EC2

AWS EC2 – Placement Groups

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 16 Comments

EC2 Placement Groups

  • EC2 Placement groups determine how the instances are placed on the underlying hardware.
  • AWS now provides three types of placement groups
    • Cluster – clusters instances into a low-latency group in a single AZ
    • Partition – spreads instances across logical partitions, ensuring that instances in one partition do not share underlying hardware with instances in other partitions
    • Spread – strictly places a small group of instances across distinct underlying hardware to reduce correlated failures

Cluster Placement Groups

  • is a logical grouping of instances within a single Availability Zone
  • don’t span across Availability Zones
  • can span peered VPCs in the same Region
  • impacts High Availability as susceptible to hardware failures for the application
  • recommended for
    • applications that benefit from low network latency, high network throughput, or both.
    • when the majority of the network traffic is between the instances in the group.
  • To provide the lowest latency, and the highest packet-per-second network performance for the placement group, choose an instance type that supports enhanced networking
  • recommended to launch all group instances with the same instance type at the same time to ensure enough capacity
  • instances can be added later, but there are chances of encountering an insufficient capacity error
  • for moving an instance into the placement group,
    • create an AMI from the existing instance,
    • and then launch a new instance from the AMI into a placement group.
  • an instance still runs in the same placement group if stopped and started within the placement group.
  • in case of a capacity error, stop and start all of the instances in the placement group, and try the launch again. Restarting the instances may migrate them to hardware that has capacity for all requested instances
  • is only available within a single AZ either in the same VPC or peered VPCs
  • is more of a hint to AWS that the instances need to be launched physically close to each together
  • enables applications to participate in a low-latency, 10 Gbps network.

AWS EC2 Placement Group

Partition Placement Groups

  • is a group of instances spread across partitions i.e. group of instances spread across racks.
  • Partitions are logical groupings of instances, where contained instances do not share the same underlying hardware across different partitions.
  • EC2 divides each group into logical segments called partitions.
  • EC2 ensures that each partition within a placement group has its own set of racks. Each rack has its own network and power source.
  • No two partitions within a placement group share the same racks, allowing isolating the impact of a hardware failure within the application.
  • reduces the likelihood of correlated hardware failures for the application.
  • can have partitions in multiple Availability Zones in the same region
  • can have a maximum of seven partitions per Availability Zone
  • number of instances that can be launched into a partition placement group is limited only by the limits of the account.
  • can be used to spread deployment of large distributed and replicated workloads, such as HDFS, HBase, and Cassandra, across distinct hardware.
  • offer visibility into the partitions and the instances to partitions mapping can be seen. This information can be shared with topology-aware applications, such as HDFS, HBase, and Cassandra. These applications use this information to make intelligent data replication decisions for increasing data availability and durability.

Spread Placement Groups

  • is a group of instances that are each placed on distinct underlying hardware i.e. each instance on a distinct rack with each rack having its own network and power source.
  • recommended for applications that have a small number of critical instances that should be kept separate from each other.
  • reduces the risk of simultaneous failures that might occur when instances share the same underlying hardware.
  • provide access to distinct hardware, and are therefore suitable for mixing instance types or launching instances over time.
  • can span multiple Availability Zones in the same region.
  • can have a maximum of seven running instances per AZ per group
  • maximum number of instances = 1 instance per rack * 7 racks * No. of AZs for e.g. in a Region with three AZs, a total of 21 instances in the group (seven per zone) can be launched
  • If the start or launch of an instance in a spread placement group fails cause of insufficient unique hardware to fulfil the request, the request can be tried later as EC2 makes more distinct hardware available over time

Placement Group Rules and Limitations

  • Ensure unique Placement group name within AWS account for the region.
  • Placement groups cannot be merged.
  • Instances cannot span multiple placement groups.
  • Instances with Dedicated Hosts cannot be launched in placement groups.
  • Instances with a tenancy of host cannot be launched in placement groups.
  • Cluster Placement groups
    • can’t span multiple Availability Zones.
    • supported by specific instance types which support 10 Gigabyte network
    • maximum network throughput speed of traffic between two instances in a cluster placement group is limited by the slower of the two instances, so choose the instance type properly.
    • can use up to 10 Gbps for single-flow traffic.
    • Traffic to and from S3 buckets within the same region over the public IP address space or through a VPC endpoint can use all available instance aggregate bandwidth.
    • recommended using the same instance type i.e. homogenous instance types. Although multiple instance types can be launched into a cluster placement group. However, this reduces the likelihood that the required capacity will be available for your launch to succeed.
    • Network traffic to the internet and over an AWS Direct Connect connection to on-premises resources is limited to 5 Gbps.
  • Partition placement groups
    • supports a maximum of seven partitions per Availability Zone
    • Dedicated Instances can have a maximum of two partitions
    • are not supported for Dedicated Hosts
    • are currently only available through the API or AWS CLI.
  • Spread placement groups
    • supports a maximum of seven running instances per Availability Zone for e.g., in a region that has three AZs, then a total of 21 running instances in the group (seven per zone).
    • are not supported for Dedicated Instances or Dedicated Hosts.

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. What is a cluster placement group?
    • A collection of Auto Scaling groups in the same Region
    • Feature that enables EC2 instances to interact with each other via high bandwidth, low latency connections
    • A collection of Elastic Load Balancers in the same Region or Availability Zone
    • A collection of authorized Cloud Front edge locations for a distribution
  2. In order to optimize performance for a compute cluster that requires low inter-node latency, which feature in the following list should you use?
    • AWS Direct Connect
    • Cluster Placement Groups
    • VPC private subnets
    • EC2 Dedicated Instances
    • Multiple Availability Zones
  3. What is required to achieve gigabit network throughput on EC2? You already selected cluster-compute, 10GB instances with enhanced networking, and your workload is already network-bound, but you are not seeing 10 gigabit speeds.
    1. Enable biplex networking on your servers, so packets are non-blocking in both directions and there’s no switching overhead.
    2. Ensure the instances are in different VPCs so you don’t saturate the Internet Gateway on any one VPC.
    3. Select PIOPS for your drives and mount several, so you can provision sufficient disk throughput
    4. Use a Cluster placement group for your instances so the instances are physically near each other in the same Availability Zone. (You are not guaranteed 10 gigabit performance, except within a placement group. Using placement groups enables applications to participate in a low-latency, 10 Gbps network)
  4. You need the absolute highest possible network performance for a cluster computing application. You already selected homogeneous instance types supporting 10 gigabit enhanced networking, made sure that your workload was network bound, and put the instances in a placement group. What is the last optimization you can make?
    1. Use 9001 MTU instead of 1500 for Jumbo Frames, to raise packet body to packet overhead ratios. (For instances that are collocated inside a placement group, jumbo frames help to achieve the maximum network throughput possible, and they are recommended in this case)
    2. Segregate the instances into different peered VPCs while keeping them all in a placement group, so each one has its own Internet Gateway.
    3. Bake an AMI for the instances and relaunch, so the instances are fresh in the placement group and do not have noisy neighbors
    4. Turn off SYN/ACK on your TCP stack or begin using UDP for higher throughput.

References

EC2_User_Guide – Placement_Groups

AWS EC2 Storage

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 6 Comments

EC2 Storage Overview

EC2 Storage Options - EBS, S3 & Instance Store

Storage Types

Elastic Block Store – EBS

  • Elastic Block Store – EBS provides highly available, reliable, durable, block-level storage volumes that can be attached to an EC2 instance.
  • persists independently from the running life of an instance.
  • behaves like a raw, unformatted, external block device that can be attached to a single EC2 instance at a time.
  • is recommended for data that requires frequent and granular updates e.g. running a database or filesystem.
  • is Zonal and can be attached to any instance within the same Availability Zone and can be used like any other physical hard drive.
  • is particularly well-suited for use as the primary storage for file systems, databases, or any applications that require fine granular updates and access to raw, unformatted, block-level storage.

Instance Store Storage

  • Instance store provides temporary or Ephemeral block-level storage
  • is located on the disks that are physically attached to the host computer.
  • consists of one or more instance store volumes exposed as block devices.
  • The size of an instance store varies by instance type.
  • Virtual devices for instance store volumes that are ephemeral[0-23], starting the first one as ephemeral0 and so on.
  • While an instance store is dedicated to a particular instance, the disk subsystem is shared among instances on a host computer.
  • is ideal for temporary storage of information that changes frequently, such as buffers, caches, scratch data, and other temporary content, or for data that is replicated across a fleet of instances, such as a load-balanced pool of web servers.
  • delivers very high random I/O performance and is a good option for storage with very low latency requirements, but you don’t need the data to persist when the instance terminates or you can take advantage of fault-tolerant architectures.

Amazon EBS vs Instance Store

More detailed @ Comparison of EBS vs Instance Store

Simple Storage Service – S3

More details @ AWS S3

Elastic File Store – EFS

  • Elastic File Store – EFS provides a simple, fully managed, easy-to-set-up, scalable, serverless, and cost-optimized file storage
  • can automatically scale from gigabytes to petabytes of data without needing to provision storage.
  • provides managed NFS (network file system) that can be mounted on and accessed by multiple EC2 in multiple AZs simultaneously.
  • offers highly durable, highly scalable, and highly available.
    • stores data redundantly across multiple AZs in the same region
    • grows and shrinks automatically as files are added and removed, so there is no need to manage storage procurement or provisioning.
  • supports the Network File System version 4 (NFSv4.1 and NFSv4.0) protocol.
  • provides file system access semantics, such as strong data consistency and file locking.
  • is compatible with all Linux-based AMIs for EC2,  POSIX file system (~Linux) that has a standard file API.
  • is a shared POSIX system for Linux systems and does not work for Windows.
  • offers the ability to encrypt data at rest using KMS and in transit.
  • can be accessed from on-premises using an AWS Direct Connect or AWS VPN connection between the on-premises datacenter and VPC.
  • can be accessed concurrently from servers in the on-premises data center as well as EC2 instances in the VPC.

