Storage and Databases

Question 1

Block level storage

Answer 1

behaves like physical hard drives
Updates only pieces that change

Question 2

Instance Stores

Answer 2

Provides temporary block-level storage for an EC2 instance
Disk storage that is physically attached to the host computer for an instance, and has the same lifespan as the instance
When instance is terminated, you lose any data in the instance store
Use for temporary data only

Question 3

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)

Answer 3

Provides block level storage volumes that you can use with EC2 instances
All data on the attached EBS volume remains available even if you terminate an EC2 instance
To create, define the configuration and provision it
Then you can attach to an EC2 instance
Back up the data using EBS snapshots - incremental backups record deltas

Question 4

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

Answer 4

Data store: store and retrieve an unlimited amount of data
Store data as objects
Store objects in buckets
Max object size of 5 TB
Version objects
Create multiple buckets

Question 5

S3 Standard Storage class

Answer 5

Frequently accessed data
Stores in a minimum of 3 availability zones
High availability

Question 6

Standard Infrequent Access Storage class

Answer 6

Infrequently accessed data
Lower storage price, higher retrieval price

Question 7

One Zone-Infrequent Access Storage class

Answer 7

Stores data in a single availability zone
Lower storage price than standard
Use if you want to save costs and can easily reproduce data in event of failure

Question 8

S3 Intelligent Tiering

Answer 8

Ideal for data with unknown or changing access patterns
Small monthly monitoring and automation fee per object

Question 9

S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval

Answer 9

For archived data that requires immediate access

Question 10

S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval

Answer 10

Low cost storage for data archiving
Retrieve objects within a few min to hours

Question 11

S3 Glacier Deep Archive

Answer 11

Lowest-cost object storage
Ideal for archiving
Retrieve objects within 12 hour

Question 12

S3 Outposts

Answer 12

Creates buckets on outposts
Easier to retrieve, store and access data on aws outposts

Question 13

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)

Answer 13

File storage: multiple clients can access data that is stored in shared file folders
Storage server uses block storage with a local file system to organize files
Clients access through file paths
Ideal for use cases where a large number of services and resources need to access the same data at the same time

Multiple instances can access data in EFS at the same time
Reading and writing simultaneously
Linux file system
Regional resource
Scales up and down automatically
Unlike EBS, EFS stores data in and across multiple availability zones

Question 14

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)

Answer 14

Managed service that automates tasks like hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups

Integrates with other services to fulfill business and operational needs, such as using Lambda to query db from a serverless application

AWS supported databases:
MySQL
PostgreSQL
Oracle
Microsoft SQL Server

Lift and shift migration
Migrate db to run on EC2

RDS supports all major db engines
Added benefits:
Automated patching
Backups
Redundancy
Failover
Disaster recovery

Question 15

Amazon Aurora

Answer 15

Enterprise-class relational database
Compatible with:
MySQL
PostgreSQL
1/10th cost of commercial dbs
Data replication
Up to 15 read replicas
Continuous backup to S3
Point in time recovery
Great if your workloads require high availability

Question 16

Amazon DynamoDB

Answer 16

Nonrelational database: create tables to store and query data

NoSQL databases use structures other than rows and columns to organize data

Key-value pairs: data organized into items(keys), and items have attributes (values)

Serverless database: no need to provision, patch, or manage servers, no installing, maintaining or operating software
Non-relational, NoSQL db

Question 17

Amazon Redshift

Answer 17

Data warehouses
Big data: historical analytics as opposed to operational analysis
Data is no longer changing

Question 18

AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)

Answer 18

Helps to migrate dbs securely
Data is moved between a source and target db
Source db remains fully operational during migration

Homogenous databases
Microsoft SQL Server
Oracle

Heterogeneous databases
Convert using AWS schema conversion tool
Then use DMS to migrate

Other uses:
Dev and test db migrations
DB consolidation: combining several dbs into a single db
Continuous db replication (disaster recovery, geo separation)

Question 19

Amazon DocumentDB

Answer 19

Content management
Catalogs
Supports MongoDB workloads

Question 20

Amazon Neptune

Answer 20

Graph DB service
Build and run applications that work with highly connected datasets, like:
Recommendation engines
Fraud detection
Knowledge graphs
Social networking

Question 21

Amazon Managed Blockchain

Answer 21

Create and manage blockchain networks with open-source frameworks
Distributed ledger system, lets multiple parties run transactions and share data without a central authority

Question 22

Amazon Quantum Ledger Database

Answer 22

Immutable system of record
Complete history of all changes made to data

Question 23

Amazon ElastiCache

Answer 23

Adds caching layers on top of dbs to improve read times of common requests
Supports Redis and Memcached

Question 24

Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)

Answer 24

In-memory cache for DynamoDB
Improves response times from single-digit milliseconds to microseconds