- On Demand - pay by the hour or second - Reserved - 1-3 years, up to 72% discount on hourly charge - Spot - purchase unused capacity, up to 90% discount, prices fluctuate w/ supply and demand - Dedicated - a physical EC2 server, dedicated for your use. The most expensive option.

- for compliance needs where you need dedicated hardware - for licensing restrictions - can be On Demand - reserved hourly - can be Reserved - purchased as a reservation for up to 70% of the on-demand price

AWS Command Line Interface - Principle of Least Privilege - use IAM groups - Secret Access Key - you only see it once, better save it - don't share key pairs - supported on Linux, Windows, MacOS, and EC2

- an identity that has specific permissions

- Roles are the preferred option from a security standpoint - always choose roles over hard-coding credentials - provide access without using access key IDs and secret access keys - made up of policies, changes take effect immediately - you can attach and detach roles without having to stop the EC2 instance

- a script that runs when the instance first starts up - has root permissions - adds to the time it takes to boot the instance - allows you to automate the installation of your applications

Data about your EC2 Instances - private IP address - public IP address - hostname - security groups, etc.

EC2 Flashcards by Ara Bob

EC2 Pricing

On Demand - pay by the hour or second
Reserved - 1-3 years, up to 72% discount on hourly charge
Spot - purchase unused capacity, up to 90% discount, prices fluctuate w/ supply and demand
Dedicated - a physical EC2 server, dedicated for your use. The most expensive option.

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On Demand Benefits

1) Flexible - low cost + no upfront payment/commitment
2) For Short Term, spiky or unpredictable workloads
3) For testing the water, apps being developed or tested for the first time

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Reserved Instances Benefits

1) For predictable usage
2) Specific capacity requirements
3) Pay up front (helps reduce computing costs)
4) Commit to 1 or 3 years
5) Super flexible (can also use with Lambda and Fargate)
6) Can be shared across accounts with in an Organization

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Types of Reserved Instances

Standard RI: up to 72% off the On Demand price
Convertible RI: up to 54% off the On Demand price with option to change to a different RI of equatl or greater value
Scheduled RI: match your capacity needs to a predictable, recurring schedule that only needs a fraction of a day, week or month

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At what level do Reserved Instance operate?

at the regional level

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Spot Instances Benefits

1) Flexible - apps that have flexible start and end times
2) Cost sensitive - apps that are only feasible at low compute prices
3) Urgent Capacity - users with urgent need for large amounts of compute (Image rendering, genomic sequencing, algorithmic trading engines)

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Dedicated Hosts

for compliance needs where you need dedicated hardware
for licensing restrictions
can be On Demand - reserved hourly
can be Reserved - purchased as a reservation for up to 70% of the on-demand price

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How can you figure out what your hypothetical infrastructure might cost?

AWS Pricing Calculator

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AWS CLI Exam Tips

AWS Command Line Interface

Principle of Least Privilege
use IAM groups
Secret Access Key - you only see it once, better save it
don’t share key pairs
supported on Linux, Windows, MacOS, and EC2

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IAM Roles

an identity that has specific permissions

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Ways IAM Roles are similar to a user

both are created in IAM
permission policies determine what it can/cannot do
IAM policies are global

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Ways IAM Roles are different from a user

not uniquely identified with a person
intended to be assumed by anyone who needs it
temporary - when you assume a role it provides you temporary security credentials for your role session

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Who can assume roles?

people
AWS architecture
other system-level accounts
other AWS accounts (for cross-account access)

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Example of using an IAM role

1) Create IAM role
2) Create EC2 instance
3) Create S3 bucket
4) Access S3 from the EC2 instance

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IAM Roles Exam Tips

Roles are the preferred option from a security standpoint
always choose roles over hard-coding credentials
provide access without using access key IDs and secret access keys
made up of policies, changes take effect immediately
you can attach and detach roles without having to stop the EC2 instance

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Bootstrap Scripts

a script that runs when the instance first starts up
has root permissions
adds to the time it takes to boot the instance
allows you to automate the installation of your applications

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Example of a Bootstrap Script

automatically install apache webserver
when originally configuring your instance, there is a ‘user data’ box at the bottom where you can paste your startup script

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Security Group Exam Tips

1) Changes to security groups take effect immediately
2) you can have any number of EC2 instances within a security group
3) you can have multiple security groups attached to an EC2 instance
4) all inbound traffic is blocked by default
5) all outbound traffic is allowed.

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EC2 Metadata

Data about your EC2 Instances

private IP address
public IP address
hostname
security groups, etc.

