What are unique distinctions and similarities between AWS, Azure and Google Cloud services? For each AWS service, what is the equivalent Azure and Google Cloud service? For each Azure service, what is the corresponding Google Service? AWS Services vs Azure vs Google Services? Side by side comparison between AWS, Google Cloud and Azure Service?
Cloud Practitioner Exam Prep: AWS vs Azure vs Google
1
Category: Marketplace Easy-to-deploy and automatically configured third-party applications, including single virtual machine or multiple virtual machine solutions. References: [AWS]:AWS Marketplace [Azure]:Azure Marketplace [Google]:Google Cloud Marketplace Tags: #AWSMarketplace, #AzureMarketPlace, #GoogleMarketplace Differences: They are both digital catalog with thousands of software listings from independent software vendors that make it easy to find, test, buy, and deploy software that runs on their respective cloud platform.
Tags: #AlexaSkillsKit, #MicrosoftBotFramework, #GoogleAssistant Differences: One major advantage Google gets over Alexa is that Google Assistant is available to almost all Android devices.
Tags: #AmazonLex, #CogintiveServices, #AzureSpeech, #Api.ai, #DialogFlow, #Tensorflow Differences: api.ai provides us with such a platform which is easy to learn and comprehensive to develop conversation actions. It is a good example of the simplistic approach to solving complex man to machine communication problem using natural language processing in proximity to machine learning. Api.ai supports context based conversations now, which reduces the overhead of handling user context in session parameters. On the other hand in Lex this has to be handled in session. Also, api.ai can be used for both voice and text based conversations (assistant actions can be easily created using api.ai).
Category: Big data and analytics: Data warehouse Description: Apache Spark-based analytics platform. Managed Hadoop service. Data orchestration, ETL, Analytics and visualization References: [AWS]:EMR, Data Pipeline, Kinesis Stream, Kinesis Firehose, Glue, QuickSight, Athena, CloudSearch [Azure]:Azure Databricks, Data Catalog Cortana Intelligence, HDInsight, Power BI, Azure Datafactory, Azure Search, Azure Data Lake Anlytics, Stream Analytics, Azure Machine Learning [Google]:Cloud DataProc, Machine Learning, Cloud Datalab Tags:#EMR, #DataPipeline, #Kinesis, #Cortana, AzureDatafactory, #AzureDataAnlytics, #CloudDataProc, #MachineLearning, #CloudDatalab Differences: All three providers offer similar building blocks; data processing, data orchestration, streaming analytics, machine learning and visualisations. AWS certainly has all the bases covered with a solid set of products that will meet most needs. Azure offers a comprehensive and impressive suite of managed analytical products. They support open source big data solutions alongside new serverless analytical products such as Data Lake. Google provide their own twist to cloud analytics with their range of services. With Dataproc and Dataflow, Google have a strong core to their proposition. Tensorflow has been getting a lot of attention recently and there will be many who will be keen to see Machine Learning come out of preview.
Category: Serverless Description: Integrate systems and run backend processes in response to events or schedules without provisioning or managing servers. References: [AWS]:AWS Lambda [Azure]:Azure Functions [Google]:Google Cloud Functions Tags:#AWSLAmbda, #AzureFunctions, #GoogleCloudFunctions Differences: Both AWS Lambda and Microsoft Azure Functions and Google Cloud Functions offer dynamic, configurable triggers that you can use to invoke your functions on their platforms. AWS Lambda, Azure and Google Cloud Functions support Node.js, Python, and C#. The beauty of serverless development is that, with minor changes, the code you write for one service should be portable to another with little effort – simply modify some interfaces, handle any input/output transforms, and an AWS Lambda Node.JS function is indistinguishable from a Microsoft Azure Node.js Function. AWS Lambda provides further support for Python and Java, while Azure Functions provides support for F# and PHP. AWS Lambda is built from the AMI, which runs on Linux, while Microsoft Azure Functions run in a Windows environment. AWS Lambda uses the AWS Machine architecture to reduce the scope of containerization, letting you spin up and tear down individual pieces of functionality in your application at will.
Category:Caching Description:An in-memory–based, distributed caching service that provides a high-performance store typically used to offload non transactional work from a database. References: [AWS]:AWS ElastiCache (works as an in-memory data store and cache to support the most demanding applications requiring sub-millisecond response times.) [Azure]:Azure Cache for Redis (based on the popular software Redis. It is typically used as a cache to improve the performance and scalability of systems that rely heavily on backend data-stores.) [Google]:Memcache (In-memory key-value store, originally intended for caching) Tags:#Redis, #Memcached <Differences: They all support horizontal scaling via sharding.They all improve the performance of web applications by allowing you to retrive information from fast, in-memory caches, instead of relying on slower disk-based databases.”, “Differences”: “ElastiCache supports Memcached and Redis. Memcached Cloud provides various data persistence options as well as remote backups for disaster recovery purposes. Redis offers persistence to disk, Memcache does not. This can be very helpful if you cache lots of data, since you remove the slowness around having a fully cold cache. Redis also offers several extra data structures that Memcache doesn’t— Lists, Sets, Sorted Sets, etc. Memcache only has Key/Value pairs. Memcache is multi-threaded. Redis is single-threaded and event driven. Redis is very fast, but it’ll never be multi-threaded. At hight scale, you can squeeze more connections and transactions out of Memcache. Memcache tends to be more memory efficient. This can make a big difference around the magnitude of 10s of millions or 100s of millions of keys. ElastiCache supports Memcached and Redis. Memcached Cloud provides various data persistence options as well as remote backups for disaster recovery purposes. Redis offers persistence to disk, Memcache does not. This can be very helpful if you cache lots of data, since you remove the slowness around having a fully cold cache. Redis also offers several extra data structures that Memcache doesn’t— Lists, Sets, Sorted Sets, etc. Memcache only has Key/Value pairs. Memcache is multi-threaded. Redis is single-threaded and event driven. Redis is very fast, but it’ll never be multi-threaded. At hight scale, you can squeeze more connections and transactions out of Memcache. Memcache tends to be more memory efficient. This can make a big difference around the magnitude of 10s of millions or 100s of millions of keys.
Category: Enterprise application services Description:Fully integrated Cloud service providing communications, email, document management in the cloud and available on a wide variety of devices. References: [AWS]:Amazon WorkMail, Amazon WorkDocs, Amazon Kendra (Sync and Index) [Azure]:Office 365 [Google]:G Suite Tags: #AmazonWorkDocs, #Office365, #GoogleGSuite Differences: G suite document processing applications like Google Docs are far behind Office 365 popular Word and Excel software, but G Suite User interface is intuite, simple and easy to navigate. Office 365 is too clunky. Get 20% off G-Suite Business Plan with Promo Code: PCQ49CJYK7EATNC
Category: Management Description: A unified management console that simplifies building, deploying, and operating your cloud resources. References: [AWS]:AWS Management Console, Trusted Advisor, AWS Usage and Billing Report, AWS Application Discovery Service, Amazon EC2 Systems Manager, AWS Personal Health Dashboard, AWS Compute Optimizer (Identify optimal AWS Compute resources) [Azure]:Azure portal, Azure Advisor, Azure Billing API, Azure Migrate, Azure Monitor, Azure Resource Health [Google]:Google CLoud Platform, Cost Management, Security Command Center, StackDriver Tags: #AWSConsole, #AzurePortal, #GoogleCloudConsole, #TrustedAdvisor, #AzureMonitor, #SecurityCommandCenter Differences: AWS Console categorizes its Infrastructure as a Service offerings into Compute, Storage and Content Delivery Network (CDN), Database, and Networking to help businesses and individuals grow. Azure excels in the Hybrid Cloud space allowing companies to integrate onsite servers with cloud offerings. Google has a strong offering in containers, since Google developed the Kubernetes standard that AWS and Azure now offer. GCP specializes in high compute offerings like Big Data, analytics and machine learning. It also offers considerable scale and load balancing – Google knows data centers and fast response time.
Build and connect intelligent bots that interact with your users using text/SMS, Skype, Teams, Slack, Office 365 mail, Twitter, and other popular services.
Enables both Speech to Text, and Text into Speech capabilities. The Speech Services are the unification of speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and speech-translation into a single Azure subscription. It’s easy to speech enable your applications, tools, and devices with the Speech SDK, Speech Devices SDK, or REST APIs. Amazon Polly is a Text-to-Speech (TTS) service that uses advanced deep learning technologies to synthesize speech that sounds like a human voice. With dozens of lifelike voices across a variety of languages, you can select the ideal voice and build speech-enabled applications that work in many different countries. Amazon Transcribe is an automatic speech recognition (ASR) service that makes it easy for developers to add speech-to-text capability to their applications. Using the Amazon Transcribe API, you can analyze audio files stored in Amazon S3 and have the service return a text file of the transcribed speech.
Computer Vision: Extract information from images to categorize and process visual data. Amazon Rekognition is a simple and easy to use API that can quickly analyze any image or video file stored in Amazon S3. Amazon Rekognition is always learning from new data, and we are continually adding new labels and facial recognition features to the service.
Face: Detect, identy, and analyze faces in photos.
The Virtual Assistant Template brings together a number of best practices we’ve identified through the building of conversational experiences and automates integration of components that we’ve found to be highly beneficial to Bot Framework developers.
Processes and moves data between different compute and storage services, as well as on-premises data sources at specified intervals. Create, schedule, orchestrate, and manage data pipelines.
Virtual servers allow users to deploy, manage, and maintain OS and server software. Instance types provide combinations of CPU/RAM. Users pay for what they use with the flexibility to change sizes.
Allows you to automatically change the number of VM instances. You set defined metric and thresholds that determine if the platform adds or removes instances.
Redeploy and extend your VMware-based enterprise workloads to Azure with Azure VMware Solution by CloudSimple. Keep using the VMware tools you already know to manage workloads on Azure without disrupting network, security, or data protection policies.
Azure Container Instances is the fastest and simplest way to run a container in Azure, without having to provision any virtual machines or adopt a higher-level orchestration service.
Deploy orchestrated containerized applications with Kubernetes. Simplify monitoring and cluster management through auto upgrades and a built-in operations console.
Fully managed service that enables developers to deploy microservices applications without managing virtual machines, storage, or networking. AWS App Mesh is a service mesh that provides application-level networking to make it easy for your services to communicate with each other across multiple types of compute infrastructure. App Mesh standardizes how your services communicate, giving you end-to-end visibility and ensuring high-availability for your applications.
Integrate systems and run backend processes in response to events or schedules without provisioning or managing servers. AWS Lambda is an event-driven, serverless computing platform provided by Amazon as a part of the Amazon Web Services. It is a computing service that runs code in response to events and automatically manages the computing resources required by that code
Managed relational database service where resiliency, scale, and maintenance are primarily handled by the platform. Amazon Relational Database Service is a distributed relational database service by Amazon Web Services. It is a web service running “in the cloud” designed to simplify the setup, operation, and scaling of a relational database for use in applications. Administration processes like patching the database software, backing up databases and enabling point-in-time recovery are managed automatically. Scaling storage and compute resources can be performed by a single API call as AWS does not offer an ssh connection to RDS instances.
An in-memory–based, distributed caching service that provides a high-performance store typically used to offload non transactional work from a database. Amazon ElastiCache is a fully managed in-memory data store and cache service by Amazon Web Services. The service improves the performance of web applications by retrieving information from managed in-memory caches, instead of relying entirely on slower disk-based databases. ElastiCache supports two open-source in-memory caching engines: Memcached and Redis.
Migration of database schema and data from one database format to a specific database technology in the cloud. AWS Database Migration Service helps you migrate databases to AWS quickly and securely. The source database remains fully operational during the migration, minimizing downtime to applications that rely on the database. The AWS Database Migration Service can migrate your data to and from most widely used commercial and open-source databases.
Comprehensive solution for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from your cloud and on-premises environments. Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring and observability service built for DevOps engineers, developers, site reliability engineers (SREs), and IT managers. CloudWatch provides you with data and actionable insights to monitor your applications, respond to system-wide performance changes, optimize resource utilization, and get a unified view of operational health. CloudWatch collects monitoring and operational data in the form of logs, metrics, and events, providing you with a unified view of AWS resources, applications, and services that run on AWS and on-premises servers. AWS X-Ray is an application performance management service that enables a developer to analyze and debug applications in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud. A developer can use AWS X-Ray to visualize how a distributed application is performing during development or production, and across multiple AWS regions and accounts.
A cloud service for collaborating on code development. AWS CodeDeploy is a fully managed deployment service that automates software deployments to a variety of compute services such as Amazon EC2, AWS Fargate, AWS Lambda, and your on-premises servers. AWS CodeDeploy makes it easier for you to rapidly release new features, helps you avoid downtime during application deployment, and handles the complexity of updating your applications. AWS CodePipeline is a fully managed continuous delivery service that helps you automate your release pipelines for fast and reliable application and infrastructure updates. CodePipeline automates the build, test, and deploy phases of your release process every time there is a code change, based on the release model you define. AWS CodeCommit is a source code storage and version-control service for Amazon Web Services’ public cloud customers. CodeCommit was designed to help IT teams collaborate on software development, including continuous integration and application delivery.
Collection of tools for building, debugging, deploying, diagnosing, and managing multiplatform scalable apps and services. The AWS Developer Tools are designed to help you build software like Amazon. They facilitate practices such as continuous delivery and infrastructure as code for serverless, containers, and Amazon EC2.
Built on top of the native REST API across all cloud services, various programming language-specific wrappers provide easier ways to create solutions. The AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) is a unified tool to manage your AWS services. With just one tool to download and configure, you can control multiple AWS services from the command line and automate them through scripts.
Configures and operates applications of all shapes and sizes, and provides templates to create and manage a collection of resources. AWS OpsWorks is a configuration management service that provides managed instances of Chef and Puppet. Chef and Puppet are automation platforms that allow you to use code to automate the configurations of your servers.
Provides a way for users to automate the manual, long-running, error-prone, and frequently repeated IT tasks. AWS CloudFormation provides a common language for you to describe and provision all the infrastructure resources in your cloud environment. CloudFormation allows you to use a simple text file to model and provision, in an automated and secure manner, all the resources needed for your applications across all regions and accounts.
Provides an isolated, private environment in the cloud. Users have control over their virtual networking environment, including selection of their own IP address range, creation of subnets, and configuration of route tables and network gateways.
Connects Azure virtual networks to other Azure virtual networks, or customer on-premises networks (Site To Site). Allows end users to connect to Azure services through VPN tunneling (Point To Site).
A service that hosts domain names, plus routes users to Internet applications, connects user requests to datacenters, manages traffic to apps, and improves app availability with automatic failover.
Application Gateway is a layer 7 load balancer. It supports SSL termination, cookie-based session affinity, and round robin for load-balancing traffic.
Azure Digital Twins is an IoT service that helps you create comprehensive models of physical environments. Create spatial intelligence graphs to model the relationships and interactions between people, places, and devices. Query data from a physical space rather than disparate sensors.
Provides analysis of cloud resource configuration and security so subscribers can ensure they’re making use of best practices and optimum configurations.
Allows users to securely control access to services and resources while offering data security and protection. Create and manage users and groups, and use permissions to allow and deny access to resources.
Role-based access control (RBAC) helps you manage who has access to Azure resources, what they can do with those resources, and what areas they have access to.
Provides managed domain services such as domain join, group policy, LDAP, and Kerberos/NTLM authentication that are fully compatible with Windows Server Active Directory.
Azure Policy is a service in Azure that you use to create, assign, and manage policies. These policies enforce different rules and effects over your resources, so those resources stay compliant with your corporate standards and service level agreements.
Azure management groups provide a level of scope above subscriptions. You organize subscriptions into containers called “management groups” and apply your governance conditions to the management groups. All subscriptions within a management group automatically inherit the conditions applied to the management group. Management groups give you enterprise-grade management at a large scale, no matter what type of subscriptions you have.
Helps you protect and safeguard your data and meet your organizational security and compliance commitments.
Key Management Service AWS KMS, CloudHSM | Key Vault
Provides security solution and works with other services by providing a way to manage, create, and control encryption keys stored in hardware security modules (HSM).
Provides inbound protection for non-HTTP/S protocols, outbound network-level protection for all ports and protocols, and application-level protection for outbound HTTP/S.
An automated security assessment service that improves the security and compliance of applications. Automatically assess applications for vulnerabilities or deviations from best practices.
Object storage service, for use cases including cloud applications, content distribution, backup, archiving, disaster recovery, and big data analytics.
Provides a simple interface to create and configure file systems quickly, and share common files. Can be used with traditional protocols that access files over a network.
Easily join your distributed microservice architectures into a single global application using HTTP load balancing and path-based routing rules. Automate turning up new regions and scale-out with API-driven global actions, and independent fault-tolerance to your back end microservices in Azure—or anywhere.
Cloud technology to build distributed applications using out-of-the-box connectors to reduce integration challenges. Connect apps, data and devices on-premises or in the cloud.
Serverless technology for connecting apps, data and devices anywhere, whether on-premises or in the cloud for large ecosystems of SaaS and cloud-based connectors.
