Module 2: Compute in the Cloud

Question 1

What is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)?

Answer 1

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a cloud infrastructure that provides raw computing resources on demand.

Question 2

Describe the benefits of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)?

Answer 2

• Launch an Amazon EC2 instance within minutes
• Stop using it when you finish running a workload
• Pay only for the compute time you use when an instance is running, not when it is stopped or shut down
• Save costs by paying only for server capacity that you need or want

Question 3

How does Amazon EC2 Instances work?

Answer 3

1. Launch an instance
2. Connect to the instance
3. Use the instance

Question 4

What are the 5 Amazon EC2 instance types?

Answer 4

1. General purpose instances provide a balance of compute, memory, and networking
   resources
2. Compute optimized instances are ideal for compute-bound applications that benefit
   from high-performance processors.
3. Memory optimized instances are designed to deliver fast performance for workloads
   that process large datasets in memory.
4. Accelerated computing instances use hardware accelerators, or coprocessors, to
   perform some functions more efficiently than is possible in software running on CPUs
5. Storage optimized instances are designed for workloads that require high, sequential
   read and write access to large datasets on local storage

Question 5

What are the 4 Amazon EC2 Instance Pricing Options?

Answer 5

1. On-Demand Instances are an excellent option to use for this type of short-term,
   irregular workload that cannot be interrupted. No upfront costs or minimum
   contracts apply
2. Spot Instances are ideal for these types of workloads with flexible start and end
   times, or that can withstand interruptions. Spot Instances use unused EC2 computing
   capacity and offer you cost savings at up to 90 percent of On-Demand prices
3. Reserved Instances are a billing discount that is applied to the use of On-Demand Instances if you commit to 1 or 3 years of service
4. Amazon EC2 Savings Plans can help you reduce your compute costs by committing to a consistent amount of compute usage for a 1-year or 3-year term. This results in savings of up to 66 percent over On-Demand costs.

Question 6

What are the 2 Amazon EC2 Dedicated Computing options?

Answer 6

1. Dedicated Instances are EC2 instances that run in a virtual private cloud (VPC) on hardware that is dedicated to a single customer. They have a higher cost compared to standard Amazon EC2 instances.
2. Dedicated Hosts are physical servers with EC2 instance capacity that is fully
   dedicated to your use. Of all the EC2 options covered, Dedicated Hosts are the most expensive

Question 7

What is EC2 Auto Scaling, and the two approaches of scaling?

Answer 7

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling enables you to automatically add or remove Amazon EC2 instances in response to changing application demand. Dynamic scaling responds to changing demand whereas Predictive scaling automatically schedules the right number of Amazon EC2 instances based on
predicted demand.

Question 8

What does Elastic Load Balancing mean?

Answer 8

Elastic Load Balancing means size of a workload remains the same, but the workload is balanced by evenly distributing it across Amazon EC2 instances.

Question 9

What is the difference between Monolithic Application Design and a Microservice Application Design?

Answer 9

In Monolithic, components including databases, servers, user interfaces, business logic, etc. are tightly coupled, meaning if a single component fails, other components fail. Microservices components are loosely coupled, so if a single component fails, the other components continue to work because they are
communicating with each other.

Question 10

What is the Amazon Simple Notification Service and how do publishers/subscribers communicate?

Answer 10

Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) is a managed service that provides message delivery from publishers to subscribers. Publishers communicate asynchronously with subscribers by sending messages to a topic.

Question 11

What is the Amazon Simple Queue Service?

Answer 11

Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) is a message queuing service where you can send, store, and receive messages between software
components without losing messages or requiring other services to be available.

Question 12

What is AWS Lambda?

Answer 12

AWS Lambda is a service that lets you run code without needing to provision or manage servers.

Question 13

What are the 4 steps involved when using AWS Lambda?

Answer 13

1. Upload code to Lambda.
2. Set code trigger from event source
3. Code runs only when triggered
4. Pay only for compute time you use

Question 14

What is a Container?

Answer 14

A container is a standard unit of software that packages up code and all its dependencies so the application runs quickly and reliably from one computing environment to another.

Question 15

What is Amazon Elastic Container Service?

Answer 15

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

Question 16

What is Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service?

Answer 16

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) is a fully managed service that you can use to run Kubernetes on AWS, which is an open source software that allows you to deploy and manage containerized applications at scale

Question 17

What is AWS Fargate and why is it different to Amazon ECS and EKS?

Answer 17

AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers. Unlike Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS, which are both container orchestration services, AWS Fargate is a container hosting platform.

Question 18

What is AWS Elastic Beanstalk?

Answer 18

Platform as a service which allows you to deploy and scale web applications and services