Cloud Platforms & DevOps Flashcards

What is AWS Elastic Beanstalk?

Answer: A PaaS service that automatically handles deployment, capacity provisioning, and scaling for web applications

Elastic Beanstalk lets developers deploy applications without managing underlying infrastructure — AWS handles provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and monitoring.

What is an AWS Auto Scaling Group?

Answer: A service that automatically adds or removes EC2 instances based on demand or schedules

Auto Scaling Groups maintain a desired count of EC2 instances, scaling out under load and scaling in when demand drops, improving availability and cost efficiency.

What does 'infrastructure immutability' enable in cloud deployments?

Answer: Consistent, repeatable deployments by replacing instances rather than updating them in place

Immutable infrastructure means every deployment creates new instances from a fresh image, eliminating configuration drift and making rollbacks as simple as switching to the previous image.

What is Azure DevOps?

Answer: A Microsoft platform offering CI/CD pipelines, repos, boards, and artifact management

Azure DevOps provides integrated tools for planning (Boards), source control (Repos), CI/CD pipelines (Pipelines), and package management (Artifacts) in one platform.

What is a cloud region in AWS/GCP/Azure?

Answer: A geographically distinct data center cluster where cloud services are hosted

A cloud region is a physical location containing multiple isolated availability zones, allowing customers to deploy resources close to users and comply with data residency requirements.

What is the principle of least privilege in cloud IAM?

Answer: Granting users and services only the minimum permissions required to perform their tasks

Least privilege minimizes the blast radius of credential compromise or misconfiguration by ensuring no identity has more access than it needs.