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How do you retrieve Metadata?

with a curl call

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User Data vs MetaData Exam tips

Study These Flashcards

User data is bootstrap scripts

meta data is data about your EC2 instances
you can use bootstrap scripts to access metadata

3 Types of virtual networking cards for EC2

Study These Flashcards

1) ENI
2) EN
3) EFA

ENI

Study These Flashcards

Elastic Networking Interface

for basic day-to-day networking
the default network card for EC2 instances
private IPv4 addresses
public IPv4 addresses
many IPv6 addresses
MAC addresses
1 or more security groups

Study These Flashcards

Enhanced Networking

- uses single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) to provide higher performance

EFA

Elastic Fabric Adapter - accelerates High Performance Computing (HPC) and machine learning applications - a network device you can attach to your EC2 instance to accelerate HPC computing and machine learning - provides lower and more consistent latency and higher throughput than TCP transport - can use OS-bypass to be faster and lower latency** - bypass the OS Kernel and communicate with the EFA device - not supported on Windows

ENI use cases

- Create a management network - use network and security appliances in your VPC - create dual-homed instances with workloads/roles on distinct subnets - create a low-budget, high-availability solution

EN use cases

- for high performance networking between 10GBPS and 100 GBPS - provides higher bandwidth - higher packet per second performance - consistently lower inter-instance latencies

Two types of EN

1) ENA - Elastic Network Adapter - supports speeds up to 100 GBPS for supported instance types 2) Intel 82599 Virtual Function Interface (older, don't choose on exam)

ENI Exam Scenarios

- for basic networking - if you need a separate management network from your production network, or a separate logging network - need to do it at low cost Solution: Use multiple ENIs for each network

EN Exam Scenarios

- for when you need speeds between 10 - 100 GBPS | - when you need reliable high throughput

EFA Exam Scenarios

- for HPC and machine learning | - for OS bypass

3 types of EC2 Placement Groups

1) Cluster Placement Groups 2) Spread Placement Groups 3) Partition Placement Groups

Cluster Placement Groups

- instances grouped within a single AZ | - Recommended for: applications that need low latency, high network throughput, or both*

Spread Placement Groups

- used for individual or critical instances* - can span AZs - each instance is on distinct physical hardware - recommended for: applications that have a small # of critical instances that should be kept separate

Partition Placement Groups

- for multiple instances - each partition placement group has its own set of racks with distinct network and power - used for : HDFS (Hadoop), H Base (big data db), Cassandra (fast NoSQL), multiple EC2 instances - can span multiple AZs*

What types of instances can be launched in a placement group?*

- Compute optimized - GPU - Memory optimized - Storage optimized

What does AWS recommend within Cluster Placement Groups

homogeneous instances (all same kind)

Can you merge Placement Groups?

Can you move an instance into an existing Placement Group?

Yes, but instance must be in a stopped state. Can be done via the CLI or SDK, but not the Console yet.

Maximum Spot Price

A price you specify that determines whether your Spot Instance will be provisioned

How many minutes do you have to accept or terminate if your instance goes above the maximum spot price?

2 minutes

Spot Block*

- for workloads that absolutely cannot be terminated - keeps your spot instance from being terminated if price goes above your max - can be set for 1 to 6 hours

How can you compare different AZs and time of day to find the best Spot Instance?

Spot Instance Pricing History

Spot Instance Use Cases

- big data - HPC - containerized workloads - CI/CD and testing - image/media rendering/encoding

What are Spot Instances NOT recommended for?

- persistent workloads - critical jobs - databases

How to terminate a one time spot instance?

instance is terminated when it is done, or when the max spot price threshold is hit

How to terminate recurring spot instances?

1) go in and cancel your request 2) then go in and terminate your instance * * must do this is the right order, otherwise you'll end up in an endless loop of it re-creating your instance

Spot Fleets*

- a collection of spot instances (and optionally, On Demand instances) - attempts to launch the number of spot and on-demand instances to meet your target capacity while honoring your maximum spot price - attempts to maintain target capacity fleet if your instances are interrupted.

Spot Fleet Strategy - Capacity Optimized

spot instances come from the pool with optimal capacity for the number of instances launching

Spot Fleet Strategy - Lowest Price

spot instances come from the pool with the lowest price (default strategy)

Spot Fleet Stratey - Diversified

Spot instances are distributed across all pools

Spot Fleet Strategy - Instance Pools to Use Count

Spot instances are distributed across the # of pools you specify. Only valid when used with the lowest price.

EC2 Flashcards

(52 cards)