Deployments and Managing Infrastructure at Scale Flashcards
What is CloudFormation?
A service that takes in a template in JSON or YAML to create infrastructure. Not to be confused with the CDK.
What are 3 advantages of using CloudFormation? (6 total)
- Good for control - all changes are reviewed through code
- All created resources are tagged so you can see how much a stack costs you. Can also estimate costs ahead of time
- Automatically generates a diagram of your setup
- Supports most AWS resources
- Can easily leverage existing templates off the web
- Can be used to automate the creation and deletion of different resources as and when needed to lower costs
What is the CDK and what does it stand for?
Cloud Development Kit. Where you actually input the code before it is turned into a YAML or JSON template for CloudFormation
What is Elastic Beanstalk?
Elastic Beanstalk is a platform as a service that allows developers to focus on deploying their code as opposed to the infrastructure set up behind it.
EB handles instance and OS configs, deployment strategy and capacity provisioning, load balancing and auto-scaling as well as application health monitoring.
What type of cloud computing is Elastic Beanstalk?
Platform-as-a-service
What is the pricing system of Elastic Beanstalk?
The platform itself is free but you pay for the resources that it provisions etc. when you use it
What is one metric that Elastic Beanstalk measures and where can you push this for centralised monitoring?
Application health, and can push this to CloudWatch
What are the 3 main infrastructure layouts that one could use Elastic Beanstalk for?
- Single instance
- ELB and ASG
- ASG
Why would you use an ASG-only infrastructure layout with Elastic Beanstalk?
Great for non-web apps
What is CodeDeploy?
A service that allows you to automatically deploy your application with EC2 and on-premise servers. SERVERS AND INSTANCES MUST BE PROVISIONED AHEAD OF TIME
What is CodeCommit?
AWS’ github. Hosts git based repositories, makes it easy to do version control and collaborate with others on code.
What is CodeBuild?
A service that takes your code and compiles, tests and packages it for deployment.
PAYG so you only pay for build time.
What is CodePipeline?
A service that gives the user a basis for continuous integration and continuous delivery (CICD). Allows you to have a pipeline from Code => Build => Test => Provision.
What is CodeArtifact?
A service that allows you store and manage the dependencies of your code.
“A secure, scalable and cost effective artefact management system”.
What is Systems Manager? What OSs does it work for?
A hybrid service that allows the user to manage EC2 and on-premise systems at scale. Works on Windows, Linux, MacOS and Raspbian.
What are the most important features of SSM?
- Automated patching
- Run commands across an entire fleet of servers
- Store parameter configurations with the SSM parameter store
What is SSM Session Manager?
A service that allows you to start a secure shell on your EC2 and on-premises servers without the need to enable SSH access, bastion hosts or SSH keys.
What is SSM Parameter Store?
A service that allows you to store configurations and secrets such as API keys, passwords etc.
What service does SSM Parameter Store use to control access permissions?
IAM
What is SSM Parameter Store - version store?
A part of the service that allows you to track changes to the parameters within the parameter store over time.
