Module 5 - Storage and Databases

Question 1

Instance stores

Answer 1

Provides temporary block-level storage for Amazon EC2 instance.

disk storage physically attached to host computer for EC2 instance - has same lifespan as instance

instance terminated - you lose any data in instance store

Question 2

Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)

Answer 2

service that provides block-level storage volumes that you can use with Amazon EC2 instances.

o Stop/terminate Amazon EC2 instance, all data on attached EBS volume remains available.

o Create EBS volume – define configuration e.g. volume size and type and provision it.

o After you create EBS volume, can attach to Amazon EC2 instance.

o EBS volumes for data that needs to persist – important to back up data.

o Can take incremental backups of EBS volumes by creating Amazon EBS snapshots.

Question 3

Amazon EBS Snapshots

Answer 3

o First backup taken of a volume copies all data.

o Subsequent backups – only blocks of data that have changed since most recent snapshot saved.

Question 4

Incremental backups different from full backups

Answer 4

o All data in a storage volume copies each time backup occurs.

o Full backup includes data that has not changed since most recent backup.

Question 5

Object storage

Answer 5

• Each object consists of data, metadata, and a key.
• Data might be image, video, text document, or any other type of file.
• Metadata contains information about what data is, how it is used, object size, and so on.
• Object’s key is its unique identifier.
• When you modify a file in block storage, only the pieces that are changed are updated.

o When a file in object storage is modified, the entire object is updated.

Question 6

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)

Answer 6

• Service that provides object-level storage.
• Amazon S3 stores data as objects in buckets.
• Can upload any type of file to Amazon S3 e.g. images, videos, text files etc.
• Offers unlimited storage space.
• Maximum file size for object in Amazon S3 is 5 TB.
• Upload file to Amazon S3 – can set permissions to control visibility and access to it.
• Amazon S3 versioning feature to track changes to objects over time.

Question 7

Amazon S3 Storage Classes

Answer 7

S3 Standard

S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA)

S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA)

S3 Intelligent-Tiering

S3 Glacier

S3 Glacier Deep Archive

Question 8

S3 Standard

Answer 8

• Designed for frequently accessed data.
• Stores data in a minimum of three Availability Zones.
• Provides high availability for objects.
• Good choice for wide range of use cases – websites, content distribution, data analytics.
• Higher cost than other storage classes intended for infrequently accessed data and archival storage.

Question 9

S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA)

Answer 9

• Ideal for infrequently accessed data but requires high availability when needed.
• Similar to S3 Standard but has lower storage price and higher retrieval price.
• S3 Standard and S3 Standard-IA store data in minimum of three Availability Zones.
• S3 Standard-IA provides same level of availability as S3 Standard

 lower storage price and higher retrieval price.

Question 10

S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA)

Answer 10

• Stores data in single Availability Zone.
• Has lower storage price than S3 Standard-IA.

•	Good storage class to consider if following conditions apply:
o	You want to save costs on storage.

o You can easily reproduce your data in the event of an Availability Zone failure.

Question 11

S3 Intelligent-Tiering

Answer 11

• Ideal for data with unknown or changing access patterns.
• Requires small monthly monitoring and automation fee per object.
• Amazon S3 monitors objects’ access patterns.
• Haven’t accessed object for 30 consecutive days – Amazon S3 automatically moves it to infrequent access tier: S3 Standard-IA.
• If you access object in infrequent access tier – Amazon S3 automatically moves it to frequent access tier: S3 Standard.

Question 12

S3 Glacier

Answer 12

• Low-cost storage designed for data archiving.
• Able to retrieve objects within few minutes to hours.
• E.g. store archived customer records, older photos and video files.

Question 13

S3 Glacier Deep Archive

Answer 13

• Lowest-cost object storage class ideal for archiving.

• Able to retrieve objects within 12 hours.
o Deciding between Amazon S3 Glacier and Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive – consider how quickly you need to retrieve archived objects.

Question 14

File Storage

Answer 14

• Multiple clients e.g. users, applications, servers etc. can access data stored in shared file folders.
• Storage server uses block storage with local file system to organise files.
• Clients access data through file paths.
• File storage ideal for use cases in which large number of services and resources need to access same data at same time.

Question 15

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS)

Answer 15

• Service that enables you to run relational databases in AWS Cloud.

