Cloud Concepts Flashcards
AWS Well-Architected Framework
Purpose is to design and operate reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective systems in the cloud.
The six pillars are:
1. Operational Excellence
2. Security
3. Reliability
4. Performance Efficiency
5. Cost Optimization
6. Sustainability
The six design principles are:
1. Stop guessing your capacity needs
2. Test systems at production scale
3. Automate to make architectural experimentation easier
4. Allow for evolutionary architectures
5. Drive architectures using data
6. Improve through game days
AWS Well-Architected Framework: Operational Excellence
Includes the ability to run and monitor systems to deliver business value and to continually improve supporting processes and procedures.
Recommends Infrastructure as Code (IaC).
In the cloud, you can define your entire workload as code and update it with code. You can implement your operations procedures as code and automate their execution by triggering them in response to events.
Performing monthly game days on your AWS environment is recommended.
AWS Well-Architected Framework: Cost Optimization
Focuses on avoiding un-needed costs. Key topics include understanding and controlling where the money is being spent, selecting the most appropriate and right number of resource types, analysing spend over time, and scaling to meet business needs without overspending.
AWS Well-Architected Framework: Performance Efficiency
Focuses on using IT and computing resources efficiently. Key topics include selecting the right resource types and sizes based on workload requirements, monitoring performance, and making informed decisions to maintain efficiency as business needs evolve.
AWS Well-Architected Framework: Security
Focuses on protecting information & systems. Key topics include confidentiality and integrity of data, identifying and managing who can do what with privilege management, protecting systems, and establishing controls to detect security events.
AWS Well-Architected Framework: Reliability
Focuses on designing a workload to perform its intended function correctly and consistently when it’s expected to. This includes the ability to operate and test the workload through its total lifecycle.
AWS Well-Architected Framework: Sustainability
Focuses on the long-term environmental, economic, and societal impact of your business activities.
VPC peering connection
It’s a networking connection between two VPC’s that enables you to route traffic between them privately. Instances in either VPC can communicate with each other as if they are within the same network. You can create a VPC peering connection between your VPC’s, with a VPC in another AWS account, or with a VPC in a different AWS Region.
AWS Site-to-Site VPN
Creates a secure connection between your data centre or branch office and your AWS cloud resources. This connection goes over the public internet.
Can’t be used to interconnect VPC’s.
VPC Endpoint
Lets you privately connect your VPC to supports AWS services and VPC endpoint services powered by AWS PrivateLink without requiring an internet gateway, NAT device, VPN connection, or AWS Direct Connect connection.
Can’t be used to connect two VPC’s.
AWS Partner Network (APN)
The global partner programme for technology and consulting businesses that leverage AWS to build solutions and services for customers.
APN Consulting Partners
Professional service firms that help customers of all types and sizes design, architect, build, migrate, and manage their workloads and applications on AWS, accelerating their migration to AWS cloud.
APN Technology Partners
Provides hardware, connectivity services, or software solutions that are either hosted on or integrated with, the AWS Cloud.
Can’t help migrate to AWS and manage application on AWS Cloud.
Concierge Support Team
They’re AWS billing and account experts that specialise in working with enterprise accounts. They’ll quickly and efficiently assist you with your billing and account inquiries. Only available for the Enterprise Support plan.
Can’t help with AWS migration and managing applications on AWS Cloud.
Hybrid deployment
A way to connect your on-premises infrastructure to the cloud. Most common method is linking the cloud and existing on-premises infrastructure to extend an organisation’s infrastructure into the cloud while connecting cloud resources to internal systems.
Cloud deployment
In this approach, a cloud-based application is fully deployed in the cloud, and all parts of the application run in the cloud. Applications in the cloud have either been created in the cloud or have been migrated from an existing infrastructure to take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing.
Private Deployment
Resources are deployed on-premises using virtualisation technologies. Doesn’t have many of the cloud computing benefits, but does have dedicated resources.
AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF)
Uses AWS experience and best practices to help you digitally transform and accelerate your business outcomes through innovative use of AWS. It identifies specific organisational capabilities that underpin successful cloud transformations. These capabilities provide best practice guidance that helps you improve your cloud readiness. Helps with assessing the feasibility of cloud migration.
It groups its capabilities in six perspectives: Business, People, Governance, Platform, Security, and Operations.
Common stakeholders include: Chief Technology Officer (CTO), technology leaders, architects, and engineers.
It’s capabilities are: Platform Architecture, Data Architecture, Platform Engineering, Data Engineering, Provisioning & Orchestration, Modern App Development, CI/CD.
The four stages in the cycle are:
1. Envison - see how cloud services can help achieve business goals.
2. Align - identify capability gaps and cross-organisational dependencies.
3. Scale - expand production pilots and business value of your cloud infrastructure.
4. Launch - delivering pilots in production and demonstrating incremental business value.
AWS Auto Scaling
It monitors your applications and automatically adjusts the capacity to maintain steady, predictable performance at the lowest possible cost.
It’s available free of charge, but you do pay for the AWS resources needed to run your applications and Amazon CloudWatch Monitoring fees.
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
It’s an object storage service that has great scalability, data availability, security, and performance.
Not free and cost is dependent on storage class. Not suited f or rapidly changing data.
When Consolidated Billing is enabled, volume discounts are offered.
Six Advantages of Cloud Computing
- Trade capital expense for variable expense.
- Benefit from massive economies of scale.
- Stop guessing capacity
- Increase speed and agility
- Stop spending money running and maintaining data centres
- Go global in minutes
High Availability
When a system can deliver the designed functionality at a given point in time. Highly available systems can withstand some measure of degradation while still remaining available. Multi-AZ deployment can help achieve high availability.