Cloud Platforms & DevOps Flashcards

What is a VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)?

Answer: An isolated virtual network within a cloud provider where you control IP ranges, subnets, and routing

A VPC lets you define your own network topology in the cloud, controlling CIDR blocks, subnets, routing tables, and access controls for your resources.

What is AWS Lambda?

Answer: A serverless compute service that runs code in response to events without managing servers

Lambda executes function code triggered by events (API calls, S3 uploads, SQS messages) and automatically scales from zero to thousands of concurrent executions.

What is a cloud availability zone?

Answer: An isolated data center within a cloud region with independent power, cooling, and networking

Availability zones are physically separate facilities within a region, designed so failures in one zone don't affect others, enabling high-availability architectures.

What is object storage (e.g., AWS S3)?

Answer: A flat storage system that stores data as objects with metadata and a unique key

Object storage stores unstructured data (images, backups, logs) as objects in buckets, accessible via HTTP APIs, with high durability and pay-per-use pricing.

What is a cloud CDN (Content Delivery Network) used for?

Answer: Caching static assets at edge locations close to users to reduce latency

A CDN caches static content (images, scripts, HTML) at globally distributed edge nodes, serving requests from the nearest location to minimize latency.

What does 'serverless' mean in cloud computing?

Answer: Developers deploy code without managing the underlying server infrastructure — the cloud handles it

Serverless abstracts server management away from developers, who deploy functions or applications while the cloud provider handles provisioning, scaling, and patching.