Cloud Practitioner Flashcards

1
Q

What are the 5 EC2 instance family types?

A
General Purpose
Compute Optimized
Memory Optimized
Accelerated Computing
Storage Optimized
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2
Q

What is a General Purpose instance and what is it good for?

A

Balance of compute, memory and networking
Application servers
Gaming servers
Backend servers for enterprise applications
Small-medium databases

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3
Q

What is a Compute Optimized instance and what is it good for?

A
High-performance processors for compute heavy work
Application servers
Gaming servers
Backend servers
Batch-processing
But when they require a lot more compute
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4
Q

What is a Memory Optimized instance and what is it good?

A

Processing large datasets in memory
Compute tasks that require a lot of data to be held in memory
Real-time processing of lots of unstructured datasets

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5
Q

What is an Accelerated Computing instance and what is it good for?

A

Make use of hardware accelerators or coprocessors to perform compute more efficiently
Floating-point number calculations
Graphic processing (game streaming)
Data pattern matching

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6
Q

What is a Storage Optimized instance and what is it good for?

A

Instance designed for tasks that need a high volume of read/write tasks
Any instance that has a high IOPS (input/output per second requirement)

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7
Q

What are the five EC2 billing options and what do they offer?

A

On-Demand - per-hour or per-second, but the most expensive
Savings Plan - Lower costs but with a minimum use requirement
Reserved Instances - Used for steady-state workloads
Spot Instances - Cheap, spare capacity instances that can be taken away with 2 minutes notice
Dedicated Hosts - dedicated to you, no one else can use them (policy reasons)

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8
Q

What is the maximum savings from the EC2 Savings Plan?

A

72%

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9
Q

What is the maximum savings from the EC2 Spot Instances?

A

90%

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10
Q

What are the three types of Reserved Instances and their available contract times?

A

Standard Reserved - 1 or 3 years
Scheduled Reserved - 1 year
Convertible Reserved - 1 or 3 years

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11
Q

What AWS service would you use for automatic compute scaling and which direction does it scale?

A

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Horizontally

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12
Q

What are the two types of scaling?

A

Dynamic scaling - responds to changing demand

Predictive scaling - automatically scheduled instances based on predicted demand

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13
Q

What are the three configurations of EC2 Auto Scaling?

A

Minimum capacity - the smallest number of running instances
Desired capacity - Ideal number of instances
Maximum capacity - Maximum number of running instances

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14
Q

What is a Load Balancer?

A

Responsible for distributing requests across back-end instances

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15
Q

What is Amazon Elastic Load Balancer?

A

Works with Auto Scaling to distribute work-loads to maximize compute resource.

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16
Q

What is the difference between a monolithic application and microservices?

A

Monolithic are tightly coupled, where if one component fails then they all will.

Conversely, a microservice is loosely coupled so one component failure does not impact the others

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17
Q

What is Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)?

A

A publish/subscribe service, i.e. publishes messages to subscribes. These could be web services, e-mail addresses, Lambda functions etc..

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18
Q

What is Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) and what is it’s benefit?

A

Used to send, store and receive messages between components. This means services are not reliant on others to be open to receive a message.

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19
Q

What does “serverless” mean? What is the benefit?

A

When your code is running on a server but you do not manage/have access to them.

Main benefit is automatic scaling.

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20
Q

What is AWS Lambda and what is the recommended maximum compute time?

A

A serverless service, upload code, set a trigger and you are only charged for the compute time taken.

Recommended for code that takes <15 minutes to run

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21
Q

What is a container?

A

A way to package your code and environment

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22
Q

What is Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS)?

A

A container management service used to host Docker images

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23
Q

What is Amazon Kubernetes Service (EKS)?

A

A container management service used to host Kurbenetes containers

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24
Q

What is Fargate and what are the three benefits?

A

A serverless compute engine for containers that works with ECS and EKS

No time spent managing infrastructure
Flexible
Secure by isolation

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25
Q

What four considerations need to be made when choosing a region?

A

Compliance
Customer Proximity
Available services
Pricing

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26
Q

What is the difference between an Availability Zone and a Region?

A

An Availability Zone is a single or group of data centres within a region

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27
Q

What is an Edge Location?

A

A site used by Amazon CloudFront to store cached copies of content, to improve the speed to reach further away customers

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28
Q

What are the four ways of interacting with AWS services?

A

Management Console
Command Line Interface (CLI)
Software Development Kits (SDK)
Amazon manage tools like Elastic Beanstalk or CloudFormation

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29
Q

What is Elastic Beanstalk and what are the 4 main tasks?

A

Provides configuration settings to manage resources

Adjust capacity
Load balancing
Automatic scaling
Health monitoring

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30
Q

What is AWS CloudFormation and what are the two main benefits?

A

Manages infrastructure as code through a CloudFormation template

Fully automated
Minimum risk of human error

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31
Q

What is AWS CloudFront?