Azure Stack is a hybrid cloud platform that enables you to run Azure services in your company’s or service provider’s datacenter. As a developer, you can build apps on Azure Stack. You can then deploy them to either Azure Stack or Azure, or you can build truly hybrid apps that take advantage of connectivity between an Azure Stack cloud and Azure.
Cloud computing is the new big thing in Information Technology. Everyone, every business will sooner or later adopt it, because of hosting cost benefits, scalability and more.
This blog outlines the Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing, Pros and Cons of Cloud Technology, Faqs, Facts, Questions and Answers Dump about cloud computing.
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam Prep PWA AppCloud Practitioner Exam Prep AWS vs Azure vs Google
What is cloud computing?
Cloud computing is an information technology paradigm that enables ubiquitous access to shared pools of configurable system resources and higher-level services that can be rapidly provisioned with minimal management effort, often over the Internet. Cloud computing relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economies of scale, similar to a public utility. Simply put, cloud computing is the delivery of computing services including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale. You typically pay only for cloud services you use, helping you lower your operating costs, run your infrastructure more efficiently, and scale as your business needs change.
Cost effective & Time saving: Cloud computing eliminates the capital expense of buying hardware and software and setting up and running on-site datacenters; the racks of servers, the round-the-clock electricity for power and cooling, and the IT experts for managing the infrastructure.
The ability to pay only for cloud services you use, helping you lower your operating costs.
Powerful server capabilities and Performance: The biggest cloud computing services run on a worldwide network of secure datacenters, which are regularly upgraded to the latest generation of fast and efficient computing hardware. This offers several benefits over a single corporate datacenter, including reduced network latency for applications and greater economies of scale.
Powerful and scalable server capabilities: The ability to scale elastically; That means delivering the right amount of IT resources—for example, more or less computing power, storage, bandwidth—right when they’re needed, and from the right geographic location.
SaaS ( Software as a service). Software as a service is a method for delivering software applications over the Internet, on demand and typically on a subscription basis. With SaaS, cloud providers host and manage the software application and underlying infrastructure, and handle any maintenance, like software upgrades and security patching. Users connect to the application over the Internet, usually with a web browser on their phone, tablet, or PC.
PaaS ( Platform as a service). Platform as a service refers to cloud computing services that supply an on-demand environment for developing, testing, delivering, and managing software applications. PaaS is designed to make it easier for developers to quickly create web or mobile apps, without worrying about setting up or managing the underlying infrastructure of servers, storage, network, and databases needed for development.
IaaS ( Infrastructure as a service). The most basic category of cloud computing services. With IaaS, you rent IT infrastructure—servers and virtual machines (VMs), storage, networks, operating systems—from a cloud provider on a pay-as-you-go basis
Serverless: Running complex Applications without a single server. Overlapping with PaaS, serverless computing focuses on building app functionality without spending time continually managing the servers and infrastructure required to do so. The cloud provider handles the setup, capacity planning, and server management for you. Serverless architectures are highly scalable and event-driven, only using resources when a specific function or trigger occurs.
Infrastructure provisioning as code, helps recreating same infrastructure by re-running the same code in a few click.
Automatic and Reliable Data backup and storage of data: Cloud computing makes data backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity easier and less expensive because data can be mirrored at multiple redundant sites on the cloud provider’s network.
Increase Productivity: On-site datacenters typically require a lot of “racking and stacking”—hardware setup, software patching, and other time-consuming IT management chores. Cloud computing removes the need for many of these tasks, so IT teams can spend time on achieving more important business goals.
Security: Many cloud providers offer a broad set of policies, technologies, and controls that strengthen your security posture overall, helping protect your data, apps, and infrastructure from potential threats.
Speed: Most cloud computing services are provided self service and on demand, so even vast amounts of computing resources can be provisioned in minutes, typically with just a few mouse clicks, giving businesses a lot of flexibility and taking the pressure off capacity planning.
Privacy: Cloud computing poses privacy concerns because the service provider can access the data that is in the cloud at any time. It could accidentally or deliberately alter or delete information.Many cloud providers can share information with third parties if necessary for purposes of law and order without a warrant. That is permitted in their privacy policies, which users must agree to before they start using cloud services.
Security: According to the Cloud Security Alliance, the top three threats in the cloud are Insecure Interfaces and API’s, Data Loss & Leakage, and Hardware Failure—which accounted for 29%, 25% and 10% of all cloud security outages respectively. Together, these form shared technology vulnerabilities.
Ownership of Data: There is the problem of legal ownership of the data (If a user stores some data in the cloud, can the cloud provider profit from it?). Many Terms of Service agreements are silent on the question of ownership.
Limited Customization Options: Cloud computing is cheaper because of economics of scale, and—like any outsourced task—you tend to get what you get. A restaurant with a limited menu is cheaper than a personal chef who can cook anything you want.
Downtime: Technical outages are inevitable and occur sometimes when cloud service providers (CSPs) become overwhelmed in the process of serving their clients. This may result to temporary business suspension.
Security of stored data and data in transit may be a concern when storing sensitive data at a cloud storage provider[10]
Users with specific records-keeping requirements, such as public agencies that must retain electronic records according to statute, may encounter complications with using cloud computing and storage. For instance, the U.S. Department of Defense designated the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) to maintain a list of records management products that meet all of the records retention, personally identifiable information (PII), and security (Information Assurance; IA) requirements
Cloud storage is a rich resource for both hackers and national security agencies. Because the cloud holds data from many different users and organizations, hackers see it as a very valuable target.
Piracy and copyright infringement may be enabled by sites that permit filesharing. For example, the CodexCloud ebook storage site has faced litigation from the owners of the intellectual property uploaded and shared there, as have the GrooveShark and YouTube sites it has been compared to.
Public clouds: A cloud is called a “public cloud” when the services are rendered over a network that is open for public use. They are owned and operated by a third-party cloud service providers, which deliver their computing resources, like servers and storage, over the Internet. Microsoft Azure is an example of a public cloud. With a public cloud, all hardware, software, and other supporting infrastructure is owned and managed by the cloud provider. You access these services and manage your account using a web browser. For infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) hold a commanding position among the many cloud companies.
Private cloud is cloud infrastructure operated solely for a single organization, whether managed internally or by a third party, and hosted either internally or externally. A private cloud refers to cloud computing resources used exclusively by a single business or organization. A private cloud can be physically located on the company’s on-site datacenter. Some companies also pay third-party service providers to host their private cloud. A private cloud is one in which the services and infrastructure are maintained on a private network.
Hybrid cloud is a composition of a public cloud and a private environment, such as a private cloud or on-premise resources, that remain distinct entities but are bound together, offering the benefits of multiple deployment models. Hybrid cloud can also mean the ability to connect collocation, managed and/or dedicated services with cloud resources. Hybrid clouds combine public and private clouds, bound together by technology that allows data and applications to be shared between them. By allowing data and applications to move between private and public clouds, a hybrid cloud gives your business greater flexibility, more deployment options, and helps optimize your existing infrastructure, security, and compliance.
Community Cloud: A community cloud in computing is a collaborative effort in which infrastructure is shared between several organizations from a specific community with common concerns, whether managed internally or by a third-party and hosted internally or externally. This is controlled and used by a group of organizations that have shared interest. The costs are spread over fewer users than a public cloud, so only some of the cost savings potential of cloud computing are realized.
Other AWS Facts and Summaries and Questions/Answers Dump
What do the top 3 public cloud providers like AWS, Azure, Google cloud do to insure customer data loss?
As cloud user, cloud customer, company storing customer data in the cloud, you probably have a lot of personal or private data hosted in various infrastructure in the cloud. Losing that data or having the data accessed by hackers or unauthorized third party can be very harmful both financially and emotionally to you or your customers. A cloud User or Customer Insurance can protect you against data lost or stolen data. Practically, the cloud computing insurance is a cyber liability policy that covers web-based services. Before looking for a customer insurance in the cloud, you need to clarify “What data should the insurance cover and under which governing laws?“, “What data can be considered a loss?” . The good news is : as cloud adoption is increasing in the insurance industry, insurers have the opportunity to better understand their operations models and to implement tailored insurance solutions for cloud.
Cloud Data loss can happen in the following forms:
First Party Losses: losses where the cloud provider incurs damages. Those types of losses include:
Destruction of Data
Denial of Service Attack (DOS)
Virus, Malware and Spyware
Human Error
Electrical Malfunctions and Power Surges in data centers
Natural Disasters
Network Failures
Cyber Extortion
Each of the above exposures to loss would result in direct damages to the insured, or first-party loss.
Third-Party Losses – damages that would occur to customers outside of the cloud provider. These types of losses include:
Breach of Privacy
Misuse of Private Personal Information
Defamation or Slander
Transmission of Malicious Content
The above exposures could result in a company being held liable for the damages caused to others (liability).
Cyber insurance is a form of insurance for businesses and individuals against internet-based risks. The most common risk that is insured against is data breaches. … It also covers losses from network security breaches, theft of intellectual property and loss of privacy.
Data Compromise coverage insures a commercial entity when there is a data breach, theft or unauthorized disclosure of personal information. … Thus Cyber Liability covers both the expenses to notify affected individuals of data breaches and the expenses to make the insured whole for their own damages incurred.
Contact an Independent Insurance Agent near you that writes Cyber Insurance and ask them to get multiple quotes for your business.
However, a more effective risk management solution might be loss control rather than financing. If you encrypt your data at rest and set up and adopt a process of automatic regular backups, and geographically distribute those backups , then you have effectively minimized the potential costs of loss.
Cyber Insurance is not yet standardized as many other forms of commercial insurance. Therefore, breadth of coverage and pricing can vary widely.
Access: As a customer, you maintain full control of your content and responsibility for configuring access to AWS services and resources. We provide an advanced set of access, encryption, and logging features to help you do this effectively (e.g., AWS Identity and Access Management, AWS Organizations and AWS CloudTrail). We provide APIs for you to configure access control permissions for any of the services you develop or deploy in an AWS environment. We do not access or use your content for any purpose without your consent. We never use your content or derive information from it for marketing or advertising.
Storage: You choose the AWS Region(s) in which your content is stored and the type of storage. You can replicate and back up your content in more than one AWS Region. We will not move or replicate your content outside of your chosen AWS Region(s) without your consent, except as legally required and as necessary to maintain the AWS services.
Security: You choose how your content is secured. We offer you strong encryption for your content in transit and at rest, and we provide you with the option to manage your own encryption keys. These features include:
Data encryption capabilities available in AWS storage and database services, such as Amazon Elastic Block Store, Amazon Simple Storage Service, Amazon Relational Database Service, and Amazon Redshift.
Flexible key management options, including AWS Key Management Service (KMS), allow customers to choose whether to have AWS manage the encryption keys or enable customers to keep complete control over their keys.
AWS customers can employ Server-Side Encryption (SSE) with Amazon S3-Managed Keys (SSE-S3), SSE with AWS KMS-Managed Keys (SSE-KMS), or SSE with Customer-Provided Encryption Keys (SSE-C).
Disclosure of customer content: We do not disclose customer information unless we’re required to do so to comply with a legally valid and binding order. Unless prohibited from doing so or there is clear indication of illegal conduct in connection with the use of Amazon products or services, Amazon notifies customers before disclosing content information.
Security Assurance: We have developed a security assurance program that uses best practices for global privacy and data protection to help you operate securely within AWS, and to make the best use of our security control environment. These security protections and control processes are independently validated by multiple third-party independent assessments
Property and Casualty Insurance: Property insurance covers the physical location of the business and its contents from things like fire, theft, flood, and earthquakes—although read the terms carefully to make sure they include everything you need. Casualty insurance, on the other hand, covers the operation of the business, but the two are usually grouped together in policies.
Auto Insurance:Auto insurance protects you against financial loss if you have an accident. It is a contract between you and the insurance company.
Liability Insurance: Liability insurance is insurance that provides protection against claims resulting from injuries and damage property.
Business Insurance: Business interruption insurance can make up for lost cash flow and profits incurred because of an event that has interrupted your normal business operations.
Health and Disability Insurance: Health insurance provides health coverage for you and your employees. This insurance covers your employees for the expenses and loss of income caused by non work-related injuries, illnesses, and disabilities and death from any cause.
Life Insurance: Life and disability insurance covers your business in the event of the death or disability of key owners.
Cyber Insurance: Cover Data loss, destruction of data, privacy breach, Denial of Service Attack (DOS), Network failure, Transmission of Malicious Content, Misuse of personal or private information, etc.
Crime & Employee Dishonesty Insurance: To cover your business for fraudulent acts committed by your employees, e.g. theft or embezzlement of money, securities, and other business-owned property and for burglary, theft, and robbery of cash and other representations of money, e.g. money orders, postage stamps, travelers checks, and readily convertible securities, e.g. bearer bonds;
Mandatory Workers Compensation Insurance: To cover your employees for injuries and illnesses sustained during the course of employment. This would include medical expenses and loss of income due to a work-related disability;
Transportation/Inland & Ocean Marine Insurance: To pay for loss of damage to property you own or are responsible for while it is being transported or shipped to or from customers, manufacturers, processors, assemblers, warehouses, etc. by air, ship, or land vehicles either domestically or internationally.
Umbrella Liability Insurance: To provide an additional layer of liability insurance over your primary automobile liability, general liability, employers liability, and, if applicable, watercraft or aircraft liability policies;
Directors & Officers Liability Insurance: To defend your business and its directors or officers against allegations that they mismanaged the business in some way which caused financial loss to your clients (and/or others) and pay money damages in a court trial or settlement;
Condos Unit Owners Personal Insurance & Landlord / Rental Property Insurance: Cover expenses that come from having a loss within your property. Whether the unit owner is living in their unit or not, it is your responsibility to ensure that your personal assets and liabilities are adequately protected by your own personal insurance policy. This coverage includes all the content items that are brought into a unit or stored in a storage locker or premises, such as furnishings, electronics, clothing, etc. Most policies out there will also cover personal property while it is temporary off premises, on vacation for example.
Landlord property coverage is to protect the property that you own within your rental unit, which includes but is not limited to, appliances, window coverings, or if you rent out your unit fully furnished, then all of that property that is yours.
Rental Property insurance coverage allows you to protect you revenue source. Your property is your responsibility and if you property gets damaged by an insured peril, and your tenant can’t live there for a month or two (or more), you can purchase insurance to replace that rental income for the period of time your property is inhabitable.
Do online businesses need insurance?
All businesses need insurance. Here are some suggestions:
Property Insurance: To cover your owned, non-owned, and leased business property (contents, buildings if applicable, computers, office supplies, and any other property that you need to operate your business) for such perils as fire, windstorm, smoke damage, water damage, and theft.
EDP Insurance: To cover your computer hardware and software for such perils as mechanical breakdown and electrical injury;
Cyber Property and Liability Insurance: To cover your business for its activities on the Internet. Cyber Property coverages apply to losses sustained by your company directly. An example is damage to your company’s electronic data files caused by a hacker/security breach. Cyber Liability coverages apply to claims against your company by people who have been injured as a result of your actions or failure to act. For instance, a client sues you for negligence after his personal data, e.g credit card numbers or confidential information is stolen from your computer system and released online.
Loss of Income (Business Interruption) Insurance: To cover your business for the loss of income you would sustain because it was damaged by a covered peril under your property insurance, e.g. fire, windstorm, smoke damage, and theft;
Thinking of purchasing cyber insurance? Make sure the policy you choose covers more than paying ransomware. Paying cyber criminals should be a last resort. Your policy should include cleaning & rebuilding current systems, hiring experts, & purchasing new protections.
The purpose of cyber security is to protect all forms of digital data. Protecting personal information (SSN, credit card information, etc.), protecting proprietary information .(Facebook algorithms, Tesla vehicle designs, etc.), and other forms of digital data.
Cloud computing insurance is meant to protect a cloud provider. The implementation of a system and the preservation of important information comes with risks. If anything goes wrong, such as an outage at a critical time that results in business interruption, your client can hold you responsible and seek damages. Cloud insurance can not only provide compensation to your client as a result of a claim against you, but can also cover your legal defense and lost income.
Definition 1:Solution architecture is a practice of defining and describing an architecture of a system delivered in context of a specific solution and as such it may encompass description of an entire system or only its specific parts. Definition of a solution architecture is typically led by a solution architect.
Definition 2:The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate examination is intended for individuals who perform a solutions architect role and have one or more years of hands-on experience designing available, cost-efficient, fault-tolerant, and scalable distributed systems on AWS.
AWS Solution Architect Associate Exam Facts and Summaries
This exam validates an examinee’s ability to effectively demonstrate knowledge of how to architect and deploy secure and robust applications on AWS technologies. It validates an examinee’s ability to:
Define a solution using architectural design principles based on customer requirements.
Provide implementation guidance based on best practices to the organization throughout the lifecycle of the project.
There are two types of questions on the examination:
Multiple-choice: Has one correct response and three incorrect responses (distractors).
Multiple-response: Has two correct responses out of five options.
