Cloud Computing Summary by Section - Exam Objectives (1.x)

A comprehensive set of practice questions and answers covering cloud service models, availability, networking, storage, cloud-native design, virtualization, cost, licensing, workloads, AI/ML, edge/IoT, DevOps, and evolving technologies.

What cloud service model provides maximum control over operating systems and applications, suitable for lift-and-shift migrations and custom security requirements?

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Name core IaaS components.

Virtual machines with configurable CPU/memory/storage, virtual networks and IP addressing, block storage volumes, and load balancers/firewalls

Who is typically responsible for operating system installation, patching, maintenance, and network configuration in an IaaS setup?

The customer

In IaaS, who handles data backup and security responsibilities?

The customer

When is PaaS most suitable?

For rapid application development and deployment, focusing on coding rather than infrastructure management, standard web apps or APIs, and teams without extensive infrastructure expertise

What are the primary components of PaaS?

Pre-configured runtime environments, development frameworks/tools, and database services

When should SaaS be used?

For standard business applications that are quick to deploy, require no customization, with minimal IT management and cost-effectiveness for common functions

List the four SaaS categories mentioned.

Communications as a Service (CaaS/UCaaS), Database as a Service (DBaaS), Desktop as a Service (DaaS), Business Process as a Service (BPaaS)

What is the cloud service decision matrix in simple terms?

Choose IaaS for infrastructure control, PaaS for development platforms, and SaaS for ready-to-use applications

What is the difference between Regions and Availability Zones (AZs)?

Regions are geographical areas with multiple data centers; AZs are individual data centers within regions

What is the best practice to achieve fault tolerance in cloud deployments?

Deploy across multiple Availability Zones

What component distributes traffic across multiple resources?

Load Balancing

What do auto-scaling, health checks, and cluster placement help achieve?

Automatic resource adjustment, monitoring resource health, and optimized VM placement for redundancy/performance

What is synchronous replication and when is it used?

Real-time data copying with near-zero RPO, higher cost and latency; used for critical systems

What is asynchronous replication and when is it used?

Scheduled or delayed data copying with lower cost/latency; potential data loss; used for backups and read replicas

Define RTO.

Recovery Time Objective: Maximum acceptable downtime

Define RPO.

Recovery Point Objective: Maximum acceptable data loss

What are common disaster recovery backup strategies?

Snapshots and cross-region replication

What are automatic vs manual failover mechanisms?

Automatic failover switches traffic without human intervention; manual failover requires manual action

What are VPCs in cloud networking?

Isolated network environments with custom IP ranges, subnets, route tables, ACLs, and gateways

What connectivity options provide encrypted tunnels over the internet?

VPN Connections

What is a dedicated connection in cloud networking?

Private circuits directly connecting to the cloud provider

What is a network peering relationship?

Direct interconnection between two networks to exchange traffic

What is an Application Gateway?

Layer 7 load balancer with SSL termination

What is a Network Load Balancer used for?

Layer 4 load balancing for high performance

What is a Global Load Balancer?

Traffic distribution across multiple regions

What are DNS and traffic management features?

Managed DNS, traffic routing policies, health-based routing, and geolocation-based routing

Name common routing problems.

Missing routes, misconfigured routes, protocol incompatibility, IP addressing issues

What issues can arise from network device misconfiguration?

Incorrect VLAN settings, firewall rule conflicts, port configuration errors, protocol deprecation

What is Block Storage best used for?

VM boot disks, database storage, and file systems

Give two examples of Block Storage services.

AWS EBS and Azure Managed Disks

What is Object Storage typically used for?

Backup, archival, web assets, and data lakes; accessed via REST APIs

How is File Storage accessed and what is it used for?

Accessed via NFS/SMB; used for shared application data and content repositories

Give examples of File Storage services.

AWS EFS and Azure Files

What are storage performance factors to consider?

HDDs, SSDs, NVMe; IOPS; latency

What are hot, cold, and archive storage?

Hot: frequently accessed; Cold: infrequently accessed; Archive: long-term retention at lowest cost

What is storage tiering and its purpose?

Automated lifecycle policies to balance performance and cost; analyze access patterns; compression/deduplication

What is containerization in cloud design?

Containers: lightweight, portable app packages; container images; container registries; microservices

What are orchestration platforms used for?

Kubernetes, service mesh, auto-scaling, and service discovery/traffic distribution

What is serverless and FaaS?

Event-driven execution, pay-per-execution, auto-scaling; examples AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, Google Cloud Functions

Name typical serverless use cases.

API backends, data processing pipelines, real-time file processing, IoT data ingestion

What is Infrastructure as Code (IaC)?

Templates (e.g., CloudFormation, ARM, Terraform) with version control and automation for reproducible environments

What is CI/CD in cloud practices?

Automated testing/building (CI) and automated deployment to environments (CD), including blue-green and canary releases

What does the Twelve-Factor App methodology promote?

Codebase in version control, declared dependencies, environment-based configuration, stateless processes, disposability

What are the two main types of hypervisors?

Type 1 (Bare Metal) and Type 2 (Hosted)

What are Type 1 hypervisors and examples?

Run directly on hardware; better performance/security; VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V

What are Type 2 hypervisors and examples?

Run on a host OS; easier to set up but with some performance overhead; VMware Workstation, VirtualBox

What is CPU affinity in VM resource management?

