Tutorial / Cram Notes

AWS Global Accelerator improves the availability and performance of applications by directing user traffic to the nearest AWS edge location and from there to application endpoints in AWS regions. When integrated with load balancers, Global Accelerator can direct traffic to Application Load Balancers (ALBs) or Network Load Balancers (NLBs).

Example:

  • Configure a Global Accelerator to use an ALB as an endpoint.
  • Apply traffic dials to manage the percentage of traffic being sent to different AWS regions.

Integration of Load Balancers with Amazon CloudFront

Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) service. When used with a load balancer, CloudFront can cache content at edge locations globally, reducing the load on the balancers and backend servers.

Example:

  • Set up CloudFront to have an ALB as the origin.
  • Use CloudFront’s caching to minimize the requests reaching the load balancer, thus reducing latency and improving user experience.

Integration of Load Balancers with AWS WAF

AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) can be associated with an ALB to provide protection against common web exploits that could affect application availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources.

Example:

  • Attach a WAF ACL to an ALB.
  • Define WAF rules to block, allow, or monitor (count) requests based on conditions such as IP addresses, HTTP headers, and body content.

Integration of Load Balancers with Amazon Route 53

Amazon Route 53 is AWS’s DNS service that routes end user requests to infrastructure running in AWS. Using Route 53 with load balancers allows DNS-level routing decisions.

Example:

  • Create an alias record in Route 53 that points to an ALB.
  • Use Route 53 health checks to route traffic away from unhealthy instances.

Integration of Load Balancers with Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS)

Amazon EKS is a managed Kubernetes service. Load balancers can be used to expose Kubernetes services to the internet.

Example:

  • Create a Kubernetes service of type LoadBalancer which automatically provisions an ALB or NLB.
  • Use annotations in the service definition to control load balancer behavior.

Integration of Load Balancers with AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)

AWS Certificate Manager handles the complexity of creating and managing TLS certificates. By integrating ACM with load balancers, you can easily encrypt traffic between the clients and your load balancer.

Example:

  • Request or import a TLS certificate in ACM.
  • Associate the ACM certificate with an ALB to enable HTTPS.

Considerations and Best Practices

  • Performance: Use AWS Global Accelerator and CloudFront to optimize performance by serving user requests from the nearest edge location and caching content.
  • Security: Implement AWS WAF with load balancers to add a security layer against common web attacks.
  • Health Checks: Integrate Route 53 health checks to ensure traffic is only sent to healthy endpoints.
  • Encryption: Utilize ACM for managing SSL/TLS certificates easily to ensure encrypted traffic for increased security.
  • Container orchestration: If using containers and microservices with Kubernetes, utilize Amazon EKS and integrate with ALB/NLB for simplified service exposure.

By integrating these AWS services, you’ll create an environment that can handle large volumes of traffic, mitigate sophisticated threats, and ensure your application remains available and responsive. Remember that the specific configuration details may vary depending on your particular use case and the AWS resources in use. Always refer to the AWS documentation for the most up-to-date and detailed guidance.

Practice Test with Explanation

True or False: AWS Global Accelerator can be used to route traffic to multiple AWS Regions to improve performance.

  • (A) True
  • (B) False

Answer: A

Explanation: AWS Global Accelerator improves performance by routing user traffic to the nearest AWS region and then to your application endpoints across those regions.

Which AWS service would you use to manage SSL/TLS certificates for a load balancer?

  • (A) AWS Shield
  • (B) AWS IAM
  • (C) AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)
  • (D) AWS CloudHSM

Answer: C

Explanation: AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) is used to provision, manage, and deploy SSL/TLS certificates for use with AWS services like load balancers.

Can AWS WAF be directly associated with an Application Load Balancer (ALB)?

  • (A) Yes
  • (B) No

Answer: A

Explanation: AWS WAF can be directly associated with an ALB to provide web traffic filtering.

True or False: Amazon Route 53 can perform health checks on Application Load Balancers.

