08 - Networking and Content Delivery Flashcards

1
Q

Elastic Network Interfaces (ENI)

A

1) Logical component in a VPC that represents a virtual network card
2) Bound to a specific availability zone (AZ)

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2
Q

Route 53 – Record Types

A

1) A – maps a hostname to IPv4
2) AAAA – maps a hostname to IPv6

3) CNAME – maps a hostname to another hostname
• The target is a domain name which must have an A or AAAA record
• Can’t create a CNAME record for the top node of a DNS namespace (Zone Apex)
• Example: you can’t create for example.com, but you can create for www.example.com

4) NS – Name Servers for the Hosted Zone
• Control how traffic is routed for a domain

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3
Q

Route 53 – Hosted Zones
• A container for records that define how to route traffic to a domain and
its subdomains

A

1) Public Hosted Zones – contains records that specify how to route
traffic on the Internet (public domain names)
application1.mypublicdomain.com

2) Private Hosted Zones – contain records that specify how you route
traffic within one or more VPCs (private domain names)
application1.company.internal

3) You pay $0.50 per month per hosted zone

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4
Q

Route 53 - CNAME vs Alias

A

1) CNAME:
• Points a hostname to any other hostname. (app.mydomain.com => blabla.anything.com)
• ONLY FOR NON ROOT DOMAIN (aka. something.mydomain.com)

2) Alias:
• Points a hostname to an AWS Resource (app.mydomain.com => blabla.amazonaws.com)
• Works for ROOT DOMAIN and NON ROOT DOMAIN (aka mydomain.com)
• Free of charge
• Native health check

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5
Q

Route 53 – Alias Records

• Maps a hostname to an AWS resource

A
  • An extension to DNS functionality
  • Automatically recognises changes in the resource’s IP addresses
  • Unlike CNAME, it can be used for the top node of a DNS namespace (Zone Apex), e.g.: example.com
  • Alias Record is always of type A/AAAA for AWS resources (IPv4 / IPv6)
  • You can’t set the TTL
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6
Q

Route 53 – Alias Records Targets

A
  • Elastic Load Balancers
  • CloudFront Distributions
  • API Gateway
  • Elastic Beanstalk environments
  • S3 Websites
  • VPC Interface Endpoints
  • Global Accelerator accelerator
  • Route 53 record in the same hosted zone
  • You cannot set an ALIAS record for an EC2 DNS name
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7
Q

CloudFront – Origins

A

1) S3 bucket
• For distributing files and caching them at the edge
• Enhanced security with CloudFront Origin Access Identity (OAI)
• CloudFront can be used as an ingress (to upload files to S3)

2) Custom Origin (HTTP)
• Application Load Balancer
• EC2 instance
• S3 website (must first enable the bucket as a static S3 website)
• Any HTTP backend you want
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8
Q

CloudFront Signed URL / Signed Cookies

• You want to distribute paid shared content to premium users over the world

A

1) We can use CloudFront Signed URL / Cookie. We attach a policy with:
• Includes URL expiration
• Includes IP ranges to access the data from
• Trusted signers (which AWS accounts can create signed URLs)

2) How long should the URL be valid for?
• Shared content (movie, music): make it short (a few minutes)
• Private content (private to the user): you can make it last for years

3) Signed URL = access to individual files (one signed URL per file)
4) Signed Cookies = access to multiple files (one signed cookie for many files)

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9
Q

CloudFront Signed URL vs S3 Pre-Signed URL

A

CloudFront Signed URL:
• Allow access to a path, no matter the origin
• Account wide key-pair, only the root can manage it
• Can filter by IP, path, date, expiration
• Can leverage caching features

S3 Pre-Signed URL:
• Issue a request as the person who pre-signed the URL
• Uses the IAM key of the signing IAM principal
• Limited lifetime

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10
Q

AWS Global Accelerator

• Leverage the AWS internal network to route to your application

A

Unicast IP vs Anycast IP
• Unicast IP: one server holds one IP address
• Anycast IP: all servers hold the same IP address and the client is routed to the nearest one

  • 2 Anycast IP are created for your application
  • The Anycast IP send traffic directly to Edge Locations
  • The Edge locations send the traffic to your application
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11
Q

AWS Global Accelerator vs CloudFront
• They both use the AWS global network and its edge locations around the world
• Both services integrate with AWS Shield for DDoS protection.

A

CloudFront
• Improves performance for both cacheable content (such as images and videos)
• Dynamic content (such as API acceleration and dynamic site delivery)
• Content is served at the edge

Global Accelerator
• Improves performance for a wide range of applications over TCP or UDP
• Proxying packets at the edge to applications running in one or more AWS Regions.
• Good fit for non-HTTP use cases, such as gaming (UDP), IoT (MQTT), or Voice over IP
• Good for HTTP use cases that require static IP addresses
• Good for HTTP use cases that required deterministic, fast regional failover

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12
Q

API Gateway – Security – Summary

A

IAM:
• Great for users / roles already within your AWS account
• Handle authentication + authorization
• Leverages Sig v4

Custom Authorizer:
• Great for 3rd party tokens
• Very flexible in terms of what IAM policy is returned
• Handle Authentication + Authorization
• Pay per Lambda invocation