Select one or more responses that best complete the statement or answer the question. Distractors, or incorrect answers, are response options that an examinee with incomplete knowledge or skill would likely choose. However, they are generally plausible responses that fit in the content area defined by the test objective. Unanswered questions are scored as incorrect; there is no penalty for guessing.
If you are running an application in a production environment and must add a new EBS volume with data from a snapshot, what could you do to avoid degraded performance during the volume’s first use? Initialize the data by reading each storage block on the volume. Volumes created from an EBS snapshot must be initialized. Initializing occurs the first time a storage block on the volume is read, and the performance impact can be impacted by up to 50%. You can avoid this impact in production environments by pre-warming the volume by reading all of the blocks.
If you are running a legacy application that has hard-coded static IP addresses and it is running on an EC2 instance; what is the best failover solution that allows you to keep the same IP address on a new instance? Elastic IP addresses (EIPs) are designed to be attached/detached and moved from one EC2 instance to another. They are a great solution for keeping a static IP address and moving it to a new instance if the current instance fails. This will reduce or eliminate any downtime uses may experience.
Which feature of Intel processors help to encrypt data without significant impact on performance? AES-NI
You can mount to EFS from which two of the following?
On-prem servers running Linux
EC2 instances running Linux
EFS is not compatible with Windows operating systems.
When a file(s) is encrypted and the stored data is not in transit it’s known as encryption at rest. What is an example of encryption at rest?
When would vertical scaling be necessary? When an application is built entirely into one source code, otherwise known as a monolithic application.
Fault-Tolerance allows for continuous operation throughout a failure, which can lead to a low Recovery Time Objective. RPO vs. RTO
High-Availability means automating tasks so that an instance will quickly recover, which can lead to a low Recovery Time Objective. RPO vs. RTO
Frequent backups reduce the time between the last backup and recovery point, otherwise known as the Recovery Point Objective. RPO vs. RTO
Which represents the difference between Fault-Tolerance and High-Availability? High-Availability means the system will quickly recover from a failure event, and Fault-Tolerance means the system will maintain operations during a failure.
From a security perspective, what is a principal?An anonymous user falls under the definition of a principal. A principal can be an anonymous user acting on a system.
An authenticated user falls under the definition of a principal. A principal can be an authenticated user acting on a system.
What are two types of session data saving for an Application Session State?Stateless and Stateful
23. It is the customer’s responsibility to patch the operating system on an EC2 instance.
24. In designing an environment, what four main points should a Solutions Architect keep in mind? Cost-efficient, secure, application session state, undifferentiated heavy lifting: These four main points should be the framework when designing an environment.
25. In the context of disaster recovery, what does RPO stand for? RPO is the abbreviation for Recovery Point Objective.
26.What are the benefits of horizontal scaling?
Vertical scaling can be costly while horizontal scaling is cheaper.
Horizontal scaling suffers from none of the size limitations of vertical scaling.
Having horizontal scaling means you can easily route traffic to another instance of a server.
Q0: A company is developing a highly available web application using stateless web servers. Which services are suitable for storing session state data? (Select TWO.)
Q1: A Solutions Architect is designing a critical business application with a relational database that runs on an EC2 instance. It requires a single EBS volume that can support up to 16,000 IOPS. Which Amazon EBS volume type can meet the performance requirements of this application?
A. EBS Provisioned IOPS SSD
B. EBS Throughput Optimized HDD
C. EBS General Purpose SSD
D. EBS Cold HDD
A. EBS Provisioned IOPS SSD provides sustained performance for mission-critical low-latency workloads. EBS General Purpose SSD can provide bursts of performance up to 3,000 IOPS and have a maximum baseline performance of 10,000 IOPS for volume sizes greater than 3.3 TB. The 2 HDD options are lower cost, high throughput volumes.
Q2: An application running on EC2 instances processes sensitive information stored on Amazon S3. The information is accessed over the Internet. The security team is concerned that the Internet connectivity to Amazon S3 is a security risk. Which solution will resolve the security concern?
A. Access the data through an Internet Gateway.
B. Access the data through a VPN connection.
C. Access the data through a NAT Gateway.
D.Access the data through a VPC endpoint for Amazon S3
D. VPC endpoints for Amazon S3 provide secure connections to S3 buckets that do not require a gateway or NAT instances. NAT Gateways and Internet Gateways still route traffic over the Internet to the public endpoint for Amazon S3. There is no way to connect to Amazon S3 via VPN.
Q3: An organization is building an Amazon Redshift cluster in their shared services VPC. The cluster will host sensitive data. How can the organization control which networks can access the cluster?
A. Run the cluster in a different VPC and connect through VPC peering.
B. Create a database user inside the Amazon Redshift cluster only for users on the network.
C. Define a cluster security group for the cluster that allows access from the allowed networks.
D. Only allow access to networks that connect with the shared services network via VPN.
C A security group can grant access to traffic from the allowed networks via the CIDR range for each network. VPC peering and VPN are connectivity services and cannot control traffic for security. Amazon Redshift user accounts address authentication and authorization at the user level and have no control over network traffic.
Q4: A web application allows customers to upload orders to an S3 bucket. The resulting Amazon S3 events trigger a Lambda function that inserts a message to an SQS queue. A single EC2 instance reads messages from the queue, processes them, and stores them in an DynamoDB table partitioned by unique order ID. Next month traffic is expected to increase by a factor of 10 and a Solutions Architect is reviewing the architecture for possible scaling problems. Which component is MOST likely to need re-architecting to be able to scale to accommodate the new traffic?
A. Lambda function
B. SQS queue
C. EC2 instance
D. DynamoDB table
C. A single EC2 instance will not scale and is a single point of failure in the architecture. A much better solution would be to have EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group across 2 availability zones read messages from the queue. The other responses are all managed services that can be configured to scale or will scale automatically.
Q5: An application requires a highly available relational database with an initial storage capacity of 8 TB. The database will grow by 8 GB every day. To support expected traffic, at least eight read replicas will be required to handle database reads. Which option will meet these requirements?
A. DynamoDB
B. Amazon S3
C. Amazon Aurora
D. Amazon Redshift
C. Amazon Aurora is a relational database that will automatically scale to accommodate data growth. Amazon Redshift does not support read replicas and will not automatically scale. DynamoDB is a NoSQL service, not a relational database. Amazon S3 is object storage, not a relational database.
C. Divide your files system into multiple smaller file systems.
D. Provision higher IOPs for your EFS.
B. Amazon EFS now allows you to instantly provision the throughput required for your applications independent of the amount of data stored in your file system. This allows you to optimize throughput for your application’s performance needs.
Q7: If you are designing an application that requires fast (10 – 25Gbps), low-latency connections between EC2 instances, what EC2 feature should you use?
A. Snapshots
B. Instance store volumes
C. Placement groups
D. IOPS provisioned instances.
C. Placement groups are a clustering of EC2 instances in one Availability Zone with fast (up to 25Gbps) connections between them. This feature is used for applications that need extremely low-latency connections between instances.
Q8: A Solution Architect is designing an online shopping application running in a VPC on EC2 instances behind an ELB Application Load Balancer. The instances run in an Auto Scaling group across multiple Availability Zones. The application tier must read and write data to a customer managed database cluster. There should be no access to the database from the Internet, but the cluster must be able to obtain software patches from the Internet.
Which VPC design meets these requirements?
A. Public subnets for both the application tier and the database cluster
B. Public subnets for the application tier, and private subnets for the database cluster
C. Public subnets for the application tier and NAT Gateway, and private subnets for the database cluster
D. Public subnets for the application tier, and private subnets for the database cluster and NAT Gateway
Answer: C. The online application must be in public subnets to allow access from clients’ browsers. The database cluster must be in private subnets to meet the requirement that there be no access from the Internet. A NAT Gateway is required to give the database cluster the ability to download patches from the Internet. NAT Gateways must be deployed in public subnets.
Q9: What command should you run on a running instance if you want to view its user data (that is used at launch)?
A. curl http://254.169.254.169/latest/user-data
B. curl http://localhost/latest/meta-data/bootstrap
C. curl http://localhost/latest/user-data
D. curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/user-data
Answer: D. Retrieve Instance User Data To retrieve user data from within a running instance, use the following URI: http://169.254.169.254/latest/user-data
Q10: A company is developing a highly available web application using stateless web servers. Which services are suitable for storing session state data? (Select TWO.)
A. CloudWatch
B. DynamoDB
C. Elastic Load Balancing
D. ElastiCache
E. Storage Gateway
Answer: B. and D. Both DynamoDB and ElastiCache provide high performance storage of key-value pairs. CloudWatch and ELB are not storage services. Storage Gateway is a storage service, but it is a hybrid Storage service that enables on-premises applications to use cloud storage.
A stateful web service will keep track of the “state” of a client’s connection and data over several requests. So for example, the client might login, select a users account data, update their address, attach a photo, and change the status flag, then disconnect.
In a stateless web service, the server doesn’t keep any information from one request to the next. The client needs to do it’s work in a series of simple transactions, and the client has to keep track of what happens between requests. So in the above example, the client needs to do each operation separately: connect and update the address, disconnect. Connect and attach the photo, disconnect. Connect and change the status flag, disconnect.
A stateless web service is much simpler to implement, and can handle greater volume of clients.
Q11: From a security perspective, what is a principal?
A. An identity
B. An anonymous user
C. An authenticated user
D. A resource
E.
Answer: B. and C.
An anonymous user falls under the definition of a principal. A principal can be an anonymous user acting on a system. An authenticated user falls under the definition of a principal. A principal can be an authenticated user acting on a system.
Q12: What are the characteristics of a tiered application?
A. All three application layers are on the same instance
B. The presentation tier is on an isolated instance than the logic layer
C. None of the tiers can be cloned
D. The logic layer is on an isolated instance than the data layer
E. Additional machines can be added to help the application by implementing horizontal scaling
F. Incapable of horizontal scaling
Answer: B. D. and E.
In a tiered application, the presentation layer is separate from the logic layer; the logic layer is separate from the data layer. Since parts of the application are isolated, they can scale horizontally.
What are the 5 pillars of a well architected framework: 1. Operational Excellence The operational excellence pillar includes the ability to run and monitor systems to deliver business value and to continually improve supporting processes and procedures. You can find prescriptive guidance on implementation in the Operational Excellence Pillar whitepaper.
2. Security The security pillar includes the ability to protect information, systems, and assets while delivering business value through risk assessments and mitigation strategies. You can find prescriptive guidance on implementation in the Security Pillar whitepaper.
3. Reliability The reliability pillar includes the ability of a system to recover from infrastructure or service disruptions, dynamically acquire computing resources to meet demand, and mitigate disruptions such as misconfigurations or transient network issues. You can find prescriptive guidance on implementation in the Reliability Pillar whitepaper.
4. Performance Efficiency The performance efficiency pillar includes the ability to use computing resources efficiently to meet system requirements and to maintain that efficiency as demand changes and technologies evolve. You can find prescriptive guidance on implementation in the Performance Efficiency Pillar whitepaper.
5. Cost Optimization The cost optimization pillar includes the ability to avoid or eliminate unneeded cost or suboptimal resources. You can find prescriptive guidance on implementation in the Cost Optimization Pillar whitepaper. The AWS Well-Architected Framework provides architectural best practices across the five pillars for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective systems in the cloud. The framework provides a set of questions that allows you to review an existing or proposed architecture. It also provides a set of AWS best practices for each pillar. Using the Framework in your architecture helps you produce stable and efficient systems, which allows you to focus on functional requirements.
Other AWS Facts and Summaries and Questions/Answers Dump
The reality, of course, today is that if you come up with a great idea you don’t get to go quickly to a successful product. There’s a lot of undifferentiated heavy lifting that stands between your idea and that success. The kinds of things that I’m talking about when I say undifferentiated heavy lifting are things like these: figuring out which servers to buy, how many of them to buy, what time line to buy them.
Eventually you end up with heterogeneous hardware and you have to match that. You have to think about backup scenarios if you lose your data center or lose connectivity to a data center. Eventually you have to move facilities. There’s negotiations to be done. It’s a very complex set of activities that really is a big driver of ultimate success.
But they are undifferentiated from, it’s not the heart of, your idea. We call this muck. And it gets worse because what really happens is you don’t have to do this one time. You have to drive this loop. After you get your first version of your idea out into the marketplace, you’ve done all that undifferentiated heavy lifting, you find out that you have to cycle back. Change your idea. The winners are the ones that can cycle this loop the fastest.
On every cycle of this loop you have this undifferentiated heavy lifting, or muck, that you have to contend with. I believe that for most companies, and it’s certainly true at Amazon, that 70% of your time, energy, and dollars go into the undifferentiated heavy lifting and only 30% of your energy, time, and dollars gets to go into the core kernel of your idea.
I think what people are excited about is that they’re going to get a chance they see a future where they may be able to invert those two. Where they may be able to spend 70% of their time, energy and dollars on the differentiated part of what they’re doing.
Definition 1: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale cloud computing easier for developers.
Definition 2: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) forms a central part of Amazon.com’s cloud-computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), by allowing users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications.
AWS Ec2 Facts and summaries
Can users SSH to EC2 instances using their AWS user name and password?
No. User security credentials created with IAM are not supported for direct authentication to customer EC2 instances. Managing EC2 SSH credentials is the customer’s responsibility within the EC2 console.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.
What is the difference between using the local instance store and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) for the root device?
When you launch your Amazon EC2 instances you have the ability to store your root device data on Amazon EBS or the local instance store. By using Amazon EBS, data on the root device will persist independently from the lifetime of the instance. This enables you to stop and restart the instance at a subsequent time, which is similar to shutting down your laptop and restarting it when you need it again.
Alternatively, the local instance store only persists during the life of the instance. This is an inexpensive way to launch instances where data is not stored to the root device. For example, some customers use this option to run large web sites where each instance is a clone to handle web traffic.
How many instances can I run in Amazon EC2?
You are limited to running up to a total of 20 On-Demand instances across the instance family, purchasing 20 Reserved Instances, and requesting Spot Instances per your dynamic Spot limit per region.
How quickly can I scale my capacity both up and down?
Amazon EC2 provides a truly elastic computing environment. Amazon EC2 enables you to increase or decrease capacity within minutes, not hours or days. You can commission one, hundreds or even thousands of server instances simultaneously. When you need more instances, you simply call RunInstances, and Amazon EC2 will typically set up your new instances in a matter of minutes. Of course, because this is all controlled with web service APIs, your application can automatically scale itself up and down depending on its needs.
When dealing with session state in EC2-based applications using Elastic load balancers which option is generally thought of as the best practice for managing user sessions?
Having the ELB distribute traffic to all EC2 instances and then having the instance check a caching solution like ElastiCache running Redis or Memcached for session information
What is one key difference between an Amazon EBS-backed and an instance-store backed instance?
Amazon EBS-backed instances can be stopped and restarted without losing data
How is the AWS Ec2 service different than a plain hosting service?
Traditional hosting services generally provide a pre-configured resource for a fixed amount of time and at a predetermined cost. Amazon EC2 differs fundamentally in the flexibility, control and significant cost savings it offers developers, allowing them to treat Amazon EC2 as their own personal data center with the benefit of Amazon.com’s robust infrastructure.
When computing requirements unexpectedly change (up or down), Amazon EC2 can instantly respond, meaning that developers have the ability to control how many resources are in use at any given point in time. In contrast, traditional hosting services generally provide a fixed number of resources for a fixed amount of time, meaning that users have a limited ability to easily respond when their usage is rapidly changing, unpredictable, or is known to experience large peaks at various intervals.
Secondly, many hosting services don’t provide full control over the compute resources being provided. Using Amazon EC2, developers can choose not only to initiate or shut down instances at any time, they can completely customize the configuration of their instances to suit their needs – and change it at any time. Most hosting services cater more towards groups of users with similar system requirements, and so offer limited ability to change these.
Finally, with Amazon EC2 developers enjoy the benefit of paying only for their actual resource consumption – and at very low rates. Most hosting services require users to pay a fixed, up-front fee irrespective of their actual computing power used, and so users risk overbuying resources to compensate for the inability to quickly scale up resources within a short time frame.
What load balancing options does the Elastic Load Balancing service offer?
Elastic Load Balancing offers two types of load balancers that both feature high availability, automatic scaling, and robust security. These include the Classic Load Balancer that routes traffic based on either application or network level information, and the Application Load Balancer that routes traffic based on advanced application level information that includes the content of the request.
When should I use the Classic Load Balancer and when should I use the Application Load Balancer?
The Classic Load Balancer is ideal for simple load balancing of traffic across multiple EC2 instances, while the Application Load Balancer is ideal for applications needing advanced routing capabilities, microservices, and container-based architectures. Please visit Elastic Load Balancing for more information.
Can I get a history of all EC2 API calls made on my account for security analysis and operational troubleshooting purposes?
Yes. To receive a history of all EC2 API calls (including VPC and EBS) made on your account, you simply turn on CloudTrail in the AWS Management Console. For more information, visit the CloudTrail home page.
