Fundamental Cloud Concepts for AWS Flashcards
What are the Advantages of Cloud Computing
- Trade capital expense for variable expenses
- Benefit from massive economies of scale
- Stop guessing capacity
- Increase speed and agility
- Stop spending money maintaining data centers
- Go global in minutes
What are the characteristics of traditional data centers
- Large up-front investment
- Forecasting demand is difficult
- Slow to deploy new data centers and servers
- Maintaining data centers is expensive
- You own all of the security and compliance burden
What are AWS Regions?
- Each region is in a specific geographic location
- Each geographic location has a cluster of data centers.
- AWS currently has 22 launched regions
What are Availability Zones (AZ)?
- Consists of one or more data centers
- Multiple availability zones are included with each AWS Region
- Located within the geographic area of the AWS Region
- Redundant power, networking and connectivity
- There are currently 69 availability zones globally
What are Edge Locations?
- Used as nodes of a global content delivery network (CDN)
- Utilized by Amazon CloudFront and Amazon Route 53
- Located globally at over 200 different locations
- Allows AWS to serve content from locations closest to users
Roger’s company runs several production workloads in its data center
They are using VMWare to have cloudlike infrastructure in their data center
They want to use AWS and integrate it with their data center for new workloads
Which cloud deployment model would his company be following?
Solution: Hybrid Cloud
Eliza’s company is trying to decide whether to fund a new line of business
Eliza’s team is looking to monetize a new emerging technology
This new line of business will require new infrastructure
What benefit of cloud computing would be most relevant to her company?
Solution: Pay as you go
Jane’s company is looking to transition to AWS
They are starting with a few workloads
It is a requirement to store backup data in multiple geographic areas
Which element of AWS global infrastructure will best suit this need?
Solution: AWS Region
Tim’s company serves content through their site to users around the globe
They are looking to optimize performance to users around the world
They want to leverage a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Which element of the AWS global infrastructure will be used in this case?
Solution: AWS Edge Location
Ellen’s company is transitioning one of their legacy applications to AWS
This application requires uptime of at least 99.5%
They want to be sure any issues at a single data center don’t cause an outage
Which element of the AWS global infrastructure supports this need?
Solution: AWS Availability Zone (AZ)
Financial Implications of:
Manage Your Own Data Center
- Large Up-front Costs (CapEx)
- Potential for either Under-used Capacity
or Unmet Demand - Increasing Capacity Takes Time and Additional Investment (CapEx)
- Monthly Costs will Map to Predicted Infrastructure Needs
Financial Implications of:
Leverage Cloud Infrastructure
- No Up-front Investment
- You Pay as You Go for Infrastructure (OpEx)
- Capacity Scales to Meet User Demand and Can Be Provisioned Immediately
- Monthly Costs will Map to User Demand
What is the AWS Cost Explorer?
User Interface for exploring your AWS costs
Provides breakdowns including:
- By service
- By cost tag
Provides predictions for the next three months of costs
Gives recommendations for cost optimization
Can be accessed via API
What is AWS Budgets?
- Utilizes data from AWS Cost Explorer to plan and track your usage across AWS services.
- It can track cost per service, service usage, reserved instance utilization and coverage, and Savings Plans utilization and coverage.
What is AWS TCO Calculator?
Enables an organization to determine how much money could be saved by leveraging cloud infrastructure
What is the AWS Simple Monthly Calculator?
Enables an organization to calculate the cost of running specific AWS infrastructure
AWS Resource Tags
- Metadata assigned to a specific AWS resource
- Includes a name and an optional value
- Common use cases include department, environment, or project
- Cost allocation report includes costs grouped by active tags
- Tags can be leveraged within the AWS Costs Explorer
AWS Organizations
- Allows organizations to manage multiple accounts under a single master account
- Provides organizations with the ability to leverage Consolidated Billing for all accounts
- Enables organizations to centralize logging and security standards across accounts
Oscar’s company has multiple departments that work within AWS
Finance is asking for a clean separation of AWS costs between departments
Currently all resources are included within a single AWS account
What approach would meet this need for future costs with minimal effort?
