Cloud Architecture and Design Flashcards

A financial services company is designing a cloud architecture to host a new critical trading application. The business has mandated a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of near-zero and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of zero to prevent any data loss or downtime. Which of the following disaster recovery strategies BEST meets these stringent requirements?

Answer: Multi-site Active-Active

A multi-site active-active architecture is the only strategy that can provide near-zero RTO and zero RPO. In this model, the application runs concurrently in two or more independent sites, with load balancing distributing traffic between them. If one site fails, traffic is seamlessly redirected to the other active site(s) with no downtime or data loss.

A company wants to migrate its on-premises infrastructure to the cloud. They want full control over the operating systems and virtualized hardware to install custom software. However, they do not want to manage the physical servers, networking, or storage hardware. Which cloud service model should they choose?

Answer: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides virtualized computing resources over the internet, including servers, storage, and networking. This model gives the company control over the operating systems and deployed applications, while the cloud provider manages the underlying physical infrastructure.

Which of the following cloud deployment models is specifically designed to be shared by several organizations from a specific community with common concerns, such as security, compliance, or jurisdiction?

Answer: Community Cloud

A community cloud is a collaborative effort in which infrastructure is shared between several organizations from a specific community with common concerns (e.g., security, compliance, jurisdiction). It can be managed internally or by a third-party and hosted either internally or externally.

A cloud architect is designing a solution that must remain operational even if an entire availability zone fails. The design involves distributing application instances and data across multiple, isolated locations within the same geographic region. Which high-availability technique is being implemented?

Answer: Multi-AZ deployment

A Multi-AZ (Availability Zone) deployment distributes resources across multiple physically separate data centers within the same cloud region. This design ensures that if one AZ becomes unavailable, the application can continue to run from the other AZs, providing high availability and fault tolerance.

A large enterprise has a complex IT environment. They want to keep their sensitive customer data and legacy applications on their own on-premises servers for security and control. At the same time, they want to leverage the scalability and cost-effectiveness of a public cloud for development, testing, and new web-facing applications. Which cloud architecture would be the MOST appropriate for this scenario?

Answer: Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud architecture combines a private cloud (or on-premises infrastructure) with a public cloud, allowing data and applications to be shared between them. This model is ideal for the enterprise's needs, as it allows them to maintain control over sensitive data in their private environment while utilizing the flexible resources of the public cloud for other workloads.

Which of the following is a core principle of cloud-native architecture that involves designing applications as a collection of small, independently deployable services?

Answer: Microservices

Microservices are a core principle of cloud-native architecture. This approach structures an application as a collection of loosely coupled, independently deployable services. Each service is self-contained and can be developed, deployed, and scaled independently, which promotes agility and resilience.