Cloud Foundations – WGU D282 (2025 Edition) | Full Study Guide with All Key Terms, Explanations, and Step-by-Step Coverage of Cloud Computing Fundamentals, Virtualization, Networking, Storage, and Security

Six advantages of cloud computing

1. Trade capital expense for variable expense

2. Benefit from massive economies of scale

3. Stop guessing capacity

4. Increase speed and agility

5. Stop spending money running and maintaining data centers

6. Go global in minutes

Athena

Serverless SQL service used to analyze data in S3.

Elastic MapReduce (EMR)

Serverless big data platform used to process vast amounts of data with open source tools like Apache.

Redshift

SQL data warehouse

QuickSight

BI service used to create dashboards to deliver insights into analytics.

Glue

Extract, transform, load service used to prepare and load data for analytics.

Simple Queue Service (SQS)

Fully managed message queuing service that facilitates decoupling; stores messages until processed by consumers.

Simple Notification Service (SNS)

Pub/sub messaging service; can send messages to multiple subscribers at once; facilitates decoupling.

Cost Explorer

Interface that lets you visualize and manage your costs and usage over time; create reports.

Budgets

Set custom budgets that alert you when your costs or usage exceed (or forecasted to exceed) your budgeted amount.

Savings Plans

Flexible pricing for EC2 and Fargate offering lower prices compared to on-demand pricing in exchange for a usage commitment ($/hour) for 1- or 3-year terms.

Lightsail

Easy way to launch and manage a virtual private server; includes everything you need to start a project; low, predictable pricing.

Elastic Beanstalk

Service for deploying and scaling web applications and services; upload your code and EB automatically deploys, etc.

Fargate

Serverless compute engine for ECS (Elastic Container Service).

Lamda

Serverless computing to run code; no charge when code is not running.

Elastic Container Registry (ECR)

Fully-managed Docker container registry used to store, manage, and deploy Docker container images.

Elastic Container Service (ECS)

Highly scalable, high-performance container service that supports Docker containers and allows you to run and scale containerized apps on AWS.

Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)

Runs Kubernetes management infrastructure to deploy, manage, and scale containerized apps using Kubernetes on AWS.

Aurora

Fully managed MySQL relational database engine combining speed and availability of high-end commercial databases w/ simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases; auto-scales up to 128TB per dB instance.

DynamoDB

NoSQL, key-value and document database; fully managed; fast.

ElastiCache

Web service to deploy, operate, and scale an in-memory cache in the cloud; supports Redis and Memcached caching engines.

Neptune

Fully-managed graph database service to build and run apps that work with highly connected datasets.

Relational Database Service (RDS)

Cost-efficient and resizable capacity; automated hardware provisioning, database setup, patching and backups; SQL.

Cloud9

Cloud-based IDE with a browser.

CloudShell

Browser-based shell.

CodeArtifact

Fully managed repository used to store, publish, and share software packages used in software development processes.

CodeBuild

Fully managed service that compiles source code, runs tests, and produces software packages ready to deploy.

CodeCommit

Fully managed source control service used to host Git repos.

CodeDeploy

Service that automates code deployments to any instance, inc. EC2 and instances running on premises.

AppStream 2.0

Fully managed application streaming service.

WorkSpaces

Fully managed cloud desktop service.

CloudFormation

Templates that allow you to create and manage a collection of resources.

Trusted Advisor

Inspects environment and makes recommendations to help you save money, and improve security, performance, and availability of resources.

Inspector

Searches for software vulnerabilities and unintended network exposure for EC2, Lambda, and ECR.

CloudWatch

Continually monitors and collects metrics on resources and apps that run on AWS in real time; gain insights, create alarms, and send notifications.

CloudTrail

Continuously monitors and logs activity in an AWS account; includes actions taken through console, SDKs, API calls, and CLI.

VPN

Managed service that establishes a secure encrypted connection between AWS and on-premises networks.

Route 53

DNS web service for domain registration, DNS routing, and health checks.

Direct Connect

Privately connect on-premises network to the cloud; not encrypted.

Connect

Use to set up a scalable contact center in the cloud.

Pricing Calculator

Gives you ability to create estimates for AWS use cases before building applications.

Macie

Service that uses machine learning to identify sensitive data stored in S3 buckets.

Client VPN

Managed client-based VPN service giving you the ability to securely access resources; you can access resources from any location through an OpenVPN-based VPN client.

What is the most cost-effective means of storing static images?

S3 because you only pay for what you use.

Config

Fully managed service that can provide inventory and configuration history audit reports of resources; helps you ensure compliance with best practices and regulatory requirements.

Artifact

Provides a central location to access security and compliance reports and agreements; does not audit or document changes to resources.

Systems Manager Session Manager

Node management service that provides secure connection through shell scripting; can establish connection without the need to open ports.

Access keys

Long-term credentials for an IAM user or root user; use to sign programmatic requests to the CLI or API; consists of two parts (access key ID and secret access key).