Cloud Computing & Infrastructure Flashcards
7 cards from real TOC practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Cloud Computing & Infrastructure flashcards as text
Which cloud cost optimization strategy involves committing to a specific resource capacity for one or three years in exchange for significantly discounted pricing?
Answer: Reserved instances
Reserved instances (or equivalent commitment-based pricing) offer discounts of up to 72% compared to on-demand rates in exchange for a usage commitment.
What does the term 'serverless computing' mean in the context of cloud infrastructure?
Answer: A model where the provider automatically manages server provisioning and scaling per function invocation
Serverless abstracts all server management from the developer; the provider runs code in response to events and bills per execution, not per server hour.
Which Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practice ensures that applying the same configuration multiple times produces the same infrastructure state?
Answer: Idempotency
Idempotency guarantees that re-running the same IaC template converges to the desired state without creating duplicate or conflicting resources.
A company needs to run a batch job that can tolerate interruptions and requires the lowest possible compute cost. Which option is most appropriate?
Answer: Spot/preemptible instances
Spot (AWS) or preemptible (GCP) instances use spare cloud capacity at steep discounts but can be reclaimed by the provider with short notice, suiting fault-tolerant batch workloads.
Which cloud database category is best suited for applications that require flexible schemas, horizontal scaling, and high write throughput for unstructured data?
Answer: NoSQL database
NoSQL databases (e.g., DynamoDB, MongoDB Atlas) support schema-less documents or key-value pairs and scale horizontally to handle massive write volumes.
In cloud networking, what is the function of a Network Access Control List (NACL)?
Answer: It provides stateless traffic filtering at the subnet boundary
NACLs are stateless subnet-level firewalls that evaluate inbound and outbound rules independently for each packet passing through the subnet boundary.
An organization wants to automatically replace unhealthy EC2 instances (or equivalent VMs) without manual intervention. Which cloud feature enables this?
Answer: Auto Scaling group with health checks
Auto Scaling groups continuously monitor instance health and automatically terminate and replace unhealthy instances to maintain the desired capacity.