Chapter 1 - Quiz

Which of the following cloud deployment models offers the best scalability and cost effectiveness? A. Public B. Private C. Community D. Hybrid

A. Public clouds, such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS), offer the best in scalability, reliability, and cost effectiveness. Private clouds do not offer as much cost effectiveness. Community clouds and hybrid clouds are between public and private in terms of scalability and cost effectiveness.

Which of the following is NOT a type of redundancy typically available in public cloud solutions? A. Process B. OS C. Hardware D. Data

B. Redundancy means having a backup of existing systems or processes—if one fails another can take over. Common redundancy types include hardware, network, geographic, process, software (apps), and data. OSs are easily replaceable, so redundant ones are not usually needed.

The CIO wants to reduce the cost of network ownership for the company, specifically for app licenses. Which service model should you recommend to her? A. XaaS B. SaaS C. PaaS D. IaaS

B. The software as a service (SaaS) model provides software applications, including apps such as Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365. Anything as a service (XaaS) is too broad and can mean a combination of multiple services. Platform as a service (PaaS) provides development platforms for software developers. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offers hardware for compute, storage, and networking functionality.

Which of the following is NOT a common characteristic of public clouds? A. Self-service B. Pay-as-you-go C. Higher cost D. Availability

C. Cloud services should lower the cost of network operations and software use for companies. Cloud characteristics include elastic, self-service, scalability, broad network access, pay-as-you-go, and availability.

The company CIO asks you to ensure that the new cloud solution provides fault tolerance. Which aspect of cloud design does this refer to? A. High availability B. Shared responsibility C. Disaster recovery D. Redundancy

D. Fault tolerance and redundancy are synonymous terms in cloud computing. Redundant systems can provide backups for other systems, so if one fails, the other can take over. Redundancy can help ensure high availability of resources. High availability means that the system is always or almost always available and is often specified in the SLA by the number of nines of uptime that are guaranteed. Disaster recovery is for after a system fails. Shared responsibility is the cloud security model.

Which of the following is a potential outcome of implementing a multicloud environment for your company? A. Combined features of public and private clouds B. Decreased complexity for internal cloud administrators C. Increased security for cloud-based resources D. Increased flexibility of using separate SaaS and IaaS vendors

D. Multicloud means using multiple cloud vendors for different service models, such as SaaS and IaaS together. This provides additional flexibility. The downsides are that it can be more complex to manage and cost more. The security will probably be a little worse than using a single cloud provider, due to having multiple systems to manage. A combined public and private cloud is a hybrid cloud.

Which of the following cloud service models best supports a software development team with members in the United States and Japan? A. IaaS B. SaaS C. DBaaS D. PaaS

D. PaaS provides software development tools for development teams. It allows geographically dispersed teams to easily operate as one. IaaS provides hardware capacity. SaaS offers web-based apps such as Google Docs. DBaaS is for databases.

Which of the following best describes an RTO? A. The oldest that data can be to be useful when it's restored B. The amount of time services can be down after a disaster before being restored C. The cost associated with restoring services after a disaster D. The chain of command for notifications when a disaster occurs within the cloud

B. The RTO is the maximum amount of time a system can be offline in the event of a disaster. Maximum data age is the RPO. There are no common disaster recovery terms associated with cost or chain of command.

Your company uses a financial transactions database that updates frequently. If a natural disaster occurred, any data backup older than one hour would not be useful to the company. To ensure that backups are always more current, what needs to be specified in the disaster recovery plan?

A. The RPO defines the maximum age of files that must be recovered from backups in order to restore normal operations. In this case, the RPO needs to be less than an hour. The RTO specifies how long services can be down in the event of a disaster. There is no TSO in disaster recovery plans. The service level agreement (SLA) usually contains a section for the disaster recovery plan.

Which of the following should you ask for in an SLA if you want to ensure the highest availability of resources for cloud users? A. Four nines five B. Four nines C. Three nines five D. Three nines

A. Availability is expressed in terms of nines. More nines means more availability. Four nines means 99.99 percent uptime. Some CSPs offer smaller increments with a five at the end. For example, four nines five means 99.995 percent availability, which is higher than four nines. Four nines five means no more than 4.32 seconds of downtime per day.

