Cloud Computing Final Exam
What is hybrid cloud?
- A composition of two or more distinct cloud infrastructures (private, community, or public) that are unique entities, but are bound by standardized or proprietary technology for data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load balancing between clouds) - The cloud service infrastructure for each set customer is virtually separated from the other sets - Provides for innovative business solutions by combining different cloud services
What does it mean to 'expose open interfaces' in evolutionary architecture?
- A service should expose an API with a well-defined API contract - APIs should be versioned so they can be updated without coordinating updates to all the upstream services that depend on it
What is Middleware?
- A software that connects components or enterprise applications - Enables communication and data management - Lies between the operating system and the applications or between applications
What is Scale Up?
- Add hardware (e.g., processors, RAM, NICs) to existing servers to support increased capacity
Why should you allow for evolutionary architecture?
- All successful applications change over time - If all parts of the application are tightly coupled, it becomes very hard to introduce changes into the system
What are the 9 responsibilities of cloud operations?
- Applications - Security - Databases - OS - Virtualization - Servers - Storage - Networking - Data Centers
What are Public APIs?
- Available to everyone - Allows third parties to develop apps that interact w/ APIs & can be a source for innovation
What is Rapid Elasticity?
- Capabilities can be elastically provisioned and released (sometimes automatically) to scale rapidly outward and inward commensurate with demand - To the consumer, the capabilities often appear to be unlimited and can be appropriated in any quantity at any time
What is Cloud Infrastructure?
- Collection of hardware and software that enables the five essential characteristics of cloud computing - Contains both a physical layer and abstraction layer
What is a micro-service based architecture?
- Consists of a collection of small, autonomous services that communicate via APIs - Each service is self-contained & should implement a single business capability - Responsible for persisting their own data or external state (different from traditional model where a separate layer handles data persistence)
What is Platform as a Service?
- Consumer deploys consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages, libraries, services, and tools supported by the provider onto the cloud infrastructure - Consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly configuration settings for the application-hosting environment
What is Infrastructure as a Service?
- Consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, etc. where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications - Consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, and deployed applications; and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls)
What are Architectural Styles?
- Family of architectures that share certain characteristics - Don't require specific technologies, but some technologies are well-suited for certain architectures (ex., containers are a natural fit for microservices)
What is public cloud?
- For open use by the general public over a public network - May be owned, managed, and operated by a business, academic, or government organization, or some combination of them - Serves a diverse pool of clients - Exists on the premises of the cloud provider
What are Private APIs?
- Only for internal use - Gives companies the most control over API
What is the Core?
- Piece of the network infrastructure that glues all the other modules together - High-speed infrastructure that provides a reliable and scalable Layer-2/Layer-3 transport - Routes and switches traffic as fast as possible from one network module to another
Why is Sandboxing beneficial?
- Prevents unauthorized access to resources - Prevents one guest OS from injecting malware into another - Reduces the threat of denial of service caused by excess resource usage in other guest OSs
What is Resource Pooling in cloud?
- Provider's computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model - Different physical and virtual resources are dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand (Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, and network bandwidth)
What is community cloud?
- Serves a group that has shared concerns such as mission objectives, security, privacy, and compliance policy, rather than a single organization - Only for use by a specific community of consumers from organizations that have shared concerns - May be owned, managed, and operated by one or more of the organizations in the community, a third party, or some combination of them - May exist on or off premises
What are Partner APIs?
- Shared w/ specific business partners - Can provide additional revenue streams without compromising quality
What is private cloud?
- The cloud infrastructure is for exclusive use by a single organization comprising multiple consumers (e.g., business units) - It may be owned, managed, and operated by the organization, a third party, or some combination of them - It may exist on or off premises
What is N-tier Architecture?
- Traditional architecture for enterprise applications - Manages dependencies by dividing the application into layers that perform logical functions (e.g., presentation, business logic, data access)
What is Software as a Service?
- Use the provider's applications running on a cloud infrastructure - Accessible from client devices through either a thin client interface (web browser - e.g., web-based email), or a program interface - Consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings
What are Message Types?
- Used when exchanging data across the service layer - Data structures are wrapped by message structures that support different types of operations
What is Big Compute Architecture?
- Work is split into discrete tasks which can be run across many cores simultaneously - Each task takes an input -> does processing -> produces output - Application runs for a finite amount of time
What are the 5 characteristics of cloud computing?
1. On-demand self-service 2. Broad network access 3. Resource pooling 4. Rapid elasticity 5. Measured service
What are the benefits of microservices?
1.) Agility in development due to small & less complex codebases since each one represents a single business function 2.) Independence among teams in the dev process thanks to the loosely coupled nature 3.) Availability of deployment tools that provide infrastructure services such as authentication
What 2 components make up the Application Landscape?
1.) Applications & Data 2.) IT Integration Platform
What does the IT Architecture Model consist of?