Block Device Mapping

  • A block device is a storage device that moves data in sequences of bytes or bits (blocks) and supports random access and generally use buffered I/O for e.g. hard disks, CD-ROM etc
  • Block devices can be physically attached to a computer (like an instance store volume) or can be accessed remotely as if it was attached (like an EBS volume)
  • Block device mapping defines the block devices to be attached to an instance, which can either be done while creation of an AMI or when an instance is launched
  • Block device must be mounted on the instance, after being attached to the instance, to be able to be accessed
  • When a block device is detached from an instance, it is unmounted by the operating system and you can no longer access the storage device.
  • Additional Instance store volumes can be attached only when the instance is launched while EBS volumes can be attached to a running instance.
  • Viewing the block device mapping for an instance only shows the EBS volumes and not the instance store volumes. Instance metadata can be used to query the complete block device mapping.

Public Data Sets

  • Amazon Web Services provides a repository of public data sets that can be seamlessly integrated into AWS cloud-based applications.
  • Amazon stores the data sets at no charge to the community and, as with all AWS services, you pay only for the compute and storage you use for your own applications.

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. When you view the block device mapping for your instance, you can see only the EBS volumes, not the instance store volumes.
    1. Depends on the instance type
    2. FALSE
    3. Depends on whether you use API call
    4. TRUE
  1. Amazon EC2 provides a repository of public data sets that can be seamlessly integrated into AWS cloud-based applications. What is the monthly charge for using the public data sets?
    1. A 1 time charge of 10$ for all the datasets.
    2. 1$ per dataset per month
    3. 10$ per month for all the datasets
    4. There is no charge for using the public data sets
  1. How many types of block devices does Amazon EC2 support?
    1. 2
    2. 4
    3. 3
    4. 1

References

AWS EC2 EBS Monitoring

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 2 Comments

EBS Monitoring

AWS support EBS monitoring by automatically providing data, such as  CloudWatch metrics and volume status checks to help monitor EBS volumes

CloudWatch Monitoring

  • CloudWatch metrics are statistical data that you can use to view, analyze, and set alarms on the operational behaviour of the EBS volumes
  • CloudWatch provides the below by default
    • Basic – Data, in 5-minute periods at no charge, which includes data from the root devices volumes for EBS backed instances
    • Detailed – Provisioned IOPS (SSD) volumes send one-minute metrics
  • EBS Metrics
    • VolumeReadBytes & VolumeWriteBytes
      • Provides information on the I/O operations in a specified period of time, in bytes
    • VolumeReadOps & VolumeWriteOps
      • Total number (count) of I/O operations in a specified period of time
    • VolumeTotalReadTime & VolumeTotalWriteTime
      • Total number of seconds spent by all operations that were completed in a specified period of time
    • VolumeIdleTime
      • Total number of seconds, in a specific period, when the volume was idle (no read and write operations)
    • VolumeQueueLength
      • Number of read and write operations, in a specific period, waiting to be completed
    • VolumeThroughputPercentage (Provisioned IOPS (SSD) volumes only)
      • Percentage of I/O operations per second (IOPS) delivered of the total IOPS provisioned
    • VolumeConsumedReadWriteOps (Provisioned IOPS (SSD) volumes only)
      • Total amount of read and write operations (normalized to 256K capacity units) consumed in a specified period of time

Volume Status Checks Monitoring

EC2 EBS Volume Status Check Monitoring

  • Volume status checks are automated tests that run every 5 minutes and return a pass or fail status.
  • Volume check status
    • Ok – all the status checks passed
    • Impaired – if the status checks failed
    • Insufficient-Data – checks are still in progress
    • Warning – the I/O performance of the volume is below expectations
  • When EBS determines the volume’s data is potentially inconsistent, it disables the I/O to the EBS volume from the attached EC2 instance to prevent any data corruption. This leads to the status check to fail and the volume status being impaired. Amazon waits for the I/O to be enabled, giving you an opportunity to perform consistency checks.
  • If the auto disabling of I/O is not needed, it can be overridden by enabling the Auto-Enabled IO flag, which would make the EBS volume auto-available immediately after the impaired status.
  • Events would be fired for notification whenever the I/O for an EBS volume is disabled
  • I/O performance status checks, applicable only for PIOPS (SSD) volumes, compare actual volume performance with the expected volume performance and alert if performing below expectations. Status check is performed every 1 min, however, is collected by CloudWatch every 5 mins.
  • While initializing Provisioned IOPS (SSD) volumes that were restored from snapshots, the performance of the volume may drop below 50 percent of its expected level, which causes the volume to display a warning state in the I/O Performance status check. This is expected and can be ignored.

EC2 EBS Volume Status

Volume Events Monitoring

  • EBS generates events for volume status checks
  • Each event includes a start time that indicates the time at which the event occurred and a duration that indicates how long I/O for the volume was disabled
  • Events description can be Awaiting Action (to enable I/O), IO enabled, IO Auto-Enabled, or whether the status check resulted in Normal, Degraded, Severely Degraded, or stalled status

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. A user has configured CloudWatch monitoring on an EBS backed EC2 instance. If the user has not attached any additional device, which of the below mentioned metrics will always show a 0 value?
    1. DiskReadBytes
    2. NetworkIn
    3. NetworkOut
    4. CPUUtilization
  2. What does it mean if you have zero IOPS and a non-empty I/O queue for all EBS volumes attached to a running EC2 instance?
    1. The I/O queue is buffer flushing.
    2. Your EBS disk head(s) is/are seeking magnetic stripes.
    3. The EBS volume is unavailable. (EBS volumes are unavailable when all of the attached volumes perform zero read write IO, with pending IO in the queue Refer link)
    4. You need to re-mount the EBS volume in the OS.
  3. While performing the volume status checks, if the status is insufficient-data, what does it mean?
    1. checks may still be in progress on the volume
    2. check has passed
    3. check has failed

References

AWS EC2 Instance Metadata & Userdata

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 4 Comments

EC2 Instance Metadata & Userdata

  • Instance metadata and user data can be used for Self Configuration allowing EC2 instances answer the question Who am I? What should I do?
  • Instance metadata and user data can be accessed from within the instance itself
  • Data is not protected by authentication or cryptographic methods. Anyone who can access the instance can view its metadata and should not be used to any store sensitive data, such as passwords, as user data.
  • Both the metadata and user data are available from the IP address 169.254.169.254 and have the latest as well as previous versions available
  • Metadata and User data can be retrieved using simple curl or GET command and these requests are not billed

Instance Metadata

  • Instance metadata is data about the instance and allows you to get answers to the Who am I?
  • is divided into two categories
    • Instance metadata
      • includes metadata about the instance such as instance id, AMI id, hostname, IP address, role, etc
      • Can be accessed from http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/
    • Dynamic data
      • is generated when the instances are launched such as instance identity documents, instance monitoring, etc
      • Can be accessed from http://169.254.169.254/latest/dynamic/
  • can be used for managing and configuring running instances
  • allows access to user data that specified when launching the instance

Instance Metadata Access Methods

  • Instance metadata can be accessed from a running instance using one of the following methods:
    • Instance Metadata Service Version 2 (IMDSv2) – a session-oriented method
    • Instance Metadata Service Version 1 (IMDSv1) – a request/response method
  • By default, either IMDSv1 or IMDSv2, or both can be used.
  • Instance metadata service distinguishes between IMDSv1 and IMDSv2 requests based on whether, for any given request, either the PUT or GET headers, which are unique to IMDSv2, are present in that request.
  • Instance metadata service can be configured on each instance so that local code or users must use IMDSv2. When IMDSv2 is enforced, IMDSv1 no longer works.

IMDSv2

  • IMDSv2 uses session-oriented requests.
  • With session-oriented requests, a session token that defines the session duration is created, which can be a minimum of one second and a maximum of six hours.
  • During the specified duration, the same session token can be used for subsequent requests.
  • After the specified duration expires, a new session token to use for future requests must be created.

User Data

  • User data can be used for bootstrapping (launching commands when the machine starts) EC2 instance and helps answer the What should I do?
  • is supplied when launching a EC2 instance and executed at boot time
  • can be in the form of parameters or user defined script executed when the instance is launched for e.g. perform software patch updates, load and update the application from an S3 bucket etc
  • can be used to build more generic AMIs, which can then be configured at launch time dynamically
  • can be retrieved from http://169.254.169.254/latest/user-data
  • By default, user data scripts and cloud-init directives run only during the first boot cycle when an EC2 instance is launched.
  • If you stop an instance, modify the user data, and start the instance, the new user data is not executed automatically.
  • However, user data script and cloud-init directives can be configured with a mime multi-part file. A mime multi-part file allows the script to override how frequently user data is executed in the cloud-init package.
  • is treated as opaque data and returned as is.
  • is limited to 16 KB. This limit applies to the data in raw form, not base64-encoded form.
  • must be base64-encoded before being submitted to the API. EC2 command line tools perform the base64 encoding. The data is decoded before being presented to the instance.

Cloud-Init & EC2Config

  • Cloud-Init and EC2Config provides the ability to parse the user-data script on the instance and run the instructions
  • Cloud-Init
    • Amazon Linux AMI supports Cloud-Init, which is an open source application built by Canonical.
    • is installed on Amazon Linux, Ubuntu and RHEL AMIs
    • enables using the EC2 UserData parameter to specify actions to run on the instance at boot time
    • User data is executed on first boot using Cloud-Init, if the user data begins with #!
  • EC2Config
    • EC2Config is installed on Windows Server AMIs
    • User data is executed on first boot using Cloud-Init (technically EC2Config parses the instructions) if the user data begins with <script> or <powershell>
    • EC2Config service is started when the instance is booted. It performs tasks during initial instance startup (once) and each time you stop and start the instance.
    • It can also perform tasks on demand. Some of these tasks are enabled automatically, while others must be enabled manually.
    • uses settings files to control its operation
    • service runs Sysprep, a Microsoft tool that enables creation of customized Windows AMI that can be reused.
    • When EC2Config calls Sysprep, it uses the settings files in EC2ConfigService\Settings to determine which operations to perform.

