INTRODUCTION – Automation in the Cloud

PRACTICE QUIZ: CLOUD COMPUTING

1. When we use cloud services provided to the general consumer, such as Google Suite or Gmail, what cloud deployment model are we using?

2. What is a container?

3. Select the examples of Managed Web Application Platforms. (Check all that apply)

4. When a company solely owns and manages its own cloud infrastructure, what type of cloud deployment model are they using?

5. Which “direction” are we scaling when we add RAM or CPU resources to individual nodes?

6. If a bare-bones cloud computing experience is needed as well as a high level of control over the software being run, what Cloud service would one choose?

7. Which “direction” are we scaling when we add capacity to our network in order to meet demand?

8. What are some advantages to using cloud services? (Select all that apply)

9. What does the phrase lift and shift refer to? 

PRACTICE QUIZ: MANAGING INSTANCES IN THE CLOUD

1. What is templating?

2. Why is setting up a new series of VMs using a reference image, what service?

3. What option is used to determine which OS will run on the VM?

4. When setting up a new series of VMs using a reference image, what are some possible options for upgrading services running on our VM at scale?

5. When using gcloud to manage VMs, what two parameters tell gcloud that a) we want to manage our VM resources and b) that we want to deal with individual VMs? (Check two)

6. If we want to reuse an exact copy of a virtual machine, we might save a snapshot to use as a reference image later. What is this snapshot called?

7. Using the web interface, what is an easy way to create a virtual machine identical to the one we’ve just configured?

8. It’s important to know where to copy our systemd service file on Linux in order to configure our scripts as services. Do you remember the location of the systemd directory?

9. What does the gcloud init command do?

PRACTICE QUIZ: AUTOMATING CLOUD DEPLOYMENTS

1. In order to detect and correct errors before end users are affected, what technique(s) should we set up?

2. When accessing a website, your web browser retrieves the IP address of a specific node in order to load the site. What is this node called?

3. What simple load-balancing technique just assigns to each node one request at a time?

4. Which cloud automation technique spins up more VMs into instance groups when demand increases, and shuts down VMs when demand decreases?

5. Which of the following are examples of orchestration tools used to manage cloud resources as code? (Check all that apply)

6. What does a load balancer do?

7. What is the difference between automation and orchestration?

8. Do you remember what Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is?

CREATE VM TEMPLATE AND AUTOMATE DEPLOYMENT

1. How do you enable the hello_cloud.py service to run on boot?

2. In creating an instance template in GCP, which of the following parameters is used to specify the source of the boot disk?

3. When creating an image based on the vm1 disk in Google Cloud Platform, what field should be set to ‘vm-image’?

4. When creating an instance template in Google Cloud Platform, as described in the process, what is the purpose of setting the firewall to ‘allow HTTP and HTTPS traffic’?

5. What is the primary purpose of the gcloud command in the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) ecosystem?

6. What is the significance of configuring the firewall to ‘allow HTTP and HTTPS traffic’ in the ‘vm1-template’?

7. In Python, what is the primary purpose of configuring an auto-enabled service?

8. What is the purpose of creating an image named “vm-image” based on the “vm1” disk in the provided instructions?

9. You have successfully created new VM instances using the “vm1-template” template as described in the instructions. Now, you want to view the list of these VM instances. How can you accomplish this?

10. In Git, what is the primary purpose of creating a ‘feature’ branch?

2.11. What is the purpose of executing the command gcloud compute instances create –zone “Zone” –source-instance-template vm1-template vm2 vm3 vm4 vm5 vm6 vm7 vm8 in the Google Cloud Platform’s command-line interface?

12. In the process of creating VMs in Google Cloud Platform, why is the image named ‘vm-image’ created from the disk of the VM instance ‘vm1’?

13. How does the creation of the ‘vm-image’ from the vm1 disk and the subsequent ‘vm1-template’ relate to the concept of cloning in VM management?

14. What is the primary purpose of the Google Cloud command-line interface (gcloud) in cloud computing?

15. What is the main purpose of the git clone command in relation to Git version control?

16. In the process of creating new VM instances in Google Cloud Platform using the ‘vm1-template’, what is the primary purpose of initially creating the ‘vm-image’ based on the vm1’s disk?

17. In the given process of VM management in Google Cloud Platform, after creating the ‘vm1-template’, what is the primary purpose of the gcloud compute instances list command?

18. Which steps are involved in creating a VM template?

19. What is the primary purpose of cloning a virtual machine?

20. What command should be used to create new VM instances using the “vm1-template” template from the local computer’s command line interface, as mentioned in the lab instructions?

21. Imagine you have successfully created an instance template named “vm1-template” following the provided instructions. You want to create new VM instances with this template in a specific zone. Which command should you use to achieve this?

