AWS Solutions Architect EC2

Instance store volumes cannot be stopped. If the underlying host fails, you will ___________________.

Instance store volumes cannot be stopped. If the underlying host fails, you will lose your data.

Regarding EC2 Instance Types Family: F1 Specialty? Use case?

Specialty: Field Programmable Gate Array Use case: Genomics Research, financial analytics, real-time video processing, big data ect.

Regarding EC2 Instance Types Family: M5 Specialty? Use case?

Specialty: General Purpose Use case: Application Servers

Regarding EC2 Instance Types Family: G3 Specialty? Use case?

Specialty: Graphics Intensive Use case: Video Encoding/ 3D Application Streaming

Regarding EC2 Instance Types Family: P3 Specialty? Use case?

Specialty: Graphics/General Purpose GPU Use case: Machine Learning, Bit Coin Mining ect

Regarding EC2 Instance Types Family: H1 Specialty? Use case?

Specialty: High Disk Throughput Use case: MapReduce-based workloads, distributed file systems such as HDFS and MapR-FS

Regarding EC2 Instance Types Family: I3 Specialty? Use case?

Specialty: High Speed Storage Use case: NoSQLs DBs, Data Warehousing ect

Regarding EC2 Instance Types Family: Z1D Specialty? Use case?

Specialty: High compute capacity and high memory footprint. Use case: ideal for electronic design automation (EDA) and certain relational database workloads with high per-core licensing costs.

Regarding EC2 Instance Types Family: T3 Specialty? Use case?

Specialty: Lowest Cost, General Purpose Use case: Web Servers/Small DBs

Regarding EC2 Instance Types Family: R5 Specialty? Use case?

Specialty: Memory Optimized Use case: Memory Intensive Apps/DBs

Regarding EC2 Instance Types Family: X1 Specialty? Use case?

Specialty: Memory Optimized Use case: SAP HANA/Apache Spark ect

Exam Tips: Volumes & Snapshots (TRUE/FALSE) You can share snapshots, but only if they are unencrypted.

True These snapshots can be shared with other AWS accounts or made public. You can not encrypt root device volumes upon creation of the EC2 instance.

Exam Tips: Volumes & Snapshots (TRUE/FALSE) Snapshots of encrypted volumes are encrypted automatically.

True

Exam Tips: Volumes & Snapshots (TRUE/FALSE) Volumes restored from encrypted snapshots are encrypted automatically.

True

FSx for Lustre

"Amazon FSx for Lustre is a fully managed file system that is optimized for compute-intensive workloads, such as high-performance computing, machine learning, media data processing workflows, and electronic design automation (EDA). With Amazon FSx, you can launch and run a Lustre file system that can process massive data sets at up to hundreds of gibibytes per second of throughput, millions of IOPS, and sub-millisecond latencies."

Spot pricing is useful for;

-Applications that have flexible start and end times. -Applications that are only feasible at very low compute prices. -Users with urgent computing needs for large amounts of additional capacity.

Reserved pricing is useful for;

-Applications with steady state or predictable usage -Applications that require reserved capacity -Users able to make upfront payments to reduce their total computing costs even further.

Exam Tip for Three Types of Placement Groups -Clustered Placement Group: -Spread Placement Group: -Partitioned:

-Clustered Placement Group: Low Network Latency / High Network Throughput -Spread Placement Group: Individual Critical EC2 Instances -Partitioned: Multiple EC2 Instances HDFS, HBase, and Cassandra

Exam Tips: In the exam you'll be given different scenarios and asked to choose whether you should use an EFS, FSx for Windows, or FSx for Lustre.

