Elastic Beanstalk

Question 1

What is the purpose of Elastic Beanstalk?

Answer 1

Deploys all of the standard components that are required for a soluton (EC2, ASG, ELB, RDS, etc)

Question 2

Compare how Web Server Tier vs Worker Tier handles incoming tasks.

Answer 2

Web servier tier uses an ELB to route trafic within an ASG.
Worker tier uses an SQS queue where EC2 instances within an ASG pull messages from the queue.

Question 3

What are the two deployment modes for Elastic Beanstalk and what are their use cases?

Answer 3

Single instance (great for dev)
High availability with load balancers (great for prod)

Question 4

What is the fastest deployment option for Elastic Beanstalk?

Answer 4

All at once (deploy all in one go)

Question 5

What Elastic Beanstalk deployment option would you choose if you’re alright with reduced capacity during deployments but dont want downtime?

Answer 5

Rolling Release

Question 6

What Elastic Beanstalk deployment option would you choose if dont want reduced capacity during deployments or downtime? What is 2 things to consider?

Answer 6

Rolling Release with additional batches.
- Additional Cost
- Long deployments if lots of nodes

Question 7

Describe the Immutable Elastic Beanstalk deployment option

Answer 7

Zero downtime by creating a new temporary ASG m deploying new code, merging into existing ASG, and terminating old nodes.

Question 8

Describe the Blue / Green deployment strategy

Answer 8

Create a new environment “Stage” and deploy code there. Test environment useing Route 53 with weighted policies. Then set new url via EBS.

Question 9

How many versions can EBS store at once and how can you configure automated removal of these versions based on space or time?

Answer 9

Lifecycle Policies

Question 10

What directory do you store Elastic Beanstalk configuration?

Answer 10

.ebextensions

Question 11

What service does Elastic Beanstalk use to provision AWS services?

Answer 11

CloudFormation

Question 12

If you want to create an identical Elastic Beanstalk environment from an existing environment, what feature could you use?

Answer 12

Beanstalk Cloning

Question 13

After creating an EBS environment, what are you unable to change?

Answer 13

The ELB type

Question 14

How would you perform an EBS migration?

Answer 14

Deploy both environments and then use a Route 53 CNAME record

Question 15

In production, what is recommended in terms of EBS and your database deployment?

Answer 15

Create RDS seperately and provide EB with connection string. This prevents the RDS lifecycle from being tied to the Beanstalk environment.