can be exchanged for different Convertible RIs of equal or greater value

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12
Q

What are the attributes of a Reserved Instance? (4)

A
  • Instance type (CPU, memory, storage, networking capacity)
  • Platform description (operating system)
  • Tenancy (runs on shared hardware/single-tenant hardware/Dedicated Host)
  • Availability zone (optional)
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13
Q

What are the features of scheduled reserved instances? (2)

A
  • Available to launch within the time windows you reserve

- Use case: capacity matching to a predictable recurring schedule that only requires a fraction of a day/week/month

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14
Q

What are the features of the EC2 Spot pricing model? (2)

A
  • Allows you to request spare EC2 computing capacity for up to 90% off the On-Demand price
  • Bid whatever price you want for instance capacity
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15
Q

Which use cases are suited to the EC2 Spot pricing model? (3)

A
  • Applications that have flexible start and end times
  • Applications that are only feasible at very low compute prices
  • Users with urgent computing needs for large amounts of additional capacity
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16
Q

What are the features of the EC2 Savings Plans pricing model?

A

Offers low prices on EC2 usage in exchange for a commitment to a consistent amount of usage ($ per hour) for a 1 or 3 year term

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17
Q

How do Reserved Instances provide a capacity reservation?

A

By assignment to a specific Availability Zone

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18
Q

What happens when you terminate an EC2 Spot instance vs when EC2 terminates it? (2)

A
  • If a Spot instance is terminated by EC2, you will not be charged for a partial hour of usage
  • If you terminate the instance yourself, you will be charged for any hour in which the instance ran
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19
Q

What are the features of the EC2 Dedicated Host pricing model? (3)

A
  • A physical EC2 server is dedicated for your use
  • Reduce costs by allowing you to use existing server-bound software licenses
  • Can be purchased On-Demand or as a Reservation
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20
Q

Which use cases are suited to the EC2 Dedicate Host pricing model? (2)

A
  • Regulatory requirements which do not support multi-tenant virtualisation
  • Licensing which does not support multi-tenancy or cloud deployment
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21
Q

What are the differences between a Dedicated Host and a Dedicated Instance? (2)

A
  • A Dedicated Host gives you additional visibility and control over how instances are placed on a physical server
  • With a Dedicated Host, can consistently deploy your instances to the same physical server over time
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22
Q

What is the default status of Termination Protection for an EC2 instance?

A

Termination Protection is turned off by default

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23
Q

By default, what happens to the root EBS volume when an EBS-backed instance is terminated?

A

On an EBS-backed instance, the default action is for the root EBS volume to be deleted when the instance is terminated

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24
Q

What does the root device volume contain?

A

The image used to boot the instance

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25
Q

What is an AMI?

A

An Amazon Machine Image provides the information required to launch an instance

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26
Q

Can root and non-root device volumes be selected for encryption during an instance launch? If not, how can the volume be encrypted after launch (3)

A
  • The root device volume cannot be encrypted during an instance launch
  • After launch, a snapshot must be taken, copied, this snapshot encrypted, an encrypted volume created from this & the existing volume then replaced with the encrypted volume
  • A non-root device volume can be encrypted during launch or after launch
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27
Q

Are security groups stateful or stateless?

A

Security groups are stateful

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28
Q

What does stateful mean?

A

When you create an inbound rule allowing traffic in, an outbound rule is created automatically which allows the traffic back out again

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29
Q

What are the default properties of a security group? (2)

A
  • All inbound traffic is blocked

- All outbound traffic is allowed

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30
Q

Can you block a particular port or IP address with security groups?

A

No, you can’t block a particular port or IP address with security groups

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31
Q

How can you block a particular port or IP address?

A

With Network Access Control Lists

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32
Q

What is the maximum number of EC2 instances within a security group?

A

Unlimited

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33
Q

Can an EC2 instance have multiple attached security groups?

A

Yes

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34
Q

What can you specify using a security group? Allow rules, deny rules, or both

A

You can specify allow rules, but not deny rules using security groups

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35
Q

What does EBS stand for>

A

Elastic Block Store

36
Q

What does Amazon EBS do?

