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Cloud Computing Containers and Orchestration Flashcards
70 question-and-answer cards covering Containers and Orchestration as it is examined in Cloud Computing. 24 of them are printed below, taken from across the deck — no signup, no paywall on the preview.
24 sample cards from the Containers and Orchestration deck
Sampled from the end of the deck, so these are different cards from the ones shown on the syllabus page.
Compare a rolling update with a recreate deployment strategy.
Rolling update replaces pods incrementally with no downtime; Recreate terminates all old pods before creating new ones, causing downtime but ensuring no version overlap.
What is a PersistentVolume (PV) versus a PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC)?
A PV is a cluster-provisioned piece of storage; a PVC is a user's request for storage of a given size and access mode that binds to a matching PV.
What are the PersistentVolume access modes?
ReadWriteOnce (RWO, one node RW), ReadOnlyMany (ROX, many nodes RO), ReadWriteMany (RWX, many nodes RW), and ReadWriteOncePod (single pod RW).
What is a StorageClass?
An object that defines a 'class' of storage with a provisioner and parameters, enabling dynamic provisioning of PersistentVolumes on demand when a PVC requests it.
What do the Retain, Delete, and Recycle reclaim policies mean for a PV?
Retain keeps the volume and data after the PVC is deleted (manual cleanup); Delete removes the underlying storage automatically; Recycle (deprecated) scrubs and reuses it.
What is Helm?
The package manager for Kubernetes that bundles related manifests into reusable, versioned, templated packages called charts.
What is a Helm chart and what is a release?
A chart is a packaged collection of templated Kubernetes manifests plus metadata; a release is a specific installed instance of a chart running in a cluster.
What is the role of values.yaml in a Helm chart?
It supplies the default configuration values that are substituted into the chart's templates, and can be overridden at install/upgrade time to customize the release.
How do you upgrade and roll back a Helm release?
`helm upgrade <release> <chart>` applies changes and creates a new revision; `helm rollback <release> <revision>` reverts to a previous revision.
What is Amazon EKS?
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, a managed Kubernetes offering where AWS runs and scales the control plane while you manage or offload the worker nodes.
What are the worker node options for Amazon EKS?
Self-managed nodes, EKS managed node groups, and serverless AWS Fargate profiles.
Which AWS add-on provides pod networking in EKS by default?
The Amazon VPC CNI plugin, which assigns pods IP addresses directly from the VPC subnet.
What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?
Microsoft Azure's managed Kubernetes service that hosts the control plane for free and lets you manage worker node pools, integrating with Azure AD, ACR, and Azure networking.
What is a node pool in AKS?
A group of nodes with identical configuration; AKS supports a system node pool (for critical system pods) and additional user node pools for workloads.
What is Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)?
Google Cloud's managed Kubernetes service, offered in Standard mode (you manage nodes) and Autopilot mode (Google fully manages nodes and you pay per pod resources).
Contrast GKE Standard and GKE Autopilot modes.
Standard gives you control and billing over node configuration and infrastructure; Autopilot removes node management, auto-provisions and bills per running pod's requested resources with a hardened default config.
What is cluster provisioning in the context of managed Kubernetes?
The automated process of creating a cluster's control plane, node pools, networking, and IAM, typically via CLI (eksctl, az aks create, gcloud) or IaC tools like Terraform.
What is a typical strategy for upgrading a Kubernetes cluster with minimal downtime?
Upgrade the control plane first, then upgrade node pools using a rolling/surge approach: cordon and drain each node to reschedule pods before replacing it with an upgraded node.
Why must the control plane version be upgraded before the nodes?
Kubernetes supports a version skew where the kubelet may be up to two (older) minor versions behind the API server but never ahead, so the control plane must lead the upgrade.
What is AWS Fargate?
A serverless compute engine for containers (used with ECS and EKS) that runs pods/tasks without you provisioning, scaling, or managing EC2 worker nodes.
What is a key benefit and a key limitation of AWS Fargate for EKS?
Benefit: no node management and per-pod right-sized billing with strong isolation. Limitation: no DaemonSets, no privileged containers, limited to specified pod sizes, and each pod runs on its own isolated microVM.
How does Fargate isolation differ from running pods on shared EC2 nodes?
Fargate runs each pod in its own dedicated kernel/microVM (Firecracker), giving VM-level isolation, whereas EC2 nodes pack multiple pods sharing the same host kernel.
What is a container runtime, and which one does modern Kubernetes use by default?
Software that runs containers (pulls images, manages lifecycle) implementing the CRI. Modern Kubernetes uses containerd (or CRI-O) by default after Docker/dockershim removal.
What is the purpose of readiness and liveness probes in Kubernetes?
A liveness probe restarts a container that has become unhealthy/deadlocked; a readiness probe determines when a pod is ready to receive traffic and is added to service endpoints.
What this deck covers
The Containers and Orchestration deck follows the Cloud Computing Containers and Orchestration syllabus — 5 chapters and 20 topics — so questions land on material that is genuinely examinable rather than trivia around it. That works out to roughly 14.0 cards per chapter.
Answers are written to be recallable, not just readable — averaging about 159 characters, which is long enough to carry the reasoning and short enough to say out loud.
A deck like this earns its keep on the second and third pass. Read the syllabus first so you know the shape of the subject, then use the cards to find the specific facts that have not stuck.
Containers and Orchestration flashcards FAQ
How many Containers and Orchestration flashcards are in this Cloud Computing deck?
70 cards. This page previews 24 of them, sampled evenly across the deck so you can judge the difficulty before installing anything.
Are these Cloud Computing flashcards free?
Yes. The preview here is free to read with no signup, and the full 70-card deck is free inside the Examius app.
What do the Containers and Orchestration cards cover?
They follow the Cloud Computing Containers and Orchestration syllabus — 5 chapters and 20 topics — so the questions track what is actually examinable.
How should I use these flashcards?
Read the syllabus first so you know the shape of the subject, then drill the deck. Examius schedules each card with spaced repetition, so cards you keep missing come back sooner and ones you know drift further apart.