Fundamental Terminology and Concepts

Question 1

Cloud Computing

Answer 1

-Cloud computing is a specialized form of distributed computing that introduces utilization models for remotely provisioning scalable and measured IT resources

Question 2

IT Resource

Answer 2

-A physical or virtual IT-related artifact(software or hardware). ex: physical server, virtual server, software program, service, storage device, network device

Question 3

Virtualization

Answer 3

• Allows physical IT resources to provide multiple virtual images of themselves so that their underlying processing capabilities can be shared individually by multiple consumers.
• The owner of the IT resource maintains centralized administrative control and intentionally hides implementation details from consumers of the virtual IT resources
• This abstraction of the physical IT resource allows consumers to use the provided virtual IT resources without and required knowledge of how the underlying physical IT resource exists or operates.
• As consumer usage demand fluctuate, the owner of the physical IT resource can scale it accordingly

Question 4

Scaling

Answer 4

Represents the ability of the IT resource to gracefully handle increased or decreased usage demands

Question 5

Horizontal Scaling

Answer 5

• The allocation or releasing of resources of the same type

- Is a common form of scaling within cloud environments.

Question 6

Vertical Scaling

Answer 6

• Occurs when an existing resource is upgraded or replaced by another
• Less common in in cloud environments due to potential downtime that may be required to scale up or down

Question 7

(Horizontal) Scaling out

Answer 7

• The horizontal allocation of resources

Question 8

(Horizontal) Scaling in

Answer 8

• The horizontal releasing of resources

Question 9

(Vertical) Up Scaling

Answer 9

• The upgrading of an IT resource or the replacing of an IT resource with that has higher capacity

Question 10

(Vertical) Down Scaling

Answer 10

• The downgrading of an IT resource or the replacing of an IT resource with another that has lower capacity

Question 11

Cloud

Answer 11

• A distinct and remote IT environment designed for the purpose of remotely provisioning scalable and measured IT resources.
• IT resources are provided by a cloud for consumers to access remotely, from outside the cloud perimeter.

Question 12

On-Premise

Answer 12

• Used to qualify an IT resource that is not remotely accessible via a cloud, but instead resides with an internal IT enterprise environment.

Question 13

Service

Answer 13

• From an implementation perspective, a service is a software program that can be remotely invoked via a published technical interface (or API) referred to as a service contract

Question 14

Service Consumer

Answer 14

• When a software program invokes and interacts with a service, it is labeled as a service consumer

Question 15

Service Composition

Answer 15

• When two or more services participate to complete a given task
• Services acting as service consumers can invoke other services.

Question 16

Cloud Service

Answer 16

• Any remotely accessible IT resource

Question 17

Service Agent

Answer 17

• An event-driven program capable of transparently intercepting and processing messages sent to or from services
• Depending on the development platform you are working with service agents may be called “filters”, “listeners”, “interceptors”, “handlers”, etc.
• Do not have a technical interface (or service contract) and are therefore not explicitly invoked
• Common functions are routing, logging, validation and security-related processing.