Module 2

Question 1

What is the purpose of Amazon EC2?

Answer 1

An EC2 instance allows you to use a virtual server to run applications in the AWS cloud.

Question 2

When launching an EC2 instance, what are some things you can initially configure?

Answer 2

Operating system
application server
applications
security settings

Question 3

Name all of the Amazon EC2 instance types.

Answer 3

G-SCAM:

General purpose
Compute optimized
Memory optimized
Accelerated computing
Storage optimized

Question 4

What are General purpose instances appropriate for?

Answer 4

General purpose instances provide a balance of compute, memory, and networking resources. You can use them for a variety of workloads, such as:
• application servers
• gaming servers
• backend servers for enterprise applications
• small and medium databases

Question 5

What are Compute optimized instances appropriate for?

Answer 5

Compute optimized applications are ideal for high-performance web servers, compute-intensive applications servers, dedicated gaming servers and batch processing workloads.

Question 6

What are Memory optimized instances appropriate for?

Answer 6

Memory optimized instances are designed to deliver fast performance for workloads that process large datasets in memory. This is best suited for a workload that requires large amounts of data to be preloaded before running an application.

eg. Databases

Question 7

What are Accelerated computing instances appropriate for?

Answer 7

Accelerated computing instances use hardware accelerators, or coprocessors, to perform some functions more efficiently than is possible in software running on CPUs.
Egs.
Graphics applications
Streaming applications

Question 8

What are Storage optimized instances appropriate for?

Answer 8

Storage optimized instances are designed for workloads that require high, sequential read and write access to large datasets on local storage.

Egs.
distributed file systems
data warehousing applications

Question 9

Name the 5 types of Amazon EC2 Pricing.

Answer 9

D-ROSS

On-Demand
Savings Plans
Reserved Instances
Spot Instances
Dedicated Hosts

Question 10

Describe Amazon On-Demand EC2 pricing.

Answer 10

On-Demand Instances are ideal for short-term, irregular workloads that cannot be interrupted. No upfront costs or minimum contracts apply. The instances run continuously until you stop them, and you pay for only the compute time you use.

Question 11

Describe Amazon Savings Plans EC2 pricing.

Answer 11

Amazon EC2 Savings Plans enable you to reduce your compute costs by committing to a consistent amount of compute usage for a 1-year or 3-year term. This term commitment results in savings of up to 72% over On-Demand costs. Any usage up to the commitment is charged at the discounted Savings Plan rate (for example, $10 an hour). Any usage beyond the commitment is charged at regular On-Demand rates.

Question 12

Describe Amazon Reserved Instances EC2 pricing.

Answer 12

Reserved Instances are a billing discount applied to the use of On-Demand Instances in your account. You can purchase Standard Reserved and Convertible Reserved Instances for a 1-year or 3-year term, and Scheduled Reserved Instances for a 1-year term. You realize greater cost savings with the 3-year option.

Question 13

Describe Amazon Spot Instances EC2 pricing.

Answer 13

Spot Instances are ideal for workloads with flexible start and end times, or that can withstand interruptions. Spot Instances use unused Amazon EC2 computing capacity and offer you cost savings at up to 90% off of On-Demand prices.

Question 14

Describe Amazon Dedicated Hosts EC2 pricing.

Answer 14

Dedicated Hosts are physical servers with Amazon EC2 instance capacity that is fully dedicated to your use. Of all the Amazon EC2 options that were covered, Dedicated Hosts are the most expensive. These are usually for certain compliance requirements. No one else will share this host.

Question 15

Describe Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling.

Answer 15

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling enables you to automatically add or remove Amazon EC2 instances in response to changing application demand. By automatically scaling your instances in and out as needed, you are able to maintain a greater sense of application availability.

Question 16

What is dynamic scaling when it comes to EC2 instances?

Answer 16

Dynamic scaling responds to changing demand.

Question 17

What is predictive scaling when it comes to EC2 instances?

Answer 17

Predictive scaling automatically schedules the right number of Amazon EC2 instances based on predicted demand.

Question 18

What are three properties for capacity that you can set in the EC2 Auto Scaling Group?

Answer 18

Minimum capacity, Desired capacity, Maximum capacity,

Question 19

Define Elastic Load Balancing.

Answer 19

Elastic Load Balancing is the AWS service that automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances.
Elastic Load Balancing distributes the workload across the multiple instances so that no single instance has to carry the bulk of it.

Question 20

What is the difference between a monolithic and microservices based application?

Answer 20

An application with tightly coupled components is a monolithic application. This type of application is vulnerable since if one component fails, the entire application will fail.
In a microservices approach, application components are loosely coupled. In this case, if a single component fails, the other components continue to work because they are communicating with each other. This will help to maintain application availability.

Question 21

Describe Amazon Simple Notification Service.

Answer 21

Amazon SNS is a publish/subscribe service. Using Amazon SNS topics, a publisher publishes messages to subscribers.

Question 22

Describe Amazon Simple Queue Service.

Answer 22

Amazon SQS is a message queuing service.
Using Amazon SQS, you can send, store, and receive messages between software components, without losing messages or requiring other services to be available. In Amazon SQS, an application sends messages into a queue. A user or service retrieves a message from the queue, processes it, and then deletes it from the queue.

Question 23

Describe serverless computing.

Answer 23

With serverless computing, your application still runs on servers, but you are freed from the responsibility of maintaining those servers. Another benefit of serverless computing is the flexibility to scale serverless applications automatically.

Question 24

What is AWS Lambda?

Answer 24

AWS Lambda is a service that lets you run code without needing to provision or manage servers. While using AWS Lambda, you pay only for the compute time that you consume. Charges apply only when your code is running. You can also run code for virtually any type of application or backend service, all with zero administration.

Question 25

What are containers?

Answer 25

These are standard ways of packaging application code and dependencies into a single object. You can also use containers for processes and workflows in which there are essential requirements for security, reliability, and scalability.

Question 26

Describe 3 Amazon container services.

Answer 26

Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) is a highly scalable, high-performance container management system that enables you to run and scale containerized applications on AWS. Amazon ECS supports Docker containers.

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) is a fully managed service that you can use to run Kubernetes on AWS.

AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers. It works with both Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS.