Summarizing cloud concepts

Question 1

What are top of rack switches used for?

Answer 1

High-performance switch model designed to implement the leaf tier in a spine and leaf topology.

Question 2

What is a storage device installed inside a server called?

Answer 2

direct attached storage.

Question 3

Where does a SAN sit on the network?

Answer 3

Its is isolated from the main network.
Accessed only by servers NO client PCs and laptops.
SAN clients are servers running databases or applications that require access to shared storage.

Question 4

What are the 3 main types of components a SAN base Fibre channel (FC) Switched Fabric (FC-SC)

Answer 4

Initiator: A client device of the SAN. i.e a file or database server.

Target: This is the network port for a storage device. Space on the storage devices is divided into logical volumes, each identified by a 64-bit logical unit number (LUN).
The initiator will use SCSI, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), SATA, or Nonvolatile Memory Express (NVMe) commands to operate the storage devices in the network, depending on which interface they support.

FC switch: This provides the interconnections between initiators and targets (a fabric).
High performance FC switches are often referred to as directors.

Question 5

How does a SAN provision access to storage devices?

Answer 5

A SAN provisions access to storage devices using block input/output (I/O), where each read or write operation addresses the actual location of data on the media.

Question 6

What is the differnece between could scalability and cloud elasticity?

Answer 6

Scalability: Property by which a computing environment is able to gracefully fulfill its ever-increasing resource needs. Scalability can be achieved by adding nodes (horizontal/scaling out) or by adding resources to each node (vertical/scaling up).

Elasticity: Property by which a computing environment can add or remove resources in response to increasing and decreasing demands in workload.
A system with high elasticity will not experience loss of service or performance if demand suddenly doubles

Question 7

What is a hosted private cloud deployment model?

Answer 7

AKAK single tenant
Hosted by a third party for the exclusive use of one organization.

Question 8

What is NFV? (Network Functions Virtualization)

Answer 8

Provisioning virtual network appliances, such as switches, routers, and firewalls, via VMs and containers.

The provisioning is split into 3 domains:
Virtual network function (VNF): Specifies and deploys instances of each virtual appliance. VNFs are designed to run as VMs on standard CPU platforms.

NFV infrastructure—Controls the allocation of compute (CPU and memory) plus storage and networking resources to each VNF.
Management and orchestration (MANO): Positions VNFs within workflows to perform the forwarding and filtering tasks they are designed for.