Elastic Block Storage (EBS)

Question 1

At its most basic, explain what EBS service is.

Answer 1

It provisions storage volumes you can attach to EC2 instances, but only within the same AZ as the instance.

Question 2

At its most basic, explain what EFS is.

Answer 2

Amazon Elastic File System, a managed NFS (network file system) that can be mounted on many EC2 instances in multiple AZs.

Question 3

Can you attach an EBS volume to an EC2 instance in another AZ or region?

Answer 3

No, your EBS volumes will always be located in the same AZ as the EC2 instance to which it is attached.

Question 4

Does EBS encryption have impact on latency?

Answer 4

No, there is minimal impact on latency.

Question 5

Explain how highly available the EFS service is.

Answer 5

Data is stored across multiple AZs within a region.

Question 6

For a scenario that is talking about processing massive amounts of datasets with hundreds of gigabytes per second of throughput, or you need millions of IOPS and sub-second latencies, what AWS storage service would you recommend?

Answer 6

Amazon FSx for Lustre

Question 7

How do you copy an EBS volume to another region?

Answer 7

Take a snapshot of the volume and then copy the snapshot to another region.

Question 8

How do you pay for EFS?

Answer 8

You pay for the storage you use (no pre-provisioning required).

Question 9

How is FSx for Windows different from EFS?

Answer 9

FSx for Windows is a managed Windows server that runs Windows Server Block Message (SMB-based) file services and it supports AD users, access control lists, groups and security policies along with Distributed File System (DFS) namespaces and replication.

EFS is a managed NAS file system for EC2 instances based on Network File System (NFS) version 4, which is one of the first network file sharing protocols native to Unix and Linux.

Question 10

How long can an EC2 instance be hibernated?

Answer 10

Up to 60 days

Question 11

If you have an application that requires highly scalable secure storage using NFS, what AWS service would you recommend?

Answer 11

EFS (Elastic File System)

Question 12

In a scenario where you are migrating Sharepoint and you need shared storage, what AWS service would you recommend?

Answer 12

FSx for Windows

Question 13

Must you stop an EC2 instance before changing the type of an EBS volume that is attached?

Answer 13

No, you can change volume types on the fly.

Question 14

Must you stop an EC2 instance before resizing the EBS volume?

Answer 14

No, they can be resized on the fly.

Question 15

Name the characteristics of an EBS Snapshot.

Answer 15

1. Point in time
2. Incremental (only the data that has changed since the last snapshot are stored)

Question 16

Name the four types of EBS volumes.

Answer 16

1. General Purpose SSD (up to 16,000 IOPS per volume)
2. Provisioned IOPS SSD (for OTLP and latency sensitive applications, up to 64,000 IOPS per volume)
3. Throughput Optimized HDD (big data, data warehouse, ETL)
4. Cold HDD (less frequently accessed data)

Question 17

Name the instance families that allows EC2 hibernation.

Answer 17

1. C3, C4 and C5
2. M2, M4 and M5
3. R3, R4 and R5

Question 18

Name the two types of EBS volumes that cannot be used as boot volumes.

Answer 18

1. Throughput Optimized HDD (st1)
2. Cold HDD (sc1)

Question 19

Name the types of Cold HDD EBS volumes.

Answer 19

1. sc1

Question 20

Name the types of General Purpose SSD EBS volumes.

Answer 20

1. gp2
2. gp3 (four times faster than gp2)

Question 21

Name the types of Provisioned IOPS SSD EBS volumes.

Answer 21

1. io1
2. io2 (latest generation)

Question 22

Name the types of Throughput Optimized HDD EBS volumes.

Answer 22

1. st1

Question 23

Name the use cases in which EFS would be recommended.

Answer 23

1. Content management (to easily share content between EC2 instances)
2. Web servers (where you have a single folder structure for your website)

Question 24

What are Cold HDD EBS volumes generally used for?

Answer 24

They are a good choice for cold data requiring fewer scans per day (e.g. file server, for lowest cost where performance is not a factor), but cannot be a boot volume.

Question 25

What are EBS volumes?

Answer 25

Storage volumes you can attach to EC2 instances that exist in EBS.

Question 26

What are General Purpose SSD EBS volumes generally used for?

Answer 26

They are good for boot volumes or development or test applications that are not latency sensitive, up to 16,000 IOPS, and are the default volume you are provisioned in EBS.

Question 27

What are Provisioned IOPS SSD EBS volumes generally used for?

Answer 27

It is the high performance, latency-sensitive option and the most expensive (if you need more than 16,000 IOPS). It is suitable for performance databases (OLTP).

Question 28

What are the four steps to encrypt and decrypt EBS volumes?

