Cloud Practitioner Exam Flashcards
What is Legacy IT?
self-managed systems deployed within a company’s own data center (on-premises), or in a shared data center (co-location) where the company leases space. This equipment is typically purchased and owned by the company and may also be fully or partially managed by the company’s IT staff.
What is Cloud Computer?
cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale.
The 6 Advantages of Cloud
- Trade capital expense for variable expense.
- Benefit from massive economies of scale.
- Stop guessing about capacity.
- Increase speed and agility.
- Stop spending money running and maintaining data centers.
- Go global in minutes.
Explain the benefit of - Trading capital expense for variable expense
Instead of having to invest heavily in data centers and servers before you know how you’re going to use them, you can pay only when you consume computing resources, and pay only for how much you consume.
Explain the concept of elasticity in regards to cloud computing
in Short - it bring speed and agility to your business
in long - One of the key benefits that differentiates cloud computing from legacy IT is its elasticity. With cloud computing you are able to scale your consumption of services to meet the demands of the business – no matter how fast your business grows. This is how companies such as Uber and Netflix were able to grow so quickly.
Of course, if you hit hard times and your business shrinks your consumption, and therefore costs will shrink along with it. This is a massive benefit, especially to smaller companies and so it’s no surprise that cloud adoption is strongest
What is on demand pricing?
With cloud consumption being delivered on-demand, and charged based on what you use, wasted capacity can be largely eliminated which can have a favorable impact on a company’s cash flow.
Pricing based on what you use not based on an upfront cost. .Having on demand prices eliminates waste which can improve a companys cashflow
How does cloud computing reduce maintenance costs?
As you reduce the costs and operational overhead of managing data centers and IT equipment, you are able to focus more on projects that differentiate your business. In the modern business landscape you either innovate or die, so moving to cloud computing services can literally enable a company to survive in this competitive environment.
explain the shared responsibility model
This model defines the boundaries and responsibility between the service provider and the customer. You are responsible for encrypting your data, patching of operating systems, and configuration of firewalls. The service provider is responsible for the hardware, software, networking, and facilities that run the cloud services.
List the THREE main cloud computing service models
IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service
PaaS - Platform as a Service
Saas - Software as a Service
Explain Software as a Service and give at least 4 examples of its benefits
SaaS is a service model where software applications are delivered over the Internet. In the consumer space, examples include Gmail, Facebook and Dropbox – these services are ready to use, no coding required, you just use them.
With SaaS the entire stack is managed for you, though you will often have some limited scope to configure the service according to your needs.
SaaS is the second most popular cloud computing service model for enterprises, totaling around 24% of all enterprise workloads.
The benefits of SaaS include:
Sign up and rapidly start using innovative business apps
Apps and data are accessible from any connected computer
No data is lost if your computer breaks, as data is in the cloud
The service is able to dynamically scale to usage needs
Explain Platform as a Service and give at least 3 examples of the benefits of PaaS
With PaaS, the cloud service provider manages the infrastructure layer and also the middleware, development tools, business intelligence (BI) services, database management systems and more. Developers love PaaS as it removes more complexity and operational overhead from them.
This allows developers to concentrate on their code without needing to manage the environment on which it runs. Developers simply upload their code to build web applications. PaaS is designed to support the complete web application life cycle: building, testing, deploying, managing, and updating.
You’re not just limited to web services with PaaS. Databases can also be offered in a platform as a service model. In this case the management of the database engine and underlying hardware is taken care of by the service provider, and you create tables and add data. Examples of database PaaS offerings include Microsoft Azure SQL and Amazon RDS.
PaaS is currently the most popular cloud computing service model, comprising around 32% of all enterprise workloads and is expected to grow in 2020.
The benefits of PaaS include:
Cut coding time – develop applications faster
Deploy new web applications to the cloud in minutes
Reduce complexity with middleware as a service
Explain what Infrastructure as a Service is
With IaaS services, such as Amazon EC2, your company can consume compute servers, known as “instances”, on-demand. This means that the hardware and software stack, up to the operating system is managed for you.
You then need to choose which operating system to use with your instance (e.g. Linux or Windows) and you are responsible for the configuration and management of the operating system and any software you install on it.
An application programming interface (API) is typically provided for all cloud services, which can be used for programmatic management. Each compute instance will have an allocated storage capacity, and cloud networking functions such as routing, firewalls, and load balancers can be configured.
IaaS is the least popular of the cloud computing service models at present, though it is gaining in popularity. Currently, around 12% of enterprise workloads run on IaaS.
The benefits of IaaS include:
You don’t need to invest in your own hardware
The infrastructure scales on-demand to support dynamic workloads
Increase stability, reliability and supportability
Maintain operational control of the operating system
Examples of IaaS services: Microsoft Azure IaaS, Amazon EC2, Google Compute Cloud (GCP), and Rackspace.
What is the fundamental meaning of “compute” in regards to tech
“compute” refers to physical servers comprised of the processing, memory, and storage required to run an operating system such as Microsoft Windows or Linux, and some virtualized networking capability.
list the components of a compute server
Processor or Central Processing Unit (CPU) – the CPU is the brains of the computer and carries out the instructions of computer programs
Memory or Random Access Memory (RAM) – within a computer memory is very high-speed storage for data stored on an integrated circuit chip
Storage – the storage location for the operating system files (and optionally data). This is typically a local disk stored within the computer or a network disk attached using a block protocol such as iSCSI
Network – physical network interface cards (NICs) to support connectivity with other servers
Explain the technique known as hyper visualization
When used in cloud computing, the operating system software that is installed directly on the server is generally a hypervisor that provides a hardware abstraction layer onto which additional operating systems can be run as virtual machines (VMs) or “instances”