  • (A) True
  • (B) False

Answer: A

Explanation: Amazon Route 53 can perform health checks and route traffic to healthy endpoints, which may include ALBs.

Which AWS service can distribute traffic to endpoints in a single or multiple AWS regions and can be used with Amazon EC2, Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), Amazon S3, and Elastic IP addresses?

  • (A) Amazon CloudFront
  • (B) AWS Global Accelerator
  • (C) Amazon Route 53
  • (D) AWS Direct Connect

Answer: B

Explanation: AWS Global Accelerator directs traffic to the optimal endpoint based on performance, allowing the use of EC2, ELB, Amazon S3, and Elastic IPs.

True or False: Amazon CloudFront can only be used to deliver content for web applications and cannot be integrated with load balancers.

  • (A) True
  • (B) False

Answer: B

Explanation: Amazon CloudFront can be used as a content delivery network (CDN) not just for web content but it can also be integrated with load balancers to distribute traffic.

Which service can you use to route user traffic based on geographic location?

  • (A) AWS Global Accelerator
  • (B) AWS VPN
  • (C) Amazon Route 53
  • (D) AWS Direct Connect

Answer: C

Explanation: Amazon Route 53 has the ability to route traffic based on geographic location amongst its various routing policies.

True or False: You can use AWS Shield Standard with a Network Load Balancer (NLB) to protect against common infrastructure layer DDoS attacks.

  • (A) True
  • (B) False

Answer: A

Explanation: AWS Shield Standard provides basic protection against DDoS attacks and can be used with a Network Load Balancer.

Which of the following AWS services can be used to observe incoming traffic and apply rule-based routing within a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)?

  • (A) AWS Lambda
  • (B) Amazon CloudWatch
  • (C) AWS Config
  • (D) AWS WAF

Answer: D

Explanation: AWS WAF can be used to monitor HTTP(S) requests and provide rule-based control over routing and access.

True or False: To integrate Amazon EKS with a load balancer, you must manually configure the load balancer to forward traffic to your EKS nodes.

  • (A) True
  • (B) False

Answer: B

Explanation: Amazon EKS can automatically manage the integration with load balancers through the use of Kubernetes Service objects, which provision and configure the load balancer for you.

AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) supports certificates for which of the following services? (Select TWO)

  • (A) Amazon API Gateway
  • (B) AWS DataSync
  • (C) Amazon Connect
  • (D) Elastic Load Balancing
  • (E) AWS Transfer for SFTP

Answer: A and D

Explanation: ACM can be used for provisioning, managing, and deploying SSL/TLS certificates for use with a variety of AWS services, including Amazon API Gateway and Elastic Load Balancing.

If your application requires IPv6 support, which AWS web service should you use alongside your load balancer?

  • (A) AWS Direct Connect
  • (B) Amazon CloudFront
  • (C) AWS Global Accelerator
  • (D) AWS WAF

Answer: B

Explanation: Amazon CloudFront supports IPv6 and can be used alongside your load balancer to serve content over IPv6 network.

Interview Questions

Can you describe the difference between AWS Global Accelerator and Amazon CloudFront, and when you might choose one over the other?

AWS Global Accelerator provides consistent performance improvements for global users by routing traffic through the AWS global network infrastructure, whereas CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that caches content at edge locations to minimize latency. One would choose Global Accelerator when the goal is to optimize for performance by reducing internet latency and jitter, while CloudFront would be chosen to cache content close to users for faster delivery.

How does integrating AWS WAF with an Application Load Balancer benefit your application’s security?

AWS WAF, when integrated with an Application Load Balancer, provides automated web traffic filtering against common web exploits and helps protect against bot attacks. It ensures that only legitimate requests reach your application, which enhances security and potentially reduces the load on the server infrastructure.

When might you use Route 53’s health checks in combination with an Elastic Load Balancer (ELB)?

Route 53 health checks can be used in combination with an ELB to implement DNS failover. If an ELB becomes unhealthy, Route 53 can detect this and route traffic to an alternate location, ensuring high availability and fault tolerance.