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. How can software determine the public and private IP addresses of the Amazon EC2 instance that it is running on?
    1. Query the local instance metadata
    2. Query the appropriate Amazon CloudWatch metric.
    3. Query the local instance userdata.
    4. Use ipconfig or ifconfig command.
  2. The base URI for all requests for instance metadata is ___________
    1. http://254.169.169.254/latest/
    2. http://169.169.254.254/latest/
    3. http://127.0.0.1/latest/
    4. http://169.254.169.254/latest/
  3. Which Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud feature can you query from within the instance to access instance properties?
    1. Instance user data
    2. Resource tags
    3. Instance metadata
    4. Amazon Machine Image
  4. You need to pass a custom script to new Amazon Linux instances created in your Auto Scaling group. Which feature allows you to accomplish this?
    1. User data
    2. EC2Config service
    3. IAM roles
    4. AWS Config
  5. By default, when an EBS volume is attached to a Windows instance, it may show up as any drive letter on the instance. You can change the settings of the _____ Service to set the drive letters of the EBS volumes per your specifications.
    1. EBSConfig Service
    2. AMIConfig Service
    3. EC2Config Service
    4. Ec2-AMIConfig Service
  6. How can software determine the public and private IP addresses of the Amazon EC2 instance that it is running on?
    1. Query the appropriate Amazon CloudWatch metric.
    2. Use ipconfig or ifconfig command.
    3. Query the local instance userdata.
    4. Query the local instance metadata.

References

AWS Documentation – EC2_Instance_Metadata_Userdata

AWS EBS Volume Types

EBS Volume Types
~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 39 Comments

AWS EBS Volume Types

  • AWS provides the following EBS volume types, which differ in performance characteristics and price and can be tailored for storage performance and cost to the needs of the applications.
  • Solid state drives (SSD-backed) volumes optimized for transactional workloads involving frequent read/write operations with small I/O size, where the dominant performance attribute is IOPS
    • General Purpose SSD (gp2/gp3)
    • Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1/io2/io2 block express)
  • Hard disk drives (HDD-backed) volumes optimized for large streaming workloads where throughput (measured in MiB/s) is a better performance measure than IOPS
    • Throughput Optimized HDD (st1)
    • Cold HDD (sc1)
    • Magnetic Volumes (standard) (Previous Generation)

EBS Volume Types (New Generation)

EBS Volume Types

Solid state drives (SSD-backed) volumes

Solid state drives (SSD-backed) volumes

General Purpose SSD Volumes (gp2/gp3)

  • General Purpose SSD volumes offer cost-effective storage that is ideal for a broad range of workloads.
  • General Purpose SSD volumes deliver single-digit millisecond latencies
  • General Purpose SSD volumes can range in size from 1 GiB to 16 TiB.
  • General Purpose SSD (gp2) volumes
    • has a maximum throughput of 160 MiB/s (at 214 GiB and larger).
    • provides a baseline performance of 3 IOPS/GiB
    • provides the ability to burst to 3,000 IOPS for extended periods of time for volume size less than 1 TiB and up to a maximum of 16,000 IOPS (at 5,334 GiB).
    • If the volume performance is frequently limited to the baseline level (due to an empty I/O credit balance),
      • consider using a larger General Purpose SSD volume (with a higher baseline performance level) or
      • switching to a Provisioned IOPS SSD volume for workloads that require sustained IOPS performance greater than 16,000 IOPS.
  • General Purpose SSD (gp3) volumes
    • deliver a consistent baseline rate of 3,000 IOPS and 125 MiB/s, included with the price of storage.
    • additional IOPS (up to 16,000) and throughput (up to 1,000 MiB/s) can be provisioned for an additional cost.
    • the maximum ratio of provisioned IOPS to provisioned volume size is 500 IOPS per GiB
    • the maximum ratio of provisioned throughput to provisioned IOPS is .25 MiB/s per IOPS.

I/O Credits and Burst Performance

  • I/O credits represent the available bandwidth that the General Purpose SSD volume can use to burst large amounts of I/O when more than the baseline performance is needed.
  • General Purpose SSD (gp2) volume performance is governed by volume size, which dictates the baseline performance level of the volume for e.g. 100 GiB volume has a 300 IOPS @ 3 IOPS/GiB
  • General Purpose SSD volume size also determines how quickly it accumulates I/O credits for e.g. 100 GiB with a performance of 300 IOPS can accumulate 180K IOPS/10 mins (300 * 60 * 10).
  • Larger volumes have higher baseline performance levels and accumulate I/O credits faster for e.g. 1 TiB has a baseline performance of 3000 IOPS
  • More credits the volume has for I/O, the more time it can burst beyond its baseline performance level and the better it performs when more performance is needed for e.g. 300 GiB volume with 180K I/O credit can burst @ 3000 IOPS for 1 minute (180K/3000)
  • Each volume receives an initial I/O credit balance of 5,400,000 I/O credits, which is enough to sustain the maximum burst performance of 3,000 IOPS for 30 minutes.
  • Initial credit balance is designed to provide a fast initial boot cycle for boot volumes and a good bootstrapping experience for other applications.
  • Each volume can accumulate I/O credits over a period of time which can be to burst to the required performance level, up to a max of 3,000 IOPS
  • Unused I/O credit cannot go beyond 54,00,000 I/O credits.

IOPS vs Volume size

  • Volumes till 1 TiB can burst up to 3000 IOPS over and above its baseline performance
  • Volumes larger than 1 TiB have a baseline performance that is already equal to or greater than the maximum burst performance, and their I/O credit balance never depletes.
  • Baseline performance cannot be beyond 10000 IOPS for General Purpose SSD volumes and this limit is reached @ 3333 GiB

IOPS vs Volume Size

Baseline Performance

  • Formula – 3 IOPS i.e. GiB * 3
  • Calculation example
    • 1 GiB volume size =  3 IOPS (1 * 3 IOPS)
    • 250 GiB volume size = 750 IOPS (250* 3 IOPS)

Maximum burst duration @ 3000 IOPS

  • How much time can 5400000 IO credit be sustained @ the burst performance of 3000 IOPS. Subtract the baseline performance from 3000 IOPS which would be contributed by the volume size
  • Formula – 5400000/(3000 – Baseline performance)
  • Calculation example
    • 1 GiB volume size @ 3000 IOPS with 5400000 the burst performance can be maintained for 5400000/(3000-3) = 1802 secs
    • 250 GiB volume size @ 3000 IOPS with 5400000 the burst performance can be maintained for 5400000/(3000-3*250) = 2400 secs

Time to fill the 5400000 I/O credit balance

  • Formula – 5400000/Baseline performance
  • Calculation
    • 1 GiB volume size @ 3 IOPS would require 5400000/3 = 1800000 secs
    • 250 GiB volume size @ 750 IOPS would require 5400000/750 = 7200 secs

Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1/io2) Volumes

  • are designed to meet the needs of I/O intensive workloads, particularly database workloads, that are sensitive to storage performance and consistency in random access I/O throughput.
  • IOPS rate can be specified when the volume is created, and EBS delivers within 10% of the provisioned IOPS performance 99.9% of the time over a given year.
  • can range in size from 4 GiB to 16 TiB
  • have a throughput limit range of 256 KiB for each IOPS provisioned, up to a maximum of 320 500 MiB/s (at 32000 IOPS)
  • can be provision up to 20,000 32,000 64,000 IOPS per volume.
  • Ratio of IOPS provisioned to the volume size requested can be a maximum of 30 50; e.g., a volume with 5,000 IOPS must be at least 100 GiB.
  • can be striped together in a RAID configuration for larger size and greater performance over 20000 IOPS

Hard disk drives (HDD-backed) volumes

Hard disk drives (HDD-backed) volumes

Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) Volumes

  • provide low-cost magnetic storage that defines performance in terms of throughput rather than IOPS.
  • is a good fit for large, sequential workloads such as EMR, ETL, data warehouses, and log processing
  • do not support Bootable sc1 volumes
  • are designed to support frequently accessed data
  • uses a burst-bucket model for performance similar to gp2. Volume size determines the baseline throughput of the volume, which is the rate at which the volume accumulates throughput credits. Volume size also determines the burst throughput of your volume, which is the rate at which you can spend credits when they are available.

Cold HDD (sc1) Volumes

  • provide low-cost magnetic storage that defines performance in terms of throughput rather than IOPS.
  • With a lower throughput limit than st1, sc1 is a good fit ideal for large, sequential cold-data workloads.
  • ideal for infrequent access to data and are looking to save costs, sc1 provides inexpensive block storage
  • do not support Bootable sc1 volumes
  • though are similar to Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) volumes, are designed to support infrequently accessed data.
  • uses a burst-bucket model for performance similar to gp2. Volume size determines the baseline throughput of the volume, which is the rate at which the volume accumulates throughput credits. Volume size also determines the burst throughput of your volume, which is the rate at which you can spend credits when they are available.

Magnetic Volumes (standard)

Magnetic volumes provide the lowest cost per gigabyte of all EBS volume types. Magnetic volumes are backed by magnetic drives and are ideal for workloads performing sequential reads, workloads where data is accessed infrequently, and scenarios where the lowest storage cost is important.

  • Magnetic volumes can range in size from1 GiB to 1 TiB
  • These volumes deliver approximately 100 IOPS on average, with burst capability of up to hundreds of IOPS
  • Magnetic volumes can be striped together in a RAID configuration for larger size and greater performance.

