| Topic | Details |
|---|
Cloud Architecture and Design - 13% |
| Compare and contrast the different types of cloud models. | - Deployment models- Public
- Private
- Hybrid
- Community
- Cloud within a cloud
- Multicloud
- Multitenancy
- Service models - Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
- Platform as a Service (PaaS)
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
- Advanced cloud services - Internet of Things (IoT)
- Serverless
- Machine learning/Artificial intelligence (AI)
- Shared responsibility model |
| Explain the factors that contribute to capacity planning. | - Requirements- Hardware
- Software
- Budgetary
- Business need analysis
- Standard templates - Per-user
- Socket-based
- Volume-based
- Core-based
- Subscription
- Licensing - User density - System load - Trend analysis - Baselines
- Patterns
- Anomalies
- Performance capacity planning |
| Explain the importance of high availability and scaling in cloud environments. | - Hypervisors - Oversubscription - Regions and zones - Applications - Containers - Clusters - High availability of network functions - Switches
- Routers
- Load balancers
- Firewalls
- Avoid single points of failure - Scalability - Auto-scaling
- Horizontal scaling
- Vertical scaling
- Cloud bursting
|
| Given a scenario, analyze the solution design in support of the business requirements. | - Requirement analysis- Software
- Hardware
- Integration
- Budgetary
- Compliance
- Service-level agreement (SLA)
- User and business needs
- Security
- Network requirements
1. Sizing 2. Subnetting 3. Routing
- Environments - Development
- Quality assurance (QA)
- Staging
- Blue-green
- Production
- Disaster recovery (DR)
- Testing techniques - Vulnerability testing
- Penetration testing
- Performance testing
- Regression testing
- Functional testing
- Usability testing
|
Security - 20% |
| Given a scenario, configure identity and access management. | - Identification and authorization- Privileged access management
- Logical access management
- Account life-cycle management
1. Provision and deprovision accounts - Access controls
1. Role-based 2. Discretionary 3. Non-discretionary 4. Mandatory
- Directory services - Lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP)
- Federation - Certificate management - Multifactor authentication (MFA) - Single sign-on (SSO) - Security assertion markup language (SAML)
- Public key infrastructure (PKI) - Secret management - Key management |
| Given a scenario, secure a network in a cloud environment. | - Network segmentation- Virtual LAN (VLAN)/Virtual extensible LAN (VXLAN)/Generic network virtualization encapsulation (GENEVE)
- Micro-segmentation
- Tiering
- Protocols - Domain name service (DNS)
1. DNS over HTTPS (DoH)/DNS over TLS (DoT) 2. DNS security (DNSSEC) - Network time protocol (NTP)
1. Network time security (NTS) - Encryption
1. IPSec 2. Transport layer security (TLS) 3. Hypertext transfer protocol secure (HTTPS) - Tunneling
1. Secure Shell (SSH) 2. Layer 2 tunneling protocol (L2TP)/Point-to-point tunneling protocol (PPTP) 3. Generic routing encapsulation (GRE)
- Network services - Firewalls
1. Stateful 2. Stateless - Web application firewall (WAF)
- Application delivery controller (ADC)
- Intrusion protection system (IPS)/Intrusion detection system (IDS)
- Data loss prevention (DLP)
- Network access control (NAC)
- Packet brokers
- Log and event monitoring - Network flows - Hardening and configuration changes - Disabling unnecessary ports and services
- Disabling weak protocols and ciphers
- Firmware upgrades
- Control ingress and egress traffic
1. Allow list (previously known as whitelisting) or blocklist (previously known as blacklisting) 2. Proxy servers - Distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection
|
| Given a scenario, apply the appropriate OS and application security controls. | - Policies- Password complexity
- Account lockout
- Application approved list (previously known as whitelisting)
- Software feature
- User/group