A

Provides persistent block storage volumes for use with EC2 instances in the AWS cloud

37
Q

How does the design of Amazon EBS protect you from component failure?

A

Each EBS volume is automatically replicated within its Availability Zone

38
Q

What are the five types of EBS? (5)

A
  • General Purpose SSD
  • Provisioned IOPS SSD
  • Throughput Optimised HDD
  • Cold HDD
  • Magnetic
39
Q

Describe the General Purpose SSD EBS volume type and its use cases (2)

A
  • Balances price and performance for a wide variety of transactional workloads
  • Most workloads
40
Q

Describe the Provisioned IOPS SSD EBS volume type and its use cases (2)

A
  • Highest-performance SSD volume designed for mission critical applications
  • Databases
41
Q

Describe the Throughput Optimised HDD EBS volume type and its use cases (2)

A
  • Low cost HDD volume designed for frequently accessed, throughput-intensive workloads
  • Big data, data warehouses
42
Q

Describe the Cold HDD EBS volume type and its use cases (2)

A
  • Lowest cost HDD volume designed for less frequently accessed workloads
  • File servers
43
Q

Describe the Magnetic EBS volume type and its use cases (2)

A
  • Previous generation HDD

- Workloads where data is infrequently accessed

44
Q

Can an EC2 instance and its EBS volume reside in different availability zones?

A

No

45
Q

How do you launch an EC2 instance in a different Availability Zone? (3)

A
  • Take a snapshot of the instance
  • Take an image of the snapshot
  • Use this image to provision new EC2 instance - change the Availability Zone during the launch process
46
Q

When you terminate an EC2 instance with multiple EBS volumes, what happens after termination? (2)

A
  • By default, the root EBS volume is deleted
  • Whereas the additional volumes remain but their status is “available” rather than “in-use” - assuming the default of an unticked “delete on termination” for additional volumes
47
Q

Where do volumes and snapshots exist, respectively? (2)

A
  • Volumes exist on EBS

- Snapshots exist on S3

48
Q

How can Amazon EBS and snapshots be described colloquially? (2)

A
  • EBS is a virtual hard disk in the cloud

- Snapshots are a photograph of the disk

49
Q

How do snapshots relate to volumes?

A

Snapshots are point in time copies of volumes

50
Q

Describe how elastic block storage (EBS) works (3)

A
  • Snapshots are incremental
  • Only the blocks that have changed since your last snapshot are moved to S3
  • As a result, the first snapshot may take some time to create
51
Q

Can you change EBS volume sizes on the fly?

A

Yes, you can change volume size and storage type

52
Q

Can you take a snapshot of EBS volumes that serve as root devices while their associated instance is running? Should you? (2)

A
  • You can take a snapshot while the instance is running

- But you should stop the instance before taking the snapshot

53
Q

What are the properties of AMIs which differentiate different ones? (5)

A
  • Region
  • Operating system
  • Architecture
  • Launch permissions
  • Storage for the root device
54
Q

For AMIs, what are the two types of storage for the root device? (2)

A
  • Instance store (ephemeral storage)

- EBS backed volumes

55
Q

Can you reboot AMIs without losing your data?

A

Yes

56
Q

What are the differences between EBS backed volumes and instance store volumes? (4)

A
  • Root device of an instance launched from an EBS backed volume AMI: an EBS volume created from an EBS snapshot
  • Root device of an instance launched from an instance store volume AMI: an instance store volume created from a template stored in Amazon S3
  • EBS backed instances can be stopped; you will not the data on the instance if stopped
  • Instance store volumes cannot be stopped; if the underlying host fails, you will lose your data
57
Q

Can you share snapshots? If so, are there any limitations on this? (2)

A
  • Yes, snapshots can be shared with other AWS accounts or made public
  • You can only share snapshots if they are unencrypted
58
Q

If you take a snapshot of an encrypted volume, is the resulting snapshot encrypted?

A

Yes

59
Q

If a volume is restored from an encrypted snapshot, is the resulting volume encrypted?

A

Yes

60
Q

What is CloudWatch?