How do you secure data in transit to an ELB using AWS Certificate Manager?

With AWS Certificate Manager (ACM), you can provision, manage, and deploy SSL/TLS certificates on ELBs to secure data in transit. ACM simplifies the process of handling the SSL/TLS operations, and it does so without additional cost, apart from the cost of running the ELB and the certificates themselves, which are provided free of charge by Amazon.

Can you explain how integrating Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) with an AWS Load Balancer improves service availability?

Integrating EKS with an AWS Load Balancer allows for the automatic distribution of incoming application traffic across multiple Kubernetes pods, which are typically spread across different nodes in a cluster. This improves service availability since the Load Balancer handles high availability and fault tolerance by rerouting traffic in case of pod or node failures.

What role does AWS Global Accelerator play in improving the performance of a multi-regional AWS application?

AWS Global Accelerator improves multi-regional application performance by directing user traffic to the nearest AWS edge location and then to the most optimal regional endpoint using the AWS global network. This reduces internet latency and jitter, leading to faster and more consistent application performance across regions.

How do you automate the failover process between primary and backup load balancers using Route 53?

You can automate the failover process by setting up health checks on both the primary and backup load balancers in Route If the primary fails, Route 53 will automatically route traffic to the backup based on the health check results, thus providing a seamless failover mechanism.

How does Amazon CloudFront integrate with AWS Shield for DDoS protection?

Amazon CloudFront integrates with AWS Shield, which provides DDoS protection for applications. AWS Shield Standard provides basic DDoS protection for all CloudFront distributions at no extra cost, while AWS Shield Advanced provides additional protection against more sophisticated and larger-scale attacks with detailed attack diagnostics.

Describe how you would use AWS WAF rate-based rules to mitigate potential DDoS attacks.

AWS WAF rate-based rules can be used to track the rate of requests for each originating IP address and to trigger an action if the request rate exceeds a limit set by the user. If a client IP is making requests at a higher rate than the threshold, the associated rule can block the traffic potentially preventing a DDoS attack.

How can you automatically manage the renewal and deployment of SSL/TLS certificates for an ELB with AWS Certificate Manager?

AWS Certificate Manager automates the process of renewing and deploying SSL/TLS certificates. Once you request and deploy an ACM certificate to an ELB, ACM handles the renewal process before the certificate expiration date, thereby reducing the manual effort required for certificate management. The updated certificate is then automatically deployed to the ELB with no service interruption.

What benefits does an Elastic Load Balancer offer when using it with Amazon EKS?

Using an ELB with EKS provides the benefit of high availability by automatically distributing incoming traffic across multiple EKS worker nodes. It also offers seamless integration with EKS services, ease of deploying containerized applications, scalability based on traffic, and health checks to ensure that traffic is only sent to healthy nodes.

Explain how Amazon CloudFront can reduce load on your origin servers while improving user experience.

Amazon CloudFront caches content at edge locations nearest to the users, reducing the need for users’ requests to reach the origin server every time. This reduces the load on the origin servers, as they are hit less frequently, while improving user experience by significantly reducing latency and accelerating content delivery to users.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
25 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Olivia Christensen
6 months ago

Great post! I found the integration of load balancers with CloudFront particularly interesting.

Samesh Bansal
7 months ago

I had no idea that AWS Global Accelerator could be integrated with Elastic Load Balancing (ELB). Any real-world use cases?

Megan Park
6 months ago

Could someone explain how Route 53 works together with AWS WAF for load balancing?

Bérénice Mercier
6 months ago

Awesome blog post! Very helpful for my ANS-C01 preparation.

Ramses Martínez
6 months ago

The integration between AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) and load balancers is a game-changer for managing SSL/TLS certificates.

سارا احمدی

How does Amazon EKS benefit from using a load balancer?

Alma Sørensen
6 months ago

Much appreciated. This helps me understand how CloudFront and load balancers enhance content delivery.

Vivan Beck
7 months ago

Integrating Route 53 with AWS Global Accelerator seems a bit confusing. Can someone clarify?

25
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x