1.) Business Model - Business Operations - Business Capabilities 2.) Application Landscape - Applications & Data - IT Integration Platform 3.) Infrastructure - Infrastructure Services - Info & Communications Technology
What 2 components make up the Business Model?
1.) Business Operations 2.) Business Capabilities
The network roles identified in network architecture provide one or more of the following classes of functions: 1.) 2.) 3.)
1.) Connectivity 2.) Security 3.) Load balancing
What are the 9 core components of data virtualization?
1.) Connectivity layer 2.) Security layer 3.) Federation & Distributed Query Engine 4.) Objects 5.) Caching & Optimization of Queries 6.) Consumption Layer 7.) Design & Administration Interfaces 8.) Persistence Layer 9.) Metadata Repository
Why are network segments typically created to control the flow of traffic between hosts on different segments? 1.) 2.) 3.)
1.) Connectivity: Provide basic communications 2.) Performance: Improve performance by providing broadcast traffic containment 3.) Security: Control the flow of traffic between segments at layer 3
What components make up Big Data Architecture?
1.) Data source 2.) Data storage 3.) Batch processing 4.) Real-time message ingestion 5.) Analysis reporting 6.) Orchestration
What are the 5 key components of data virtualization?
1.) Design & Admin 2.) Connectors 3.) Optimizer and cache 4.) Metadata 5.) Consumption interfaces
What are the steps to designing a layered architecture?
1.) Focus on the highest level of abstraction & group functionality into layers 2.) Define the public interface for each layer (depends on the type of application you are designing) 3.) Determine how the application will be deployed 4.) Choose the communication protocols for interaction between the layers & tiers of the application
For an application to scale up effectively, what three things must scale up as well?
1.) Framework 2.) Run time 3.) Computer architecture
What are the 2 characteristics of evolutionary design?
1.) Highly cohesive & loosely coupled 2.) Exposes open interfaces
What are 4 security recommendations for virtualization?
1.) Hypervisor platforms with hardware-assisted virtualization provide greater security assurance than software-assisted virtualization 2.) User accounts on HV host must be integrated with the enterprise directory infrastructure 3.) Place the management interface of the HV in a dedicated virtual network segment and enforce traffic controls using a firewall 4.) Communication from VM to enterprise should be enabled through multiple communication paths
When is N-tier used?
1.) Implemented as part of IaaS-hosted applications 2.) Simple web applications 3.) Migration of on-premise applications to the cloud
What 2 components make up Infrastructure?
1.) Infrastructure Services 2.) Info & Communications Technology
What are 4 characteristics of a traditional computing model?
1.) Infrastructure as a collection of hardware 2.) Requires space, staff, physical security, planning, capital expenditure 3.) Has a long hardware procurement cycle 4.) You must guess theoretical maximum peaks
What are the characteristics of non-distributed deployment?
1.) Minimal number of physical servers 2.) Limited scalability
What are the 2 deployment strategies for N-tier Architectures?
1.) Non-distributed 2.) Distributed
What are the 2 common categories of private cloud?
1.) On-site private cloud 2.) Outsourced private cloud
What are the 4 layers of the Layered Design Approach?
1.) Presentation Layer 2.) Business Layer 3.) Data Layer 4.) Services Layer
Organizations connected to the Internet have at least two security zones: 1.) 2.)
1.) Private 2.) Public
Network architecture is designed to achieve the following objectives: 1.) 2.)
1.) Provide reliable and efficient movement of data packets from a source device to a destination 2.) Comply with the organizational security policy
What are the 4 cloud deployment models?
1.) Public Cloud 2.) Private Cloud 3.) Community Cloud 4.) Hybrid Cloud
What are the 5 design principles for well-architected applications?
1.) Reliability 2.) Redundancy 3.) Scalability 4.) Security 5.) Evolutionary architecture
Describe the two characteristics of a reliable workload
1.) Resilient: Return the application to a fully functioning state after failure 2.) Available: Users can access your workload when they need to
What are the 2 design approaches for scalability?
1.) Scale up 2.) Scale out
What are the 3 cloud service models?
1.) Software as a Service (SaaS) 2.) Platform as a Service (PaaS) 3.) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
What are 3 key security issues of virtualization?
1.) The VMs share a common virtualization layer - If an attacker escapes the guest OS, they can gain control over the hypervisor and harm ALL guest OS's 2.) All systems in a single physical computer --> larger impact if a security compromise occurs - All hosted VMs will be compromised 3.) Increase in security management burden due to multiple layers of technology in virtualization - need additional security controls
What are the characteristics of distributed deployment?
1.) The layers of the application reside on separate physical tiers 2.) Scalable
What are the benefits of a cloud computing model?