- User permissions - Antivirus/anti-malware/endpoint detection and response (EDR) - Host-based IDS (HIDS)/Host-based IPS (HIPS) - Hardened baselines - File integrity - Log and event monitoring - Configuration management - Builds - Stable
- Long-term support (LTS)
- Beta
- Canary
- Operating system (OS) upgrades - Encryption - Application programming interface (API) endpoint
- Application
- OS
- Storage
- Filesystem
- Mandatory access control - Software firewall |
| Given a scenario, apply data security and compliance controls in cloud environments. | - Encryption - Integrity- Hashing algorithms
- Digital signatures
- File integrity monitoring (FIM)
- Classification - Segmentation - Access control - Impact of laws and regulations - Records management - Versioning
- Retention
- Destruction
- Write once read many
- Data loss prevention (DLP) - Cloud access security broker (CASB) |
| Given a scenario, implement measures to meet security requirements. | - Tools- Vulnerability scanners
- Port scanners
- Vulnerability assessment - Default and common credential scans
- Credentialed scans
- Network-based scans
- Agent-based scans
- Service availabilities
- Security patches - Hot fixes
- Scheduled updates
- Virtual patches
- Signature updates
- Rollups
- Risk register - Prioritization of patch application - Deactivate default accounts - Impacts of security tools on systems and services - Effects of cloud service models on security implementation |
| Explain the importance of incident response procedures. | - Preparation- Documentation
- Call trees
- Training
- Tabletops
- Documented incident types/categories
- Roles and responsibilities
- Incident response procedures - Identification
1. Scope - Investigation
- Containment, eradication, and recovery
1. Isolation 2. Evidence acquisition 3. Chain of custody 4. Root cause analysis - Post-incident and lessons learned
|
Deployment - 23% |
| Given a scenario, integrate components into a cloud solution. | - Subscription services- File subscriptions
- Communications
1. Email 2. Voice over IP (VoIP) 3. Messaging - Collaboration
- Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)
- Directory and identity services
- Cloud resources
1. IaaS 2. PaaS 3. SaaS
- Provisioning resources - Application - Deploying virtual machines (VMs) and custom images - Templates - OS templates
- Solution templates
- Identity management - Containers - Configure variables
- Configure secrets
- Persistent storage
- Auto-scaling - Post-deployment validation |
| Given a scenario, provision storage in cloud environments. | - Types- Block
1. Storage area network (SAN) - Zoning - File
1. Network attached storage (NAS) - Object
1. Tenants 2. Buckets
- Tiers - Flash
- Hybrid
- Spinning disks
- Long-term
- Input/output operations per second (IOPS) and read/write - Protocols - Network file system (NFS)
- Common Internet file system (CIFS)
- Internet small computer system interface (iSCSI)
- Fibre Channel (FC)
- Non-volatile memory express over fabrics (NVMe-oF)
- Redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID) - Storage system features - Compression
- Deduplication
- Thin provisioning
- Thick provisioning
- Replication
- User quotas - Hyperconverged - Software-defined storage (SDS) |
| Given a scenario, deploy cloud networking solutions. | - Services- Dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP)
- NTP
- DNS
- Content delivery network (CDN)
- IP address management (IPAM)
- Virtual private networks (VPNs) - Site-to-site
- Point-to-point
- Point-to-site
- IPSec
- Multiprotocol label switching (MPLS)
- Virtual routing - Dynamic and static routing
- Virtual network interface controller (vNIC)
- Subnetting
- Network appliances - Virtual private cloud (VPC) - VLAN/VXLAN/GENEVE - Single root input/output virtualization (SR-IOV) - Software-defined network (SDN) |
| Given a scenario, configure the appropriate compute sizing for a deployment. | - Virtualization- Hypervisors
1. Type 1 2. Type 2 - Simultaneous multi-threading (SMT)
- Dynamic allocations
- Oversubscription
- Central processing unit (CPU)/virtual CPU (vCPU) - Graphics processing unit (GPU) - Virtual