When shopping for public cloud services, the CSP tells you that if your company needs more or fewer resources, the CSP can instantly accommodate that. What cloud characteristic does this refer to? A. Elasticity B. Self-service C. Broad network access D. Availability

A. Elastic means that cloud resources can grow or shrink as a client's needs change. Selfservice is when the client can get more resources without supplier intervention. Broad network access refers to the cloud being accessible regardless of client device. Availability means that resources are always (or almost always) accessible.

Which of the following best describes the purpose of the shared responsibility model? A. The CSP and client share responsibility for cloud security. B. The CSP and client share responsibility for cloud costs. C. Clients in a cloud share security responsibility with each other. D. Clients in a cloud share costs with each other.

A. The shared responsibility model defines security duties within the cloud. The CSP is responsible for the security of the cloud, and the client is responsible for security in the cloud.

You are negotiating an SLA with a CSP. Which two things need to be included as part of the recovery objectives? A. Recovery process objective B. Recovery point objective C. Recovery time objective D. Recovery cost objective

B, C. Disaster recovery plans should include a recovery point objective (RPO) and a recovery time objective (RTO). The RPO specifies how old data can be when it's restored to be useful to the company. The RTO specifies how long services can be down after a disaster, before being restored. There are no recovery process or recovery cost objectives.

In the cloud security model, who is responsible for securing access management and firewall configurations? A. CSP B. Client C. CSP and client D. All clients share this responsibility.

B. In the shared security model, the CSP is responsible for the security of the cloud, and clients own security in the cloud. Customer data, access management, and firewall configurations are examples of items in the cloud and are therefore the client's responsibility.

Your CSP makes daily backups of important files and hourly backups of an essential database, which will be used to restore the data if needed. Which aspect of cloud design does this represent? A. Redundancy B. High availability C. Disaster recovery D. RTO

C. Backups are a form of disaster recovery. Redundant systems are typically online and do not need to be activated or restored. High availability means that resources are almost always accessible. A recovery time objective (RTO) defines how long services can be down before they are restored, in the event of a disaster.

Several universities want to band together to get cloud service. They want to share scholarly research but also take advantage of common cloud-based productivity apps. Which solution is the best option for their needs? A. Public B. Private C. Hybrid D. Community

D. A community cloud is one that is essentially public but is shared between multiple organizations. In a sense, it's like a public cloud but has better security. Public clouds are accessible to everyone. A private cloud is for only one organization. Hybrid clouds are both public and private.

Your network hardware is outdated and needs to be replaced. The CIO suggests using the most cost-effective cloud solution. However, he insists that the company database remain 100 percent controlled by your company. Which solution is the best choice? A. Public B. Private C. Community D. Hybrid

D. The most cost-effective cloud solution is a public cloud, but the best security comes with a private cloud. Since both elements are needed in this case, the best solution is most likely a combination of the two, or a hybrid cloud. A community cloud is one that is owned by multiple organizations with shared interests.

Which of the following are examples of IaaS that a cloud provider might offer? (Choose two.) A. Compute B. Applications C. Database D. Storage

A, D. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offers a client company capacity such as processing power (compute resources), storage, and network services. Applications are offered as part of software as a service (SaaS), and a database is typically offered as database as a service (DBaaS).

You are buying new cloud services. The internal network administration team is worried about cloud access from different OSs, such as Windows, macOS, and Android. What should you tell them? A. Resources will be available to only Windows and macOS clients via broad network access. B. Resources will be available to only Windows and macOS clients via self-service. C. Resources will be available to all client OSs via broad network access. D. Cloud services are usable only by Android and iOS mobile devices. E. Resources will be available to all client OSs via self-service.

C. Broad network access means that clients of different types, such as laptops and mobile devices, running different operating systems (OSs), such as Windows, macOS, and Android, can all access network resources. Self-service is the cloud characteristic that allows clients to get additional resources without supplier intervention.

Your data science team runs complex simulations that require more compute resources. They do about one simulation per month, and it takes one to two days. You want to ensure that the team has available compute resources but that you only pay for the resources when they are in use. Which cloud characteristic do you need? A. Scalability B. Availability C. Pay-as-you-go D. Elasticity

C. In a pay-as-you-go model, clients pay only for resources that are used. Scalability and elastic can refer to the ability to get more resources, but the key component of this question is paying only for used resources. Availability means that resources are always (or almost always) accessible to clients.