EBS Volume Types (Previous Generation – Reference Only)

EBS Volume Types Comparision

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. You are designing an enterprise data storage system. Your data management software system requires mountable disks and a real filesystem, so you cannot use S3 for storage. You need persistence, so you will be using AWS EBS Volumes for your system. The system needs as low-cost storage as possible, and access is not frequent or high throughput, and is mostly sequential reads. Which is the most appropriate EBS Volume Type for this scenario?
    1. gp1
    2. io1
    3. standard (Standard or Magnetic volumes are suited for cold workloads where data is infrequently accessed, or scenarios where the lowest storage cost is important)
    4. gp2
  2. Which EBS volume type is best for high performance NoSQL cluster deployments?
    1. io1 (io1 volumes, or Provisioned IOPS (PIOPS) SSDs, are best for: Critical business applications that require sustained IOPS performance, or more than 10,000 IOPS or 160 MiB/s of throughput per volume, like large database workloads, such as MongoDB.)
    2. gp1
    3. standard
    4. gp2
  3. Provisioned IOPS Costs: you are charged for the IOPS and storage whether or not you use them in a given month.
    1. FALSE
    2. TRUE
  4. A user is trying to create a PIOPS EBS volume with 8 GB size and 450 IOPS. Will AWS create the volume?
    1. Yes, since the ratio between EBS and IOPS is less than 50
    2. No, since the PIOPS and EBS size ratio is less than 50
    3. No, the EBS size is less than 10 GB
    4. Yes, since PIOPS is higher than 100
  5. A user has provisioned 2000 IOPS to the EBS volume. The application hosted on that EBS is experiencing fewer IOPS than provisioned. Which of the below mentioned options does not affect the IOPS of the volume?
    1. The application does not have enough IO for the volume
    2. Instance is EBS optimized
    3. The EC2 instance has 10 Gigabit Network connectivity
    4. Volume size is too large
  6. A user is trying to create a PIOPS EBS volume with 6000 IOPS and 100 GB size. AWS does not allow the user to create this volume. What is the possible root cause for this?
    1. The ratio between IOPS and the EBS volume is higher than 50
    2. The maximum IOPS supported by EBS is 3000
    3. The ratio between IOPS and the EBS volume is lower than 100
    4. PIOPS is supported for EBS higher than 500 GB size

References

AWS EC2 VM Import/Export

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 5 Comments

EC2 VM Import/Export

  • EC2 VM Import/Export enables importing virtual machine (VM) images from existing virtualization environment to EC2, and then export them back to the on-premises environment
  • EC2 VM Import/Export enables
    • migration of applications and workloads to EC2,
    • coping VM image catalog to EC2, or
    • create a repository of VM images for backup and disaster recovery
    • to leverage previous investments in building VMs by migrating the VMs to EC2.
  • Supported file formats are: VMware ESX VMDK images, Citrix Xen VHD images, Microsoft Hyper-V VHD images, and RAW images
  • For VMware vSphere, AWS Connector for vCenter can be used to export a VM from VMware and import it into Amazon EC2
  • For Microsoft Systems Center, AWS Systems Manager for Microsoft SCVMM can be used to import Windows VMs from SCVMM to EC2

AWS EC2 VM Import/Export

EC2 VM Import/Export features

  • ability to import a VM from a virtualization environment to EC2 as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI), which can be used to launch an EC2 instance
  • ability to import a VM from a virtualization environment to EC2 as an EC2 instance, which is initially in a stopped state. AMI can be created from it
  • ability to export a VM that was previously imported from the virtualization environment
  • ability to import disks as EBS snapshots.

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. You are responsible for a legacy web application whose server environment is approaching end of life. You would like to migrate this application to AWS as quickly as possible, since the application environment currently has the following limitations: The VM’s single 10GB VMDK is almost full. The virtual network interface still uses the 10Mbps driver, which leaves your 100Mbps WAN connection completely underutilized. It is currently running on a highly customized Windows VM within a VMware environment: You do not have the installation media. This is a mission critical application with an RTO (Recovery Time Objective) of 8 hours. RPO (Recovery Point Objective) of 1 hour. How could you best migrate this application to AWS while meeting your business continuity requirements?
    1. Use the EC2 VM Import Connector for vCenter to import the VM into EC2
    2. Use Import/Export to import the VM as an EBS snapshot and attach to EC2. (Import/Export is used to transfer large amount of data)
    3. Use S3 to create a backup of the VM and restore the data into EC2.
    4. Use the ec2-bundle-instance API to Import an Image of the VM into EC2 (only bundles an windows instance store instance)
  2. You are tasked with moving a legacy application from a virtual machine running inside your datacenter to an Amazon VPC. Unfortunately this app requires access to a number of on-premises services and no one who configured the app still works for your company. Even worse there’s no documentation for it. What will allow the application running inside the VPC to reach back and access its internal dependencies without being reconfigured? (Choose 3 answers)
    1. An AWS Direct Connect link between the VPC and the network housing the internal services (VPN or a DX for communication)
    2. An Internet Gateway to allow a VPN connection. (Virtual and Customer gateway is needed)
    3. An Elastic IP address on the VPC instance (Don’t need a EIP as private subnets can also interact with on-premises network)
    4. An IP address space that does not conflict with the one on-premises (IP address cannot conflict)
    5. Entries in Amazon Route 53 that allow the Instance to resolve its dependencies’ IP addresses (Route 53 is not required)
    6. A VM Import of the current virtual machine (VM Import to copy the VM to AWS as there is no documentation it can’t be configured from scratch)

AWS EC2 – Elastic Cloud Compute

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 9 Comments

Elastic Cloud Compute – EC2

  • Elastic Compute Cloud – EC2 provides scalable computing capacity in AWS
  • Elastic Compute Cloud – EC2
    • eliminates the need to invest in hardware upfront, so applications can be developed and deployed faster.
    • can be used to launch as many or as few virtual servers as you need, configure security and networking, and manage storage.
    • enables you to scale up or down to handle changes in requirements or spikes in popularity, reducing the need to forecast traffic.

EC2 features

  • EC2 instances – Virtual computing environments
  • Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) – Preconfigured templates for the instances that package the bits needed for a server (including the operating system and additional software)
  • Instance types – Various configurations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity for the instances
  • Key Pairs – Secure login information for the instances (AWS stores the public key, and you store the private key in a secure place)
  • Instance Store Volumes – Storage volumes for temporary data that are deleted when you stop or terminate your instance, known as
  • EBS Volumes – Persistent storage volumes for the data using Elastic Block Store (EBS)
  • Regions and Availability Zones – Multiple physical locations for the resources, such as instances and EBS volumes
  • Security Groups – A firewall that enables you to specify the protocols, ports, and source IP ranges that can reach the instances
  • Elastic IP addresses – Static IP addresses for dynamic cloud computing
  • Tags – Metadata can be created and assigned to EC2 resources

Accessing EC2

  • Amazon EC2 console
    • Amazon EC2 console is the web-based user interface that can be accessed from the AWS management console
  • AWS Command line Interface (CLI)
    • Provides commands for a broad set of AWS products, and is supported on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
  • Amazon EC2 Command Line Interface (CLI) tools
    • Provides commands for Amazon EC2, Amazon EBS, and Amazon VPC, and is supported on Windows, Mac, and Linux
  • AWS Tools for Windows Powershell
    • Provides commands for a broad set of AWS products for those who script in the PowerShell environment
  • AWS Query API
    • Query API allows for requests are HTTP or HTTPS requests that use the HTTP verbs GET or POST and a Query parameter named Action
  • AWS SDK libraries
    • AWS provides libraries in various languages which provide basic functions that automate tasks such as cryptographically signing your requests, retrying requests, and handling error responses

Additional Reading

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. What are the Amazon EC2 API tools?
    1. They don’t exist. The Amazon EC2 AMI tools, instead, are used to manage permissions.
    2. Command-line tools to the Amazon EC2 web service
    3. They are a set of graphical tools to manage EC2 instances.
    4. They don’t exist. The Amazon API tools are a client interface to Amazon Web Services.
  2. When a user is launching an instance with EC2, which of the below mentioned options is not available during the instance launch console for a key pair?
    1. Proceed without the key pair
    2. Upload a new key pair
    3. Select an existing key pair
    4. Create a new key pair

References

AWS_EC2

AWS EC2 Security

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 17 Comments

AWS EC2 Security

  • IAM helps control whether users in the organization can perform a task using specific EC2 API actions and whether they can use specific AWS resources.
  • Use IAM roles to prevent the need to share as well as manage, and rotate the security credentials that the applications use.
  • Security groups act as a virtual firewall that controls the traffic to the EC2 instances. They can help specify rules that control the inbound traffic that’s allowed to reach the instances and the outbound traffic that’s allowed to leave the instance.
  • Use AWS Systems Manager Session Manager to connect to the instance as it provides secure and auditable instance management without the need to open inbound ports, maintain bastion hosts, or manage SSH keys.
  • Use EC2 Instance Connect to connect to your instances using Secure Shell (SSH) without the need to share and manage SSH keys.
  • Use AWS Systems Manager Run Command to automate common administrative tasks instead of opening inbound SSH ports and managing SSH keys.
  • Use Systems Manager Patch Manager can be used to automate the process of patching, installing security-related updates for both the operating system and applications.

EC2 Key Pairs

  • EC2 uses public-key cryptography to encrypt & decrypt login information
  • Public-key cryptography uses a public key to encrypt a piece of data, such as a password, then the recipient uses the private key to decrypt the data.
  • Public and private keys are known as a key pair.
  • To log in to an EC2 instance, a key pair needs to be created and specified when the instance is launched, and the private key can be used to connect to the instance.
  • Linux instances have no password, and the key pair is used for ssh log in
  • For Windows instances, the key pair can be used to obtain the administrator password and then log in using RDP
  • EC2 stores the public key only, and the private key resides with the user. EC2 doesn’t keep a copy of your private key
  • Public key content (on Linux instances) is placed in an entry within  ~/.ssh/authorized_keys at boot time and enables the user to securely access the instance without passwords
  • Public key specified for an instance when launched is also available through its instance metadata http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/public-keys/0/openssh-key
  • EC2 Security Best Practice: Store the private keys in a secure place as anyone who possesses the private key can decrypt the login information
  • Also, if the private key is lost, there is no way to recover the same.
    • For instance store, you cannot access the instance
    • For EBS-backed Linux instances, access can be regained.
      • EBS-backed instance can be stopped, its root volume detached and attached to another instance as a data volume
      • Modify the authorized_keys file, move the volume back to the original instance, and restart the instance
  • Key pair associated with the instances can either be
    • Generated by EC2
      • Keys that EC2 uses are 2048-bit SSH-2 RSA keys.
    • Created separately (using third-party tools) and Imported into EC2
      • EC2 only accepts RSA keys and does not accept DSA keys
      • Supported lengths: 1024, 2048, and 4096
  • supports five thousand key pairs per region
  • Deleting a key pair only deletes the public key and does not impact the servers already launched with the key.
  • Use AWS Systems Manager Session Manager to connect to the instance as it provides secure and auditable instance management without the need to open inbound ports, maintain bastion hosts, or manage SSH keys.