-EFS When you need distributed, highly resilient storage for Linux instances and Linux-based applications. -Amazon FSx for Windows When you need centralised storage for Windows-based applications such as Sharepoint, Microsoft SQL Server, Workspaces, IIS Web Server or any other native Microsoft Applicaiton. -Amazon FSx for Lustre: When you need high-speed, high-capacity distributed storage. This will be for applications that do High Performance Compute(HPC), financial modeling ect. Remember that FSx for Lustre can store data directly on S3

WAF provides extra protection against web attacks using conditions you specify. You can define conditions by using characteristics of web requests such as:

-IP addressed that requests originate from -Country that requests originate from -Values in request headers. -Strings that appear in requests, either specific strings or strings that match regular expression(regex) patterns. -Length of requests. -Presence of SQL code that is likely to be malicious(known as SQL injection) -Presence of a script that is likely to be malicious (known as a cross-site scripting)

Exam Tips: In the exam you will be given different scenarios and you will be asked how to block malicious IP addresses.

-Use AWS WAF -Use Network ACLs

Dedicated Hosts pricing is useful for;

-Useful for regulatory requirements that may not support multi-tenant virtualization. -Great for licensing which does not support multi-tenancy or cloud deployments. -Can be purchased On-Demand (hourly.) -Can be purchased as a Reservation for up to 70% off the On-Demand price.

On Demand pricing is useful for;

-Users that want the low cost and flexibility of Amazon EC2 without any up-front payment or long-term commitment -Applications with short term, spiky, or unpredictable workloads that cannot be interrupted -Applications being developed or tested on Amazon EC2 for the first time

CloudWatch Exam Tips: Detailed Monitoring is how many Minutes?

1 Minute

CloudWatch Exam Tips: Standard Monitoring is how many Minutes?

5 Minutes

What is a Cluster Placement Group?

A Cluster Placement Group is a way of grouping of instances within a single Availability Zone. Placement groups are recommended for applications that need low network latency, high network throughput, or both. Only certain instances can be launched in to a Clustered Placement Group.

What is a Spread Placement Group?

A Spread Placement Group is a group of instances that are each placed on distinct underlying hardware. Spread placement groups are recommended for applications that have a small number of critical instances that should be kept separate from each other. THINK INDIVIDUAL INSTANCES

What is AWS WAF?

AWS WAF is a web application firewall that lets you monitor the HTTP and HTTPS requests that are forwarded to Amazon CloudFront, an Application Load Balancer or API Gateway. AWS WAF also lets you control access to your content.

EBS vs Instance Store Volumes Differences:

All AMIs are categorized as either backed by Amazon EBS or backed by instance store. For EBS Volumes: The root device for an instance launched from the AMI is an Amazon EBS volume created from an Amazon EBS snapshot. For Instance Store Volumes: The root device for an instance launched from the AMI is and instance store volume created from a template stored in Amazon S3

Regarding EC2 Pricing Models. Describe "On Demand" Pricing:

Allows you to pay a fixed rate by the hour (or by the second) with no commitment.

What is Amazon CloudWatch?

Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring service to monitor your AWS resources, as well as the applications that you run on AWS. When hearing "CloudWatch" think "Performance"

What is EBS?

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) provides persistent block storage volumes for use with Amazon EC2 instances in the AWS Cloud. Each Amazon EBS volume is automatically replicated withing it's Availability Zone to protect you from component failure, offering high availability and durability.

What is EC2?

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Amazon 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.

What is EFS?

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) is a file storage service for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances. Amazon EFS is easy to use and provides a simple interface that allows you to create and configure file systems quickly and easily. With Amazon EFS, storage capacity is elastic, growing and shrinking automatically as you add and remove files, so your applications have the storage they need, when they need it.

What is Amazon FSx?

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server provides a fully managed system so you can easily move your Windows-based applications that require file storage to AWS. Amazon FSx is built on Windows Server

CloudTrial vs CloudWatch

CloudWatch monitors performance. CloudTrail monitors API calls in the AWS platform.

What are the three Types of EC2 Placement Groups?

Clustered Placement Group Spread Placement Group Partitioned

CloudWatch can monitor things like:

Compute: -EC2 Instance -Autoscaling Groups -Elastic Load Balancers -Route53 Health Checks Storage and Content Delivery -EBS Volumes -Storage Gateways -CloudFront

CloudWatch Exam Tips: What Can I do with CloudWatch?