Cognito User Pool:
• You manage your own user pool (can be backed by Facebook, Google login etc…)
• No need to write any custom code
• Must implement authorization in the backend

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13
Q

Transit Gateway

• Transitive peering connections for VPC, VPN & DX

A
  • For having transitive peering between thousands of VPC and on-premises, hub-and-spoke (star) connection
  • Regional resource, can work cross-region
  • Share cross-account using Resource Access Manager (RAM)
  • You can peer Transit Gateways across regions
  • Route Tables: limit which VPC can talk with other VPC
  • Works with Direct Connect Gateway, VPN connections
  • Supports IP Multicast (not supported by any other AWS service)
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14
Q

Direct Connect (DX)

A
  • Provides a dedicated private connection from a remote network to your VPC
  • Dedicated connection must be setup between your DC and AWS Direct Connect locations
  • You need to setup a Virtual Private Gateway on your VPC
  • Access public resources (S3) and private (EC2) on same connection
  • Use Cases:
  • Increase bandwidth throughput - working with large data sets – lower cost
  • More consistent network experience - applications using real-time data feeds
  • Hybrid Environments (on prem + cloud)
  • Supports both IPv4 and IPv6
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15
Q

Direct Connect – Connection Types

A

Dedicated Connections: 1Gbps and 10 Gbps capacity
• Physical ethernet port dedicated to a customer
• Request made to AWS first, then completed by AWS Direct Connect Partners

Hosted Connections: 50Mbps, 500 Mbps, to 10 Gbps
• Connection requests are made via AWS Direct Connect Partners
• Capacity can be added or removed on demand
• 1, 2, 5, 10 Gbps available at select AWS Direct Connect Partners

Lead times are often longer than 1 month to establish a new connection

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16
Q

VPC in AWS – IPv4

• VPC = Virtual Private Cloud

A

• You can have multiple VPCs in an AWS region (max. 5 per region – soft limit)

  • Max. CIDR per VPC is 5, for each CIDR:
    • Min. size is /28 (16 IP addresses)
    • Max. size is /16 (65536 IP addresses)
  • Because VPC is private, only the Private IPv4 ranges are allowed:
    • 10.0.0.0 – 10.255.255.255 (10.0.0.0/8)
    • 172.16.0.0 – 172.31.255.255 (172.16.0.0/12)
    • 192.168.0.0 – 192.168.255.255 (192.168.0.0/16)

• Your VPC CIDR should NOT overlap with your other networks (e.g., corporate)

17
Q

VPC – Subnet (IPv4)

A
  • AWS reserves 5 IP addresses (first 4 & last 1) in each subnet
  • These 5 IP addresses are not available for use and can’t be assigned to an EC2 instance
  • Example: if CIDR block 10.0.0.0/24, then reserved IP addresses are:
    • 10.0.0.0 – Network Address
    • 10.0.0.1 – reserved by AWS for the VPC router
    • 10.0.0.2 – reserved by AWS for mapping to Amazon-provided DNS
    • 10.0.0.3 – reserved by AWS for future use
    • 10.0.0.255 – Network Broadcast Address. AWS does not support broadcast in a VPC, therefore the address is reserved
  • Exam Tip, if you need 29 IP addresses for EC2 instances:
    • You can’t choose a subnet of size /27 (32 IP addresses, 32 – 5 = 27 < 29)
    • You need to choose a subnet of size /26 (64 IP addresses, 64 – 5 = 59 > 29)
18
Q

VPC Endpoints (AWS PrivateLink)

A
  • Every AWS service is publicly exposed (public URL)
  • VPC Endpoints (powered by AWS PrivateLink) allows you to connect to AWS services using a private network instead of using the public Internet
  • They’re redundant and scale horizontally
  • They remove the need of IGW, NATGW, … to access AWS Services
  • In case of issues:
    • Check DNS Setting Resolution in your VPC
    • Check Route Tables

Types of Endpoints

Interface Endpoints
• Provisions an ENI (private IP address) as an entry point (must attach a Security Group)
• Supports most AWS services

Gateway Endpoints
• Provisions a gateway and must be used as a target in a route table
• Supports both S3 and DynamoDB

19
Q

VPC Flow Logs

A
  • Capture information about IP traffic going into your interfaces:
    • VPC Flow Logs
    • Subnet Flow Logs
    • Elastic Network Interface (ENI) Flow Logs
  • Helps to monitor & troubleshoot connectivity issues
  • Flow logs data can go to S3 / CloudWatch Logs
  • Captures network information from AWS managed interfaces too: ELB, RDS, ElastiCache, Redshift, WorkSpaces, NATGW, Transit Gateway…
20
Q

AWS Site-to-Site VPN

A

Virtual Private Gateway (VGW)
• VPN concentrator on the AWS side of the VPN connection
• VGW is created and attached to the VPC from which you want to create the Site-to-Site VPN connection
• Possibility to customize the ASN (Autonomous System Number)

Customer Gateway (CGW)
• Software application or physical device on customer side of the VPN connection
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpn/latest/s2svpn/your-cgw.html#DevicesTested
21
Q

Egress-only Internet Gateway

A
  • Used for IPv6 only
  • (similar to a NAT Gateway but for IPv6)
  • Allows instances in your VPC outbound connections over IPv6 while preventing the internet to initiate an IPv6 connection to your instances
  • You must update the Route Tables