SMC Cloud Computing Midterm

Which service allows for you to transfer petabytes of data from on-premise location to the AWS Cloud.

AWS Snowball

Based on what you know, what are some disadvantages of cloud computing?.

One big disadvantage of cloud computing is security. If a company buys server space from Amazon, they rely on Amazon to maintain the integrity of their system and make sure it doesn't get hacked. However, if a company does get hacked, which does happen, a hacker with access to the cloud has the potential to do a ton of damage. They could delete all of a company's files with ease just by getting into their server. Another big disadvantage is downtime. If an Amazon server goes down, a small company with no backup has no choice but to sit and wait for Amazon to fix the problem. They can't do anything about it themselves, and can lose money as they wait for Amazon to fix the outages.

There are requirements for storage of objects. The objects should be available for download via URL. What storage option should be considered from AWS?

S3

You are deploying a two-tier, highly available web application to AWS. Which service provides a durable storage for static content?

S3

. What year did Amazon launched Amazon Web Services for public access?

2002

Which deployment mechanism enables global availability at all time?

AWS Global Accelerator

. What is an EC2 instance?

An EC2 instance is a virtual server to run applications on in the cloud.

What challenges will a business encounter once it operates entirely on the cloud?

Billing management console

Horizontal and Vertical Scaling is utilized for optimization. Which type of scaling has the ability to accommodate a drastic increased in usage demand?

Both scaling methods, horizontal and vertical, can help deal with increased usage. Increasing server size with horizontal or vertical scaling will increase resources to allow more requests to the server. However, horizontal scaling is more commonly used because it is adding more machines instead of making one more powerful. As a result, you minimize the risk of having one huge server go down and now have multiple servers running to provide resources for increased use.

Describe the various cloud services and applications you are familiar with and provide a brief description for each.

Google Drive stores my files "in the cloud", and know of various applications like Netflix, Adobe, Spotify, Coinbase, and Ticketmaster that all host their services on Amazon Web Services

What should businesses be aware of when transitioning to the cloud? Provide 3 examples in the order of highest priorty.

Businesses should be aware of cost, security, and their needs as a company before moving to the cloud. The cost is most important for a small business looking to scale their operations because if they leave their servers running or migrate data to a large server they may start spending more money than they can afford to. Security is also important to consider because with their server being on the cloud it is vulnerable to attacks and hacks so they need to be cautious of that. Finally, their needs are important. Not every company needs to be on the cloud, and a company does not need to move every piece of data to the cloud. They should look at the pros and cons of moving specific operations to the cloud before moving everything.

What are the clear benefits of EC2?

EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change.

Each AWS region is composed of two or more locations that offer organizations the ability to operate production systems that are highly available, fault-tolerant and scalable beyond what would be possible using a single data center. What are these locations referred to as?

Each region has two or more availability zones that are isolated locations connected by low latency links. You can run a project to be in multiple availability zones to keep your project up in the event of crashes.

When a customer transitions over to AWS, what operational concerns will be handled by AWS rather than the customer themselves?

With AWS, no customer will have to rack, stack, and power servers. Amazon takes care of running and operating the servers so the company does not have to worry about it.

What advantages are realized when cloud computing is utilized?

Without running services on local servers, companies can save time and money on IT. They don't need to be constantly upgrading or maintaining local servers if they outsource their server space. Another advantage is scalability, companies utilizing cloud computing are able to scale their projects (bigger or smaller) with ease. A final advantage is the accessibility. All employees can access files from home, and collaborators in different countries can access the same files by connecting to the same cloud server.

The e-commerce you manage is experiencing fluctuations in the traffic patterns due to the website supporting flash sales. What feature can help your company dynamically match the required compute capacity to the spike in traffic during flash sales events?

auto scalling