Can I access the metrics data for a terminated Amazon EC2 instance or a deleted Elastic Load Balancer?
Yes. Amazon CloudWatch stores metrics for terminated Amazon EC2 instances or deleted Elastic Load Balancers for 2 weeks.
Q0:
When dealing with session state in EC2-based applications using Elastic load balancers which option is generally thought of as the best practice for managing user sessions?
A. Having the ELB distribute traffic to all EC2 instances and then having the instance check a caching solution like ElastiCache running Redis or Memcached for session information
B. Permanently assigning users to specific instances and always routing their traffic to those instances
C. Using Application-generated cookies to tie a user session to a particular instance for the cookie duration
D. Using Elastic Load Balancer generated cookies to tie a user session to a particular instance
A.
Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached is a Memcached-compatible in-memory key-value store service that can be used as a cache or a data store. It delivers the performance, ease-of-use, and simplicity of Memcached. ElastiCache for Memcached is fully managed, scalable, and secure – making it an ideal candidate for use cases where frequently accessed data must be in-memory. It is a popular choice for use cases such as Web, Mobile Apps, Gaming, Ad-Tech, and E-Commerce.
Q2: You are attempting to SSH into an EC2 instance that is located in a public subnet. However, you are currently receiving a timeout error trying to connect. What could be a possible cause of this connection issue?
A. The security group associated with the EC2 instance has an inbound rule that allows SSH traffic, but does not have an outbound rule that allows SSH traffic.
B. The security group associated with the EC2 instance has an inbound rule that allows SSH traffic AND has an outbound rule that explicitly denies SSH traffic.
C. The security group associated with the EC2 instance has an inbound rule that allows SSH traffic AND the associated NACL has both an inbound and outbound rule that allows SSH traffic.
D. The security group associated with the EC2 instance does not have an inbound rule that allows SSH traffic AND the associated NACL does not have an outbound rule that allows SSH traffic.
D. Security groups are stateful, so you do NOT have to have an explicit outbound rule for return requests. However, NACLs are stateless so you MUST have an explicit outbound rule configured for return request.
Q4: What is one key difference between an Amazon EBS-backed and an instance-store backed instance?
A. Autoscaling requires using Amazon EBS-backed instances
B. Virtual Private Cloud requires EBS backed instances
C. Amazon EBS-backed instances can be stopped and restarted without losing data
D. Instance-store backed instances can be stopped and restarted without losing data
C. Instance-store backed images use “ephemeral” storage (temporary). The storage is only available during the life of an instance. Rebooting an instance will allow ephemeral data stay persistent. However, stopping and starting an instance will remove all ephemeral storage.
Q15: After having created a new Linux instance on Amazon EC2, and downloaded the .pem file (called Toto.pem) you try and SSH into your IP address (54.1.132.33) using the following command.
ssh -i my_key.pem ec2-user@52.2.222.22
However you receive the following error.
@@@@@@@@ WARNING: UNPROTECTED PRIVATE KEY FILE! @ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
What is the most probable reason for this and how can you fix it?
A. You do not have root access on your terminal and need to use the sudo option for this to work.
B. You do not have enough permissions to perform the operation.
C. Your key file is encrypted. You need to use the -u option for unencrypted not the -i option.
D. Your key file must not be publicly viewable for SSH to work. You need to modify your .pem file to limit permissions.
D. You need to run something like: chmod 400 my_key.pem
Q5: You have an EBS root device on /dev/sda1 on one of your EC2 instances. You are having trouble with this particular instance and you need to either Stop/Start, Reboot or Terminate the instance but you do NOT want to lose any data that you have stored on /dev/sda1. However, you are unsure if changing the instance state in any of the aforementioned ways will cause you to lose data stored on the EBS volume. Which of the below statements best describes the effect each change of instance state would have on the data you have stored on /dev/sda1?
A. Whether you stop/start, reboot or terminate the instance it does not matter because data on an EBS volume is not ephemeral and the data will not be lost regardless of what method is used.
B. If you stop/start the instance the data will not be lost. However if you either terminate or reboot the instance the data will be lost.
C. Whether you stop/start, reboot or terminate the instance it does not matter because data on an EBS volume is ephemeral and it will be lost no matter what method is used.
D. The data will be lost if you terminate the instance, however the data will remain on /dev/sda1 if you reboot or stop/start the instance because data on an EBS volume is not ephemeral.
D. The question states that an EBS-backed root device is mounted at /dev/sda1, and EBS volumes maintain information regardless of the instance state. If it was instance store, this would be a different answer.
Q6: EC2 instances are launched from Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). A given public AMI:
A. Can only be used to launch EC2 instances in the same AWS availability zone as the AMI is stored
B. Can only be used to launch EC2 instances in the same country as the AMI is stored
C. Can only be used to launch EC2 instances in the same AWS region as the AMI is stored
D. Can be used to launch EC2 instances in any AWS region
C. AMIs are only available in the region they are created. Even in the case of the AWS-provided AMIs, AWS has actually copied the AMIs for you to different regions. You cannot access an AMI from one region in another region. However, you can copy an AMI from one region to another
Q8: You are in charge of deploying an application that will be hosted on an EC2 Instance and sit behind an Elastic Load balancer. You have been requested to monitor the incoming connections to the Elastic Load Balancer. Which of the below options can suffice this requirement?
A. Use AWS CloudTrail with your load balancer
B. Enable access logs on the load balancer
C. Use a CloudWatch Logs Agent
D. Create a custom metric CloudWatch lter on your load balancer
Answer – B
Elastic Load Balancing provides access logs that capture detailed information about requests sent to your load balancer. Each log contains information such as the time the request was received, the client’s IP address, latencies, request paths, and server responses. You can use these access logs to analyze traffic patterns and troubleshoot issues.
Reference: Access Logs for Your Application Load Balancer
IAM is a framework of policies and technologies for ensuring that the proper people in an enterprise have the appropriate access to technology resources. IdM systems fall under the overarching umbrella of IT security and Data Management .
Definition 2:
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a web service that helps you securely control access to AWS resources. You use IAM to control who is authenticated (signed in) and authorized (has permissions) to use resources.
AWS IAM Facts and summaries
You can use AWS IAM to securely control individual and group access to your AWS resources. You can create and manage user identities (“IAM users”) and grant permissions for those IAM users to access your resources. You can also grant permissions for users outside of AWS ( federated users).
How do users call AWS services?
Users can make requests to AWS services using security credentials. Explicit permissions govern a user’s ability to call AWS services. By default, users have no ability to call service APIs on behalf of the account.
What kinds of security credentials can IAM users have?
IAM users can have any combination of credentials that AWS supports, such as an AWS access key, X.509 certificate, SSH key, password for web app logins, or an MFA device.
What is the access level for newly created regular users in AWS?
Default deny to all resources and actions
By default, all new AWS users lack ANY access to AWS resources with a default deny. That default deny doesn’t prevent an explicit allow to grant them access. Keep in mind that EXPLICT denys override explicit allows.
What is identity federation?
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) supports identity federation for delegated access to the AWS Management Console or AWS APIs. With identity federation, external identities are granted secure access to resources in your AWS account without having to create IAM users. These external identities can come from your corporate identity provider (such as Microsoft Active Directory or from the AWS Directory Service) or from a web identity provider (such as Amazon Cognito, Login with Amazon, Facebook, Google, or any OpenID Connect-compatible provider).
Does AWS IAM support SAML?
Yes, AWS supports the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0.
What SAML profiles does AWS support?
The AWS single sign-on (SSO) endpoint supports the IdP-initiated HTTP-POST binding WebSSO SAML Profile. This enables a federated user to sign in to the AWS Management Console using a SAML assertion. A SAML assertion can also be used to request temporary security credentials using the AssumeRoleWithSAML API. For more information, see About SAML 2.0-Based Federation.
Can a temporary security credential be revoked prior to its expiration?
No. When requesting temporary credentials, we recommend the following:
When creating temporary security credentials, set the expiration to a value that is appropriate for your application.
Because root account permissions cannot be restricted, use an IAM user and not the root account for creating temporary security credentials. You can revoke permissions of the IAM user that issued the original call to request it. This action almost immediately revokes privileges for all temporary security credentials issued by that IAM user
Can I reactivate or extend the expiration of temporary security credentials?
No. It is a good practice to actively check the expiration and request a new temporary security credential before the old one expires. This rotation process is automatically managed for you when temporary security credentials are used in roles for EC2 instances.
What does a policy look like?
The following policy grants access to add, update, and delete objects from a specific folder, example_folder, in a specific bucket, example_bucket.
What is the IAM policy simulator?
The IAM policy simulator is a tool to help you understand, test, and validate the effects of your access control policies.
What can the policy simulator be used for?
You can use the policy simulator in several ways. You can test policy changes to ensure they have the desired effect before committing them to production. You can validate existing policies attached to users, groups, and roles to verify and troubleshoot permissions. You can also use the policy simulator to understand how IAM policies and resource-based policies work together to grant or deny access to AWS resources.
Is there an authentication API to verify IAM user sign-ins?
No. There is no programmatic way to verify user sign-ins.
Can users SSH to EC2 instances using their AWS user name and password?
No. User security credentials created with IAM are not supported for direct authentication to customer EC2 instances. Managing EC2 SSH credentials is the customer’s responsibility within the EC2 console.
Are IAM actions logged for auditing purposes?
Yes. You can log IAM actions, STS actions, and AWS Management Console sign-ins by activating AWS CloudTrail. To learn more about AWS logging, see AWS CloudTrail.
What is AWS MFA?
AWS multi-factor authentication (AWS MFA) provides an extra level of security that you can apply to your AWS environment. You can enable AWS MFA for your AWS account and for individual AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) users you create under your account.
What problems does IAM solve?
IAM makes it easy to provide multiple users secure access to your AWS resources. IAM enables you to:
Manage IAM users and their access: You can create users in AWS’s identity management system, assign users individual security credentials (such as access keys, passwords, multi-factor authentication devices), or request temporary security credentials to provide users access to AWS services and resources. You can specify permissions to control which operations a user can perform.
Manage access for federated users: You can request security credentials with configurable expirations for users who you manage in your corporate directory, allowing you to provide your employees and applications secure access to resources in your AWS account without creating an IAM user account for them. You specify the permissions for these security credentials to control which operations a user can perform.
What is an IAM role?
An IAM role is an IAM entity that defines a set of permissions for making AWS service requests. IAM roles are not associated with a specific user or group. Instead, trusted entities assume roles, such as IAM users, applications, or AWS services such as EC2.
What problems do IAM roles solve?
IAM roles allow you to delegate access with defined permissions to trusted entities without having to share long-term access keys. You can use IAM roles to delegate access to IAM users managed within your account, to IAM users under a different AWS account, or to an AWS service such as EC2.
Q0: What are the main benefits of IAM groups? (Select two)
A. The ability to create custom permission policies.
B. Assigning IAM permission policies to more than one user at a time.
C. Easier user/policy management.
D. Allowing EC2 instances to gain access to S3.
B. and C.
An IAM group is a collection of IAM users. Groups let you specify permissions for multiple users, which can make it easier to manage the permissions for those users. For example, you could have a group called Admins and give that group the types of permissions that administrators typically need. Any user in that group automatically has the permissions that are assigned to the group. If a new user joins your organization and needs administrator privileges, you can assign the appropriate permissions by adding the user to that group. Similarly, if a person changes jobs in your organization, instead of editing that user’s permissions, you can remove him or her from the old groups and add him or her to the appropriate new groups.Reference: IAM Groups
Q1: You would like to use STS to allow end users to authenticate from third-party providers such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon. What is this type of authentication called?
A. Web Identity Federation
B. Enterprise Identity Federation
C. Cross-Account Access
D. Commercial Federation
A.
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) supports identity federation for delegated access to the AWS Management Console or AWS APIs. With identity federation, external identities are granted secure access to resources in your AWS account without having to create IAM users. These external identities can come from your corporate identity provider (such as Microsoft Active Directory or from the AWS Directory Service) or from a web identity provider (such as Amazon Cognito, Login with Amazon, Facebook, Google, or any OpenID Connect-compatible provider).
Q4: Your mobile application includes a photo-sharing service that is expecting tens of thousands of users at launch. You will leverage Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) for storage of the user Images, and you must decide how to authenticate and authorize your users for access to these images. You also need to manage the storage of these images. Which two of the following approaches should you use? Choose two answers from the options below
A. Create an Amazon S3 bucket per user, and use your application to generate the S3 URL for the appropriate content.
B. Use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) user accounts as your application-level user database, and offload the burden of authentication from your application code.
C. Authenticate your users at the application level, and use AWS Security Token Service (STS)to grant token-based authorization to S3 objects.
D. Authenticate your users at the application level, and send an SMS token message to the user. Create an Amazon S3 bucket with the same name as the SMS message token, and move the user’s objects to that bucket.
Answer- C
The AWS Security Token Service (STS) is a web service that enables you to request temporary, limited-privilege credentials for AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) users or for users that you authenticate (federated users). The token can then be used to grant access to the objects in S3.
You can then provides access to the objects based on the key values generated via the user id.
Q5: You’ve developed a Lambda function and are now in the process of debugging it. You add the necessary print statements in the code to assist in the debugging. You go to Cloudwatch logs , but you see no logs for the lambda function. Which of the following could be the underlying issue for this?
A. You’ve not enabled versioning for the Lambda function
B. The IAM Role assigned to the Lambda function does not have the necessary permission to create Logs
C. There is not enough memory assigned to the function
D. There is not enough time assigned to the function
Answer: B
“If your Lambda function code is executing, but you don’t see any log data being generated after several minutes, this could mean your execution role for the Lambda function did not grant permissions to write log data to CloudWatch Logs. For information about how to make sure that you have set up the execution role correctly to grant these permissions, see Manage Permissions: Using an IAM Role (Execution Role)”.
Q6: Your application must write to an SQS queue. Your corporate security policies require that AWS credentials are always encrypted and are rotated at least once a week.
How can you securely provide credentials that allow your application to write to the queue?
A. Have the application fetch an access key from an Amazon S3 bucket at run time.
B. Launch the application’s Amazon EC2 instance with an IAM role.
C. Encrypt an access key in the application source code.
D. Enroll the instance in an Active Directory domain and use AD authentication.
Answer: B.
IAM roles are based on temporary security tokens, so they are rotated automatically. Keys in the source code cannot be rotated (and are a very bad idea). It’s impossible to retrieve credentials from an S3 bucket if you don’t already have credentials for that bucket. Active Directory authorization will not grant access to AWS resources.
Reference: AWS IAM FAQs
Q65: A corporate web application is deployed within an Amazon VPC, and is connected to the corporate data center via IPSec VPN. The application must authenticate against the on-premise LDAP server. Once authenticated, logged-in users can only access an S3 keyspace specific to the user. Which of the solutions below meet these requirements? Choose two answers How would you authenticate to the application given these details? (Choose 2)
A. The application authenticates against LDAP, and retrieves the name of an IAM role associated with the user. The application then calls the IAM Security Token Service to assume that IAM Role. The application can use the temporary credentials to access the S3 keyspace.
B. Develop an identity broker which authenticates against LDAP, and then calls IAM Security Token Service to get IAM federated user credentials. The application calls the identity broker to get IAM federated user credentials with access to the appropriate S3 keyspace
C. Develop an identity broker which authenticates against IAM Security Token Service to assume an IAM Role to get temporary AWS security credentials. The application calls the identity broker to get AWS temporary security credentials with access to the app
D. The application authenticates against LDAP. The application then calls the IAM Security Service to login to IAM using the LDAP credentials. The application can use the IAM temporary credentials to access the appropriate S3 bucket.
Answer: A. and B.
The question clearly says “authenticate against LDAP”. Temporary credentials come from STS. Federated user credentials come from the identity broker.
Reference: IAM faqs
Q7:
A corporate web application is deployed within an Amazon VPC, and is connected to the corporate data center via IPSec VPN. The application must authenticate against the on-premise LDAP server. Once authenticated, logged-in users can only access an S3 keyspace specific to the user. Which of the solutions below meet these requirements? Choose two answers
How would you authenticate to the application given these details? (Choose 2)
A. The application authenticates against LDAP, and retrieves the name of an IAM role associated with the user. The application then calls the IAM Security Token Service to assume that IAM Role. The application can use the temporary credentials to access the S3 keyspace.
B. Develop an identity broker which authenticates against LDAP, and then calls IAM Security Token Service to get IAM federated user credentials. The application calls the identity broker to get IAM federated user credentials with access to the appropriate S3 keyspace
C. Develop an identity broker which authenticates against IAM Security Token Service to assume an IAM Role to get temporary AWS security credentials. The application calls the identity broker to get AWS temporary security credentials with access to the app
D. The application authenticates against LDAP. The application then calls the IAM Security Service to login to IAM using the LDAP credentials. The application can use the IAM temporary credentials to access the appropriate S3 bucket.
Answer: A. and B.
The question clearly says “authenticate against LDAP”. Temporary credentials come from STS. Federated user credentials come from the identity broker.