Dashboards - Creates awesome dashboards to see what is happening with your AWS environment. Alarms - Allows you to set Alarms that notify you when particular thresholds are hit. Events - CloudWatch Events helps you to respond to state changes in your AWS resources. Logs - CloudWatch Logs help you to aggregate, monitor, and store logs.

Regarding EBS Types: What is: General Purpose SSD

Description: General purpose SSD volume that balances price and performance for a wide variety of transactional workloads. Use Cases: Most Work Loads API Name: gp2 Volume Size: 1 Gib - 16 TiB Max. IOPS**/ Volume: 16,000

Regarding EBS Types: What is: Provisioned IOPS SSD

Description: Highest-performance SSD volume designed for mission-critical applications Use Cases: Databases API Name: io1 Volume Size: 4 GiB - 16 TiB Max. IOPS**/ Volume: 64,000

Regarding EBS Types: What is: Throughput Optimized HDD

Description: Los cost HDD volume designed for less frequently accessed workloads Use Cases: File Servers API Name: st1 Volume Size: 500 GiB - 16 TiB Max. IOPS**/ Volume: 500

Regarding EBS Types: What is Cold HDD

Description: Lowest cost HDD volume designed for less frequently accessed workloads. Use Cases: File Servers API Name: sc1 Volume Size: 500 GiB - 16 TiB Max. IOPS**/ Volume: 250

Regarding EBS Types: What is EBS Magnetic

Description: Previous generation HDD Use Cases: Workloads where data is infrequently accessed API Name: Standard Volume Size: 1 GiB - 1 TiB Max. IOPS**/ Volume: 40 - 200

How is Windows FSx different to EFS? Windows FSx: -a managed Windows Server that runs Windows Server Message Block(SMB)-based file services. -Designed for Windows and Windows applications. -Supports AD users, access control lists, groups and security policies, along with Distributed File System(DFS) namespaces and replication.

EFS: A managed NAS filer for EC2 instances based on Network File System(NFS) version 4. -One of the first network file sharing protocols native to Unix and Linux.

ENI vs ENA vs EFA

ENI: Elastic Network Interface - essentially a virtual network card. ENA: Enhanced Networking. Uses single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) to provide high-performance networking capabilities on supported instance types. Elastic Fabric Adapter: A network device that you can attach to your Amazon EC2 instance to accelerate High Performance Computing (HPC) and machine learning applications.

Regarding EC2 Pricing Models. Describe "Spot Instance" Pricing:

Enables you to bid whatever price you want for instance capacity, providing even greater savings if your applications have flexible start and end times.

Instance Store Volumes are sometimes called _____________

Ephemeral Storage

What are the 5 different types of EBS Storage

General Purpose (SSD) Provision IOPS(SSD) Throughput Optimised Hard Disk Drive Cold HDD EBS Magnetic

Regarding EC2 Pricing Models. Describe "Reserved" Pricing:

Provide you with a capacity reservation, and offers a significant discount on the hourly charge for an instance. Contract Terms are 1 Year or 3 Year Terms.

Regarding EC2 Pricing Models. Describe "Dedicated Hosts" Pricing:

Physical EC2 server dedicated for your use. Dedicated Hosts can help you reduce costs by allowing you to use your existing server-bound software licenses.

Regarding AMI's: You can select your AMI based on:

Region(see Regions and Availability Zones) Operating system Architecture (32-bit or 64-bit) Launch Permissions Storage for the Root Device(Root Device Volume) Instance Store(EPHEMERAL STORAGE) EBS Backed Volumes

Regarding EC2 Instance Types Family: D2 Specialty? Use case?

Specialty: Dense Storage Use case: Fileservers/Data Warehousing/Hadoop

Exam Tips: Snapshots are point in time copies of ____________

Snapshots are point in time copies of Volumes.