Binding VMs to specific CPU cores to manage performance

What is the difference between thin and thick provisioning?

Thin provisioning allocates storage as needed; thick reserves storage upfront

What are hypervisor affinity rules and DRS?

Affinity rules keep related VMs on the same host; anti-affinity rules for HA; DRS automates placement

What are resource pools?

Compute pools (CPU/memory), network pools, and storage pools for shared resources

What is the purpose of resource pools in virtualization?

Aggregate and manage shared resources across hosts

List cloud pricing models.

Pay-as-you-go, Reserved Instances, Spot Instances, Savings Plans

What are common cloud cost components?

Compute, Storage, Network, and Services (e.g., managed databases, monitoring)

What is right-sizing resources?

Comparing actual usage to allocated resources to avoid overprovisioning

What tools help with cost management?

AWS Pricing Calculator, Cost Explorer, Budget Alerts, Resource Tagging

What is CapEx vs OpEx in cloud economics?

CapEx: upfront hardware purchases; OpEx: ongoing monthly cloud payments; differing financial implications

What does BYOL stand for in licensing?

Bring Your Own License

What means ‘License Included’ in cloud licensing?

Cloud provider licenses included and managed by the provider

What is license optimization?

Matching licenses to actual usage and ensuring compliance

What AI/ML service categories are listed?

Text Recognition (OCR), Text Translation, Visual Recognition, Sentiment Analysis, Voice Services, Generative AI

What are the two main machine learning types?

Supervised and Unsupervised learning

What are edge computing benefits?

Reduced latency, bandwidth optimization, real-time processing

What is IoT architecture composed of?

IoT devices, gateways, communication protocols (MQTT, CoAP, HTTP, LoRaWAN), and cloud integration

Which protocols are mentioned for IoT communications?

MQTT, CoAP, HTTP, LoRaWAN

What characterizes FaaS usage?

Event-driven execution, stateless deployment, auto-scaling, pay-per-use

What are typical FaaS use cases?

API backends, data processing ETL, real-time analytics, automation tasks

What is multi-cloud strategy advocating?

Containerization (Kubernetes) for portability, API standardization, abstraction layers, and hybrid architectures

What should you consider to avoid vendor lock-in?

Open standards, plan migrations, ensure interoperability, and perform testing across platforms

How do you ensure compatibility across clouds?

Use API standardization, abstraction layers, and test across environments

What are typical goals of DNS and traffic management?

Health-based routing, geolocation-based routing, and global traffic distribution

What is the role of health checks in load balancing and traffic management?

To monitor backend status and trigger failover or rerouting as needed

What is SSL termination in the context of load balancing?

Decrypting SSL/TLS at the load balancer to offload work from backends

What is session affinity?

Maintaining client-server relationships to route a user to the same backend

What is the difference between hot and archival storage in terms of access frequency?

Hot storage is frequently accessed; archival storage is rarely accessed and cheapest

What is the purpose of data deduplication and compression in storage optimization?

Reduce storage footprint and data transfer costs

What is the role of a service mesh?

A dedicated infrastructure layer for handling communication between microservices

What is the significance of 'reproducible environments' in IaC?

Ensures environments can be recreated consistently across deployments

What are blue-green deployments?

Zero-downtime updates by switching traffic between two identical production environments

What are canary releases?

Gradual rollout of a new version to a subset of users to monitor impact

What does ‘stateless’ imply in the Twelve-Factor App methodology?

Processes do not rely on persistent state; state is stored externally

What is the main advantage of microservices architecture?

Modularity and independent deployment of services for scalability and resilience

What is the purpose of a service registry in a microservices architecture?

Track and locate services for inter-service communication

What is the primary function of a CDN?

Distribute content geographically to reduce latency and improve load times

What is geographic routing in DNS/traffic management?

Routing users to the nearest or most appropriate regional endpoint

What are the two main types of replication used in disaster recovery?

Synchronous (near-zero data loss) and asynchronous (potential data loss)

What are the differences between compute, storage, and network cost components?

Compute: VM/instance costs; Storage: capacity and IOPS; Network: egress, load balancing, VPNs

What is a cross-region backup strategy?

Replicating data to a different geographic region for disaster recovery

What is the primary purpose of a global load balancer?

Distribute traffic across regions to optimize latency and availability

What is the purpose of service-level objectives (SLOs) in cloud design?

Define measurable performance and reliability targets for services

What is the difference between capacity planning and performance tuning?

Capacity planning anticipates resource needs; performance tuning optimizes existing resources

What is the role of a NAT gateway?

Enable outbound internet traffic from private subnets while keeping them isolated

What is IP addressing best practice in cloud networks?

Use non-overlapping subnets, plan address space, and avoid conflicts

What is a route table used for in VPCs?

Defines how traffic is directed between subnets and gateways

What is a network ACL?

A stateless firewall at the subnet level controlling inbound/outbound traffic

What is a firewall rule conflict?

When rules block legitimate traffic or allow unwanted traffic due to misconfiguration

What is latency?

Delay in data transmission between a source and destination

What is IOPS?

Input/Output Operations Per Second, a measure of storage performance

What is the difference between Container Registry and Container Image?

Registry stores container images; images are templates for containers

What does ‘service discovery’ mean in orchestration?

Finding and connecting services in a dynamic container environment