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DevOps Cloud Providers Flashcards
51 question-and-answer cards covering Cloud Providers as it is examined in DevOps. 24 of them are printed below, taken from across the deck — no signup, no paywall on the preview.
24 sample cards from the Cloud Providers deck
Sampled from the end of the deck, so these are different cards from the ones shown on the syllabus page.
What is the principle of least privilege in IAM?
Granting only the minimum permissions required to perform a task, and no more, to reduce the security attack surface.
What is the AWS root user and how should it be protected?
The root user is the account owner identity with full unrestricted access, created with the AWS account email. Best practice: enable MFA, avoid using it for daily tasks, and create IAM users/roles instead.
What is a Virtual Machine (VM)?
A software-based emulation of a physical computer that runs its own operating system and applications, sharing the underlying physical hardware through a hypervisor.
What is a hypervisor and what are its two types?
A hypervisor is software that creates and runs virtual machines by abstracting hardware. Type 1 (bare-metal) runs directly on hardware (e.g., ESXi, Hyper-V); Type 2 (hosted) runs on top of a host OS (e.g., VirtualBox).
What is the difference between a virtual machine and a container?
A VM virtualizes hardware and includes a full guest OS (heavier, more isolated); a container virtualizes the OS, sharing the host kernel and packaging only the app and dependencies (lighter, faster to start).
What is Azure Virtual Machines?
Microsoft Azure's IaaS offering that provides on-demand, scalable Windows or Linux virtual servers, giving full control over the OS and configuration, analogous to AWS EC2.
What is Azure Blob Storage?
Microsoft Azure's object storage service for storing massive amounts of unstructured data (text or binary) as blobs, accessible via HTTP/HTTPS; the Azure equivalent of AWS S3.
What are the three types of blobs in Azure Blob Storage?
Block blobs (text/binary files, up to ~190 TiB), Append blobs (optimized for append operations like logging), and Page blobs (random-access files up to 8 TiB, used for VHD disks).
What are the Azure Blob Storage access tiers?
Hot (frequent access, higher storage cost), Cool (infrequent access, 30+ days), Cold (rarely accessed, 90+ days), and Archive (rarely accessed, lowest cost, offline retrieval with rehydration latency).
What is Azure SQL Database?
A fully managed PaaS relational database engine based on Microsoft SQL Server, providing automatic patching, backups, scaling, and high availability without managing the underlying infrastructure.
What is the difference between Azure SQL Database and SQL Server on an Azure VM?
Azure SQL Database is a PaaS managed service (provider handles OS/patching/backups); SQL Server on an Azure VM is IaaS where you manage the OS and SQL Server installation yourself (more control, more overhead).
What purchasing/service models does Azure SQL Database offer?
DTU-based model (bundled compute, storage, I/O as Database Transaction Units) and vCore-based model (independently scale compute and storage; supports serverless and Hyperscale tiers).
What is Azure Active Directory (now Microsoft Entra ID)?
Microsoft's cloud-based identity and access management service that handles authentication and authorization for users and applications, supporting single sign-on (SSO), MFA, and conditional access.
How does Azure Active Directory differ from traditional on-premises Active Directory (AD DS)?
On-prem AD DS uses LDAP/Kerberos/NTLM and organizes resources in domains/OUs/forests for on-premises networks; Azure AD is a cloud identity service using HTTP/HTTPS protocols (OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML) for web and SaaS applications.
What is Conditional Access in Azure AD?
A policy-based feature that enforces access controls (e.g., require MFA, compliant device, or specific location) based on signals/conditions when a user attempts to access a resource.
What is Google Compute Engine?
Google Cloud Platform's IaaS offering that provides configurable virtual machines running in Google's data centers; the GCP equivalent of AWS EC2 and Azure VMs.
What are preemptible/Spot VMs in Google Compute Engine?
Low-cost, short-lived VM instances that use spare Compute Engine capacity at a large discount but can be terminated (preempted) by Google at any time, ideal for fault-tolerant batch workloads.
What is a machine type in Google Compute Engine?
A predefined or custom specification of virtualized hardware resources (vCPUs and memory) for a VM instance, such as general-purpose, compute-optimized, or memory-optimized families.
What is Google Cloud Storage?
Google Cloud's object storage service for storing unstructured data in buckets, offering high durability and availability; the GCP equivalent of AWS S3 and Azure Blob Storage.
Name the four storage classes in Google Cloud Storage.
Standard (frequent access/hot data), Nearline (access ~once a month), Coldline (access ~once a quarter), and Archive (access less than once a year, lowest cost).
What is Google Cloud SQL?
A fully managed relational database service on GCP supporting MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server, handling backups, replication, patching, and failover automatically; the GCP equivalent of AWS RDS.
What is Google Cloud IAM?
Google Cloud Identity and Access Management lets administrators authorize who (identity) can take what action (role) on which resource, following the model 'who can do what on which resource'.
In Google Cloud IAM, what are the three types of roles?
Basic/Primitive roles (Owner, Editor, Viewer - broad), Predefined roles (granular, service-specific, managed by Google), and Custom roles (user-defined sets of permissions tailored to needs).
Map the equivalent compute, object storage, managed relational DB, and identity services across AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Compute: EC2 / Azure VMs / Compute Engine. Object storage: S3 / Blob Storage / Cloud Storage. Managed relational DB: RDS / Azure SQL Database / Cloud SQL. Identity: IAM / Azure AD (Entra ID) / Cloud IAM.
What this deck covers
The Cloud Providers deck follows the DevOps Cloud Providers syllabus — 4 chapters and 14 topics — so questions land on material that is genuinely examinable rather than trivia around it. That works out to roughly 12.8 cards per chapter.
Answers are written to be recallable, not just readable — averaging about 188 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.
Cloud Providers flashcards FAQ
How many Cloud Providers flashcards are in this DevOps deck?
51 cards. This page previews 24 of them, sampled evenly across the deck so you can judge the difficulty before installing anything.
Are these DevOps flashcards free?
Yes. The preview here is free to read with no signup, and the full 51-card deck is free inside the Examius app.
What do the Cloud Providers cards cover?
They follow the DevOps Cloud Providers syllabus — 4 chapters and 14 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.