Exam Tips: __________ exist on S3. Think of __________ as a photograph of the disk.

Snapshots exist on S3. Think of snapshots as a photograph of the disk.

Regarding EC2 Instance Types Family: A1 Specialty? Use case?

Specialty: Arm-based workloads Use case: Scale-out workloads such as web servers

Regarding EC2 Instance Types Family: U-6tb1 Specialty? Use case?

Specialty: Bare Metal Use case: Bare metal capabilities that eliminate virtualization overhead.

Regarding EC2 Instance Types Family: C5 Specialty? Use case?

Specialty: Compute Optimized Use case: CPU Intensive Apps/DBs

Regarding Pricing Types; Describe "Scheduled Reserved Instances"

These are available to launch within the time windows you reserve. This option allows you to match your capacity reservation to a predictable recurring schedule that only requires a fraction of the a day, a week, or a month.

Regarding Pricing Types; Describe "Convertible Reserved Instances"

These offer up to 54% off on demand capability to charge the attributes of the RI as long as the exchange results in the creation of Reserved Instances of equal or greater value.

Regarding Pricing Types; Describe "Standard Reserved instances"

These offer up to 75% off demand instances. The more you pay up front and the longer the contract, the greater the discount.

Exam Tips: Snapshots are incremental: What does this mean?

This means that only the blocks that have changed since your last snapshot are moved to S3.

Exam Tips: To create a snapshot for Amazon EBS volumes that serve as root devices, you should ______________________ before taking the snapshot.

To create a snapshot for Amazon EBS volumes that serve as root devices, you should stop the instance before taking the snapshot. However you can take a snap while the instance is running.

Exam Tips: Volumes exist on ______. Think of ______as a virtual hard disk

Volumes exist on EBS. Think of EBS as a virtual hard disk

Exam Tips: Volumes will _______________ be in the same availability zone as the EC2 instance.

Volumes will ALWAYS be in the same availability zone as the EC2 instance.

What is a EC2 Placement Group?

Way of placing your EC2

What are Partitioned Placement Groups?

When using Partition Placement Groups, Amazon EC2 divides each group into logical segments called partitions. Amazon EC2 ensures that each partition within a placement group has its own set of racks. Each rack has it's own network and power source. No two partitions within a placement group share the same racks, allowing you to isolate the impact of hardware failure within your application. THINK MULTIPLE INSTANCES

AWS CloudTrail increases visibility into your user and resource activity by recording AWS Management Console actions and API calls. You can identify which users and accounts called AWS, the source IP address from which the calls were made, and when the calls occurred.

Whenever you see CloudTrail, imagine a big CCTV

What is the general conscious around AWS Pricing

While the number and types of services offered by AWS have increased dramatically, our philosophy on pricing has not changed. You pay as you go, pay for what you use, pay less as you use more, and pay even less when you reserve capacity. Projecting costs for a use case, such as application hosting, can be challenging, because a solution typically uses multiple features across multiple AWS products, which in turn means there are more factors and purchase options to consider.

Exam Tips: You can change ________volumes sizes on the fly, including changing the size and storage type.

You can change EBS volumes sizes on the fly, including changing the size and storage type.

Exam Tips: You can create ______ from Snapshots

You can create AMI's from Snapshots

EC2 Exam Tips: EBS Root Volumes of your DEFAULT AMI's ___ be encrypted. You can also use a third party tool (such as bit locker ect) to encrypt the root volume, or this can be done when creating AMI's (tab to follow) in the AWS console or the using the API. -Additional volumes can be encrypted.

can

EBS backed instances ___________________. you will not lose the data on this instance if it is stopped.

can be stopped.

EC2 Exam Tips: -On an EBS-backed instance, the _______________________________ when the instance is terminated.

default action is for the root EBS volume to be deleted

EC2 Exam Tips: -Termination Protection is _____________ by default, you must turn it on.

turned off