1.) Think (and use) infrastructure as a software 2.) Can change more quickly, easily and cost-effectively than hardware solutions 3.) Eliminates the undifferentiated heavy-lifting tasks
What are the characteristics of a 'design for security?'
1.) Users are partitioned into application-defined, logical roles 2.) Members of a particular role share the same privileges within the application 3.) Access to operations (typically expressed by method calls) is authorized based on the role membership of the user
What is on-demand self service in cloud?
A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities (server time, network storage, etc.) automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider
What is a Security Zone?
A logical entity containing one or more tiers that segregate various parts of the network
What is IT Architecture?
A structured approach to designing applications on the cloud that are scalable, resilient, and highly available
Interfaces are typically implemented as ________.
APIs
What is reliability?
Ability of the system to recover from failures and continue to function
What is evolutionary architecture?
Ability to allow systems to evolve over time so that businesses can take advantage of innovations as standard practice
What are Business Operations?
Activities that define the business & create value for the customer
What is the connectivity layer of data virtualization?
Adapters and connectors enable the access to data from various sources
What is Scale Out?
Add more servers & use load-balancing and clustering solutions
What is the Business Layer?
Application Facade -> Business Workflow -> Business Components -> Business Entities - Implements the core functionality of the system & encapsulates the relevant business logic - Consists of components that may expose service interfaces that other callers can use
What are APIs?
Application Program Interfaces - Set of features & rules that exist inside a software program - Act as an interface between the application offering and other items such as third-party software or hardware
the ability of an application to scale out depends more on its __________ __________ than on the __________ ___________.
Application architecture; underlying infrastructure
What are microservices?
Application system of relatively loose coupled entities or components that communicate w/ each other using lightweight communication protocols
What is the consumer responsible for in PaaS?
Applications
What is orchestration?
Automated configuration, management, & coordination of computer systems, applications, & services
The cloud demands that deployments must be _____________ and ___________.
Automated; Predictable
What is redundancy?
Avoid having single points of failure
The storage service you've chosen is updated by EC2 servers in __________ of data.
Batches
Where is the Services Layer located when utilized?
Between the Presentation & Business Layers
What is the Federation & Distributed Query Engine in data virtualization?
Breaks incoming queries into subqueries and executes them through a query execution plan
What does it mean to be 'loosely coupled' in evolutionary design?
Can change one service without changing the other (e.g., microservices are decoupled autonomous services)
What is broad network access in cloud?
Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and workstations)
What is the persistence layer in data virtualization?
Capability to push the transformed data back to the source data level for persistence
What is a Measured Service?
Clients can monitor and measure transactions and use of resources for transparency
What is Network Architecture?
Combines a number of technology solutions into a complex environment that provides highly available, secure, scalable, manageable, and reliable services.
Services can be seen as _______ of the overall solution.
Components
What are the design and administration interfaces in data virtualization?
Configuration, graphical design of integrated views, and administration are provided in this layer
What is the consumption layer in data virtualization?
Consists of the protocols through which queries are presented and the results of federation can be accessed
What are private security zones?
Contains assets controlled by the organization
What are public security zones?
Contains assets not owned or managed by the organization
The compute service you select gets _________ from your customers.
Data
What is the Data Layer?
Data Access Components -> Data Helpers/Utilities -> Service Agents - Provides access to data hosted within the boundaries of the system & data exposed by other networked systems - Exposes generic interfaces that components in the business layer can consume - Works off data sources and services
What is Big Data Architecture?
Designed to handle ingestion, processing, & analysis of data that is too large/complex for traditional databases
What does each logical layer contain?
Discrete component types that are grouped into sub-layers that perform a specific task
Layered design principles apply _________ to service-based solutions.
Equally
What are Service Interfaces?
Facades that expose business logic implemented in the application to potential customers
T/F?: Virtualization is necessary to create a cloud environment.
False; it is not necessary but it enables rapid scaling of resources in a way that non-virtualized environments find hard to achieve
When is Big Compute Architecture utilized?
For computationally intensive operations such as simulation and number crunching
When should Big Data Arch be used?
For storing & processing unstructured data in volumes
Why are Message Brokers beneficial?
Give increased control over interservice communications, ensuring that data is sent securely, reliably, and efficiently between the components of the application
In addition to handling additional load, the scale out scenario also mitigates ________ failures
Hardware
What do client-server architectures allow?
Hardware and software from different vendors to be used together
What does the physical layer of cloud infrastructure consist of?
Hardware resources, and typically includes server, storage and network components
Why is orchestration beneficial?
Helps IT manage complex tasks & workflow
What is the Intranet Data Center?
Houses most of the critical applications and data for the enterprise
What is a Failover Cluster?
If one server becomes unavailable, another server automatically takes over for the failed server and continues processing
Other applications can make use of services without being aware of the way they are __________.
Implemented
What is Data Virtualization?