EC2 Security Groups

  • An EC2 instance, when launched, can be associated with one or more security groups, which acts as a virtual firewall that controls the traffic to that instance
  • Security groups help specify rules that control the inbound traffic that’s allowed to reach the instances and the outbound traffic that’s allowed to leave the instance
  • Security groups are associated with network interfaces. Changing an instance’s security groups changes the security groups associated with the primary network interface (eth0)
  • An ENI can be associated with 5 security groups and with 50 60 rules per security group
  • Rules for a security group can be modified at any time; the new rules are automatically applied to all instances associated with the security group.
  • All the rules from all associated security groups are evaluated to decide where to allow traffic to an instance
  • Security Group features
    • For the VPC default security group, it allows all inbound traffic from other instances associated with the default security group
    • By default, VPC default security groups or newly created security groups allow all outbound traffic
    • Security group rules are always permissive; deny rules can’t be created
    • Rules can be added and removed any time.
    • Any modification to the rules are automatically applied to the instances associated with the security group after a short period, depending on the connection tracking for the traffic
    • Security groups are stateful — if you send a request from your instance, the response traffic for that request is allowed to flow in regardless of inbound security group rules. For VPC security groups, this also means that responses to allowed inbound traffic are allowed to flow out, regardless of outbound rules
    • If multiple rules are defined for the same protocol and port, the Most permissive rule is applied for e.g. for multiple rules for tcp and port 22 for specific IP and Everyone, everyone is granted access being the most permissive rule

Connection Tracking

  • Security groups are Stateful and they use Connection tracking to track information about traffic to and from the instance.
  • This allows responses to inbound traffic to flow out of the instance regardless of outbound security group rules, and vice versa.
  • Connection Tracking is maintained only if there is no explicit Outbound rule for an Inbound request (and vice versa)
  • However, if there is an explicit Outbound rule for an Inbound request, the response traffic is allowed on the basis of the Outbound rule and not on the Tracking information
  • Any existing flow of traffic, that is tracked, is not interrupted even if the rules for the security groups are changed. To ensure traffic is immediately interrupted, use NACL as they are stateless and therefore do not allow automatic response traffic.
  • Also, If the instance (host A) initiates traffic to host B and uses a protocol other than TCP, UDP, or ICMP,  the instance’s firewall only tracks the IP address and protocol number for the purpose of allowing response traffic from host B. If host B initiates traffic to your instance in a separate request within 600 seconds of the original request or response, your instance accepts it regardless of inbound security group rules, because it’s regarded as response traffic.
  • can be controlled by modifying the security group’s outbound rules to permit only certain types of outbound traffic or using NACL

IAM with EC2

  • IAM policy can be defined to allow or deny a user access to the EC2 resources and actions
  • EC2 partially supports resource-level permissions. For some EC2 API actions, you cannot specify which resource a user is allowed to work with for that action; instead, you have to allow users to work with all resources for that action
  • IAM allows to control only what actions a user can perform on the EC2 resources but cannot be used to grant access for users to be able to access or login to the instances

EC2 with IAM Role

  • EC2 instances can be launched with IAM roles so that the applications can securely make API requests from your instances,
  • IAM roles prevent the need to share as well as manage, rotate the security credentials that the applications use.
  • IAM role can be added to an existing running EC2 instance.
  • EC2 uses an instance profile as a container for an IAM role.
    • Creation of an IAM role using the console, creates an instance profile automatically and gives it the same name as the role it corresponds to.
    • When using the AWS CLI, API, or an AWS SDK to create a role, the role and instance profile needs to be created as separate actions, and they can be given different names.
  • To launch an instance with an IAM role, the name of its instance profile needs to be specified.
  • An application on the instance can retrieve the security credentials provided by the role from the instance metadata item http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/role-name.
  • Security credentials are temporary and are rotated automatically and new credentials are made available at least five minutes prior to the expiration of the old credentials.
  • Best Practice: Always launch EC2 instance with IAM role instead of hardcoded credentials

EC2 IAM Role S3 Access

EC2 Resiliency

  • EC2 offers the following features to support your data resiliency:
    • Copying AMIs across Regions
    • Copying EBS snapshots across Regions
    • Automating EBS-backed AMIs using Data Lifecycle Manager
    • Automating EBS snapshots using Data Lifecycle Manager
    • Maintaining the health and availability of the fleet using EC2 Auto Scaling
    • Distributing incoming traffic across multiple instances in a single AZ or multiple AZs using Elastic Load Balancing

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. You launch an Amazon EC2 instance without an assigned AWS identity and Access Management (IAM) role. Later, you decide that the instance should be running with an IAM role. Which action must you take in order to have a running Amazon EC2 instance with an IAM role assigned to it?
    1. Create an image of the instance, and register the image with an IAM role assigned and an Amazon EBS volume mapping.
    2. Create a new IAM role with the same permissions as an existing IAM role, and assign it to the running instance. (As per AWS latest enhancement, this is possible now)
    3. Create an image of the instance, add a new IAM role with the same permissions as the desired IAM role, and deregister the image with the new role assigned.
    4. Create an image of the instance, and use this image to launch a new instance with the desired IAM role assigned (This was correct before, as it was not possible to add an IAM role to an existing instance)
  2. What does the following command do with respect to the Amazon EC2 security groups? ec2-revoke RevokeSecurityGroupIngress
    1. Removes one or more security groups from a rule.
    2. Removes one or more security groups from an Amazon EC2 instance.
    3. Removes one or more rules from a security group
    4. Removes a security group from our account.
  3. Which of the following cannot be used in Amazon EC2 to control who has access to specific Amazon EC2 instances?
    1. Security Groups
    2. IAM System
    3. SSH keys
    4. Windows passwords
  4. You must assign each server to at least _____ security group
    1. 3
    2. 2
    3. 4
    4. 1
  5. A company is building software on AWS that requires access to various AWS services. Which configuration should be used to ensure that AWS credentials (i.e., Access Key ID/Secret Access Key combination) are not compromised?
    1. Enable Multi-Factor Authentication for your AWS root account.
    2. Assign an IAM role to the Amazon EC2 instance
    3. Store the AWS Access Key ID/Secret Access Key combination in software comments.
    4. Assign an IAM user to the Amazon EC2 Instance.
  6. Which of the following items are required to allow an application deployed on an EC2 instance to write data to a DynamoDB table? Assume that no security keys are allowed to be stored on the EC2 instance. (Choose 2 answers)
    1. Create an IAM Role that allows write access to the DynamoDB table
    2. Add an IAM Role to a running EC2 instance. (As per AWS latest enhancement, this is possible now)
    3. Create an IAM User that allows write access to the DynamoDB table.
    4. Add an IAM User to a running EC2 instance.
    5. Launch an EC2 Instance with the IAM Role included in the launch configuration (This was correct before, as it was not possible to add an IAM role to an existing instance)
  7. You have an application running on an EC2 Instance, which will allow users to download files from a private S3 bucket using a pre-assigned URL. Before generating the URL the application should verify the existence of the file in S3. How should the application use AWS credentials to access the S3 bucket securely?
    1. Use the AWS account access Keys the application retrieves the credentials from the source code of the application.
    2. Create a IAM user for the application with permissions that allow list access to the S3 bucket launch the instance as the IAM user and retrieve the IAM user’s credentials from the EC2 instance user data.
    3. Create an IAM role for EC2 that allows list access to objects in the S3 bucket. Launch the instance with the role, and retrieve the role’s credentials from the EC2 Instance metadata
    4. Create an IAM user for the application with permissions that allow list access to the S3 bucket. The application retrieves the IAM user credentials from a temporary directory with permissions that allow read access only to the application user.
  8. A user has created an application, which will be hosted on EC2. The application makes calls to DynamoDB to fetch certain data. The application is using the DynamoDB SDK to connect with from the EC2 instance. Which of the below mentioned statements is true with respect to the best practice for security in this scenario?
    1. The user should attach an IAM role with DynamoDB access to the EC2 instance
    2. The user should create an IAM user with DynamoDB access and use its credentials within the application to connect with DynamoDB
    3. The user should create an IAM role, which has EC2 access so that it will allow deploying the application
    4. The user should create an IAM user with DynamoDB and EC2 access. Attach the user with the application so that it does not use the root account credentials
  9. Your application is leveraging IAM Roles for EC2 for accessing object stored in S3. Which two of the following IAM policies control access to you S3 objects.
    1. An IAM trust policy allows the EC2 instance to assume an EC2 instance role.
    2. An IAM access policy allows the EC2 role to access S3 objects
    3. An IAM bucket policy allows the EC2 role to access S3 objects. (Bucket policy is defined with S3 and not with IAM)
    4. An IAM trust policy allows applications running on the EC2 instance to assume as EC2 role (Trust policy allows EC2 instance to assume the role)
    5. An IAM trust policy allows applications running on the EC2 instance to access S3 objects. (Applications can access S3 through EC2 assuming the role)
  10. You have an application running on an EC2 Instance, which will allow users to download files from a private S3 bucket using a pre-assigned URL. Before generating the URL the application should verify the existence of the file in S3. How should the application use AWS credentials to access the S3 bucket securely?
    1. Use the AWS account access Keys the application retrieves the credentials from the source code of the application.
    2. Create a IAM user for the application with permissions that allow list access to the S3 bucket launch the instance as the IAM user and retrieve the IAM user’s credentials from the EC2 instance user data.
    3. Create an IAM role for EC2 that allows list access to objects in the S3 bucket. Launch the instance with the role, and retrieve the role’s credentials from the EC2 Instance metadata
    4. Create an IAM user for the application with permissions that allow list access to the S3 bucket. The application retrieves the IAM user credentials from a temporary directory with permissions that allow read access only to the application user.