A

A global content delivery service, i.e. a network of edge locations

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32
Q

What is AWS Outpost?

A

Extending the AWS infrastructure & services to on premise data centers

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33
Q

What is the difference between a public and private subnet?

A

Public subnets can interact publicly, i.e. over the internet - private subnets can’t.

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34
Q

What is a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)?

A

Allows you to isolate sections of the AWS Cloud in a defined virtual network

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35
Q

What is an Internet Gateway?

A

A way to connect the public internet to a VPC

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36
Q

What is a Virtual Private Gateway?

A

A way to restrict internet access to your VPC (like a VPN)

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37
Q

What is AWS Direct Connect?

A

A dedicated, isolated and private connection between your data centre and a VPC

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38
Q

What is a Network Access Control List (Network ACL)?

A

Checks packets from the internet have the correct permissions to leave/exit the subnet.

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39
Q

What is a Security Group?

A

Rules applied to a collection of EC2s

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40
Q

Is Network ACL Stateful or Stateless and what is the difference? How about Security Groups?

A

Stateless, always checks the packet regardless of circumstance

Security Groups are Stateful, remembers who to let in

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41
Q

What is the default rule for a network ACL?

A

Allow all inbound and outbound traffic

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42
Q

What is the default for a Security Group?

A

Deny all inbound traffic, allow all outbound traffic

43
Q

What is the default for a Security Group?

A

Deny all inbound traffic, allow all outbound traffic

44
Q

What is Amazon Route 53?

A

A DNS webservice, routes users to internet applications hosted in AWS

45
Q

What is DNS and what’s it’s purpose?

A

Domain Name System, translates public site address to an IP address

46
Q

What is an instance store?

A

Block-level storage attached to the EC2 instance, all data is lost once the instance is terminated

47
Q

What is Amazon EBS?

A

Amazon Block Storage

Block storage you can attach to an EC2 instance, but persists if the instance is shutdown

48
Q

How do you back-up an Amazon EBS volume?

A

Snapshots

49
Q

What three things does every storage object have?

A

Data, metadata & key (unique identifier)

50
Q

What is Amazon S3 and what is the maximum file size?

A

Simple Storage Service

5TB

51
Q

What are the 6 types of S3 storage?

A
Standard
Standard-Infrequent Access
One Zone-Infrequent Access
Intelligent-Tiering
Glacier
Glacier Deep Archive
52
Q

How many Availability Zones is S3 Standard data stored in?

A

A minimum of 3

53
Q

What is S3 Standard used for?

A

High availability objects that are frequently accessed

54
Q

What is S3 Standard-Infrequent Access?

A

Ideal for storing infrequently accessed data, similar to Standard except cheaper storage and more expensive retrieval price

55
Q

What is S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access?

A

Ideal for storing infrequently accessed data, similar to Standard except cheaper storage and more expensive retrieval price

Data is also only stored in one Availability Zone, again making it cheaper but less reliable

Good for when data is easily replicated

56
Q

What is S3 Intelligent-Tiering?

A

Automatically moves the data from S3 Standard to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access

Good for data where retrieval frequency will change

Comes with a monitoring & automation fee per object

57
Q

What is S3 Glacier?

A

Low-cost storage, designed for long term archiving

58
Q

What is S3 Glacier Deep Archive?

A

Lowest-cost storage but slower (within 12 hours) and more expensive retrieval

59
Q

What is Amazon EFS and what are its 4 main benefits?

A

Elastic File System

Automatically scales
Can be shared by EC2 instances
Can be used by any Availability Zone in the Region
Can be connected to directly through Direct Connect

60
Q

What is Amazon RDS and what’s its main benefit?

A

Amazon Relational Database Service

Automates relational database tasks such as hardware provisioning, database set-up, patching & backups

61
Q

What is Amazon Aurora, what are its benefits?

A

Enterprise-class relational database, good for high availability workloads

Fast (3x MySQL, 5x PostgreSQL)
Cheaper (1/10th)
Reliable (6 copies across 3 AZs)

62
Q

What is Amazon DynamoDB & what are the benefits?

A

A non-relational, NoSQL database

Performance (single-digit millisecond)
Scalability
Serverless (do not need to provision, patch or manage servers)

63
Q

When do you pick DynamoDB over RDS?

A

When you don’t require table joins

64
Q

What is Amazon Redshift and when would you need it?

A

A data warehousing service

Big data analytics that uses historic data

65
Q

What is Amazon DMS and what is it primarily used for and what are three other use cases?

A

Database Migration Service

Service to migrate databases/datastores from source to target (i.e. on-prem to cloud)

Development & test DB migration
DB consolidation
Continuous replication

66
Q

What are the 6 additional (and niche) DB services offered and what do they do?

