AWS Cloud Economics
Flashcard Study
What are the typical characteristics of CapEx expenses?
Large, one-time investments in hardware and infrastructure that can be depreciated over time.
What are the typical characteristics of OpEx expenses?
Recurring expenses for maintaining or operating a long-term asset, such as electricity costs and maintenance fees, and typically not depreciated.
How does cloud computing shift costs from CapEx to OpEx?
By allowing businesses to pay for resources on a pay-as-you-go basis, reducing the initial investment required and allowing for more flexibility in scaling up or down as needed.
How does cloud computing allow businesses to scale?
By allowing businesses to increase or decrease their storage capacity on the cloud, only paying for what they need and only when they need it.
What is the goal of cloud computing in terms of cost management?
To shift costs from CapEx to OpEx, reducing the initial investment required and allowing for more flexibility in scaling up or down as needed.
What are the labor costs that are typically associated with on-premises IT operations?
Expenses incurred by an organization for the maintenance, management, and administration of its on-premises IT infrastructure.
What are some specific examples of labor costs associated with on-premises IT operations?
Hiring and maintaining a team of IT professionals, training and certifying IT staff, contracting with third-party vendors, managing and troubleshooting IT issues, managing and updating hardware and software, and managing physical space for servers.
How does AWS help minimize labor costs associated with on-premises operations?
By offering a variety of services such as Elastic Beanstalk, Auto Scaling, and RDS that allow developers to focus on writing code and building features, automate common database management tasks, and scale resources up or down as needed.
What is AWS Elastic Beanstalk?
A fully managed service that allows developers to deploy and run web applications and services without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure.
What is AWS RDS?
A fully managed relational database service that automates common database management tasks such as backups, software patching, and hardware scaling.
How does Auto Scaling help minimize labor costs?
By automatically scaling resources up or down based on demand, eliminating the need for manual intervention.
How does RDS help minimize labor costs?
By automating common database management tasks, freeing up resources and enabling customers to focus on developing and running their applications.
How does EC2 help reduce software licensing costs?
By eliminating the need to purchase expensive, long-term licenses for on-premises servers.
What is AWS License Manager?
A service that allows you to manage your software licenses across multiple AWS accounts and on-premises environments.
How does AWS License Manager help reduce software licensing costs?
By ensuring that you're only paying for licenses that you actually need.
What is right-sizing in AWS?
Right-sizing in AWS refers to the process of using the appropriate amount of resources for your application, not over-provisioning or under-provisioning.
Why is having the right-sized infrastructure important in AWS?
Having the right-sized infrastructure is important in AWS because you are only paying for the resources you use, and over-provisioning or under-provisioning can lead to wasted money or performance issues.
What is AWS Auto Scaling and how does it help with right-sizing?
AWS Auto Scaling is a service that automatically adjusts the number of resources based on the amount of traffic your application is receiving. It helps with right-sizing by ensuring that you have enough resources to handle increased traffic, but not paying for extra resources when you don't need them.
What are AWS Reserved Instances and how can they help with right-sizing?
AWS Reserved Instances are a service that allows you to purchase a reservation for a specific instance type at a lower hourly rate. They help with right-sizing by providing a cost-effective option for instances that you know you will be using for an extended period of time.
What is AWS Trusted Advisor and how can it help with right-sizing?
AWS Trusted Advisor is a tool that analyzes your usage patterns, compares them to best practices, and recommends ways to optimize your resources and reduce costs. It helps with right-sizing by identifying underutilized resources and recommending options for optimization.
Explain over-provisioning and under-provisioning in AWS.
Over-provisioning in AWS means using more resources than your application needs, which leads to wasted money. Under-provisioning means using fewer resources than your application needs, which can lead to performance issues or downtime.
What is the main benefit of automation in AWS?
The main benefit of automation in AWS is cost reduction. By automating repetitive tasks and processes, you can save time and money on manual labor.
How can AWS Automation be used with EC2 instances to reduce costs?
AWS Automation can be used to automatically start and stop Amazon EC2 instances on a schedule, which can help reduce compute costs.
What is AWS Elastic Beanstalk used for?
AWS Elastic Beanstalk is used to automatically deploy, scale, and manage web applications, which can help save time and money on manual configuration and maintenance tasks.
What is the purpose of using AWS Lambda and AWS Step Functions?
The purpose of using AWS Lambda and AWS Step Functions is to automatically trigger and run serverless functions based on events, such as changes to data in an Amazon S3 bucket, which can help save on server costs and reduce the need for manual intervention.
What is ECS in AWS?
ECS (Elastic Container Service) is an AWS managed service that enables you to easily run, scale, and manage Docker containers.
What is EKS in AWS?
EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) is an AWS managed service that allows you to run, scale, and manage Kubernetes clusters.
What is DynamoDB in AWS?
DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database service in AWS that can handle large amounts of data and scale automatically.
How does using RDS help minimize cloud costs in AWS?
By using RDS, you can save time and money on manual setup, configuration, and maintenance tasks and easily set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud.
How does using ECS help minimize cloud costs in AWS?
By using ECS, you can save time and money on managing and scaling containerized applications and easily run, scale, and manage Docker containers.
What is the benefit of using AWS managed services versus managing your own infrastructure?
The benefit of using AWS managed services instead of managing your own infrastructure is that they can help you save time and money on manual setup, configuration, and maintenance tasks and allow you to focus on building your application.