EC2 Deck

Question 1

EC2 is _AAS?

Answer 1

IAAS

Question 2

What is EC2 used for?

Answer 2

o Renting virtual machines (EC2)
o Storing data on virtual drives (EBS)
o Distributing load across machines (ELB)
o Scaling the services using an auto-scaling group (ASG)

Question 3

What is ECs' Sizing & Config options?
o	Amazon Machine Image Operating System (OS): 
o	Compute power & cores (CPU)
o	Random-access memory (RAM)
o	Storage space:
	Network-attached:
	Hardware
o	Network card
o	Firewall rules
o	Bootstrap script (configure at first launch)

Answer 3

o Operating System (OS): Linux or Windows
o Compute power & cores (CPU)
o Random-access memory (RAM)
o Storage space:
 Network-attached (EBS & EFS)
 Hardware (EC2 Instance Store)
o Network card: speed of the card, Public IP address
o Firewall rules: security group
o Bootstrap script (configure at first launch): EC2 User Data

Question 4

What does each represent?

m5.2xlarge

Answer 4

m: instance class
5: generation
2xlarge: size w/in instance

Question 5

What are the EC2 instance types?

Answer 5

General purpose
Compute Optimized
Memory Optimized
Accelerated Computing
Storage Optimized
Instance Features
Measuring Instance Performance

Question 6

What is general purpose EC2 instance good for? What are the classes?

Answer 6

1. Great for a diversity of workloads such as web servers or code repositories
2. Balance b/w compute, memory & networking

Classes: Mac, T, M, A

Question 7

What is compute optimized EC2 instance good for? What are the classes?

Answer 7

Great for compute-intensive tasks requiring high performance processing

Use cases: 
•	Batch processing workloads
•	Media transcoding
•	High performance web servers
•	High performance computing (HPC)
•	Scientific modeling & machine learning
•	Dedicated gaming servers

Classes: C

Question 8

What is memory optimized EC2 instance good for? What are the classes?

Answer 8

Fast performance for workloads that process large data sets in memory

Use cases:
• Floating point number calculations
• Graphic processing
• Data pattern matching

Classes: R, X, High Memory, Z

Question 9

What is storage optimized EC2 instance good for? What are the classes?

Answer 9

Great for storage-intensive tasks that require high, sequential read and write access to large data sets on local storage

Use cases:
• High frequency online transaction processing (OLTP) systems
• Relational & NoSQL databases
• Cache for in-memory databases (for example, Redis)
• Data warehousing applications
• Distributed file systems

Classes: I, D, H

Question 10

What is fundamental of network security in AWS?

Answer 10

Security Groups

Question 11

What controls how traffic is allowed into or out of our EC2 Instances?

Answer 11

Security Groups

Question 12

What is the most cost efficient instance in AWS? What is the d/c and compared to what?

Answer 12

EC2 Spot Instance & up to 90% compared to On-demand

Question 13

What is EC2 Spot Instance best used for?

Answer 13

Useful for workloads that are resilient to failure
• Batch jobs
• Data analysis
• Image processing
• Any distributed workloads
• Workloads with a flexible start and end time

Not suitable for critical jobs or databases

Question 14

What is AWS responsible for EC2 as part of shared responsibility model?

Answer 14

• Infrastructure (global
network security)
• Isolation on physical hosts
• Replacing faulty hardware
• Compliance validation

Question 15

What is customer responsible for EC2 as part of shared responsibility model?

Answer 15

• Security Groups rules
• Operating-system patches and
updates
• Software and utilities installed
on the EC2 instance
• IAM Roles assigned to EC2 &
IAM user access management
• Data security on your instance

Question 16

What is EC2 User Data?

Answer 16

Script launched at the first start of an instance

Question 17

What is SSH used for?

Answer 17

To start a terminal into our EC2 Instances (port 22)

Question 18

What storages exist for EC2 Instance?

Answer 18

EBS volumes
AMI
EC2 Image Builder
EC2 Instance Store
EFS

Question 19

What is an EBS volume? What can it do? How many instances can it be associated with? What’s a good analogy?

Answer 19

NETWORK drive you can attach to your instances while they run that allows the instances to persist data even after termination. It can only be mounted to one instance at a time.

Analogy: USB

Question 20

What limitations exist with EBS volume?

Answer 20

It can only be mounted to one instance at a time, and it’s bound to a specific AZ

Question 21

Can you copy EBS volume? If so, how?

Answer 21

With EBS snapshot (i.e. copy/back-up)

Question 22

How does EBS provisioned capacity work for size and pricing?

Answer 22

Get billed for all the provisioned capacity and can increase capacity over time

Question 23

What is a customization of an EC2 instance where you don’t change IP? What is the advantage of this?

Answer 23

Amazon Machine Image

You add your own software, configuration, operating system, monitoring… Faster boot / configuration time because all your software is pre-packaged

Question 24

What are the regional restrictions for AMI?

Answer 24

AMIs are built for a specific region but can be copied across regions

Question 25

What AMIs can you launch EC2 instances from?

Answer 25

``` Public AMI (AWS provided) your own AMI (you make and maintain) an AWS Marketplace AMI (made by someone else) ```

Question 26

What is used to automate the creation of Virtual Machines or container images, i.e. to create, maintain, validate, and test EC2 AMIs?

Answer 26

EC2 Image Builder

Question 27

What is unique about EC2 Image Builder?

Answer 27

Free & can be run on schedule

Question 28

What should you use if you need a high-performance hardware disk?

Answer 28

EC2 Instance Store

Question 29

When should you use EC2 Instance Store over EBS volume?

Answer 29

If you need a high-performance hardware disk

Question 30

What are the pros & cons of EC2 Instance Store?

Answer 30

Pro: Better I/O performance Good for buffer/cache/scratch data/temp content Cons: Storage is ephermeral (data lost the second instance is lost) Risk of data loss if hardware fails Back-ups and replications are your responsibility

Question 31

What is a highly available, scalable, expensive (3x gp2), pay per use, no capacity planning network file system?

Answer 31

Elastic File System

Question 32

Which managed NFS can be mounted on 100s of EC2 simultaneously?

Answer 32

Elastic File System

Question 33

What is AWS's Shared Responsibility for EC2 Storage?

Answer 33

``` • Infrastructure • Replication for data for EBS volumes & EFS drives • Replacing faulty hardware • Ensuring their employees cannot access your data ```

Question 34

What is customer's Shared Responsibility for EC2 Storage?

Answer 34

``` • Setting up backup / snapshot procedures • Setting up data encryption • Responsibility of any data on the drives • Understanding the risk of using EC2 Instance Store ```