22. What is the purpose of cloning the hello_cloud.py file to the /usr/local/bin/ location during the setup of this lab?

23. What is the main function of an auto-scaling service?

24. When creating a template for a virtual machine (VM) in Google Cloud Platform (GCP), what is the first step in the process?

25. What is the recommended machine series when creating a new instance template in Google Cloud Platform as per the provided instructions?

26. What are the steps to create an instance template named “vm1-template” based on the “vm-image” for the boot disk?

27. Which machine series and machine type are used when creating the instance template named “vm1-template” in the lab instructions?

28. After creating the “vm1-template” instance template, you notice that the boot disk for the template is set to a “standard persistent disk.” What type of storage is this and what are its characteristics?

29. Which construct allows for the modification of firewall rules to selectively permit SSH traffic while blocking other inbound and outbound traffic when creating a new instance?

PRACTICE QUIZ: BUILDING SOFTWARE FOR THE CLOUD

1. What is latency in terms of Cloud storage?

2. Which of the following statements about sticky sessions are true? (Select all that apply.)

3. If you run into limitations such as rate limits or utilization limits, you should contact the Cloud provider and ask for a _____.

4. What is the term referring to everything needed to run a service?

5. What is the term referring to a network of hosts spread in different geographical locations, allowing ISPs to be as close as possible to content?

6. Which form of cloud data storage is based on objects instead of traditional file system hierarchies?

7. Which description fits the Round-robin DNS load balancing method?

8. Automation tools are used to manage the software development phase’s build and test functions. Which of the following is the set of development practices focusing on these aspects?

9. What is the purpose of a rate limit?

GRADED ASSESSMENT FOR MODULE 1

1. Which word best describes the direction you are scaling when increasing the capacity of a specific service by making the nodes bigger? Select all that apply.

2. You work for a company that is moving to a new office. The organization does not use a cloud service. What might you point out to convince them to migrate some services to the cloud during the move?

3. When you shift your servers to the cloud, the core configurations will stay the same. What are some ways of installing and configuring applications on the new server? Select all that apply.

4. All cloud providers give you a console where you can manage services that you’re using. What might be different from one provider to the next? Select all that apply.

5. In large applications, where there are layers in between the entry point and the actual web service, what is the first layer?

6. What are some of the applications you might choose to use when managing a pool of web caching servers? Select all that apply.

7. What are some advantages of setting up a server as a dedicated load balancer? Select all that apply.

8. You get a new job in a company’s IT department. What are some common names you might immediately recognize as testing environments separate from the production environment? Select all that apply.

9. What are some advantages of having servers in multiple locations? Select all that apply.

10. What are the locations from where you can create a VM to run in the cloud? Select all that apply.

11. Why are there usually multiple entry points for a single website? Select all that apply.

12. What is the name for the automated configuration and coordination of complex IT systems and services?

13. As you look at the performance of a cloud storage solution, you are checking the rate of input/output operations per second, or IOPS. What might you notice about these numbers?

14. What is read latency?

15. You have fixed some bugs you’ve discovered in your cloud services, but you want to push them to a test environment before they’re placed into production? How can continuous deployment, or CD, help in this situation?

16. Say you work for a company that wants the IT department to focus on deploying and managing applications and spend as little time as possible managing cloud services. Which service might be the right choice?

17. If any part of your workload is running on servers owned by your company, what type of cloud might this be part of? Select all that apply.

18. Both hybrid clouds and multiclouds use a mix of different cloud services. What is the key difference between a hybrid cloud and a multicloud?

19. What is the best method for a batch action like creating ten VMs at once?

20. If you wanted to choose a service with a lot of control, which category would you most likely be choosing from?

21. You are about to create a VM to run in the cloud. What are some parameters you can be sure you will need to set? Select all that apply.

22. What is autoscaling?

23. You’re looking at factors that influence the performance of a storage solution. One of the big ones is throughput. What is the best definition of throughput?

24. What is the advantage of round robin DNS?

25. You are planning some improvements in your cloud services, but you want to make the changes in a controlled way. This approach is commonly called “change management”. In change management, how does a continuous integration system, or CI, help to catch problems before they’re merged into the main branch?

26. Your company just received a huge bill from your cloud service provider for automatic scaling, and is thinking about opting for manual scaling to avoid another unexpected cost like this in the future. What might be the downsides of that choice? Select all that apply.

27. Your company is migrating some of its computing needs to a cloud service, and you hear another IT professional saying they will use a “container”. What is a “container” when referring to computing?

28. A VM running in the cloud has a local disk attached to it. What kind of storage is this an example of?

29. Your organization is setting up a cloud service, and you decide to use automatic scaling. Why would you want to set up quotas?

30. What type of storage refers to storing files with unique names in a storage bucket? Select all that apply.

31. You’ve set up a VM, modified its configuration settings, and made sure that it’s working correctly. Now you want to reproduce this exactly on another machine. How might a reference image help?

CONCLUSION – Automation in the Cloud