EC2 - Elastic Compute Cloud

Question 1

Which EC2 Purchasing Option can provide the biggest discount, but is not suitable for critical jobs or databases?

a) Scheduled instances
b) Convertible Instances
c) Dedicated Hosts
d) Spot Instances

Answer 1

d) Spot Instances

Spot Instances are good for short workloads, but are less reliable.

Question 2

Which network security tool can you use to control traffic in and out of EC2 Instances?

a) Network Access Control List (NACL)
b) Identity and Management Access (IAM)
c) GuardDuty
d) Security Groups

Answer 2

d) Security Groups

Security Groups operate at instance level and can control traffic.

Question 3

Under the Shared Responsibility Model, who is responsible for operating-system patches and updates on EC2 Instances?

a) The customer
b) AWS
c) Both AWS and the customer

Answer 3

a) The customer

The customer is responsible for operating-system patches and updates on EC2 Instances, as well as data security on the instances, Security Groups rules, etc.

Question 4

How long can you reserve an EC2 Reserved Instance?

a) 1 or 3 years
b) 2 or 4 years
c) 6 months or 1 year
d) Anytime between 1 and 3 years

Answer 4

a) 1 or 3 years

1 year or 3 years terms are available for EC2 Reserved Instances.

Question 5

Which of the following is NOT an EC2 Instance Purchasing Option?

a) Spot Instances
b) Reserved Instances
c) On-demand Instances
d) Connect Instances

Answer 5

d) Connect Instances

This EC2 Instance purchasing option does not exist.

Question 6

Which EC2 Purchasing Option should you use for an application you plan on running on a server continuously for 1 year?

a) Reserved Instances
b) Spot Instances
c) On-demand instances
d) Convertible Instances

Answer 6

a) Reserved Instances

Reserved Instances are good for long workloads. You can reserve instances for 1 or 3 years.

Question 7

For EC2 On Demand, you pay for what you use, how are billed Linux and all other OS (ex: Windows)?

Answer 7

For Linux, billing per second, after the first minute

For all other OS, billing per hour

Question 8

What are the types of reserved instances available?

Answer 8

• Normal Reserved Instance, a specific instance type is reserved.
• Convertible Reserved Instance, where you can change the EC2 type over time.
• Scheduled Reserved Instances, these are launched within reserved time window.

Question 9

What are EC2 Spot Instances and what could be used for?

Answer 9

Are the most cost-efficient instances, they are lost at any point of time if the max price a customer is willing to pay for them is less than the current spot price.

Useful for workload that are resilient to failure like:

• Batch jobs
• Data analysis
• Image processing
• Any distrubuted workloads, it doesn’t matter if an instance gets lost while other instances can continue working.
• Workloads with a flexible start and end time

NEVER CONSIDER A SPOT INSTANCE FOR CRITICAL JOBS OR DATABASES

Question 10

What are the EC2 Dedicated Hosts?

Answer 10

Are physical servers with EC2 instance capacity fully dedicated for customer’s use.
Deciated Hosts can help customers to address compliance requirements and reduce costs by allowing them to use existing server-bound software licenses.

They are allocated for an account for 3 year period reservation and they are more expensive.

Are useful for software that has complicated licensing model (BYOL Bring Your Own License) or companies that have strong regulatory or compliance needs