Solution: Create and leverage a Resource Tag for Department
Cindy’s company is considering a transition to the cloud
They currently have two physical data centers that they own and maintain
Stakeholders are questioning whether this approach will save money
Which approach should Cindy take to make a case for the cloud?
Solution: Utilize the AWS TCO Calculator and provide reports to stakeholders
William is a web developer at his company
Given some recent downtime he is looking at moving their site to the cloud
Finance is asking for an estimate of costs for this transition to AWS
What approach should William take to get this data to his finance team?
Solution: Utilize the AWS Simple Monthly Calculator and share results
What is AWS Support?
- Enables support from AWS resources for workloads running in the cloud
- Provided in different tiers based on need and scope
- Includes tools to provide automated answers and recommendations
What is AWS Personal Health Dashboard?
Provides alerts and remediation guidance when AWS is
experiencing events that may impact you
What is AWS Trusted Advisor?
- Automated tool to check your AWS usage against best practices
- Accessed from the AWS console
- Different checks are provided based on the AWS Support plan tier
- All AWS customers get access to seven core checks
What does Trusted Advisor Check?
- Cost Optimization
- Performance
- Security
- Fault Tolerance
- Service Limits
What are the support plan differences?
- Communication method
- Response time
- Cost
- Type of guidance offered
AWS Basic Support
- Provided for all AWS customers
- Access to Trusted Advisor (7 Core Checks)
- 24x7 Access to customer service, documentation, forums, & whitepapers
- Access to AWS Personal Health Dashboard
- No monthly cost
AWS Developer Support
- Includes all features of Basic Support
- Business hours email access to support engineers
- Limited to 1 primary contact
- Starts at $29 per month (tied to AWS usage)
AWS Business Support
- Includes all features of Developer Support
- Full set of Trusted Advisor checks
- 24x7 phone, email, and chat access to support engineers
- Unlimited contacts
- Provides third-party software support
- Starts at $100 per month (tied to AWS usage)
AWS Enterprise Support
- Includes all features of Business Support
- Includes designated Technical Account Manager (TAM)
- Includes concierge support team
- Starts at $15,000 per month (tied to AWS usage)
What support plans are offered for AWS?
- Basic
- Developer
- Business
- Enterprise
What are the support times for “General Guidance” issues?
- Basic - N/A
- Developer: 24 Business hours
- Business: 24 Hours
- Enterprise: 24 Hours
What are the support times for “System Impaired” issues?
- Basic - N/A
- Developer: 12 Business hours
- Business: 12 Hours
- Enterprise: 12 Hours
What are the support times for “Production System Impaired” issues?
- Basic - N/A
- Developer: N/A
- Business: 4 Hours
- Enterprise: 4 Hours
What are the support times for “Production System Down” issues?
- Basic - N/A
- Developer: N/A
- Business: 1 Hour
- Enterprise: 1 Hour
What are the support times for “Business-Critical System Down” issues?
- Basic - N/A
- Developer: N/A
- Business: N/A
- Enterprise: 15 minutes
Sylvia’s company is in the process of moving multiple workloads into AWS
One of these workloads is a mission critical application
Her CTO says that they need to be able to call support 24 hours a day
What is the most cost effective support plan that meets this criteria?
Solution: Business Support
Edward’s company is evaluating AWS for future workloads
One of the workloads supports multiple offices globally
The company needs to be able to call, text, or email support if an issue occurs
The company also needs a response from support in 15 minutes
What is the most cost effective support plan that meets this criteria?
Solution: Enterprise Support
William has an AWS account for a personal project
He doesn’t expect to need technical guidance from AWS
He does want access to the AWS Trusted Advisor core checks
What is the most cost effective support plan that meets this criteria?
Solution: Basic Support
3 Primary elements of AWS global infrastructure
- AWS Regions
- AWS Availability Zones
- AWS Edge Locations
What is a CDN?
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Which AWS services utilize Edge Locations?
Amazon CloudFront and Amazon Route 53