Reference: AWA STS Faqs
Definition 1:Serverless computing is a cloud-computing execution model in which the cloud provider runs the server, and dynamically manages the allocation of machine resources. Pricing is based on the actual amount of resources consumed by an application, rather than on pre-purchased units of capacity. It can be a form of utility computing. Definition 2: AWS Serverless is the native architecture of the cloud that enables you to shift more of your operational responsibilities to AWS, increasing your agility and innovation. Serverless allows you to build and run applications and services without thinking about servers. It eliminates infrastructure management tasks such as server or cluster provisioning, patching, operating system maintenance, and capacity provisioning.
AWS Serverless Facts and summaries
The AWS Serverless Application Model (AWS SAM) is a model to define serverless applications. AWS SAM is natively supported by AWS CloudFormation and provides a simplified way of defining the Amazon API Gateway APIs, AWS Lambda functions, and Amazon DynamoDB tables needed by your serverless application.
You can use AWS CodePipeline with the AWS Serverless Application Model to automate building, testing, and deploying serverless applications. AWS CodeBuild integrates with CodePipeline to provide automated builds. You can use AWS CodeDeploy to gradually roll out and test new Lambda function versions.
You can monitor and troubleshoot the performance of your serverless applications and AWS Lambda functions with AWS services and third-party tools. Amazon CloudWatch helps you see real-time reporting metrics and logs for your serverless applications. You can use AWS X-Ray to debug and trace your serverless applications and AWS Lambda.
The AWS Serverless Application Repository is a managed repository for serverless applications. It enables teams, organizations, and individual developers to store and share reusable applications, and easily assemble and deploy serverless architectures in powerful new ways. Using the Serverless Application Repository, you don’t need to clone, build, package, or publish source code to AWS before deploying it. Instead, you can use pre-built applications from the Serverless Application Repository in your serverless architectures, helping you and your teams reduce duplicated work, ensure organizational best practices, and get to market faster.
Anyone with an AWS account can publish a serverless application to the Serverless Application Repository. Applications can be privately shared with specific AWS accounts. Applications that are shared publicly include a link to the application’s source code so others can view what the application does and how it works.
What kinds of applications are available in the AWS Serverless Application Repository? The AWS Serverless Application Repository includes applications for Alexa Skills, chatbots, data processing, IoT, real time stream processing, web and mobile back-ends, social media trend analysis, image resizing, and more from publishers on AWS.
The AWS Serverless Application Repository enables developers to publish serverless applications developed in a GitHub repository. Using AWS CodePipeline to link a GitHub source with the AWS Serverless Application Repository can make the publishing process even easier, and the process can be set up in minutes.
What two arguments does a Python Lambda handler function require?
Event, Context
A Lambda deployment package contains Function code and libraries not included within the runtime environment
When referencing the remaining time left for a Lambda function to run within the function’s code you would use The context object.
Long-running memory-intensive workloads is LEAST suited to AWS Lambda
The maximum execution duration of your Lambda functions is Fifteen Minutes
Logs for Lambda functions are Stored in AWS CloudWatch
Docker Container Images are constructed using instructions in a file called Dockerfile
The ECS Task Agent Is responsible for starting and stopping tasks. It runs inside the EC2 instance and reports on information like running tasks and resource utilization
AWS ECR Stores Container Images.
Elastic Beanstalk is used to Deploy and scale web applications and services developed with a supported platform
When deploying a simple Python web application with Elastic Beanstalk which of the following AWS resources will be created and managed for you by Elastic Beanstalk?
An Elastic Load Balancer, an S3 Bucket, an Ec2 instance.
When using Elastic Beanstalk you can deploy your web applications by:
Configuring a git repository with Elastic Beanstalk so that changes will be detected and your application will be updated.
Uploading code files to the Elastic Beanstalk service
Q00: You have created a serverless application which converts text in to speech using a combination of S3, API Gateway, Lambda, Polly, DynamoDB and SNS. Your users complain that only some text is being converted, whereas longer amounts of text does not get converted. What could be the cause of this problem?
A. Polly has built in censorship, so if you try and send it text that is deemed offensive, it will not generate an MP3.
B. You’ve placed your DynamoDB table in a single availability zone, which is currently down, causing an outage.
C. Your lambda function needs a longer execution time. You should check how long is needed in the fringe cases and increase the timeout inside the function to slightly longer than that.
D. AWS X-ray service is interfering with the application and should be disabled.
Q3: You have launched a new web application on AWS using API Gateway, Lambda and S3. Someone post a thread to reddit about your application and it starts to go viral.
Your start receiving 100000 requests every second and you notice that most requests are similar.
Your web application begins to struggle. What can you do to optimize performance of your application?
A. Enable API Gateway Accelerator
B. Enable API Gateway caching to cache frequent requests.
C. Change your route53 allias record to point to AWS Neptune and then configure Neptune to filter your API requests to genuine requests only.
D. Migrate your API Gateway to an Network Load Balancer and enable session stickiness for all sessions.
Q4: Which of the following services does X-ray integrate with? (Choose 3)
A. Elastic Load Balancer
B. Lambda
C. S3
D. API Gateway
Answer: A. B. and D.
AWS X-Ray helps developers analyze and debug production, distributed applications, such as those built using a microservices architecture. With X-Ray, you can understand how your application and its underlying services are performing to identify and troubleshoot the root cause of performance issues and errors.
You can use X-Ray with applications running on EC2, ECS, Lambda, and Elastic Beanstalk. In addition, the X-Ray SDK automatically captures metadata for API calls made to AWS services using the AWS SDK. In addition, the X-Ray SDK provides add-ons for MySQL and PostgreSQL drivers.
Q5: You are a developer for a busy real estate company and you want to enable other real estate agents to the
ability to show properties on your books, but skinned so that it looks like their own website. You decide the most efficient way to do this is to
expose your API to the public. The project works well, however one of your competitors starts abusing this, sending your API tens of thousands
of requests per second. This generates a HTTP 429 error. Each agent connects to your API using individual API Keys. What actions can you take to stop this behaviour?
A. Use AWS Shield Advanced API protection to block the requests.
B. Deploy multiple API Gateways and give the agent access to another API Gateway.
C. Place an AWS Web Application Firewall in front of API gateway and filter requests.
D. Throttle the agents API access using the individual API Keys
Answer: D.
Throttling ensures that API traffic is controlled to help your backend services maintain performance and availability.
How can I protect my backend systems and applications from traffic spikes?
Amazon API Gateway provides throttling at multiple levels including global and by service call. Throttling limits can be set for standard rates and bursts. For example, API owners can set a rate limit of 1,000 requests per second for a specific method in their REST APIs, and also configure Amazon API Gateway to handle a burst of 2,000 requests per second for a few seconds. Amazon API Gateway tracks the number of requests per second. Any requests over the limit will receive a 429 HTTP response. The client SDKs generated by Amazon API Gateway retry calls automatically when met with this response.
Q6: You are developing a new application using serverless infrastructure and are using services such as S3, DynamoDB, Lambda, API Gateway, CloudFront, CloudFormation and Polly.
You deploy your application to production and your end users begin complaining about receiving a HTTP 429 error. What could be the cause of the error?
A. You enabled API throttling for a rate limit of 1000 requests per second while in development and now that you have deployed to production your API Gateway is being throttled.
B. Your cloudFormation stack is not valid and is failling to deploy properly which is causing a HTTP 429 error.
C. Your lambda function does not have sufficient permissions to read to DynamoDB and this is generating a HTTP 429 error.
D. You have an S3 bucket policy which is preventing lambda from being able to write tyo your bucket, generating a HTTP 429 error.
Answer: A.
Amazon API Gateway provides throttling at multiple levels including global and by service call. Throttling limits can be set for standard rates and bursts. For example, API owners can set a rate limit of 1,000 requests per second for a specific method in their REST APIs, and also configure Amazon API Gateway to handle a burst of 2,000 requests per second for a few seconds. Amazon API Gateway tracks the number of requests per second. Any requests over the limit will receive a 429 HTTP response. The client SDKs generated by Amazon API Gateway retry calls automatically when met with this response.
Q7: What is the format of structured notification messages sent by Amazon SNS?
A. An XML object containing MessageId, UnsubscribeURL, Subject, Message and other
values
B. An JSON object containing MessageId, DuplicateFlag, Message and other values
C. An XML object containing MessageId, DuplicateFlag, Message and other values
D. An JSON object containing MessageId, unsubscribeURL, Subject, Message and other
values
Answer: D.
The notification message sent by Amazon SNS for deliveries over HTTP, HTTPS, Email-JSON and SQS transport protocols will consist of a simple JSON object, which will include the following information: MessageId: A Universally Unique Identifier, unique for each notification published.Reference: Format of structured notification messages sent by Amazon SNS
Definition 1: The AWS Developer is responsible for designing, deploying, and developing cloud applications on AWS platform
Definition 2: The AWS Developer Tools is a set of services designed to enable developers and IT operations professionals practicing DevOps to rapidly and safely deliver software.
AWS Developer and Deployment Theory Facts and summaries
Continuous Integration is about integrating or merging the code changes frequently, at least once per day. It enables multiple devs to work on the same application.
Continuous delivery is all about automating the build, test, and deployment functions.
Continuous Deployment fully automates the entire release process, code is deployed into Production as soon as it has successfully passed through the release pipeline.
AWS CodePipeline is a continuous integration/Continuous delivery service:
It automates your end-to-end software release process based on user defines workflow
It can be configured to automatically trigger your pipeline as soon as a change is detected in your source code repository
It integrates with other services from AWS like CodeBuild and CodeDeploy, as well as third party custom plug-ins.
AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed build service. It can build source code, run tests and produce software packages based on commands that you define yourself.
Dy default the buildspec.yml defines the build commands and settings used by CodeBuild to run your build.
AWS CodeDeploy is a fully managed automated deployment service and can be used as part of a Continuous Delivery or Continuous Deployment process.
There are 2 types of deployment approach:
In-place or Rolling update- you stop the application on each host and deploy the latest code. EC2 and on premise systems only. To roll back, you must re-deploy the previous version of the application.
Blue/Green : New instances are provisioned and the new application is deployed to these new instances. Traffic is routed to the new instances according to your own schedule. Supported for EC2, on-premise systems and Lambda functions. Rollback is easy, just route the traffic back to the original instances. Blue is active deployment, green is new release.
Docker allows you to package your software into Containers which you can run in Elastic Container Service (ECS)
A docker Container includes everything the software needs to run including code, libraries, runtime and environment variables etc..
A special file called Dockerfile is used to specify the instructions needed to assemble your Docker image.
Once built, Docker images can be stored in Elastic Container Registry (ECR) and ECS can then use the image to launch Docker Containers.
AWS CodeCommit is based on Git. It provides centralized repositories for all your code, binaries, images, and libraries.
CodeCommit tracks and manages code changes. It maintains version history.
CodeCommit manages updates from multiple sources and enables collaboration.
To support CORS, API resource needs to implement an OPTIONS method that can respond to the OPTIONS preflight request with following headers:
Access-Control-Allow-Headers
Access-Control-Allow-Origin
Access-Control-Allow-Methods
You have a legacy application that works via XML messages. You need to place the application behind the API gateway in order for customers to make API calls. Which of the following would you need to configure? You will need to work with the Request and Response Data mapping.
Your application currently points to several Lambda functions in AWS. A change is being made to one of the Lambda functions. You need to ensure that application traffic is shifted slowly from one Lambda function to the other. Which of the following steps would you carry out?
Create an ALIAS with the –routing-config parameter
Update the ALIAS with the –routing-config parameter
By default, an alias points to a single Lambda function version. When the alias is updated to point to a different function version, incoming request traffic in turn instantly points to the updated version. This exposes that alias to any potential instabilities introduced by the new version. To minimize this impact, you can implement the routing-config parameter of the Lambda alias that allows you to point to two different versions of the Lambda function and dictate what percentage of incoming traffic is sent to each version.
AWS CodeDeploy: The AppSpec file defines all the parameters needed for the deployment e.g. location of application files and pre/post deployment validation tests to run.
For Ec2 / On Premise systems, the appspec.yml file must be placed in the root directory of your revision (the same folder that contains your application code). Written in YAML.
For Lambda and ECS deployment, the AppSpec file can be YAML or JSON
Visual workflows are automatically created when working with which Step Functions
API Gateway stages store configuration for deployment. An API Gateway Stage refers to A snapshot of your API
AWS SWF Services SWF guarantees delivery order of messages/tasks
Blue/Green Deployments with CodeDeploy on AWS Lambda can happen in multiple ways. Which of these is a potential option? Linear, All at once, Canary
X-Ray Filter Expressions allow you to search through request information using characteristics like URL Paths, Trace ID, Annotations
S3 has eventual consistency for overwrite PUTS and DELETES.
What can you do to ensure the most recent version of your Lambda functions is in CodeDeploy?
Specify the version to be deployed in AppSpec file.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codedeploy/latest/userguide/application-specification-files.htmlAppSpec Files on an Amazon ECS Compute Platform
If your application uses the Amazon ECS compute platform, the AppSpec file can be formatted with either YAML or JSON. It can also be typed directly into an editor in the console. The AppSpec file is used to specify:
The name of the Amazon ECS service and the container name and port used to direct traffic to the new task set. The functions to be used as validation tests. You can run validation Lambda functions after deployment lifecycle events. For more information, see AppSpec ‘hooks’ Section for an Amazon ECS Deployment, AppSpec File Structure for Amazon ECS Deployments , and AppSpec File Example for an Amazon ECS Deployment .
Q2: Which of the following practices allows multiple developers working on the same application to merge code changes frequently, without impacting each other and enables the identification of bugs early on in the release process?
Q5: You want to receive an email whenever a user pushes code to CodeCommit repository, how can you configure this?
A. Create a new SNS topic and configure it to poll for CodeCommit eveents. Ask all users to subscribe to the topic to receive notifications
B. Configure a CloudWatch Events rule to send a message to SES which will trigger an email to be sent whenever a user pushes code to the repository.
C. Configure Notifications in the console, this will create a CloudWatch events rule to send a notification to a SNS topic which will trigger an email to be sent to the user.
D. Configure a CloudWatch Events rule to send a message to SQS which will trigger an email to be sent whenever a user pushes code to the repository.
Q8: You are deploying a number of EC2 and RDS instances using CloudFormation. Which section of the CloudFormation template
would you use to define these?
A. Transforms
B. Outputs
C. Resources
D. Instances
Answer: C.
The Resources section defines your resources you are provisioning. Outputs is used to output user defines data relating to the resources you have built and can also used as input to another CloudFormation stack. Transforms is used to reference code located in S3.
Q9: Which AWS service can be used to fully automate your entire release process?
A. CodeDeploy
B. CodePipeline
C. CodeCommit
D. CodeBuild
Answer: B.
AWS CodePipeline is a fully managed continuous delivery service that helps you automate your release pipelines for fast and reliable application and infrastructure updates
Q10: You want to use the output of your CloudFormation stack as input to another CloudFormation stack. Which sections of the CloudFormation template would you use to help you configure this?
A. Outputs
B. Transforms
C. Resources
D. Exports
Answer: A.
Outputs is used to output user defines data relating to the resources you have built and can also used as input to another CloudFormation stack.
Q11: You have some code located in an S3 bucket that you want to reference in your CloudFormation template. Which section of the template can you use to define this?
A. Inputs
B. Resources
C. Transforms
D. Files
Answer: C.
Transforms is used to reference code located in S3 and also specifying the use of the Serverless Application Model (SAM)
for Lambda deployments.
Transform:
Name: ‘AWS::Include’
Parameters:
Location: ‘s3://MyAmazonS3BucketName/MyFileName.yaml’
Q12: You are deploying an application to a number of Ec2 instances using CodeDeploy. What is the name of the file
used to specify source files and lifecycle hooks?
Q13: Which of the following approaches allows you to re-use pieces of CloudFormation code in multiple templates, for common use cases like provisioning a load balancer or web server?
A. Share the code using an EBS volume
B. Copy and paste the code into the template each time you need to use it
C. Use a cloudformation nested stack
D. Store the code you want to re-use in an AMI and reference the AMI from within your CloudFormation template.
Q15:You need to setup a RESTful API service in AWS that would be serviced via the following url https://democompany.com/customers Which of the following combination of services can be used for development and hosting of the RESTful service? Choose 2 answers from the options below
Q16: As a developer, you have created a Lambda function that is used to work with a bucket in Amazon S3. The Lambda function is not working as expected. You need to debug the issue and understand what’s the underlying issue. How can you accomplish this in an easily understandable way?
A. Use AWS Cloudwatch metrics
B. Put logging statements in your code
C. Set the Lambda function debugging level to verbose
D. Use AWS Cloudtrail logs
Answer: B
You can insert logging statements into your code to help you validate that your code is working as expected. Lambda automatically integrates with Amazon CloudWatch Logs and pushes all logs from your code to a CloudWatch Logs group associated with a Lambda function (/aws/lambda/).
Reference: Using Amazon CloudWatch
Q17: You have a lambda function that is processed asynchronously. You need a way to check and debug issues if the function fails? How could you accomplish this?
