Week 3: AWS Storage and Databases

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1 INTRODUCTION
2 WEEK 3 QUIZ
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INTRODUCTION

For this week, you will focus on some major AWS storage services and their meanings or applications. You will learn about features such as buckets and objects in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) and its usage with AWS, and databases on AWS and their various uses.

Learning Objectives:

  • Understand the usage of Amazon EBS in the AWS.
  • Know basic Amazon S3 concepts: Buckets and Objects.
  • Create an Amazon S3 Bucket.
    Explore AWS database offerings and their dedicated use case.
  • Explore the features and capabilities of Amazon DynamoDB in AWS.
  • Hands-on experience in creating a DynamoDB table.

WEEK 3 QUIZ

1. What is a typical use case for Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)?

  • Block storage for an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance
  • Object storage for media hosting (CORRECT)
  • File storage for multiple Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances
  • Object storage for a boot drive

Correct: Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is a scalable object storage service for very large objects such as media files. With its unlimited object capacity ranging from single file sizes of about 5TB each, it is the perfect choice for any website hosting video, photo, or music uploads. To knwo more, check out the Object Storage with Amazon S3 video.

2. A company needs a storage layer for a high-transaction relational database on an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance.  Which service should the company use?

  • Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
  • Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) (CORRECT)
  • Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)
  • Amazon EC2 Instance Store

Correct: Amazon EBS would be ideal for high-transaction database storage layers. High-performance and reliable storage: For further information, watch the Amazon EC2 Instance Storage and Amazon Elastic Block Store videos.

3. True or False: Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volumes are considered ephemeral storage.

  • True
  • False (CORRECT)

Correct: Amazon Elastic Block Store provides persistent storage so that attached data on an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance is permanently stored on the relevant EBS volume after its instance is stopped or terminated. Read further on the Amazon EC2 Instance Storage and the reading on Amazon Elastic Block Store.

4. A solutions architect is working for a healthcare facility, and they are tasked with storing 7 years of patient information that is rarely accessed. The facility’s IT manager asks the solutions architect to consider one of the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) storage tiers to store the patient information. Which storage tier should the solutions architect suggest?

  • Amazon S3 Standard
  • Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive (CORRECT)
  • Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access
  • Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering

zzCorrect: Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive is the most cost-effective storage class in the Amazon S3 range for storing data long-term and preserving it digitally. It is meant for data accessed very infrequently, say once or twice a year. This class is targeted at industries with careful regulatory requirements, like financial services, healthcare, and the public sector, where data often needs to be retained for 7 to 10 years or even longer. For further reading, see Object Storage with Amazon S3.

5. True or False: Object storage is the best storage solution for applications that need to frequently update specific small sections of a file.

  • True
  • False (CORRECT)

Correct: Object storage supports only a complete update of a file; it does not have partial updates. If there are demands for updating specific areas of a file, block storage is highly preferred. Check more-Storage Types on AWS-end for additional details.

6. True or False: A Multi-AZ deployment is beneficial when users want to increase the availability of their database.

  • True (CORRECT)
  • False

Correct: Distributing workloads across several Availability Zones boosts their availability. If, for example, an environmental disaster strikes an Availability Zone and brings down an Amazon Aurora database, the affected database can simply have its read replica in the unaffected Availability Zone promoted to be the primary. Refer to Amazon Relational Database Service for further information on this.

7. An AWS architect must choose a database for a dataset that has a variation within the data, which means that not all pieces of data share all of the same attributes. Which database should the architect choose for this solution?

  • Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS)
  • Amazon QLDB
  • Amazon DynamoDB (CORRECT)
  • Amazon Neptune

Correct: Amazon DynamoDB is a flexible schema design that enables items to have non-primary and nonsecondary key attributes. It works best with dynamic or unstructured data. Please refer to Introduction to Amazon DynamoDB for detailed information.

8. Which task of running and operating the database are users responsible for when they use Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS)?

  • Optimizing the database (CORRECT)
  • Provisioning and managing the underlying infrastructure
  • Installing patches to the operating system for the database instance
  • Installing the relational database management system on the database instance

Correct: You will not have the headache of managing the environment where the database runs with Amazon RDS. This enables you to focus more on optimizing the database itself because most of the major infrastructure components are already being taken care of by AWS. Know more about using AWS databases by exploring this site.

9. Which of the following are common use cases for file storage? (Choose TWO.)

  • Backup files that are stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
  • Relational or non-relational databases
  • Big data analytics
  • User home directories (CORRECT)
  • Large content repositories (CORRECT)

Correct: They’re trained on data till the end of October 2023. User home directories are still among the most classic examples of file storage using a hierarchical method to organize and store data. See Reading: Storage Types on AWS for more.

Correct: One of the types of file storage that makes use of a hierarchy when it organizes and stores data is the content room. Refer to Reading: Storage Type on AWS for more details.

10. True or False: The IT department in a company can attach Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volumes to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to store data in a bucket.

  • T​rue
  • F​alse (CORRECT)

Correct: The department of IT won’t be able to connect any EBS volumes to Amazon S3 but instead only Amazon EBS volumes can be hooked up to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances. Further details are Choose the Right Storage Service.

11. Which of the following instance families does Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) support? (Choose TWO.)

  • Storage optimized
  • Compute optimized
  • Accelerated computing
  • General purpose (CORRECT)
  • Memory optimized (CORRECT)

Correct: This instance type is general purpose and has a balanced combination of compute, memory, and network resources. More details can be found in Reading: Amazon Relational Database Service.

Correct: Amazon RDS is especially suitable for applications that are memory intensive, providing a managed environment with excellent performance and scalability. Further details are provided in Reading: Amazon Relational Database Service.

12. A solutions architect is working for a small business. The business is looking for a storage service that temporarily stores frequently changing and non-persistent data. This type of data can be deleted during instance stops or terminations. Which service should the solutions architect recommend for this use case?

  • Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)
  • Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
  • Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Instance Store (CORRECT)
  • Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)

Correct: The Amazon EC2 Instance Store provides ephemeral block storage and is perfect for temporary data- such as buffers, caches, and other out-of-band data storage. Refer to Reading: Choose the Right Storage Service for more information.

13. Which database is a non-relational database that stores data in key-value pairs, and is a good fit for hosting simple lookup tables?

  • Amazon DynamoDB (CORRECT)
  • Amazon DocumentDB
  • Amazon Neptune
  • Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS)

Correct: DynamoDB is actually a very important database, laid on the key-value data model and it can store the simple data in a very efficient way. It has further references available in Purpose Built Databases on AWS.

14. Which core component of Amazon DynamoDB corresponds to a column in a relational database table?

  • Table
  • I​tem
  • A​ttribute (CORRECT)
  • D​atabase

Correct: An attribute is the most basic unit of data that cannot be subdivided in DynamoDB. It is the most basic unit of data in a table. Read more about it in the article Reading: Introduction to Amazon DynamoDB.

15. Which AWS database service is best suited for use cases such as social networking or recommendation engines?

  • Amazon DynamoDB
  • Amazon Aurora
  • Amazon Redshift
  • Amazon Neptune (CORRECT)

Correct: The fast, dependable, fully managed graph database service from Amazon should be used for the following applications: fraud detection; social networking; recommendation engines; etc. More on this can be found in Reading: Choose the Right AWS Database Service.

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