A

DocumentDB - Supports MongoDB, a document DB program

Neptune - Graph database service

Quantum Ledger Database - Immutable ledger DB

Managed Blockchain - create and manage blockchain networks

ElastiCache - adds caching layer on frequent requests for faster access

DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) - in-memory cache for DynamoDB for microsecond response time

67
Q

What is the shared responsibility model?

A

AWS are responsible for protecting the global infrastructure of the Cloud, the customer is responsible for everything they put in it

68
Q

What is AWS IAM?

A

Identity and Access Management

How you manage access to AWS services & resources

69
Q

What is the AWS root user?

A

The owner of the account, has all permissions

70
Q

What is an IAM user?

A

An identity created by the root user which can be assigned various permissions

71
Q

What are IAM policies?

A

A document that defines the permissions to certain services and resources

72
Q

What are IAM groups?

A

A set of IAM users, which can all be set the same policies

73
Q

What are IAM roles?

A

A specific role that has specific permissions which can be assumed temporarily by a user

74
Q

What are AWS Organizations?

A

A service to manage multiple AWS accounts which can be controlled through SCPs

75
Q

What is an SCP?

A

Service Control Policy, enables you to place restrictions on services, resources & API actions that users and roles within each Organization account can use

76
Q

What are Organizational Units?

A

Group AWS accounts into OUs to apply policies/SCPs to all accounts.

77
Q

What is AWS Artifact?

A

A service that provides on-demand access to security and compliance reports

78
Q

What is Customer Compliance Center?

A

Knowledge hub for AWS compliance

79
Q

What is AWS Shield?

A

A service to protect applications from DDoS attacks

80
Q

What is AWS Shield Standard?

A

An automatic and free service that protects against common DDoS attacks

81
Q

What is AWS Shield Advanced?

A

Paid for service that protects against sophisticated attacks and provide attack diagnostics

82
Q

What is AWS WAF?

A

Web Application Firewall: monitors network requests and controls access using the web access control list (ACL)

83
Q

What is Amazon Inspector?

A

Runs automated security assessments to see what improvements could be made

84
Q

What is Amazon GuardDuty?

A

Intelligent threat detector that continuously monitors network activity

85
Q

What is Amazon CloudWatch?

A

Service to monitor and manage metrics and configure alarms

86
Q

What is a CloudWatch alarm?

A

An alarm that is triggered if a metric goes above/beyond a certain amount for a certain amount of time

87
Q

What is AWS CloudTrail?

A

An auditing tool to review traffic

88
Q

What is CloudTrail Insights?

A

A feature that can be enabled within CloudTrail to automatically detect unsual API activity

89
Q

What is AWS Trusted Advisor?

A

Service that automatically inspects AWS environment and provides real-time recommendations

90
Q

What are the AWS Trusted Advisor 5 pillars?

A
Cost
Performance
Security
Fault Tolerance
Service Limits
91
Q

How many requests can you make to AWS Lambda for free?

A

Up to 1 million requests & 3.2 million seconds of compute

92
Q

How can you save on AWS Lambda?

A

Compute Savings Plan of 1 or 3 years, requires a minimum compute cost

93
Q

What are the four AWS Support plans?

A

Basic
Developer
Business
Enterprise

94
Q

What is included in the Developer Support plan?

A

Free plan +
Best practice guidance
Client-side diagnostic tools
Building-block architecture support

95
Q

What is included in the Business Support plan?

A

Dev plan +
Use-case guidance
All AWS Trusted Advisor checks
Some support for third-party software (i.e. operating systems)

96
Q

What is included in the Enterprise Support plan?

A

Bus plan +
Application architecture guidance
Infrastructure event management
Technical Account Manager (TAM)

97
Q

What is AWS Marketplace?

A

Amazon digital catalogue to find, test & buy software

98
Q

What is the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework?

A

A set of guidance to help with migration to the cloud

99
Q

What are the 6 perspectives of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework?

A
Business (managers/stakeholders)
People (HR/staffing)
Governance (Risk/Performance)
Platform (IT)
Security
Operations (IT support)
100
Q

What are the 6 strategies of migration?

A
Rehosting
Replatforming
Retire
Retain
Repurchasing
Refactoring
101
Q

What is the AWS Snow Family?

A

Physical devices used to transport large volumes of data

102
Q

What are the four devices in the Snow Family and what are their maximum storage amounts?

A

Snowcone - small device that can contain up to 8TB of data
Snowball (Storage) - larger device with 80TB of disk space
Snowball (Compute) - 42TB of storage and 52 vCPUs with 208GB of memory
Snowmobile - Shipping container that can contain up to 100 petabytes of data

103
Q

What are the five pillars of a Well-Architected Framework?

A
Operational Excellence
Security
Reliability
Performance efficiency
Cost optimization
104
Q

What is the Well-Architected Tool?

A

A tool to analyse your AWS infrastructure against the five “well-architected” pillars