Integrates data from different sources, locations, and formats, without replicating the data - Creates a single "virtual" data layer that delivers unified data services to support multiple applications and users
In order to achieve interoperability, _________ ________ is used
Integration Layer
What are Message Brokers?
Inter-application technology to help build a common integration mechanism to support cloud-native, micro-service-based, serverless, & hybrid cloud archs
What is Sandboxing?
Isolating each guest OS from the others and restricting what resources and privileges they have
Why is Layered Logical Design helpful?
It helps to differentiate the kinds of tasks performed by components in the application architecture which makes it easier to create a design that supports reusability & components
Why is IT Architecture important?
It provides consistency & standardization
What is Info & Communications Technology?
It standardizes the physical infrastructure to optimize procurement and maintenance
It is common to locate more than one ________ on the same physical machine (same tier)
Layer
What do layers describe?
Logical groupings of the functionality & components in an application
What does Middleware do?
Masks application heterogeneity & distribution of underlying hardware and operating systems --> hiding low-level programming details
What is the consumer responsible for in SaaS?
Nothing
What is the consumer responsible for in IaaS?
OS & up - Applications - Security - Databases - OS
What are objects in data virtualization?
Objects encapsulate the logic necessary to modify source data, and deliver the data to consumers
What is the metadata repository in data virtualization?
Permits the logical mapping of physical data stores to a more application-neutral model
The term tier refers to _________ __________ patterns (two-tier, three-tier, n-tier)
Physical distribution
What do tiers describe?
Physical distribution of the functionality & components on separate servers, computers, networks, or remote locations
In the case of cloud computing, virtualization is used more broadly to _______ infrastructure resources.
Pool
A non-relational database __________ your application.
Powers
What are Business Capabilities?
Process that support marketing, finance, & other business operations; some stay at the unit level and others span across the business
What is security?
Protection of applications and data from threats
In a hybrid cloud IT operating model, the IT organization acts as ________ and ________.
Provider and broker
What are the benefits of private cloud?
Provides an organization greater control over security, assurance over data location, and removal of multiple jurisdiction legal and compliance requirements
What does it mean to be 'cohesive' in evolutionary design?
Provides functionality that logically belongs together
When scaling up, consider which _________ are limiting application performance.
Resources
What is the security level of data virtualization?
Security layer provides row-level security
Design your application to be ________-_________ when failures occur
Self-healing
What is the Services Layer?
Service Interfaces & Message Types - Used when an application must provide services to other applications - Implements features to support clients directly - Exposes the business functionality of the application - Effectively provides an alternate channel for the client to access the application
A service-based solution is composed of multiple _________ - each communicating w/ the others by passing ________.
Services; messages
What does the abstraction layer of cloud infrastructure consist of?
Software deployed across the physical layer, which manifests the essential cloud characteristics
What is the IT Integration Platform?
Software that integrates the company's applications allowing for business interconnectivity
What are caching & optimization queries in data virtualization?
Store whole or partial views & control where and when source data and federated views are cached.
What does the integration layer ensure?
That software can communicate by exposing them to other applications - allowing for data integration, routing capabilities, etc.
What is Cloud Computing?
The practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer.
What are Applications & Data?
The programming that supports an organization's business capabilities (CRM, ERP, etc)
What are Infrastructure Services?
They manage the delivery of the runtime environment to support day-to-day operations
Both layers & tiers use the same set of names (presentation, business, data, and services) BUT only ________ imply a physical separation
Tiers
Why are Message Brokers often used?
To manage communications between on-premise system & cloud components in hybrid cloud environments
What is the purpose of a security zone?
To provide a logical container so that mitigation strategy policies can be defined and applied to the following areas: - Tier restrictions within a zone - Intra-zone communications - Inter-zone tier communications
T/F?: In multi-tenancy each tenant's data is isolated from, and invisible to, the other tenants sharing the application instance, ensuring data security and privacy for all tenants.
True
What is the Presentation Layer?
UI Components & Presentation Logic Components - Contains user-oriented functionality responsible for managing user interaction w/ the system - Consists of components that bridge the core business logic within the business layer - What users see & interact with
What is scalability?
Use as much capacity as needed - Scale out as load expands - Scale in when the extra capacity is not needed
What is the provider responsible for in IaaS?
Virtualization & down - Virtualization - Servers - Storage - Networking - Data Centers
The underpinning for most high-performing clouds is a ____________ __________.
Virtualized infrastructure
What is multi-tenancy in cloud?
When a single instance of a software application (and its underlying database and hardware) serves multiple tenants (or user accounts)
A tenant can be an _________ _________, but more frequently, it's a ________ of users such as a customer organization that shares common access to and privileges within the application instance
individual user; group
A zone can contain ______ security zones, be a _______ of other security zones, or _____ other security zones.
other; member; span
Internally, each service is made of __________ components that can be logically grouped into ________, _________, and _________ layers.
software; presentation; business; data