A. Use AWS Cloudwatch metrics
B. Assign a dead letter queue
C. Congure SNS notications
D. Use AWS Cloudtrail logs
Answer: B
Any Lambda function invoked asynchronously is retried twice before the event is discarded. If the retries fail and you’re unsure why, use Dead Letter Queues (DLQ) to direct unprocessed events to an Amazon SQS queue or an Amazon SNS topic to analyze the failure.
Reference: AWS Lambda Function Dead Letter Queues
Q18: You are developing an application that is going to make use of Amazon Kinesis. Due to the high throughput , you decide to have multiple shards for the streams. Which of the following is TRUE when it comes to processing data across multiple shards?
A. You cannot guarantee the order of data across multiple shards. Its possible only within a shard
B. Order of data is possible across all shards in a streams
C. Order of data is not possible at all in Kinesis streams
D. You need to use Kinesis firehose to guarantee the order of data
Answer: A
Kinesis Data Streams lets you order records and read and replay records in the same order to many Kinesis Data Streams applications. To enable write ordering, Kinesis Data Streams expects you to call the PutRecord API to write serially to a shard while using the sequenceNumberForOrdering parameter. Setting this parameter guarantees strictly increasing sequence numbers for puts from the same client and to the same partition key.
Option A is correct as it cannot guarantee the ordering of records across multiple shards.
Reference: How to perform ordered data replication between applications by using Amazon DynamoDB Streams
Q19: You’ve developed a Lambda function and are now in the process of debugging it. You add the necessary print statements in the code to assist in the debugging. You go to Cloudwatch logs , but you see no logs for the lambda function. Which of the following could be the underlying issue for this?
A. You’ve not enabled versioning for the Lambda function
B. The IAM Role assigned to the Lambda function does not have the necessary permission to create Logs
C. There is not enough memory assigned to the function
D. There is not enough time assigned to the function
Answer: B
“If your Lambda function code is executing, but you don’t see any log data being generated after several minutes, this could mean your execution role for the Lambda function did not grant permissions to write log data to CloudWatch Logs. For information about how to make sure that you have set up the execution role correctly to grant these permissions, see Manage Permissions: Using an IAM Role (Execution Role)”.
Q20: Your application is developed to pick up metrics from several servers and push them off to Cloudwatch. At times , the application gets client 429 errors. Which of the following can be done from the programming side to resolve such errors?
A. Use the AWS CLI instead of the SDK to push the metrics
B. Ensure that all metrics have a timestamp before sending them across
C. Use exponential backoff in your request
D. Enable encryption for the requests
Answer: C.
The main reason for such errors is that throttling is occurring when many requests are sent via API calls. The best way to mitigate this is to stagger the rate at which you make the API calls.
In addition to simple retries, each AWS SDK implements exponential backoff algorithm for better flow control. The idea behind exponential backoff is to use progressively longer waits between retries for consecutive error responses. You should implement a maximum delay interval, as well as a maximum number of retries. The maximum delay interval and maximum number of retries are not necessarily fixed values and should be set based on the operation being performed, as well as other local factors, such as network latency.
Reference: Error Retries and Exponential Backoff in AWS
Q21: You have been instructed to use the CodePipeline service for the CI/CD automation in your company. Due to security reasons , the resources that would be part of the deployment are placed in another account. Which of the following steps need to be carried out to accomplish this deployment? Choose 2 answers from the options given below
A. Dene a customer master key in KMS
B. Create a reference Code Pipeline instance in the other account
C. Add a cross account role
D. Embed the access keys in the codepipeline process
Answer: A. and C.
You might want to create a pipeline that uses resources created or managed by another AWS account. For example, you might want to use one account for your pipeline and another for your AWS CodeDeploy resources. To do so, you must create a AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) key to use, add the key to the pipeline, and set up account policies and roles to enable cross-account access.
Reference: Create a Pipeline in CodePipeline That Uses Resources from Another AWS Account
Q22: You are planning on deploying an application to the worker role in Elastic Beanstalk. Moreover, this worker application is going to run the periodic tasks. Which of the following is a must have as part of the deployment?
A. An appspec.yaml file
B. A cron.yaml file
C. A cron.cong file
D. An appspec.json file
Answer: B.
Create an Application Source Bundle
When you use the AWS Elastic Beanstalk console to deploy a new application or an application version, you’ll need to upload a source bundle. Your source bundle must meet the following requirements:
Consist of a single ZIP file or WAR file (you can include multiple WAR files inside your ZIP file)
Not exceed 512 MB
Not include a parent folder or top-level directory (subdirectories are fine)
If you want to deploy a worker application that processes periodic background tasks, your application source bundle must also include a cron.yaml file. For more information, see Periodic Tasks.
Q23: An application needs to make use of an SQS queue for working with messages. An SQS queue has been created with the default settings. The application needs 60 seconds to process each message. Which of the following step need to be carried out by the application.
A. Change the VisibilityTimeout for each message and then delete the message after processing is completed
B. Delete the message and change the visibility timeout.
C. Process the message , change the visibility timeout. Delete the message
D. Process the message and delete the message
Answer: A
If the SQS queue is created with the default settings , then the default visibility timeout is 30 seconds. And since the application needs more time for processing , you first need to change the timeout and delete the message after it is processed.
Reference: Amazon SQS Visibility Timeout
Q24: AWS CodeDeploy deployment fails to start & generate following error code, ”HEALTH_CONSTRAINTS_INVALID”, Which of the following can be used to eliminate this error?
A. Make sure the minimum number of healthy instances is equal to the total number of instances in the deployment group.
B. Increase the number of healthy instances required during deployment
C. Reduce number of healthy instances required during deployment
D. Make sure the number of healthy instances is equal to the specified minimum number of healthy instances.
Answer: C
AWS CodeDeploy generates ”HEALTH_CONSTRAINTS_INVALID” error, when a minimum number of healthy instances defined in deployment group are not available during deployment. To mitigate this error, make sure required number of healthy instances are available during deployments.
Reference: Error Codes for AWS CodeDeploy
B. A specific snapshot of all of your API’s settings, resources, and methods
C. A specific snapshot of your API’s resources
D. A specific snapshot of your API’s resources and methods
Answer: D.
AWS API Gateway Deployments are a snapshot of all the resources and methods of your API and their configuration.
Reference: Deploying a REST API in Amazon API Gateway
Q29: A SWF workflow task or task execution can live up to how long?
A. 1 Year
B. 14 days
C. 24 hours
D. 3 days
Answer: A. 1 Year
Each workflow execution can run for a maximum of 1 year. Each workflow execution history can grow up to 25,000 events. If your use case requires you to go beyond these limits, you can use features Amazon SWF provides to continue executions and structure your applications using child workflow executions.
Reference: Amazon SWF FAQs
Q30: With AWS Step Functions, all the work in your state machine is done by tasks. These tasks performs work by using what types of things? (Choose the best 3 answers)
A. An AWS Lambda Function Integration
B. Passing parameters to API actions of other services
A. A decider program that is written in the language of the developer’s choice
B. A visual workflow created in the SWF visual workflow editor
C. A JSON-defined state machine that contains states within it to select the next step to take
D. SWF outsources all decisions to human deciders through the AWS Mechanical Turk service.
Answer: A.
SWF allows the developer to write their own application logic to make decisions and determine how to evaluate incoming data.
Q: What programming conveniences does Amazon SWF provide to write applications? Like other AWS services, Amazon SWF provides a core SDK for the web service APIs. Additionally, Amazon SWF offers an SDK called the AWS Flow Framework that enables you to develop Amazon SWF-based applications quickly and easily. AWS Flow Framework abstracts the details of task-level coordination with familiar programming constructs. While running your program, the framework makes calls to Amazon SWF, tracks your program’s execution state using the execution history kept by Amazon SWF, and invokes the relevant portions of your code at the right times. By offering an intuitive programming framework to access Amazon SWF, AWS Flow Framework enables developers to write entire applications as asynchronous interactions structured in a workflow. For more details, please see What is the AWS Flow Framework?
Reference:
Q34: CodePipeline pipelines are workflows that deal with stages, actions, transitions, and artifacts. Which of the following statements is true about these concepts?
A. Stages contain at least two actions
B. Artifacts are never modified or iterated on when used inside of CodePipeline
C. Stages contain at least one action
D. Actions will have a deployment artifact as either an input an output or both
Q35: When deploying a simple Python web application with Elastic Beanstalk which of the following AWS resources will be created and managed for you by Elastic Beanstalk?
A. An Elastic Load Balancer
B. An S3 Bucket
C. A Lambda Function
D. An EC2 instance
Answer: A. B. and D.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk uses proven AWS features and services, such as Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, Amazon S3, and Amazon SNS, to create an environment that runs your application. The current version of AWS Elastic Beanstalk uses the Amazon Linux AMI or the Windows Server 2012 R2 AMI.
Reference: AWS Elastic Beanstalk FAQs
A. Deploy and scale web applications and services developed with a supported platform
B. Deploy and scale serverless applications
C. Deploy and scale applications based purely on EC2 instances
D. Manage the deployment of all AWS infrastructure resources of your AWS applications
Answer: A.
Who should use AWS Elastic Beanstalk?
Those who want to deploy and manage their applications within minutes in the AWS Cloud. You don’t need experience with cloud computing to get started. AWS Elastic Beanstalk supports Java, .NET, PHP, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, and Docker web applications.
Reference:
Q41: How does using ElastiCache help to improve database performance?
A. It can store petabytes of data
B. It provides faster internet speeds
C. It can store the results of frequent or highly-taxing queries
D. It uses read replicas
Answer: C.
With ElastiCache, customers get all of the benefits of a high-performance, in-memory cache with less of the administrative burden involved in launching and managing a distributed cache. The service makes setup, scaling, and cluster failure handling much simpler than in a self-managed cache deployment.
Reference: Amazon ElastiCache
Q42: Which of the following best describes the Lazy Loading caching strategy?
A. Every time the underlying database is written to or updated the cache is updated with the new information.
B. Every miss to the cache is counted and when a specific number is reached a full copy of the database is migrated to the cache
C. A specific amount of time is set before the data in the cache is marked as expired. After expiration, a request for expired data will be made through to the backing database.
D. Data is added to the cache when a cache miss occurs (when there is no data in the cache and the request must go to the database for that data)
Answer: D.
Amazon ElastiCache is an in-memory key/value store that sits between your application and the data store (database) that it accesses. Whenever your application requests data, it first makes the request to the ElastiCache cache. If the data exists in the cache and is current, ElastiCache returns the data to your application. If the data does not exist in the cache, or the data in the cache has expired, your application requests the data from your data store which returns the data to your application. Your application then writes the data received from the store to the cache so it can be more quickly retrieved next time it is requested.
Reference: Lazy Loading
Q45: You have just set up a push notification service to send a message to an app installed on a device with the Apple Push Notification Service. It seems to work fine. You now want to send a message to an app installed on devices for multiple platforms, those being the Apple Push Notification Service(APNS) and Google Cloud Messaging for Android (GCM). What do you need to do first for this to be successful?
A. Request Credentials from Mobile Platforms, so that each device has the correct access control policies to access the SNS publisher
B. Create a Platform Application Object which will connect all of the mobile devices with your app to the correct SNS topic.
C. Request a Token from Mobile Platforms, so that each device has the correct access control policies to access the SNS publisher.
D. Get a set of credentials in order to be able to connect to the push notification service you are trying to setup.
Answer: D.
To use Amazon SNS mobile push notifications, you need to establish a connection with a supported push notification service. This connection is established using a set of credentials.
Reference: Add Device Tokens or Registration IDs
Q46: SNS message can be sent to different kinds of endpoints. Which of these is NOT currently a supported endpoint?
A. Slack Messages
B. SMS (text message)
C. HTTP/HTTPS
D. AWS Lambda
Answer: A.
Slack messages are not directly integrated with SNS, though theoretically, you could write a service to push messages to slack from SNS.
Reference:
Q47: Company B provides an online image recognition service and utilizes SQS to decouple system components for scalability. The SQS consumers poll the imaging queue as often as possible to keep end-to-end throughput as high as possible. However, Company B is realizing that polling in tight loops is burning CPU cycles and increasing costs with empty responses. How can Company B reduce the number empty responses?
A. Set the imaging queue VisibilityTimeout attribute to 20 seconds
B. Set the imaging queue MessageRetentionPeriod attribute to 20 seconds
C. Set the imaging queue ReceiveMessageWaitTimeSeconds Attribute to 20 seconds
D. Set the DelaySeconds parameter of a message to 20 seconds
Answer: C.
Enabling long polling reduces the amount of false and empty responses from SQS service. It also reduces the number of calls that need to be made to a queue by staying connected to the queue until all messages have been received or until timeout. In order to enable long polling the ReceiveMessageWaitTimeSeconds attribute needs to be set to a number greater than 0. If it is set to 0 then short polling is enabled.
Reference: Amazon SQS Long Polling
Q48: Which of the following statements about SQS standard queues are true?
A. Message order can be indeterminate – you’re not guaranteed to get messages in the same order they were sent in
B. Messages will be delivered exactly once and messages will be delivered in First in, First out order
C. Messages will be delivered exactly once and message delivery order is indeterminate
D. Messages can be delivered one or more times
Answer: A. and D.
A standard queue makes a best effort to preserve the order of messages, but more than one copy of a message might be delivered out of order. If your system requires that order be preserved, we recommend using a FIFO (First-In-First-Out) queue or adding sequencing information in each message so you can reorder the messages when they’re received.
Reference: Amazon SQS Standard Queues
Q49: Which of the following is true if long polling is enabled?
A. If long polling is enabled, then each poll only polls a subset of SQS servers; in order for all messages to be received, polling must continuously occur
B. The reader will listen to the queue until timeout
C. Increases costs because each request lasts longer
D. The reader will listen to the queue until a message is available or until timeout
Q50: When dealing with session state in EC2-based applications using Elastic load balancers which option is generally thought of as the best practice for managing user sessions?
A. Having the ELB distribute traffic to all EC2 instances and then having the instance check a caching solution like ElastiCache running Redis or Memcached for session information
B. Permanently assigning users to specific instances and always routing their traffic to those instances
C. Using Application-generated cookies to tie a user session to a particular instance for the cookie duration
D. Using Elastic Load Balancer generated cookies to tie a user session to a particular instance
Q52: Your application must write to an SQS queue. Your corporate security policies require that AWS credentials are always encrypted and are rotated at least once a week.
How can you securely provide credentials that allow your application to write to the queue?
A. Have the application fetch an access key from an Amazon S3 bucket at run time.
B. Launch the application’s Amazon EC2 instance with an IAM role.
C. Encrypt an access key in the application source code.
D. Enroll the instance in an Active Directory domain and use AD authentication.
Answer: B.
IAM roles are based on temporary security tokens, so they are rotated automatically. Keys in the source code cannot be rotated (and are a very bad idea). It’s impossible to retrieve credentials from an S3 bucket if you don’t already have credentials for that bucket. Active Directory authorization will not grant access to AWS resources.
Reference: AWS IAM FAQs
Q53: Your web application reads an item from your DynamoDB table, changes an attribute, and then writes the item back to the table. You need to ensure that one process doesn’t overwrite a simultaneous change from another process.
How can you ensure concurrency?
A. Implement optimistic concurrency by using a conditional write.
B. Implement pessimistic concurrency by using a conditional write.
C. Implement optimistic concurrency by locking the item upon read.
D. Implement pessimistic concurrency by locking the item upon read.
Answer: A.
Optimistic concurrency depends on checking a value upon save to ensure that it has not changed. Pessimistic concurrency prevents a value from changing by locking the item or row in the database. DynamoDB does not support item locking, and conditional writes are perfect for implementing optimistic concurrency.
Reference: Optimistic Locking With Version Number
Answer: C.
The intrinsic function Fn::FindInMap returns the value corresponding to keys in a two-level map that is declared in the Mappings section.
You can use the Fn::FindInMap function to return a named value based on a specified key. The following example template contains an Amazon EC2 resource whose ImageId property is assigned by the FindInMap function. The FindInMap function specifies key as the region where the stack is created (using the AWS::Region pseudo parameter) and HVM64 as the name of the value to map to.
Reference:
Q56: Your application triggers events that must be delivered to all your partners. The exact partner list is constantly changing: some partners run a highly available endpoint, and other partners’ endpoints are online only a few hours each night. Your application is mission-critical, and communication with your partners must not introduce delay in its operation. A delay in delivering the event to one partner cannot delay delivery to other partners.
What is an appropriate way to code this?
A. Implement an Amazon SWF task to deliver the message to each partner. Initiate an Amazon SWF workflow execution.
B. Send the event as an Amazon SNS message. Instruct your partners to create an HTTP. Subscribe their HTTP endpoint to the Amazon SNS topic.
C. Create one SQS queue per partner. Iterate through the queues and write the event to each one. Partners retrieve messages from their queue.
D. Send the event as an Amazon SNS message. Create one SQS queue per partner that subscribes to the Amazon SNS topic. Partners retrieve messages from their queue.