A

CloudWatch is a monitoring service to monitor your AWS resources, as well as the applications that you run on AWS

61
Q

Which compute functions can CloudWatch monitor? (4)

A
  • EC2 instances
  • Autoscaling groups
  • Elastic load balancers
  • Route53 health checks
62
Q

Which storage & content delivery functions can CloudWatch monitor? (3)

A
  • EBS volumes
  • Storage gateways
  • CloudFront
63
Q

What is CloudTrail?

A

CloudTrail increases visibility into your user and resource activity by recording AWS Management Console actions and API calls

64
Q

What can CloudTrail identify? (3)

A
  • Which users and accounts called AWS
  • The source IP address from which the calls were made
  • When the calls occurred
65
Q

What is the difference between CloudWatch and CloudTrail?

A

CloudWatch is performance monitoring, CloudTrail is CCTV (audit)

66
Q

Which host level metrics are available using CloudWatch? (4)

A
  • CPU
  • Network
  • Disk
  • Status check
67
Q

By default, how often does CloudWatch with EC2 monitor events?

A

5 minutes by default

68
Q

With detailed monitoring, how often can CloudWatch with EC2 monitor events?

A

Every minute

69
Q

What are the four key features of CloudWatch? (4)

A
  • Dashboards
  • Alarms
  • Events
  • Logs
70
Q

What do you need to enable in order to user the AWS command line interface?

A

Programmatic access (from IAM in the AWS console)

71
Q

What are the benefits of using IAM roles with EC2? (4)

A
  • More secure than storing your access key and secret access key on individual EC2 instances
  • Roles are easier to manage
  • Roles can be assigned to an EC2 instance after it’s created, using console or command line
  • Roles are universal, you can use them in any region
72
Q

What is Amazon Elastic File System?

A

Elastic File System (EFS) is a file storage service for Amazon EC2 instances

73
Q

What are the benefits of EFS? (6)

A
  • Simple interface for creating + configuring file systems
  • Elastic storage capacity, scalable up to petabytes
  • Two EC2 instances can both reside on the same EFS (as opposed to one EBS per EC2)
  • You only pay for the storage you use, no pre-provisioning required
  • Data is stored across multiple availability zones within a region
  • Read After Write consistency
74
Q

What are the three types of EC2 Placement Groups? (3)

A
  • Clustered
  • Spread
  • Partitioned
75
Q

To what extent must the name of a placement group be unique?

A

Must be unique within your AWS account only, not globally unique

76
Q

Can you merge placement groups?

A

No, you can’t merge placement groups

77
Q

Can you move an existing instance into a placement group?

A

No, you can’t move an existing instance into a placement group

78
Q

What should you do if you’d like an existing instance to be within a placement group?

A

Create an AMI from the existing instance, then launch a new instance from the AMI into a placement group

79
Q

What is a clustered placement group?

A

A group of instances within a single Availability Zone

80
Q

For which applications is a clustered placement group suitable?

A

Applications that need low network latency and high network throughput

81
Q

Is it advisable to place multiple types of EC2 instances into a single clustered placement group?

A

No, AWS recommends that homogenous instances (same EC2 instance type) are placed within a clustered placement group

82
Q

What is a spread placement group?

A

A group of instances that are each placed on distinct underlying hardware

83
Q

For which applications is a spread placement group advisable and why?

A
  • Applications that have a small number of critical instances that should be kept separate from each other
  • Designed to protect your EC2 instances from hardware failure
84
Q

What “distinct underlying hardware” is each instance placed on in a spread placement group? (3)

A
  • Different racks
  • Within either the same or different Availability Zone(s)
  • Always within the same region
85
Q

What is a partitioned placement group? (3)

A
  • A group is divided into logical segments called partitions
  • Partitions are comprised of 1 or more instance(s)
  • No two partitions within a placement group share the same racks
86
Q

What “distinct underlying hardware” is each partition placed on in a partitioned placement group? (3)

A
  • A rack per partition
  • Within either the same of different Availability Zone(s)
  • Always within the same region

AWS - Solutions Architect Associate (5 decks)

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