Answer 28

1. Create a snapshot of the unencrypted root device volume 2. Create a copy of the snapshot and select the encrypt option 3. Create an AMI from the encrypted snapshot 4. Use the AMI to create a new instance

Question 29

What are Throughput Optimized HDD EBS volumes generally used for?

Answer 29

They are designed for frequently accessed, throughput intensive workloads, such as big data, data warehouses, ETL and log processing, but cannot be a boot volume.

Question 30

What distributed storage service in AWS can store data in S3?

Answer 30

Amazon FSx for Lustre

Question 31

What happens when you encrypt your EBS volume?

Answer 31

1. The data at rest is encrypted inside the volume 2. All data in flight moving between the instance in the volume is encrypted 3. All snapshots are encrypted 4. All volumes created from the snapshot are encrypted

Question 32

What is an EBS snapshot?

Answer 32

It is a photograph of the virtual disk/volume that exists in S3.

Question 33

What is EC2 hibernation?

Answer 33

It preserves the in-memory RAM on persistent storage (EBS).

Question 34

What is the benefit of EC2 hibernation?

Answer 34

It is much faster to boot up after hibernation because you do not need to reload the operating system.

Question 35

What is the maximum amount of RAM that is allowed for EC2 hibernation to work?

Answer 35

150 GB

Question 36

What operating systems can handle EC2 hibernation?

Answer 36

1. Windows 2. Amazon Linux 2 AMI 3. Ubuntu

Question 37

What protocol does EFS support?

Answer 37

It supports the Network File System version 4 (NFSv4) protocol.

Question 38

What type of data consistency is expected with EFS?

Answer 38

Read-after-write consistency

Question 39

What type of EBS volumes should you use for big data applications?

Answer 39

Throughput Optimized HDD

Question 40

What type of EBS volumes should you use for transactional (OLTP) applications?

Answer 40

General Purpose SSD or Provisioned IOPS SSD

Question 41

What types of EC2 instances allow for EC2 hibernation?

Answer 41

1. On Demand 2. Reserved

Question 42

When would you choose Provisioned IOPS SSD EBS volumes over General Purpose SSD EBS volumes?

Answer 42

If you need more than 16,000 IOPS

Question 43

When you need centralized storage for Windows-based applications such as Sharepoint, Microsoft SQL Server, Workspaces, IIS Web Server or any other native Microsoft application, what AWS service would you recommend?

Answer 43

Amazon FSx for Windows

Question 44

When you need distributed, highly resilient storage for Linux instances and Linux-based applications, what AWS service would you recommend?

Answer 44

EFS (Elastic File System)

Question 45

When you need high-speed, high-capacity distributed storage (for applications that do high performance computing (HPC), financial modeling, etc., what AWS service would you recommend?

Answer 45

Amazon FSx for Lustre

Question 46

Where do EBS snapshots get stored?

Answer 46

S3

Question 47

How does scaling work in EFS?

Answer 47

It scales in petabytes (no pre-provisioning required) and can support thousands of NFS connections at once.

Question 48

What is an AMI?

Answer 48

An Amazon Machine Image which provides information required to launch an EC2 image. It is a blueprint for an EC2 instance.

Question 49

What are the five things you can base your AMI on?

Answer 49

1. Region 2. Operating system 3. Architecture (32-bit or 64-bit) 4. Launch permissions 5. Storage for the root device (root device volume)

Question 50

What are the two volume types that AMIs are backed by?

Answer 50

1. Amazon EBS (the root device for an instance launched from the AMI is an EBS volume created from an EBS snapshot) 2. Instance Store (the root device for an instance launched from an instance store is a template stored in Amazon S3)

Question 51

What are Instance Store Volumes in AMIs?

Answer 51

1. Sometimes called ephemeral storage 2. They cannot be stopped (only terminated) 3. If the underlying host fails, you will lose your data, but you can reboot the instance without losing your data 4. If you delete the instance, you lose the instance store volume

Question 52

What are EBS volumes in AMIs?

Answer 52

1. EBS-backed instances can be stopped without data loss 2. By default the root device volume will be deleted on termination, but you can request that it not be deleted.

Question 53

What is AWS Backup?

Answer 53

1. A way of consolidating your backups across multiple AWS services, like EC2, EBS, EFS, Amazon FSx for Lustre, Amazon FSx for Windows File Server and AWS Storage Gateway and can include other database technologies such as RDS and DynamoDB. 2. It can be used by AWS Organizations to back up multiple AWS accounts in your organization.

Question 54

What are the benefits of AWS Backup?

Answer 54

1. Central Management (one console to backup multiple services) 2. Automation (schedules and retention policies and lifecyle policies) 3. Improved Compliance (backup policies can be enforced and auditing is made easy due to consolidated view of backups across many AWS services)