Answer: D.
There are two challenges here: the command must be “fanned out” to a variable pool of partners, and your app must be decoupled from the partners because they are not highly available.
Sending the command as an SNS message achieves the fan-out via its publication/subscribe model, and using an SQS queue for each partner decouples your app from the partners. Writing the message to each queue directly would cause more latency for your app and would require your app to monitor which partners were active. It would be difficult to write an Amazon SWF workflow for a rapidly changing set of partners.
Q57: You have a three-tier web application (web, app, and data) in a single Amazon VPC. The web and app tiers each span two Availability Zones, are in separate subnets, and sit behind ELB Classic Load Balancers. The data tier is a Multi-AZ Amazon RDS MySQL database instance in database subnets.
When you call the database tier from your app tier instances, you receive a timeout error. What could be causing this?
A. The IAM role associated with the app tier instances does not have rights to the MySQL database.
B. The security group for the Amazon RDS instance does not allow traffic on port 3306 from the app
instances.
C. The Amazon RDS database instance does not have a public IP address.
D. There is no route defined between the app tier and the database tier in the Amazon VPC.
Answer: B.
Security groups block all network traffic by default, so if a group is not correctly configured, it can lead to a timeout error. MySQL security, not IAM, controls MySQL security. All subnets in an Amazon VPC have routes to all other subnets. Internal traffic within an Amazon VPC does not require public IP addresses.
Q58: What type of block cipher does Amazon S3 offer for server side encryption?
A. RC5
B. Blowfish
C. Triple DES
D. Advanced Encryption Standard
Answer: D
Amazon S3 server-side encryption uses one of the strongest block ciphers available, 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-256), to encrypt your data.
Q59: You have written an application that uses the Elastic Load Balancing service to spread
traffic to several web servers Your users complain that they are sometimes forced to login
again in the middle of using your application, after they have already togged in. This is not
behaviour you have designed. What is a possible solution to prevent this happening?
A. Use instance memory to save session state.
B. Use instance storage to save session state.
C. Use EBS to save session state
D. Use ElastiCache to save session state.
E. Use Glacier to save session slate.
Answer: D.
You can cache a variety of objects using the service, from the content in persistent data stores (such as Amazon RDS, DynamoDB, or self-managed databases hosted on EC2) to dynamically generated web pages (with Nginx for example), or transient session data that may not require a persistent backing store. You can also use it to implement high-frequency counters to deploy admission control in high volume web applications.
Q60: You are writing to a DynamoDB table and receive the following exception:”
ProvisionedThroughputExceededException”. though according to your Cloudwatch metrics
for the table, you are not exceeding your provisioned throughput. What could be an
explanation for this?
A. You haven’t provisioned enough DynamoDB storage instances
B. You’re exceeding your capacity on a particular Range Key
C. You’re exceeding your capacity on a particular Hash Key
D. You’re exceeding your capacity on a particular Sort Key
E. You haven’t configured DynamoDB Auto Scaling triggers
Answer: C.
The primary key that uniquely identifies each item in a DynamoDB table can be simple (a partition key only) or composite (a partition key combined with a sort key).
Generally speaking, you should design your application for uniform activity across all logical partition keys in the Table and its secondary indexes.
You can determine the access patterns that your application requires, and estimate the total read capacity units and write capacity units that each table and secondary Index requires.
As traffic starts to flow, DynamoDB automatically supports your access patterns using the throughput you have provisioned, as long as the traffic against a given partition key does not exceed 3000 read capacity units or 1000 write capacity units.
Q61: Which DynamoDB limits can be raised by contacting AWS support?
A. The number of hash keys per account
B. The maximum storage used per account
C. The number of tables per account
D. The number of local secondary indexes per account
E. The number of provisioned throughput units per account
Answer: C. and E.
For any AWS account, there is an initial limit of 256 tables per region.
AWS places some default limits on the throughput you can provision.
These are the limits unless you request a higher amount.
To request a service limit increase see https://aws.amazon.com/support.Reference: Limits in DynamoDB
Q62: AWS CodeBuild allows you to compile your source code, run unit tests, and produce deployment artifacts by:
A. Allowing you to provide an Amazon Machine Image to take these actions within
B. Allowing you to select an Amazon Machine Image and provide a User Data bootstrapping script to prepare an instance to take these actions within
C. Allowing you to provide a container image to take these actions within
D. Allowing you to select from pre-configured environments to take these actions within
Answer: C. and D.
You can provide your own custom container image to build your deployment artifacts.
You never actually pass a specific AMI to CodeBuild. Though you can provide a custom docker image which you could basically ‘bootstrap’ for the purposes of your build.
Reference: AWS CodeBuild Faqs
Q63: Which of the following will not cause a CloudFormation stack deployment to rollback?
A. The template contains invalid JSON syntax
B. An AMI specified in the template exists in a different region than the one in which the stack is being deployed.
C. A subnet specified in the template does not exist
D. The template specifies an instance-store backed AMI and an incompatible EC2 instance type.
Answer: A.
Invalid JSON syntax will cause an error message during template validation. Until the syntax is fixed, the template will not be able to deploy resources, so there will not be a need to or opportunity to rollback.
Reference: AWS CloudFormatio Faqs
Q64: Your team is using CodeDeploy to deploy an application which uses secure parameters that are stored in the AWS System Mangers Parameter Store. What two options below must be completed so CodeDeploy can deploy the application?
A. Use ssm get-parameters with –with-decryption option
B. Add permissions using AWS access keys
C. Add permissions using AWS IAM role
D. Use ssm get-parameters with –with-no-decryption option
Q65: A corporate web application is deployed within an Amazon VPC, and is connected to the corporate data center via IPSec VPN. The application must authenticate against the on-premise LDAP server. Once authenticated, logged-in users can only access an S3 keyspace specific to the user. Which of the solutions below meet these requirements? Choose two answers How would you authenticate to the application given these details? (Choose 2)
A. The application authenticates against LDAP, and retrieves the name of an IAM role associated with the user. The application then calls the IAM Security Token Service to assume that IAM Role. The application can use the temporary credentials to access the S3 keyspace.
B. Develop an identity broker which authenticates against LDAP, and then calls IAM Security Token Service to get IAM federated user credentials. The application calls the identity broker to get IAM federated user credentials with access to the appropriate S3 keyspace
C. Develop an identity broker which authenticates against IAM Security Token Service to assume an IAM Role to get temporary AWS security credentials. The application calls the identity broker to get AWS temporary security credentials with access to the app
D. The application authenticates against LDAP. The application then calls the IAM Security Service to login to IAM using the LDAP credentials. The application can use the IAM temporary credentials to access the appropriate S3 bucket.
Answer: A. and B.
The question clearly says “authenticate against LDAP”. Temporary credentials come from STS. Federated user credentials come from the identity broker.
Reference: IAM faqs
Q66:
A corporate web application is deployed within an Amazon VPC, and is connected to the corporate data center via IPSec VPN. The application must authenticate against the on-premise LDAP server. Once authenticated, logged-in users can only access an S3 keyspace specific to the user. Which of the solutions below meet these requirements? Choose two answers
How would you authenticate to the application given these details? (Choose 2)
A. The application authenticates against LDAP, and retrieves the name of an IAM role associated with the user. The application then calls the IAM Security Token Service to assume that IAM Role. The application can use the temporary credentials to access the S3 keyspace.
B. Develop an identity broker which authenticates against LDAP, and then calls IAM Security Token Service to get IAM federated user credentials. The application calls the identity broker to get IAM federated user credentials with access to the appropriate S3 keyspace
C. Develop an identity broker which authenticates against IAM Security Token Service to assume an IAM Role to get temporary AWS security credentials. The application calls the identity broker to get AWS temporary security credentials with access to the app
D. The application authenticates against LDAP. The application then calls the IAM Security Service to login to IAM using the LDAP credentials. The application can use the IAM temporary credentials to access the appropriate S3 bucket.
Answer: A. and B.
The question clearly says “authenticate against LDAP”. Temporary credentials come from STS. Federated user credentials come from the identity broker.
Reference: AWA STS Faqs
Q67: When users are signing in to your application using Cognito, what do you need to do to make sure if the user has compromised credentials, they must enter a new password?
A. Create a user pool in Cognito
B. Block use for “Compromised credential” in the Basic security section
C. Block use for “Compromised credential” in the Advanced security section
D. Use secure remote password
Answer: A. and C.
Amazon Cognito can detect if a user’s credentials (user name and password) have been compromised elsewhere. This can happen when users reuse credentials at more than one site, or when they use passwords that are easy to guess.
From the Advanced security page in the Amazon Cognito console, you can choose whether to allow, or block the user if compromised credentials are detected. Blocking requires users to choose another password. Choosing Allow publishes all attempted uses of compromised credentials to Amazon CloudWatch. For more information, see Viewing Advanced Security Metrics.
You can also choose whether Amazon Cognito checks for compromised credentials during sign-in, sign-up, and password changes.
Note Currently, Amazon Cognito doesn’t check for compromised credentials for sign-in operations with Secure Remote Password (SRP) flow, which doesn’t send the password during sign-in. Sign-ins that use the AdminInitiateAuth API with ADMIN_NO_SRP_AUTH flow and the InitiateAuth API with USER_PASSWORD_AUTH flow are checked for compromised credentials.
Q68: You work in a large enterprise that is currently evaluating options to migrate your 27 GB Subversion code base. Which of the following options is the best choice for your organization?
A. AWS CodeHost
B. AWS CodeCommit
C. AWS CodeStart
D. None of these
Answer: D.
None of these. While CodeCommit is a good option for git reponsitories it is not able to host Subversion source control.
Q69: You are on a development team and you need to migrate your Spring Application over to AWS. Your team is looking to build, modify, and test new versions of the application. What AWS services could help you migrate your app?
A. Elastic Beanstalk
B. SQS
C. Ec2
D. AWS CodeDeploy
Answer: A. C. and D.
Amazon EC2 can be used to deploy various applications to your AWS Infrastructure.
AWS CodeDeploy is a deployment service that automates application deployments to Amazon EC2 instances, on-premises instances, or serverless Lambda functions.
Q70:
You are a developer responsible for managing a high volume API running in your company’s datacenter. You have been asked to implement a similar API, but one that has potentially higher volume. And you must do it in the most cost effective way, using as few services and components as possible. The API stores and fetches data from a key value store. Which services could you utilize in AWS?
A. DynamoDB
B. Lambda
C. API Gateway
D. EC2
Answer: A. and C.
NoSQL databases like DynamoDB are designed for key value usage. DynamoDB can also handle incredible volumes and is cost effective. AWS API Gateway makes it easy for developers to create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs.
Q72:
AWS X-Ray was recently implemented inside of a service that you work on. Several weeks later, after a new marketing push, that service started seeing a large spike in traffic and you’ve been tasked with investigating a few issues that have started coming up but when you review the X-Ray data you can’t find enough information to draw conclusions so you decide to:
A. Start passing in the X-Amzn-Trace-Id: True HTTP header from your upstream requests
B. Refactor the service to include additional calls to the X-Ray API using an AWS SDK
C. Update the sampling algorithm to increase the sample rate and instrument X-Ray to collect more pertinent information
D. Update your application to use the custom API Gateway TRACE method to send in data
Answer: C.
This is a good way to solve the problem – by customizing the sampling so that you can get more relevant information.
Q75: Which of the following is the right sequence that gets called in CodeDeploy when you use Lambda hooks in an EC2/On-Premise Deployment?
A. Before Install-AfterInstall-Validate Service-Application Start
B. Before Install-After-Install-Application Stop-Application Start
C. Before Install-Application Stop-Validate Service-Application Start
D. Application Stop-Before Install-After Install-Application Start
Answer: D.
In an in-place deployment, including the rollback of an in-place deployment, event hooks are run in the following order:
Note An AWS Lambda hook is one Lambda function specified with a string on a new line after the name of the lifecycle event. Each hook is executed once per deployment. Following are descriptions of the lifecycle events where you can run a hook during an Amazon ECS deployment.
BeforeInstall – Use to run tasks before the replacement task set is created. One target group is associated with the original task set. If an optional test listener is specified, it is associated with the original task set. A rollback is not possible at this point. AfterInstall – Use to run tasks after the replacement task set is created and one of the target groups is associated with it. If an optional test listener is specified, it is associated with the original task set. The results of a hook function at this lifecycle event can trigger a rollback. AfterAllowTestTraffic – Use to run tasks after the test listener serves traffic to the replacement task set. The results of a hook function at this point can trigger a rollback. BeforeAllowTraffic – Use to run tasks after the second target group is associated with the replacement task set, but before traffic is shifted to the replacement task set. The results of a hook function at this lifecycle event can trigger a rollback. AfterAllowTraffic – Use to run tasks after the second target group serves traffic to the replacement task set. The results of a hook function at this lifecycle event can trigger a rollback. Run Order of Hooks in an Amazon ECS Deployment
In an Amazon ECS deployment, event hooks run in the following order:
For in-place deployments, the six hooks related to blocking and allowing traffic apply only if you specify a Classic Load Balancer, Application Load Balancer, or Network Load Balancer from Elastic Load Balancing in the deployment group.Note The Start, DownloadBundle, Install, and End events in the deployment cannot be scripted, which is why they appear in gray in this diagram. However, you can edit the ‘files’ section of the AppSpec file to specify what’s installed during the Install event.
Q76:
Describe the process of registering a mobile device with SNS push notification service using GCM.
A. Receive Registration ID and token for each mobile device. Then, register the mobile application with Amazon SNS, and pass the GCM token credentials to Amazon SNS
B. Pass device token to SNS to create mobile subscription endpoint for each mobile device, then request the device token from each mobile device. SNS then communicates on your behalf to the GCM service
C. None of these are correct
D. Submit GCM notification credentials to Amazon SNS, then receive the Registration ID for each mobile device. After that, pass the device token to SNS, and SNS then creates a mobile subscription endpoint for each device and communicates with the GCM service on your behalf
Answer: D.
When you first register an app and mobile device with a notification service, such as Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) and Google Cloud Messaging for Android (GCM), device tokens or registration IDs are returned from the notification service. When you add the device tokens or registration IDs to Amazon SNS, they are used with the PlatformApplicationArn API to create an endpoint for the app and device. When Amazon SNS creates the endpoint, an EndpointArn is returned. The EndpointArn is how Amazon SNS knows which app and mobile device to send the notification message to.
Q77:
You run an ad-supported photo sharing website using S3 to serve photos to visitors of your site. At some point you find out that other sites have been linking to the photos on your site, causing loss to your business. What is an effective method to mitigate this?
A. Store photos on an EBS volume of the web server.
B. Block the IPs of the offending websites in Security Groups.
C. Remove public read access and use signed URLs with expiry dates.
D. Use CloudFront distributions for static content.
Answer: C.
This solves the issue, but does require you to modify your website. Your website already uses S3, so it doesn’t require a lot of changes. See the docs for details: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/ShareObjectPreSignedURL.html
CloudFront on its own doesn’t prevent unauthorized access and requires you to add a whole new layer to your stack (which may make sense anyway). You can serve private content, but you’d have to use signed URLs or similar mechanism. Here are the docs: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/PrivateContent.html
Q78: How can you control access to the API Gateway in your environment?
A. Cognito User Pools
B. Lambda Authorizers
C. API Methods
D. API Stages
Answer: A. and B.
Access to a REST API Using Amazon Cognito User Pools as Authorizer
As an alternative to using IAM roles and policies or Lambda authorizers (formerly known as custom authorizers), you can use an Amazon Cognito user pool to control who can access your API in Amazon API Gateway.
To use an Amazon Cognito user pool with your API, you must first create an authorizer of the COGNITO_USER_POOLS type and then configure an API method to use that authorizer. After the API is deployed, the client must first sign the user in to the user pool, obtain an identity or access token for the user, and then call the API method with one of the tokens, which are typically set to the request’s Authorization header. The API call succeeds only if the required token is supplied and the supplied token is valid, otherwise, the client isn’t authorized to make the call because the client did not have credentials that could be authorized.
The identity token is used to authorize API calls based on identity claims of the signed-in user. The access token is used to authorize API calls based on the custom scopes of specified access-protected resources. For more information, see Using Tokens with User Pools and Resource Server and Custom Scopes.
Q80: Company B provides an online image recognition service and utilizes SQS to decouple system components for scalability. The SQS consumers poll the imaging queue as often as possible to keep end-to-end throughput as high as possible. However, Company B is realizing that polling in tight loops is burning CPU cycles and increasing costs with empty responses. How can Company B reduce the number of empty responses?
A. Set the imaging queue MessageRetentionPeriod attribute to 20 seconds.
B. Set the imaging queue ReceiveMessageWaitTimeSeconds attribute to 20 seconds.
C. Set the imaging queue VisibilityTimeout attribute to 20 seconds.
D. Set the DelaySeconds parameter of a message to 20 seconds.
Answer: B.