AWS Elastic Block Store Storage – EBS

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 61 Comments

EC2 Elastic Block Storage – EBS

  • Elastic Block Storage – EBS provides highly available, reliable, durable, block-level storage volumes that can be attached to an EC2 instance.
  • EBS as a primary storage device is recommended for data that requires frequent and granular updates e.g. running a database or filesystem.
  • An EBS volume
    • behaves like a raw, unformatted, external block device that can be attached to a single EC2 instance at a time.
    • persists independently from the running life of an instance.
    • is Zonal and can be attached to any instance within the same Availability Zone and can be used like any other physical hard drive.
    • is particularly well-suited for use as the primary storage for file systems, databases, or any applications that require fine granular updates and access to raw, unformatted, block-level storage.

Elastic Block Storage Features

  • EBS Volumes are created in a specific Availability Zone and can be attached to any instance in that same AZ.
  • Volumes can be backed up by creating a snapshot of the volume, which is stored in S3.
  • Volumes can be created from a snapshot that can be attached to another instance within the same region.
  • Volumes can be made available outside of the AZ by creating and restoring the snapshot to a new volume anywhere in that region.
  • Snapshots can also be copied to other regions and then restored to new volumes, making it easier to leverage multiple AWS regions for geographical expansion, data center migration, and disaster recovery.
  • Volumes allow encryption using the EBS encryption feature. All data stored at rest, disk I/O, and snapshots created from the volume are encrypted.
  • Encryption occurs on the EC2 instance, providing encryption of data-in-transit from EC2 to the EBS volume.
  • Elastic Volumes help easily adapt the volumes as the needs of the applications change. Elastic Volumes allow you to dynamically increase capacity, tune performance, and change the type of any new or existing current generation volume with no downtime or performance impact.
  • You can dynamically increase size, modify the provisioned IOPS capacity, and change volume type on live production volumes.
  • General Purpose (SSD) volumes support up to 10,000 16000 IOPS and 160 250 MB/s of throughput and Provisioned IOPS (SSD) volumes support up to 20,000 64000 IOPS and 320 1000 MB/s of throughput.
  • EBS Magnetic volumes can be created from 1 GiB to 1 TiB in size; EBS General Purpose (SSD) and Provisioned IOPS (SSD) volumes can be created up to 16 TiB in size.

EBS Benefits

  • Data Availability
    • Data is automatically replicated in an Availability Zone to prevent data loss due to the failure of any single hardware component.
  • Data Persistence
    • persists independently of the running life of an EC2 instance
    • persists when an instance is stopped, started, or rebooted
    • Root volume is deleted, by default, on Instance termination but the behaviour can be changed using the DeleteOnTermination flag
    • All attached volumes persist, by default, on instance termination
  • Data Encryption
    • can be encrypted by the EBS encryption feature
    • uses 256-bit AES-256 and an Amazon-managed key infrastructure.
    • Encryption occurs on the server that hosts the EC2 instance, providing encryption of data-in-transit from the EC2 instance to EBS storage
    • Snapshots of encrypted EBS volumes are automatically encrypted.
  • Snapshots
    • provides the ability to create snapshots (backups) of any EBS volume and write a copy of the data in the volume to S3, where it is stored redundantly in multiple Availability Zones.
    • can be used to create new volumes, increase the size of the volumes or replicate data across Availability Zones or Regions.
    • are incremental backups and store only the data that was changed from the time the last snapshot was taken.
    • Snapshot size can probably be smaller than the volume size as the data is compressed before being saved to S3.
    • Even though snapshots are saved incrementally, the snapshot deletion process is designed so that you need to retain only the most recent snapshot in order to restore the volume.

EBS Volume Types

Refer blog post @ EBS Volume Types

EBS Volume

EBS Volume Creation

  • Creating New volumes
    • Completely new from console or command line tools and can then be attached to an EC2 instance in the same Availability Zone.
  • Restore volume from Snapshots
    • Volumes can also be restored from previously created snapshots
    • New volumes created from existing snapshots are loaded lazily in the background.
    • There is no need to wait for all of the data to transfer from S3 to the volume before the attached instance can start accessing the volume and all its data.
    • If the instance accesses the data that hasn’t yet been loaded, the volume immediately downloads the requested data from S3, and continues loading the rest of the data in the background.
    • Volumes restored from encrypted snapshots are always encrypted, by default.
  • Volumes can be created and attached to a running EC2 instance by specifying a block device mapping

EBS Volume Detachment

  • EBS volumes can be detached from an instance explicitly or by terminating the instance.
  • EBS root volumes can be detached by stopping the instance.
  • EBS data volumes, attached to a running instance, can be detached by unmounting the volume from the instance first.
  • If the volume is detached without being unmounted, it might result in the volume being stuck in a busy state and could possibly damage the file system or the data it contains.
  • EBS volume can be force detached from an instance, using the Force Detach option, but it might lead to data loss or a corrupted file system as the instance does not get an opportunity to flush file system caches or file system metadata.
  • Charges are still incurred for the volume after its detachment

EBS Volume Deletion

  • EBS volume deletion would wipe out its data and the volume can’t be attached to any instance. However, it can be backed up before deletion using EBS snapshots

EBS Volume Resize

  • EBS Elastic Volumes can be modified to increase the volume size, change the volume type, or adjust the performance of your EBS volumes.
  • If the instance supports Elastic Volumes, changes can be performed without detaching the volume or restarting the instance.

EBS Volume Snapshots

Refer blog post @ EBS Snapshot

EBS Encryption

  • EBS volumes can be created and attached to a supported instance type and support the following types of data
    • Data at rest
    • All disk I/O i.e All data moving between the volume and the instance
    • All snapshots created from the volume
    • All volumes created from those snapshots
  • Encryption occurs on the servers that host EC2 instances, providing encryption of data-in-transit from EC2 instances to EBS storage.
  • EBS encryption is supported with all EBS volume types (gp2, io1, st1, and sc1), and has the same IOPS performance on encrypted volumes as with unencrypted volumes, with a minimal effect on latency
  • EBS encryption is only available on select instance types.
  • Volumes created from encrypted snapshots and snapshots of encrypted volumes are automatically encrypted using the same encryption key.
  • EBS encryption uses AWS KMS customer master keys (CMK) when creating encrypted volumes and any snapshots created from the encrypted volumes.
  • EBS volumes can be encrypted using either
    • a default CMK created for you automatically.
    • a CMK that you created separately using AWS KMS, giving you more flexibility, including the ability to create, rotate, disable, define access controls, and audit the encryption keys used to protect your data.
  • Public or shared snapshots of encrypted volumes are not supported, because other accounts would be able to decrypt your data and needs to be migrated to an unencrypted status before sharing.
  • Existing unencrypted volumes cannot be encrypted directly, but can be migrated by
    • Option 1
      • create an unencrypted snapshot from the volume
      • create an encrypted copy of an unencrypted snapshot
      • create an encrypted volume from the encrypted snapshot
    • Option 2
      • create an unencrypted snapshot from the volume
      • create an encrypted volume from an unencrypted snapshot
  • An encrypted snapshot can be created from an unencrypted snapshot by creating an encrypted copy of the unencrypted snapshot.
  • Unencrypted volume cannot be created from an encrypted volume directly but needs to be migrated

