Domain 1 - Cloud Computing Concepts and Architecture

Question 1

What are the benefits of the cloud?

Answer 1

Agility - no need to purchase and wait for HW
Resilience - cloud is elastic
Cost - no capex, match demand and capacity
Security - CSPs have significant economic interest in protecting customers.

Question 2

What are the key techniques that underpin cloud computing?

Answer 2

• Abstraction - Resources are abstracted from the underlying physical infrastructure
• Orchestration - Coordinating the delivery of a set of resources to the consumer.

Traditional virtualization abstracts resources, but does NOT orchestrate its delivery to consumers. It is often manual.

Question 3

What, according to NIST, are the essential characteristics of cloud computing?

Answer 3

1- Broad Network Access
2- Rapid elasticity
3 - Measured Service
4 - On Demand Self-Service
5 - Resource Pooling

Question 4

What comprises an IaaS service model?

Answer 4

• Facility
  -Hardware
  -Abstraction Layer
• Orchestration (connectivity and delivery)
  -APIs.

Question 5

What is the key characteristic of a PaaS?

Answer 5

• PaaS is hard to define.
• Essentially, the user does not see the underlying infrastructure; just the platform
• Example, DBaaS - the DB expands and contracts as needed. User does not see any servers.
• Example, application development platform - developers just develop code; PaaS provider keeps them up to date, patched and takes care of clustering and load balancing.

Question 6

What are the layers of the Logical Model of cloud anc traditional computing?

Answer 6

• Infostructure - Data and information- e.g. DB contents
• Applistructure - underlying services that applications use -e.g. PaaS Message Queues or Notification services.
• Metastructure - protocols and mechanisms that provide the interface between infra and other layers - e.g. management console, Control Plane APIs
• Infrastructure - compute, network, storage

Question 7

What are the key steps in a cloud security process model?

Answer 7

• Identify necessary security and compliance requirements, and any existing controls.
• Select your cloud provider, service, and deployment models.
• Define the architecture.
• Assess the security controls.
• Identify control gaps.
• Design and implement controls to fill the gaps.
• Manage changes over time

Question 8

What is virtualization?

Answer 8

Virtualization abstracts resources from their underlying physical assets.
Cloud Computing = Virtualization + Orchestration.