ReceiveMessageWaitTimeSeconds, when set to greater than zero, enables long polling. Long polling allows the Amazon SQS service to wait until a message is available in the queue before sending a response. Short polling continuously pools a queue and can have false positives. Enabling long polling reduces the number of poll requests, false positives, and empty responses.
Reference: AWS SQS Long Polling
81: You’re using CloudFormation templates to build out staging environments. What section of the CloudFormation would you edit in order to allow the user to specify the PEM key-name at start time?
A. Resources Section
B. Parameters Section
C. Mappings Section
D. Declaration Section
Answer:B.
Parameters property type in CloudFormation allows you to accept user input when starting the CloudFormation template. It allows you to reference the user input as variable throughout your CloudFormation template. Other examples might include asking the user starting the template to provide Domain admin passwords, instance size, pem key, region, and other dynamic options.
Q82: You are writing an AWS CloudFormation template and you want to assign values to properties that will not be available until runtime. You know that you can use intrinsic functions to do this but are unsure as to which part of the template they can be used in. Which of the following is correct in describing how you can currently use intrinsic functions in an AWS CloudFormation template?
A. You can use intrinsic functions in any part of a template, except AWSTemplateFormatVersion and Description
B. You can use intrinsic functions in any part of a template.
C. You can use intrinsic functions only in the resource properties part of a template.
D. You can only use intrinsic functions in specific parts of a template. You can use intrinsic functions in resource properties, metadata attributes, and update policy attributes.
Answer: D.
You can use intrinsic functions only in specific parts of a template. Currently, you can use intrinsic functions in resource properties, outputs, metadata attributes, and update policy attributes. You can also use intrinsic functions to conditionally create stack resources.Reference: AWS Intrinsic Functions
Definition 1:Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed proprietary NoSQL database service that supports key-value and document data structures and is offered by Amazon.com as part of the Amazon Web Services portfolio. DynamoDB exposes a similar data model to and derives its name from Dynamo, but has a different underlying implementation. Dynamo had a multi-master design requiring the client to resolve version conflicts and DynamoDB uses synchronous replication across multiple datacenters for high durability and availability.
Definition 2:DynamoDB is a fast and flexible non-relational database service for any scale. DynamoDB enables customers to offload the administrative burdens of operating and scaling distributed databases to AWS so that they don’t have to worry about hardware provisioning, setup and configuration, throughput capacity planning, replication, software patching, or cluster scaling.
AWS DynamoDB Facts and Summaries
Amazon DynamoDB is a low-latency NoSQL database.
DynamoDB consists of Tables, Items, and Attributes
DynamoDb supports both document and key-value data models
DynamoDB Supported documents formats are JSON, HTML, XML
DynamoDB has 2 types of Primary Keys: Partition Key and combination of Partition Key + Sort Key (Composite Key)
DynamoDB has 2 consistency models: Strongly Consistent / Eventually Consistent
DynamoDB Access is controlled using IAM policies.
DynamoDB has fine grained access control using IAM Condition parameter dynamodb:LeadingKeys to allow users to access only the items where the partition key vakue matches their user ID.
DynamoDB Indexes enable fast queries on specific data columns
DynamoDB indexes give you a different view of your data based on alternative Partition / Sort Keys.
DynamoDB Local Secondary indexes must be created when you create your table, they have same partition Key as your table, and they have a different Sort Key.
DynamoDB Global Secondary Index Can be created at any time: at table creation or after. They have a different partition Key as your table and a different sort key as your table.
A DynamoDB query operation finds items in a table using only the primary Key attribute: You provide the Primary Key name and a distinct value to search for.
A DynamoDB Scan operation examines every item in the table. By default, it return data attributes.
DynamoDB Query operation is generally more efficient than a Scan.
With DynamoDB, you can reduce the impact of a query or scan by setting a smaller page size which uses fewer read operations.
To optimize DynamoDB performance, isolate scan operations to specific tables and segregate them from your mission-critical traffic.
To optimize DynamoDB performance, try Parallel scans rather than the default sequential scan.
To optimize DynamoDB performance: Avoid using scan operations if you can: design tables in a way that you can use Query, Get, or BatchGetItems APIs.
When you scan your table in Amazon DynamoDB, you should follow the DynamoDB best practices for avoiding sudden bursts of read activity.
DynamoDb Provisioned Throughput is measured in Capacity Units.
1 Write Capacity Unit = 1 x 1KB Write per second.
1 Read Capacity Unit = 1 x 4KB Strongly Consistent Read Or 2 x 4KB Eventually Consistent Reads per second. Eventual consistent reads give us the maximum performance with the read operation.
What is the maximum throughput that can be provisioned for a single DynamoDB table?
DynamoDB is designed to scale without limits. However, if you want to exceed throughput rates of 10,000 write capacity units or 10,000 read capacity units for an individual table, you must Ccontact AWS to increase it.
If you want to provision more than 20,000 write capacity units or 20,000 read capacity units from a single subscriber account, you must first contact AWS to request a limit increase.
Dynamo Db Performance: DAX is a DynamoDB-compatible caching service that enables you to benefit from fast in-memory performance for demanding applications.
As an in-memory cache, DAX reduces the response times of eventually-consistent read workloads by an order of magnitude, from single-digit milliseconds to microseconds
DAX improves response times for Eventually Consistent reads only.
With DAX, you point your API calls to the DAX cluster instead of your table.
If the item you are querying is on the cache, DAX will return it; otherwise, it will perform and Eventually Consistent GetItem operation to your DynamoDB table.
DAX reduces operational and application complexity by providing a managed service that is API compatible with Amazon DynamoDB, and thus requires only minimal functional changes to use with an existing application.
DAX is not suitable for write-intensive applications or applications that require Strongly Consistent reads.
For read-heavy or bursty workloads, DAX provides increased throughput and potential operational cost savings by reducing the need to over-provision read capacity units. This is especially beneficial for applications that require repeated reads for individual keys.
Dynamo Db Performance: ElastiCache
In-memory cache sits between your application and database
2 different caching strategies: Lazy loading and Write Through: Lazy loading only caches the data when it is requested
Elasticache Node failures are not fatal, just lots of cache misses
Avoid stale data by implementing a TTL.
Write-Through strategy writes data into cache whenever there is a change to the database. Data is never stale
Write-Through penalty: Each write involves a write to the cache. Elasticache node failure means that data is missing until added or updated in the database.
Elasticache is wasted resources if most of the data is never used.
Time To Live (TTL) for DynamoDB allows you to define when items in a table expire so that they can be automatically deleted from the database. TTL is provided at no extra cost as a way to reduce storage usage and reduce the cost of storing irrelevant data without using provisioned throughput. With TTL enabled on a table, you can set a timestamp for deletion on a per-item basis, allowing you to limit storage usage to only those records that are relevant.
DynamoDB Security: DynamoDB uses the CMK to generate and encrypt a unique data key for the table, known as the table key. With DynamoDB, AWS Owned, or AWS Managed CMK can be used to generate & encrypt keys. AWS Owned CMK is free of charge while AWS Managed CMK is chargeable. Customer managed CMK’s are not supported with encryption at rest.
Amazon DynamoDB offers fully managed encryption at rest. DynamoDB encryption at rest provides enhanced security by encrypting your data at rest using an AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) managed encryption key for DynamoDB. This functionality eliminates the operational burden and complexity involved in protecting sensitive data.
DynamoDB is a alternative solution which can be used for storage of session management. The latency of access to data is less , hence this can be used as a data store for session management
DynamoDB Streams Use Cases and Design Patterns:
How do you set up a relationship across multiple tables in which, based on the value of an item from one table, you update the item in a second table?
How do you trigger an event based on a particular transaction?
How do you audit or archive transactions?
How do you replicate data across multiple tables (similar to that of materialized views/streams/replication in relational data stores)?
As a NoSQL database, DynamoDB is not designed to support transactions. Although client-side libraries are available to mimic the transaction capabilities, they are not scalable and cost-effective. For example, the Java Transaction Library for DynamoDB creates 7N+4 additional writes for every write operation. This is partly because the library holds metadata to manage the transactions to ensure that it’s consistent and can be rolled back before commit.
You can use DynamoDB Streams to address all these use cases. DynamoDB Streams is a powerful service that you can combine with other AWS services to solve many similar problems. When enabled, DynamoDB Streams captures a time-ordered sequence of item-level modifications in a DynamoDB table and durably stores the information for up to 24 hours. Applications can access a series of stream records, which contain an item change, from a DynamoDB stream in near real time.
AWS maintains separate endpoints for DynamoDB and DynamoDB Streams. To work with database tables and indexes, your application must access a DynamoDB endpoint. To read and process DynamoDB Streams records, your application must access a DynamoDB Streams endpoint in the same Region
20 global secondary indexes are allowed per table? (by default)
What is one key difference between a global secondary index and a local secondary index? A local secondary index must have the same partition key as the main table
How many tables can an AWS account have per region? 256
How many secondary indexes (global and local combined) are allowed per table? (by default): 25 You can define up to 5 local secondary indexes and 20 global secondary indexes per table (by default) – for a total of 25.
How can you increase your DynamoDB table limit in a region? By contacting AWS and requesting a limit increase
For any AWS account, there is an initial limit of 256 tables per region.
The minimum length of a partition key value is 1 byte. The maximum length is 2048 bytes.
The minimum length of a sort key value is 1 byte. The maximum length is 1024 bytes.
For tables with local secondary indexes, there is a 10 GB size limit per partition key value. A table with local secondary indexes can store any number of items, as long as the total size for any one partition key value does not exceed 10 GB.
The following diagram shows a local secondary index named LastPostIndex. Note that the partition key is the same as that of the Thread table, but the sort key is LastPostDateTime. AWS DynamoDB secondary indexes example
Q0: What should the Developer enable on the DynamoDB table to optimize performance and minimize costs?
A. Amazon DynamoDB auto scaling
B. Amazon DynamoDB cross-region replication
C. Amazon DynamoDB Streams
D. Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator
D. DAX is a DynamoDB-compatible caching service that enables you to benefit from fast in-memory performance for demanding applications. DAX addresses three core scenarios:
As an in-memory cache, DAX reduces the response times of eventually-consistent read workloads by an order of magnitude, from single-digit milliseconds to microseconds.
DAX reduces operational and application complexity by providing a managed service that is API-compatible with Amazon DynamoDB, and thus requires only minimal functional changes to use with an existing application.
For read-heavy or bursty workloads, DAX provides increased throughput and potential operational cost savings by reducing the need to over-provision read capacity units. This is especially beneficial for applications that require repeated reads for individual keys.
Q2: A security system monitors 600 cameras, saving image metadata every 1 minute to an Amazon DynamoDb table. Each sample involves 1kb of data, and the data writes are evenly distributed over time. How much write throughput is required for the target table?
A. 6000
B. 10
C. 3600
D. 600
B. When you mention the write capacity of a table in Dynamo DB, you mention it as the number of 1KB writes per second. So in the above question, since the write is happening every minute, we need to divide the value of 600 by 60, to get the number of KB writes per second. This gives a value of 10.
You can specify the Write capacity in the Capacity tab of the DynamoDB table.
Q3: You are developing an application that will interact with a DynamoDB table. The table is going to take in a lot of read and write operations. Which of the following would be the ideal partition key for the DynamoDB table to ensure ideal performance?
A. CustomerID
B. CustomerName
C. Location
D. Age
Answer- A
Use high-cardinality attributes. These are attributes that have distinct values for each item, like e-mailid, employee_no, customerid, sessionid, orderid, and so on..
Use composite attributes. Try to combine more than one attribute to form a unique key.
Reference: Choosing the right DynamoDB Partition Key
Q4: A DynamoDB table is set with a Read Throughput capacity of 5 RCU. Which of the following read configuration will provide us the maximum read throughput?
A. Read capacity set to 5 for 4KB reads of data at strong consistency
B. Read capacity set to 5 for 4KB reads of data at eventual consistency
C. Read capacity set to 15 for 1KB reads of data at strong consistency
D. Read capacity set to 5 for 1KB reads of data at eventual consistency
Answer: B.
The calculation of throughput capacity for option B would be:
Read capacity(5) * Amount of data(4) = 20.
Since its required at eventual consistency , we can double the read throughput to 20*2=40
Q5: Your team is developing a solution that will make use of DynamoDB tables. Due to the nature of the application, the data is needed across a couple of regions across the world. Which of the following would help reduce the latency of requests to DynamoDB from different regions?
A. Enable Multi-AZ for the DynamoDB table
B. Enable global tables for DynamoDB
C. Enable Indexes for the table
D. Increase the read and write throughput for the tablez
Answer: B
Amazon DynamoDB global tables provide a fully managed solution for deploying a multi-region, multimaster database, without having to build and maintain your own replication solution. When you create a global table, you specify the AWS regions where you want the table to be available. DynamoDB performs all of the necessary tasks to create identical tables in these regions, and propagate ongoing data changes to all of them.
Reference: Global Tables
Q6: An application is currently accessing a DynamoDB table. Currently the tables queries are performing well. Changes have been made to the application and now the performance of the application is starting to degrade. After looking at the changes , you see that the queries are making use of an attribute which is not the partition key? Which of the following would be the adequate change to make to resolve the issue?
A. Add an index for the DynamoDB table
B. Change all the queries to ensure they use the partition key
C. Enable global tables for DynamoDB
D. Change the read capacity on the table
Answer: A
Amazon DynamoDB provides fast access to items in a table by specifying primary key values. However, many applications might benefit from having one or more secondary (or alternate) keys available, to allow efficient access to data with attributes other than the primary key. To address this, you can create one or more secondary indexes on a table, and issue Query or Scan requests against these indexes.
A secondary index is a data structure that contains a subset of attributes from a table, along with an alternate key to support Query operations. You can retrieve data from the index using a Query, in much the same way as you use Query with a table. A table can have multiple secondary indexes, which gives your applications access to many different query patterns.
Q7: Company B has created an e-commerce site using DynamoDB and is designing a products table that includes items purchased and the users who purchased the item.
When creating a primary key on a table which of the following would be the best attribute for the partition key? Select the BEST possible answer.
A. None of these are correct.
B. user_id where there are many users to few products
C. category_id where there are few categories to many products
D. product_id where there are few products to many users
Answer: B.
When designing tables it is important for the data to be distributed evenly across the entire table. It is best practice for performance to set your primary key where there are many primary keys to few rows. An example would be many users to few products. An example of bad design would be a primary key of product_id where there are few products but many users.
When designing tables it is important for the data to be distributed evenly across the entire table. It is best practice for performance to set your primary key where there are many primary keys to few rows. An example would be many users to few products. An example of bad design would be a primary key of product_id where there are few products but many users.
Reference: Partition Keys and Sort Keys
Q8: Which API call can be used to retrieve up to 100 items at a time or 16 MB of data from a DynamoDB table?
A. BatchItem
B. GetItem
C. BatchGetItem
D. ChunkGetItem
Answer: C. BatchGetItem
The BatchGetItem operation returns the attributes of one or more items from one or more tables. You identify requested items by primary key.
A single operation can retrieve up to 16 MB of data, which can contain as many as 100 items. BatchGetItem will return a partial result if the response size limit is exceeded, the table’s provisioned throughput is exceeded, or an internal processing failure occurs. If a partial result is returned, the operation returns a value for UnprocessedKeys. You can use this value to retry the operation starting with the next item to get.Reference: API-Specific Limits
Q9: Which DynamoDB limits can be raised by contacting AWS support?
A. The number of hash keys per account
B. The maximum storage used per account
C. The number of tables per account
D. The number of local secondary indexes per account
E. The number of provisioned throughput units per account
Answer: C. and E.
For any AWS account, there is an initial limit of 256 tables per region.
AWS places some default limits on the throughput you can provision.
These are the limits unless you request a higher amount.
To request a service limit increase see https://aws.amazon.com/support.
Q10: Which approach below provides the least impact to provisioned throughput on the “Product”
table?
A. Create an “Images” DynamoDB table to store the Image with a foreign key constraint to
the “Product” table
B. Add an image data type to the “Product” table to store the images in binary format
C. Serialize the image and store it in multiple DynamoDB tables
D. Store the images in Amazon S3 and add an S3 URL pointer to the “Product” table item
for each image
Answer: D.
Amazon DynamoDB currently limits the size of each item that you store in a table (see Limits in DynamoDB). If your application needs to store more data in an item than the DynamoDB size limit permits, you can try compressing one or more large attributes, or you can store them as an object in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and store the Amazon S3 object identifier in your DynamoDB item.
Compressing large attribute values can let them fit within item limits in DynamoDB and reduce your storage costs. Compression algorithms such as GZIP or LZO produce binary output that you can then store in a Binary attribute type.
Reference: Best Practices for Storing Large Items and Attributes
Q11: You’re creating a forum DynamoDB database for hosting forums. Your “thread” table contains the forum name and each “forum name” can have one or more “subjects”. What primary key type would you give the thread table in order to allow more than one subject to be tied to the forum primary key name?
A. Hash
B. Range and Hash
C. Primary and Range
D. Hash and Range
Answer: D.
Each forum name can have one or more subjects. In this case, ForumName is the hash attribute and Subject is the range attribute.
