David Clinton - AWS Certified Solutions Architect Study Guide

3 Which of the following is the best use‐case scenario for Elastic Block Store?You need a cheap and reliable place to store files your application can access.You need a safe place to store backup archives from your local servers.You need a source for on‐demand compute cycles to meet fluctuating demand for your application.You need persistent storage for the filesystem run by your EC2 instance.

4 You need to integrate your company's local user access controls with some of your AWS resources. Which of the following can help you control the way your local users access your AWS services and administration console? (Choose two.)AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)Key Management Service (KMS)AWS Directory ServiceSimple WorkFlow (SWF)Amazon Cognito

5 The data consumed by the application you're planning will require more speed and flexibility than you can get from a closely defined relational database structure. Which AWS database service should you choose?Relational Database Service (RDS)Amazon AuroraAmazon DynamoDBKey Management Service (KMS)

6 You've launched an EC2 application server instance in the AWS Ireland region and you need to access it from the web. Which of the following is the correct endpoint address that you should use? compute.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com ec2.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com elasticcomputecloud.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com ec2.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com

7 When working to set up your first AWS deployment, you keep coming across the term availability zone. What exactly is an availability zone?An isolated physical data center within an AWS regionA region containing multiple data centersA single network subnet used by resources within a single regionA single isolated server room within a data center

8 As you plan your multi‐tiered, multi‐instance AWS application, you need a way to effectively organize your instances and configure their network connectivity and access control. Which tool will let you do that?Load BalancingAmazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)Amazon CloudFrontAWS endpoints

9 You want to be sure that the application you're building using EC2 and S3 resources will be reliable enough to meet the regulatory standards required within your industry. What should you check?Historical uptime log recordsThe AWS Program Compliance ToolThe AWS service level agreement (SLA)The AWS Compliance Programs documentation pageThe AWS Shared Responsibility Model

10 Your organization's operations team members need a way to access and administer your AWS infrastructure via your local command line or shell scripts. Which of the following tools will let them do that?AWS ConfigAWS CLIAWS SDKThe AWS Console

11 While building a large AWS‐based application, your company has been facing configuration problems they can't solve on their own. As a result, they need direct access to AWS support for both development and IT team leaders. Which support plan should you purchase?BusinessDeveloperBasicEnterprise

THE AWS CERTIFIED SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT ASSOCIATE EXAM OBJECTIVES COVERED IN THIS CHAPTER MAY INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO, THE FOLLOWING:

Domain 1: Design Resilient Architectures1.1 Design a multi‐tier architecture solution1.2 Design highly available and/or fault‐tolerant architectures1.4 Choose appropriate resilient storage

Domain 2: Design High‐Performing Architectures2.1 Identify elastic and scalable compute solutions for a workload2.2 Select high‐performing and scalable storage solutions for a workload

Domain 3: Design Secure Applications and Architectures3.1 Design secure access to AWS resources

Domain 4: Design Cost‐Optimized Architectures4.1 Identify cost‐effective storage solutions4.2 Identify cost‐effective compute and database services4.3 Design cost‐optimized network architectures

The ultimate focus of a traditional data center/server room is its precious servers. But, to make those servers useful, you'll need to add racks, power supplies, cabling, switches, firewalls, and cooling.

AWS's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is designed to replicate the data center/server room experience as closely as possible. At the center of it all is the EC2 virtual server, known as an instance . But, like the local server room I just described, EC2 provides a range of tools meant to support and enhance your instance's operations.

This chapter will explore the tools and practices used to fully leverage the power of the EC2 ecosystem, including the following:

Provisioning an EC2 instance with the right hardware resources for your project

Configuring the right base operating system for your application needs

Building a secure and effective network environment for your instance

Adding scripts to run as the instance boots to support (or start) your application

Choosing the best EC2 pricing model for your needs

Understanding how to manage and leverage the EC2 instance lifecycle

Choosing the right storage drive type for your needs

Securing your EC2 resources using key pairs, security groups, network access lists, and Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles

Scaling the number of instances up and down to meet changing demand using Auto Scaling

Accessing your instance as an administrator or end‐user client

An EC2 instance may only be a virtualized and abstracted subset of a physical server, but it behaves just like the real thing. It will have access to storage, memory, and a network interface, and its primary storage drive will come with a fresh and clean operating system running.

It's up to you to decide what kind of hardware resources you want your instance to have, what operating system and software stack you'd like it to run, and, ultimately, how much you'll pay for it. Let's see how all that works.

You configure your instance's operating system and software stack, hardware specs (the CPU power, memory, primary storage, and network performance), and environment before launching it. The OS is defined by the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) you choose, and the hardware follows the instance type.

An AMI is really just a template document that contains information telling EC2 what OS and application software to include on the root data volume of the instance it's about to launch. There are four kinds of AMIs:

Amazon Quick Start AMIs Amazon Quick Start images appear at the top of the list in the console when you start the process of launching a new instance. The Quick Start AMIs are popular choices and include various releases of Linux or Windows Server OSs and some specialty images for performing common operations (like deep learning and database). These AMIs are up‐to‐date and officially supported.

AWS Marketplace AMIs AMIs from the AWS Marketplace are official, production‐ready images provided and supported by industry vendors like SAP and Cisco.

Community AMIs More than 100,000 images are available as community AMIs. Many of these images are AMIs created and maintained by independent vendors and are usually built to meet a specific need. This is a good catalog to search if you're planning an application built on a custom combination of software resources.

Private AMIs You can also store images created from your own instance deployments as private AMIs. Why would you want to do that? You might, for instance, want the ability to scale up the number of instances you've got running to meet growing demand. Having a reliable, tested, and patched instance image as an AMI makes incorporating autoscaling easy. You can also share images as AMIs or import VMs from your local infrastructure (by way of AWS S3) using the AWS VM Import/Export tool.