Storage

Question 1

What persistent storage is typically used for EC2 instances?

Answer 1

EBS, Elastic Block Store

Question 2

What are the characteristics of EBS?

Answer 2

EBS is persistent, network attached storage which is replicated within an AZ for redundancy. it can be encrypted, and backed up. EBS volumes can be detached from EC2 instances and re-attached elsewhere.

Question 3

How do you achieve redundancy of data with EBS?

Answer 3

EBS automatically replicates all data to multiple locations in an AZ

Question 4

What ephemeral storage is typically used for EC2 instances?

Answer 4

Instance backed volumes.

Question 5

What are the characteristics of instance backed volumes?

Answer 5

They are attached to an EC2 instance. When the EC2 instance is stopped, all data is lost. Data will remain through a reboot.

Question 6

What is the cost of data transfers related to S3?

Answer 6

Data transferred into S3 is free, data transferred between regions is $0.02 / GB

Question 7

What is the cost of requests with S3?

Answer 7

$0.053 / 10,000 operations that change data

$0.042 / 10,000 GET operations

Question 8

What 4 types of data should you NOT use S3 for?

Answer 8

1) long term data archiving
2) Fast changing data
3) File systems
4) Structured data that must be queried

Question 9

What are S3 ACL’s used for?

Answer 9

Controlling access from the public, from outside of your AWS account

Question 10

How do you control rights for S3 objects from within your account?

Answer 10

Bucket policies

Question 11

What is the default limit on the number of S3 buckets you can have within an account?

Answer 11

100 - soft limit

Question 12

What are the data retrieval options for Glacier?

Answer 12

1) Expedited, for < 250 MB, available in 1 - 5 minutes
2) Standard, available in 3 - 5 hours
3) Bulk, available in 5 - 12 hours

Question 13

What is the difference between Glacier Vault Access Policies and Lock Policies?

Answer 13

Vault access policies are editable, and expected to change over time. Lock policies cannot be changed once they are set, and are used for regulatory compliance

Question 14

What is the cost of data transfers related to Glacier?

Answer 14

Data transfers into Glacier is free. Data transferred to another region is $0.02 / GB. Data transfers to the internet depends on the amount of data.

Question 15

What is a good general rule for when to use Snowball?

Answer 15

If your data would take more than a week to transfer over your network connectivity to AWS, consider Snowball

Question 16

What sizes does the Snowball come in?

Answer 16

50 TB and 80 TB, but 50TB is only available in the US

Question 17

What are the 3 configurations of the Storage Gateway?

Answer 17

File, Volume, and Tape

Question 18

What are the two configurations of the Storage Gateway’s Volume Gateway?

Answer 18

Stored and Cached

Question 19

What is the primary use case for a Stored Volume Gateway?

Answer 19

Backing up to AWS, then during a disaster of the traditional DC, bringing the systems online in AWS. The backups are stored as EBS snapshots and can be attached to EC2 instances

Question 20

What is the primary difference between a Stored Volume Gateway and a Cached Volume Gateway?

Answer 20

The stored treats local storage as the primary and backs up to AWS, while the cached treats AWS as the primary and uses a local cache to buffer the transfers

Question 21

What is the Taped Library configuration of the Storage Gateway?

Answer 21

The storage gateway replaces a physical tape library solution with virtual tapes which actually back up to AWS

Question 22

What are the 4 primary security controls for S3?

Answer 22

Bucket policies, ACLs, Data Encryption, SSL

Question 23

What are the two performance modes of EFS?

Answer 23

General Purpose and Max I/O

Question 24

What are the 2 primary types of EBS volumes, and their individual subtypes?

Answer 24

SSD, and HDD. SSD has General Purpose and Provisioned IOPS, while HDD has Cold HDD and Throughput optimized HDD.