EBS Multi-Attach

Refer blog Post @ EBS Multi-Attach

EBS Performance

Refer blog Post @ EBS Performance

EBS vs Instance Store

Refer blog post @ EBS vs Instance Store

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. _____ is a durable, block-level storage volume that you can attach to a single, running Amazon EC2 instance.
    1. Amazon S3
    2. Amazon EBS
    3. None of these
    4. All of these
  2. Which Amazon storage do you think is the best for my database-style applications that frequently encounter many random reads and writes across the dataset?
    1. None of these.
    2. Amazon Instance Storage
    3. Any of these
    4. Amazon EBS
  3. What does Amazon EBS stand for?
    1. Elastic Block Storage
    2. Elastic Business Server
    3. Elastic Blade Server
    4. Elastic Block Store
  4. Which Amazon Storage behaves like raw, unformatted, external block devices that you can attach to your instances?
    1. None of these.
    2. Amazon Instance Storage
    3. Amazon EBS
    4. All of these
  5. A user has created numerous EBS volumes. What is the general limit for each AWS account for the maximum number of EBS volumes that can be created?
    1. 10000
    2. 5000
    3. 100
    4. 1000
  6. Select the correct set of steps for exposing the snapshot only to specific AWS accounts
    1. Select Public for all the accounts and check mark those accounts with whom you want to expose the snapshots and click save.
    2. Select Private and enter the IDs of those AWS accounts, and click Save.
    3. Select Public, enter the IDs of those AWS accounts, and click Save.
    4. Select Public, mark the IDs of those AWS accounts as private, and click Save.
  7. If an Amazon EBS volume is the root device of an instance, can I detach it without stopping the instance?
    1. Yes but only if Windows instance
    2. No
    3. Yes
    4. Yes but only if a Linux instance
  8. Can we attach an EBS volume to more than one EC2 instance at the same time?
    1. Yes
    2. No
    3. Only EC2-optimized EBS volumes.
    4. Only in read mode.
  9. Do the Amazon EBS volumes persist independently from the running life of an Amazon EC2 instance?
    1. Only if instructed to when created
    2. Yes
    3. No
  10. Can I delete a snapshot of the root device of an EBS volume used by a registered AMI?
    1. Only via API
    2. Only via Console
    3. Yes
    4. No
  11. By default, EBS volumes that are created and attached to an instance at launch are deleted when that instance is terminated. You can modify this behavior by changing the value of the flag_____ to false when you launch the instance
    1. DeleteOnTermination
    2. RemoveOnDeletion
    3. RemoveOnTermination
    4. TerminateOnDeletion
  12. Your company policies require encryption of sensitive data at rest. You are considering the possible options for protecting data while storing it at rest on an EBS data volume, attached to an EC2 instance. Which of these options would allow you to encrypt your data at rest? (Choose 3 answers)
    1. Implement third party volume encryption tools
    2. Do nothing as EBS volumes are encrypted by default
    3. Encrypt data inside your applications before storing it on EBS
    4. Encrypt data using native data encryption drivers at the file system level
    5. Implement SSL/TLS for all services running on the server
  13. Which of the following are true regarding encrypted Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes? Choose 2 answers
    1. Supported on all Amazon EBS volume types
    2. Snapshots are automatically encrypted
    3. Available to all instance types
    4. Existing volumes can be encrypted
    5. Shared volumes can be encrypted
  14. How can you secure data at rest on an EBS volume?
    1. Encrypt the volume using the S3 server-side encryption service
    2. Attach the volume to an instance using EC2’s SSL interface.
    3. Create an IAM policy that restricts read and write access to the volume.
    4. Write the data randomly instead of sequentially.
    5. Use an encrypted file system on top of the EBS volume
  15. A user has deployed an application on an EBS backed EC2 instance. For a better performance of application, it requires dedicated EC2 to EBS traffic. How can the user achieve this?
    1. Launch the EC2 instance as EBS dedicated with PIOPS EBS
    2. Launch the EC2 instance as EBS enhanced with PIOPS EBS
    3. Launch the EC2 instance as EBS dedicated with PIOPS EBS
    4. Launch the EC2 instance as EBS optimized with PIOPS EBS
  16. A user is trying to launch an EBS backed EC2 instance under free usage. The user wants to achieve encryption of the EBS volume. How can the user encrypt the data at rest?
    1. Use AWS EBS encryption to encrypt the data at rest (Encryption is allowed on micro instances)
    2. User cannot use EBS encryption and has to encrypt the data manually or using a third party tool (Encryption was not allowed on micro instances before)
    3. The user has to select the encryption enabled flag while launching the EC2 instance
    4. Encryption of volume is not available as a part of the free usage tier
  17. A user is planning to schedule a backup for an EBS volume. The user wants security of the snapshot data. How can the user achieve data encryption with a snapshot?
    1. Use encrypted EBS volumes so that the snapshot will be encrypted by AWS
    2. While creating a snapshot select the snapshot with encryption
    3. By default the snapshot is encrypted by AWS
    4. Enable server side encryption for the snapshot using S3
  18. A user has launched an EBS backed EC2 instance. The user has rebooted the instance. Which of the below mentioned statements is not true with respect to the reboot action?
    1. The private and public address remains the same
    2. The Elastic IP remains associated with the instance
    3. The volume is preserved
    4. The instance runs on a new host computer
  19. A user has launched an EBS backed EC2 instance. What will be the difference while performing the restart or stop/start options on that instance?
    1. For restart it does not charge for an extra hour, while every stop/start it will be charged as a separate hour
    2. Every restart is charged by AWS as a separate hour, while multiple start/stop actions during a single hour will be counted as a single hour
    3. For every restart or start/stop it will be charged as a separate hour
    4. For restart it charges extra only once, while for every stop/start it will be charged as a separate hour
  20. A user has launched an EBS backed instance. The user started the instance at 9 AM in the morning. Between 9 AM to 10 AM, the user is testing some script. Thus, he stopped the instance twice and restarted it. In the same hour the user rebooted the instance once. For how many instance hours will AWS charge the user?
    1. 3 hours
    2. 4 hours
    3. 2 hours
    4. 1 hour
  21. You are running a database on an EC2 instance, with the data stored on Elastic Block Store (EBS) for persistence At times throughout the day, you are seeing large variance in the response times of the database queries Looking into the instance with the isolate command you see a lot of wait time on the disk volume that the database’s data is stored on. What two ways can you improve the performance of the database’s storage while maintaining the current persistence of the data? Choose 2 answers
    1. Move to an SSD backed instance
    2. Move the database to an EBS-Optimized Instance
    3. Use Provisioned IOPs EBS
    4. Use the ephemeral storage on an m2.4xLarge Instance Instead
  22. An organization wants to move to Cloud. They are looking for a secure encrypted database storage option. Which of the below mentioned AWS functionalities helps them to achieve this?
    1. AWS MFA with EBS
    2. AWS EBS encryption
    3. Multi-tier encryption with Redshift
    4. AWS S3 server-side storage
  23. A user has stored data on an encrypted EBS volume. The user wants to share the data with his friend’s AWS account. How can user achieve this?
    1. Create an AMI from the volume and share the AMI
    2. Copy the data to an unencrypted volume and then share
    3. Take a snapshot and share the snapshot with a friend
    4. If both the accounts are using the same encryption key then the user can share the volume directly
  24. A user is using an EBS backed instance. Which of the below mentioned statements is true?
    1. The user will be charged for volume and instance only when the instance is running
    2. The user will be charged for the volume even if the instance is stopped
    3. The user will be charged only for the instance running cost
    4. The user will not be charged for the volume if the instance is stopped
  25. A user is planning to use EBS for his DB requirement. The user already has an EC2 instance running in the VPC private subnet. How can the user attach the EBS volume to a running instance?
    1. The user must create EBS within the same VPC and then attach it to a running instance.
    2. The user can create EBS in the same zone as the subnet of instance and attach that EBS to instance. (Should be in the same AZ)
    3. It is not possible to attach an EBS to an instance running in VPC until the instance is stopped.
    4. The user can specify the same subnet while creating EBS and then attach it to a running instance.
  26. A user is creating an EBS volume. He asks for your advice. Which advice mentioned below should you not give to the user for creating an EBS volume?
    1. Take the snapshot of the volume when the instance is stopped
    2. Stripe multiple volumes attached to the same instance
    3. Create an AMI from the attached volume (AMI is created from the snapshot)
    4. Attach multiple volumes to the same instance
  27. An EC2 instance has one additional EBS volume attached to it. How can a user attach the same volume to another running instance in the same AZ?
    1. Terminate the first instance and only then attach to the new instance
    2. Attach the volume as read only to the second instance
    3. Detach the volume first and attach to new instance
    4. No need to detach. Just select the volume and attach it to the new instance, it will take care of mapping internally
  28. What is the scope of an EBS volume?
    1. VPC
    2. Region
    3. Placement Group
    4. Availability Zone

Reference

Amazon_EBS

AWS EC2 Instance Types

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 12 Comments

EC2 Instance Types

  • EC2 Instance types determine the hardware of the host computer used for the instance.
  • EC2 Instance types offer different compute, memory & storage capabilities and are grouped in instance families based on these capabilities.
  • EC2 provides each instance with a consistent and predictable amount of CPU capacity, regardless of its underlying hardware.
  • EC2 dedicates some resources of the host computer, such as CPU, memory, and instance storage, to a particular instance.
  • EC2 shares other resources of the host computer, such as the network and the disk subsystem, among instances. If each instance on a host computer tries to use as much of one of these shared resources as possible, each receives an equal share of that resource. However, when a resource is under-utilized, an instance can consume a higher share of that resource while it’s available.

EC2 Instance Types Selection criteria

  • Some Instance types support only the HVM virtualization type while others support both the PV and HVM virtualization types. AWS, however, recommends using HVM for taking advantage of the underlying hardware
  • All EC2 instance types are available in a VPC, however, a few are not available in an EC2-classic. AWS recommends using VPC to take advantage of enhanced networking, multiple IP addresses, finer security control etc.
  • Some instances support only EBS volumes, while others support both EBS and Instance store volumes. Some instances that support instance store volumes use solid-state drives (SSD) to deliver very high random I/O performance.
  • Some EC2 instance types can be launched as EBS optimized instances with a dedicated capacity for EBS I/O.
  • Some EC2 Instance types can be launched in placement group to optimize instances for High-Performance Computing (HPC)
  • Some instances support Enhanced Networking,  to get significantly higher packet per second (PPS) performance, lower network jitter, and lower latencies
  • Some Instances allow EBS volumes to be encrypted

EBS-Optimized

  • EBS-optimized instance uses an optimized configuration stack and provides additional, dedicated capacity for EBS I/O.
  • EBS-optimized instances enable you to get consistently high performance for the EBS volumes by eliminating contention between EBS I/O and other network traffic from the instance.
  • EBS-optimized instances deliver dedicated throughput between Amazon EC2 and EBS, with options between 500 and 60,000 Megabits per second (Mbps) depending on the instance type used.
  • When attached to an EBS–optimized instance, General Purpose (SSD) volumes are designed to deliver within 10 percent of their baseline and burst performance 99.9 percent of the time in a given year, and Provisioned IOPS (SSD) volumes are designed to deliver within 10 percent of their provisioned performance 99.9 percent of the time in a given year.
  • EBS optimization can be enabled for an instance that is not EBS–optimized, by default

Placement Groups

  • EC2 Placement groups determine how the instances are placed on the underlying hardware.
  • AWS now provides three types of placement groups
    • Cluster – clusters instances into a low-latency group in a single AZ
    • Partition – spreads instances across logical partitions, ensuring that instances in one partition do not share underlying hardware with instances in other partitions
    • Spread – strictly places a small group of instances across distinct underlying hardware to reduce correlated failures

NOTE – AWS keeps on releasing new instance types, please refer AWS documentation for the same.