• Managed service that automates tasks e.g. hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, backups.
o Spend less time completing administrative tasks and more time using data to innovate your applications.

• Can integrate Amazon RDS with other services to fulfil business and operational needs.
o E.g. AWS Lambda to query database from serverless application.

Question 16

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)

Answer 16

scalable file system used with AWS Cloud services and on-premises resources.

• Add/remove files – Amazon EFS grows and shrinks automatically.
o Can scale on demand to petabytes without disrupting applications.

Question 17

Relational Databases

Answer 17

• Data stored in way that relates it to other pieces of data.
• Use structured query language (SQL) to store and query data.
• Approach allows data to be stored in easily understandable, consistent, scalable way.

Question 18

Amazon RDS Database Engines (optimised for memory, performance, input/output (I/O))

Answer 18

Supported database engines:

Question 19

Amazon RDS Database Engines (optimised for memory, performance, input/output (I/O))

Answer 19

Supported database engines:
Amazon Aurora
PostgreSQL
MySQL
MariaDB
Oracle Database
Microsoft SQL Server

Question 20

Amazon Aurora

Answer 20

• Enterprise-class relational database.
• Compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL relational databases.
• Up to five times faster than standard MySQL databases.
• Up to three times faster than standard PostgreSQL databases.
• Helps reduce database costs by reducing unnecessary input/output (I/O) operations.
o Ensuring database resources remain reliable and available.
• Consider if workloads require high availability.
o Replicates six copies of data across three Availability Zones.
o Continuously backs up data to Amazon S3.

Question 21

Amazon DynamoDB

Answer 21

• Key-value database service.
• Delivers single-digit millisecond performance at any scale.

• Serverless – do not have to provision, patch or manage servers.
o Do not have to install, maintain or operate software.

• Automatic scaling:
  • Automatically adjust for changes in capacity while maintaining consistent performance.
  o Suitable choice for use cases that require high performance while scaling.

Question 22

Nonrelational Databases

Answer 22

• Create tables.
o Table is place where you can store and query data.
• Sometimes referred to as “NoSQL databases”  use structures other than rows and columns to organise data.
• Type of structural approach: key-value pairs.
o Data organised into items (keys) and items have attributes (values).
o Attributes as being different features of data.
o Can add/remove attributes from items in table at any time.
o Not every item in table has to have same attributes.

Question 23

Amazon Redshift

Answer 23

• Data warehousing service that you can use for big data analytics.
• Offers ability to collect data from many sources.
• Helps you to understand relationships and trends across your data.

Question 24

AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS)

Answer 24

• Enables you to migrate relational databases, nonrelational databases and other types of data stores.
• Move data between source database and target database.
o Source and target databases can be of same type or different types.
o During migration – source database remains operational, reducing downtime for any applications that rely on database.

Question 25

Other Use Cases for AWS DMS

Answer 25

• Development and test database migrations. o Enabling developers to test applications against production data without affecting production users. • Database consolidation. o Combining several databases into a single database. • Continuous replication. o Sending ongoing copies of your data to other target sources instead of doing a one-time migration.

Question 26

Additional Database Services

Answer 26

Amazon DocumentDB Amazon Neptune Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (Amazon QLDB) Amazon Managed Blockchain Amazon ElastiCache Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator

Question 27

Amazon DocumentDB

Answer 27

o Document database service that supports MongoDB workloads. | o MongoDB – document database program.

Question 28

Amazon Neptune

Answer 28

o Graph database service. o Use to build and run applications that work with highly connected datasets. o E.g. recommendation engines, fraud detection, knowledge graphs.

Question 29

Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (Amazon QLDB)

Answer 29

o Ledger database service. | o Can use to review complete history of all the changes that have been made to your application data.

Question 30

Amazon Managed Blockchain

Answer 30

o Service use to create and manage blockchain networks with open-source frameworks. o Distributed ledger system that lets multiple parties run transactions and share data without central authority.

Question 31

Amazon ElastiCache

Answer 31

o Service that adds caching layers on top of your databases to help improve read times of common requests. o Supports two types of data stores.  Redis.  Memcached.

Question 32

Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator

Answer 32

o In-memory cache for DynamoDB. | o Helps improve response times from single-digit milliseconds to microseconds.