EC2

Question 1

What can be configured on an EC2 instance?

(what are the configuration options)

Answer 1

• OS
• CPU
• Memory
• Firewall Rules (security group)
• ELB (load balancing
• Storage
  
  • Network attached (EBS/EFS)
  • EC2 Instance Store
• Bootstrap Script

Question 2

What are the different EC2 Instance Types

(Use Cases)

Answer 2

• General Purpose
• Memory Optimized
• Compute Optimized
• Accelerated Computing
• Storage Optimized

Question 3

What are the main characteristics of

GENERAL PURPOSE

Instance Types?

Answer 3

• great for wide range of workloads
• Balance between CPU/Memory/Networking

Question 4

What are some examples of General Purpose use cases?

Answer 4

• web servers
• code repositories
• diverse workloads that use cpu/mem/networking proportionally

Question 5

What are the main characteristics of

MEMORY OPTIMIZED

use cases?

Answer 5

• Fast performance for workloads processing large data sets in memory

Question 6

What are some examples of

MEMORY OPTIMIZED

use cases?

Answer 6

• High performance databases
• Distributed web scale cache stores
• In-memory databases optimized for BI
• Apps performing real-time processing of big, unstructured data

Question 7

What are the main characteristics of Compute Optimized instance types?

Answer 7

• Compute-intensive tasks requiring high performance processors

Question 8

What are some examples of

COMPUTE-OPTIMIZED

use cases?

Answer 8

• Batch processing workloads
• Media transcoding
• High performance web servers
• HPC
• Scientific modeling/Machine learning
• Dedicated gaming servers

Question 9

What are the main characteristics of Storage Optimized instance types?

Answer 9

• great for storage-intensive tasks that require high, sequential read/write access to large data sets on LOCAL storage

Question 10

What are some examples of

STORAGE OPTIMIZED

use cases?

Answer 10

• high frequency OLTP
• Databases
• Cache for in-memory dbs (redis)
• Data warehousing
• distributed file systems

Question 11

What are the characteristics of Accelerated Computing instance types?

Answer 11

• Accelerated computing instances use hardware accelerators, or co-processors, to perform functions, such as floating point number calculations, graphics processing, or data pattern matching, more efficiently than is possible in software running on CPUs.

Question 12

What are some examples of

ACCELERATED COMPUTING

use cases?

Answer 12

• autonomous cars
• Machine learning
• high performance computing
• computational fluid dynamics
• computational finance
• seismic analysis
• speech recognition
• autonomous vehicles
• drug discovery

Question 13

What are the EC2 Instances Purchasing Options?

Answer 13

• On-Demand Instances
• Reserved (1/3 years)
• Convertible Reserved
• Savings Plans (1/3 years)
• Spot Instances
• Dedicated Hosts
• Dedicated Instances
• Capacity Reservations

Question 14

What is EC2 On Demand Pricing Model?

Answer 14

• Pay for what you use
  
  • Windows/linux: per second
  • everything else: per hour
• Highest Cost
• No long term commitment

Question 15

What is the appropriate use case for

EC2 On Demand Pricing?

Answer 15

• Short term
• uninterrupted workloads
• unpredictable application behavior

Question 16

What are

EC2 Reserved Instances?

Answer 16

• Reserve specific instance attributes
  
  • Instance type, Region, Tenancy, OS)
• Reservation period
  
  • 1 or 3 years
• Payment Options
  
  • No upfront
  • Partial upfront
  • All upfront
• RI’s scope - regional or zonal
• Convertible Reserved Instance
  
  • Can change EC2 instance type, family, OS, scope, tenancy

Question 17

What is the most appropriate use case for

EC2 Reserved Instances?

Answer 17

• Steady state usage applications, like database

Question 18

What are EC2 Savings Plans?

Answer 18

• Discount based on long term usage (same as RIs)
• Commit to certain level of usage (ie: $10/hr for 1 or 3 years)
• Usage beyond that level is billed at On Demand price
• Locked to specific instance family and region
• Flexible across
  
  • Instance size
  • OS
  • Tenancy (host/dedicated/default)

Question 19

Wat are EC2 Spot Instances

Answer 19

• Discount of up to 90% off On Demand
• most cost efficient option
• you can lose the instances at any time if max price < spot price

Question 20

What are the most appropriate use cases for

EC2 Spot Instances?

Answer 20

• Workloads that are resilient to failure
  
  • Batch jobs
  • Data analysis
  • Image processing
  • Distributed workloads
  • Workloads with flexible start/end times
• NOT suitable for databases or critical jobs

Question 21

What are EC2 Dedicated Hosts

Answer 21

• actual physical server with EC2 instance capacity fully dedicated to your use
• Purchasing options
  
  • on demand - pay per second
  • reserved - 1 or 3 years
• Most expensive options

Question 22

What are the use cases for

EC2 Dedicated Hosts?

Answer 22

• appropriate for enterprises with compliance and/or regulatory needs
• useful for enterprises with software that have complicated licensing models
  
  • BYOL
  • can utilize server bound licensing (per socket, per core, per VM etc)

Question 23

What are

EC2 Dedicated Instances

Answer 23

• Instances run on hardware dedicated to you
• May share hardware with instances on same account
• No control over instance placement
• No visibility of sockets/cores/host ID
• no affinity between host and instance
• limited BYOL support

Question 24

What are

EC2 Capacity Reservations?

Answer 24

• Reserve On Demand instance capacity in specific AZ for any amount of time
• No time commitment
• No billing discounts
• Charged On Demand rate whether you actually run instances or not

* Suitable for short-term, uninterrupted workloads that need to be in a specific AZ