EC2 Instance Types – Current Generation

EC2 Instance Types

EC2 Instance Types Comparision

Screen Shot 2016-04-15 at 7.06.50 AM.png

T2 Instances (General Purpose)

  • T2 instances are designed to provide moderate baseline performance and the capability to burst to significantly higher performance as required
  • Mainly intended for workloads that don’t use the full CPU often or consistently, but occasionally need to burst.
  • T2 instances are well suited for
    • general-purpose workloads, such as web servers, developer environments, remote desktops, and small databases
  • Requirements
    • can be launched only with HVM AMI
    • can be launched into a  VPC only, and not supported on the EC2-Classic platform
    • are available as EBS-backed instances only
    • are available as On-Demand, Reserved instances, Dedicated Instances (T3 only), and Spot instances but do not allow spot instances
    • By default, 20 (soft limit) T2 instances can run simultaneously
    • cannot be launched as a Dedicated host
  • T2 Unlimited Instances
    • can sustain high CPU performance for as long as a workload needs it.
    • for most general-purpose workloads, it provides ample performance without any additional charges.
    • If the instance needs to run at higher CPU utilization for a prolonged period, it can also do so at a flat additional rate

CPU Credits

  • CPU Credits (Similar to I/O Credits in the case of the EBS general-purpose storage) provides the performance of a full CPU core for one minute
  • T2 instances provide a baseline level of CPU performance, while CPU governs the ability to burst above the baseline level
  • One CPU credit is equal to one vCPU running at 100% utilization for one minute. for e.g. can have One vCPU running at 100% for One min OR One vCPU running @ 50% for 2 mins OR Two vCPU running @ 25% for 2 mins
  • Each T2 instance receives a healthy initial credit balance for startup performance
  • Initial CPU credits do not expire, but they are used first when an instance uses CPU credits.
  • Each T2 instance then continuously (at a millisecond-level resolution) receives a set rate of CPU credits per hour, depending on instance size for e.g. t2.nano earns 3/hour while a t2.large earns 36/hour
  • Each T2 instance accumulates the CPU credit when it uses fewer CPU resources than its allowed baseline performance levels
  • Maximum earned credit balance for an instance is equal to the number of CPU credits received per hour times 24 hours for e.g. t2.nano can earn max 72 (24 * 3) credits
  • CPU credit balance is available for a period of 24 hours and it expires 24 hours after they were earned. Expired credits are removed from the balance before new ones are added
  • CPU credit ceases to persist between an instance stop-start. However, after the start, the instance receives the initial CPU credits again
  • When the credit balance is completely exhausted, the instance will perform at its baseline performance

C4 Instances (Compute Intensive)

  • C4 instances are ideal for compute-bound applications that benefit from high-performance processors
  • Well suited for
    • Batch processing workloads,
    • Media transcoding,
    • High-traffic web servers, massively multiplayer online (MMO) gaming servers, and ad serving engines,
    • High-traffic web servers, massively multiplayer online (MMO) gaming servers, and ad serving engines
  • Features
    • are EBS-optimized, by default
    • can be enabled for Enhanced Networking capabilities
    • can be clustered in a placement group
  • requirements
    • requires 64-bit HVM AMI
    • can be launched into a  VPC only, and not supported on the EC2-Classic platform

G2 Instances (Graphic Intensive)

  • GPU instances provide  high parallel processing capability
  • Well suited for
    • to accelerate many scientific, engineering, and rendering applications by leveraging the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) or OpenCL parallel computing frameworks
    • graphics applications, including game streaming, 3-D application streaming, and other graphics workloads
  • Requirements
    • requires HVM AMI
    • can’t access GPU unless NVIDIA drivers installed
  • Features
    • can be clustered in a placement group

I2 Instances (I/O Intensive)

  • I2 instances are optimized to deliver tens of thousands of low-latency, random I/O operations per second (IOPS) to applications.
  • Well suited for applications
    • NoSQL databases (for example, Cassandra and MongoDB)
    • Clustered databases
    • Online transaction processing (OLTP) systems
  • Features
    • Primary data storage is SSD-based instance storage.
    • can be enabled for Enhanced Networking capabilities
    • can be clustered in a placement group
    • can enable EBS–optimization to obtain additional, dedicated capacity for Amazon EBS I/O
  • Requirements
    • requires HVM AMI
  • HI1 is the equivalent previous generation instance
    • supports both PV and HVM AMIs

D2 Instances (Density Intensive)

  • D2 instances are designed for workloads with very high storage density and that require high sequential read and write access to very large data sets on local storage.
  • Well suited for applications
    • Massive parallel processing (MPP) data warehouse
    • MapReduce and Hadoop distributed computing
    • Log or data processing applications
  • Features
    • Primary data storage for D2 instances is HDD-based instance storage
    • are EBS-optimized, by default
    • can be enabled for Enhanced Networking capabilities
    • can be clustered in a placement group
  • requirements
    • requires 64-bit HVM AMI
  • HS1 is the equivalent previous generation instance
    • supports both EBS and Instance store backed AMIs
    • supports both PV and HVM AMIs

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. Which of the following instance types are available as Amazon EBS-backed only? Choose 2 answers
    1. General purpose T2
    2. General purpose M3
    3. Compute-optimized C4
    4. Compute-optimized C3
    5. Storage-optimized 12
  2. A t2.medium EC2 instance type must be launched with what type of Amazon Machine Image (AMI)?
    1. An Instance store Hardware Virtual Machine AMI
    2. An Instance store Paravirtual AMI
    3. An Amazon EBS-backed Hardware Virtual Machine AMI
    4. An Amazon EBS-backed Paravirtual AMI
  3. You have identified network throughput as a bottleneck on your m1.small EC2 instance when uploading data Into Amazon S3 In the same region. How do you remedy this situation? Add an additional ENI
    1. Change to a larger Instance
    2. Use DirectConnect between EC2 and S3
    3. Use EBS PIOPS on the local volume
  4. You are using an m1.small EC2 Instance with one 300 GB EBS volume to host a relational database. You determined that write throughput to the database needs to be increased. Which of the following approaches can help achieve this? Choose 2 answers
    1. Use an array of EBS volumes (Striping to increase throughput)
    2. Enable Multi-AZ mode.
    3. Place the instance in an Auto Scaling Groups
    4. Add an EBS volume and place into RAID 5 (RAID 5 is not recommended as it provides parity and EBS volumes are already replicated across multiple servers in an Availability Zone for availability and durability, so AWS recommends striping for performance rather than durability)
    5. Increase the size of the EC2 Instance.
    6. Put the database behind an Elastic Load Balancer.
  5. You are tasked with setting up a cluster of EC2 Instances for a NoSQL database. The database requires random read IO disk performance up to a 100,000 IOPS at 4KB block side per node. Which of the following EC2 instances will perform the best for this workload?
    1. A High-Memory Quadruple Extra Large (m2.4xlarge) with EBS-Optimized set to true and a PIOPs EBS volume
    2. A Cluster Compute Eight Extra Large (cc2.8xlarge) using instance storage
    3. High I/O Quadruple Extra Large (hi1.4xlarge) using instance storage
    4. A Cluster GPU Quadruple Extra Large (cg1.4xlarge) using four separate 4000 PIOPS EBS volumes in a RAID 0 configuration
  6. You are implementing a URL whitelisting system for a company that wants to restrict outbound HTTP’S connections to specific domains from their EC2-hosted applications you deploy a single EC2 instance running proxy software and configure It to accept traffic from all subnets and EC2 instances in the VPC. You configure the proxy to only pass through traffic to domains that you define in its whitelist configuration You have a nightly maintenance window or 10 minutes where ail instances fetch new software updates. Each update Is about 200MB In size and there are 500 instances In the VPC that routinely fetch updates After a few days you notice that some machines are failing to successfully download some, but not all of their updates within the maintenance window The download URLs used for these updates are correctly listed in the proxy’s whitelist configuration and you are able to access them manually using a web browser on the instances What might be happening? (Choose 2 answers) [PROFESSIONAL]
    1. You are running the proxy on an undersized EC2 instance type so network throughput is not sufficient for all instances to download their updates in time.
    2. You have not allocated enough storage to the EC2 instance running me proxy so the network buffer is filling up causing some requests to fall
    3. You are running the proxy in a public subnet but have not allocated enough EIPs to support the needed network throughput through the Internet Gateway (IGW)
    4. You are running the proxy on a affluently-sized EC2 instance in a private subnet and its network throughput is being throttled by a NAT running on an undersized EC2 instance
    5. The route table for the subnets containing the affected EC2 instances is not configured to direct network traffic for the software update locations to the proxy.
  7. You have been asked to design the storage layer for an application. The application requires disk performance of at least 100,000 IOPS in addition; the storage layer must be able to survive the loss of an individual disk, EC2 instance, or Availability Zone without any data loss. The volume you provide must have a capacity of at least 3TB. Which of the following designs will meet these objectives? [PROFESSIONAL]
    1. Instantiate an i2.8xlarge instance in us-east-1a. Create a RAID 0 volume using the four 800GB SSD ephemeral disks provided with the instance. Provision 3×1 TB EBS volumes attach them to the instance and configure them as a second RAID 0 volume. Configure synchronous, block-level replication from the ephemeral backed volume to the EBS-backed volume. (Same AZ will not survive the AZ loss)
    2. Instantiate an i2.8xlarge instance in us-east-1a. Create a RAID 0 volume using the four 800GB SSD ephemeral disks provided with the Instance Configure synchronous block-level replication to an identically configured Instance in us-east-1b.
    3. Instantiate a c3.8xlarge Instance in us-east-1. Provision an AWS Storage Gateway and configure it for 3 TB of storage and 100,000 IOPS. Attach the volume to the instance. (Need synchronous replication to prevent any data loss)
    4. Instantiate a c3.8xlarge instance in us-east-1 provision 4x1TB EBS volumes, attach them to the instance, and configure them as a single RAID 5 volume Ensure that EBS snapshots are performed every 15 minutes. (RAID 5 not recommended by AWS and Need synchronous replication to prevent any data loss)
    5. Instantiate a c3 8xlarge Instance in us-east-1 Provision 3x1TB EBS volumes attach them to the instance, and configure them as a single RAID 0 volume Ensure that EBS snapshots are performed every 15 minutes. (Need synchronous replication to prevent any data loss)

References