Choose the best answer for each question based on the provided notes. Click the arrow next to "Answer" to reveal it.
Amazon EC2 Questions
Which AWS service provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud as virtual servers?
A) AWS Lambda
B) Amazon S3
C) Amazon EC2
D) AWS Fargate
Answer
C) Amazon EC2 Explanation: EC2 provides virtual servers (instances) for raw compute capacity.
The concept of "multitenancy" in the context of Amazon EC2 means:
A) Each customer gets their own dedicated physical server.
B) Virtual machines share underlying physical hardware with other customers.
C) Instances can only run one specific operating system.
D) Networking bandwidth is exclusively allocated per instance.
Answer
B) Virtual machines share underlying physical hardware with other customers. Explanation: Multitenancy refers to the sharing of physical resources among multiple tenants (customers).
A company needs to run a high-performance database that requires large amounts of RAM. Which EC2 instance type category is MOST suitable for this workload?
A) Compute Optimized
B) Storage Optimized
C) General Purpose
D) Memory Optimized
Answer
D) Memory Optimized Explanation: Memory Optimized instances are designed for workloads that process large datasets in memory.
Which EC2 pricing option offers the MOST significant discount but carries the risk of instances being terminated by AWS with short notice?
A) On-Demand Instances
B) Reserved Instances
C) Spot Instances
D) Dedicated Hosts
Answer
C) Spot Instances Explanation: Spot Instances use spare EC2 capacity and offer the deepest discounts, but can be interrupted.
A company wants to commit to a specific amount of compute usage ($/hour) for 1 year to reduce costs, desiring flexibility across instance families and regions, potentially including AWS Fargate usage. Which pricing model BEST fits this need?
A) Standard Reserved Instances
B) Convertible Reserved Instances
C) Spot Instances
D) Savings Plans
Answer
D) Savings Plans Explanation: Savings Plans offer flexibility across instance types, regions, and even compute services like EC2, Fargate, and Lambda, based on an hourly spend commitment.
Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling primarily helps achieve which type of scaling?
A) Vertical Scaling
B) Diagonal Scaling
C) Horizontal Scaling
D) Manual Scaling
Answer
C) Horizontal Scaling Explanation: EC2 Auto Scaling adds or removes instances (scaling horizontally) based on demand.
If a company requires guarantees that their EC2 instances are running on physical hardware solely dedicated to them due to compliance requirements, which option should they choose?
A) Spot Instances
B) Reserved Instances
C) Dedicated Hosts
D) Standard EC2 Instances
Answer
C) Dedicated Hosts Explanation: Dedicated Hosts provide dedicated physical servers for single-tenant usage.
Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) Questions
What is the primary function of AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)?
A) To automatically resize EC2 instances based on load.
B) To distribute incoming traffic across multiple targets, such as EC2 instances.
C) To provide DNS resolution for applications.
D) To cache static content closer to users.
Answer
B) To distribute incoming traffic across multiple targets, such as EC2 instances. Explanation: ELB acts as a traffic distributor to improve application availability and scalability.
How does Elastic Load Balancing enhance the fault tolerance of an application?
A) By automatically backing up EC2 instance data.
B) By operating across multiple Availability Zones within a Region.
C) By encrypting all traffic between instances.
D) By reducing the cost of EC2 instances.
Answer
B) By operating across multiple Availability Zones within a Region. Explanation: By distributing traffic across instances in different AZs, ELB ensures the application remains available even if one AZ fails.
In an architecture using EC2 Auto Scaling and ELB, what role does the ELB typically play?
A) It triggers the scaling actions based on instance health.
B) It acts as the single entry point for traffic directed to the Auto Scaling group instances.
C) It manages the configuration of the EC2 instances.
D) It archives the logs generated by the instances.
Answer
B) It acts as the single entry point for traffic directed to the Auto Scaling group instances. Explanation: ELB routes incoming requests to the healthy instances currently registered within the Auto Scaling group.
Messaging and Queuing Questions
Using services like Amazon SQS and SNS helps to build applications that are:
A) Tightly coupled and monolithic.
B) Stateful and persistent.
C) Loosely coupled and more resilient.
D) Primarily focused on synchronous communication.
Answer
C) Loosely coupled and more resilient. Explanation: Queues and pub/sub topics decouple components, improving fault tolerance and scalability.
Which AWS service allows you to decouple application components by using a message queue where messages are stored until processed and deleted by a consumer?
A) Amazon SNS
B) Amazon SQS
C) AWS Lambda
D) Amazon Kinesis
Answer
B) Amazon SQS Explanation: SQS is a managed message queuing service for decoupling and scaling microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications.
A developer needs to send a notification simultaneously to multiple subscribers, including email addresses, SMS numbers, and SQS queues. Which AWS service is designed for this publish/subscribe (pub/sub) scenario?
A) Amazon SQS
B) Amazon MQ
C) Amazon Connect
D) Amazon SNS
Answer
D) Amazon SNS Explanation: SNS uses a pub/sub model where a message published to a topic is delivered to multiple types of subscribers.
Additional Compute Services Questions
Which AWS compute service allows you to run code in response to events without provisioning or managing servers, typically for short-duration tasks?
A) Amazon EC2
B) AWS Fargate
C) AWS Lambda
D) Amazon Lightsail
Answer
C) AWS Lambda Explanation: Lambda is the core serverless, event-driven compute service in AWS.
Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS are primarily used for what purpose?
A) Running serverless functions.
B) Managing relational databases.
C) Orchestrating containers.
D) Building virtual private networks.
Answer
C) Orchestrating containers. Explanation: ECS and EKS are managed services for deploying, managing, and scaling containerized applications.
What is the key benefit of using AWS Fargate with Amazon ECS or EKS?
A) It provides dedicated physical servers for containers.
B) It allows running containers without managing the underlying server infrastructure.
C) It offers significant cost savings compared to Spot Instances.
D) It enables running containers directly on bare metal hardware.
Answer
B) It allows running containers without managing the underlying server infrastructure. Explanation: Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers, removing the need to manage EC2 instances for the container workload.