1. Shared - Pass-through
- Clock speed/Instructions per cycle (IPC) - Hyperconverged - Memory - Dynamic allocation
- Ballooning
|
| Given a scenario, perform cloud migrations. | - Physical to virtual (P2V) - Virtual to virtual (V2V) - Cloud-to-cloud migrations- Vendor lock-in
- PaaS or SaaS migrations
1. Access control lists (ACLs) 2. Firewalls
- Storage migrations - Database migrations - Cross-service migrations
- Relational
- Non-relational
|
Operations and Support - 22% |
| Given a scenario, configure logging, monitoring, and alerting to maintain operational status. | - Logging- Collectors
1. Simple network management protocol (SNMP) 2. Syslog - Analysis
- Severity categorization
- Audits
- Types
1. Access/authentication 2. System 3. Application - Automation
- Trending
- Monitoring - Baselines
- Thresholds
- Tagging
- Log scrubbing
- Performance monitoring
1. Application 2. Infrastructure components - Resource utilization
- Availability
1. SLA-defined uptime requirements - Verification of continuous monitoring activities
- Service management tool integration
- Alerting - Common messaging methods
- Enable/disable alerts
1. Maintenance mode - Appropriate responses
- Policies for categorizing and communicating alerts
|
| Given a scenario, maintain efficient operation of a cloud environment. | - Confirm completion of backups - Life-cycle management- Roadmaps
- Old/current/new versions
- Upgrading and migrating systems
- Deprecations or end of life
- Change management - Asset management - Configuration management database (CMDB)
- Patching - Features or enhancements
- Fixes for broken or critical infrastructure or applications
- Scope of cloud elements to be patched
1. Hypervisors 2. VMs 3. Virtual appliances 4. Networking components 5. Applications 6. Storage components 7. Firmware 8. Software 9. OS - Policies
1. n-1 - Rollbacks
- Impacts of process improvements on systems - Upgrade methods - Rolling upgrades
- Blue-green
- Canary
- Active-passive
- Development/QA/production/DR
- Dashboard and reporting - Tagging
- Costs
1. Chargebacks 2. Showbacks - Elasticity usage
- Connectivity
- Latency
- Capacity
- Incidents
- Health
- Overall utilization
- Availability
|
| Given a scenario, optimize cloud environments. | - Right-sizing- Auto-scaling
- Horizontal scaling
- Vertical scaling
- Cloud bursting
- Compute - Storage - Tiers
1. Adaptive optimization - IOPS
- Capacity
- Deduplication
- Compression
- Network - Bandwidth
- Network interface controllers (NICs)
- Latency
- SDN
- Edge computing
1. CDN
- Placement - Geographical
- Cluster placement
- Redundancy
- Colocation
- Device drivers and firmware |
| Given a scenario, apply proper automation and orchestration techniques. | - Infrastructure as code- Infrastructure components and their integration
- Continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) - Version control - Configuration management - Containers - Automation activities - Routine operations
- Updates
- Scaling
- Shutdowns
- Restarts
- Create internal APIs
- Secure scripting - No hardcoded passwords
- Use of individual service accounts
- Password vaults
- Key-based authentication
- Orchestration sequencing |
| Given a scenario, perform appropriate backup and restore operations. | - Backup types- Incremental
- Differential
- Full
- Synthetic full
- Snapshot
- Backup objects - Application-level backup
- Filesystem backup
- Database dumps
- Configuration files
- Backup targets - Backup and restore policies - Retention
- Schedules
- Location
- SLAs
- Recovery time objective (RTO)
- Recovery point objective (RPO)
- Mean time to recovery (MTTR)
- 3-2-1 rule
1. Three copies of data 2. Two different media 3. One copy off site
- Restoration methods - In place
- Alternate location
- Restore files
- Snapshot
|
| Given a scenario, perform disaster recovery tasks. | - Failovers - Failback - Restore backups - Replication - Network configurations - On-premises and cloud sites - Requirements - RPO
- RTO
- SLA
- Corporate guidelines
- Documentation - DR kit
- Playbook
- Network diagram
- Geographical datacenter requirements |
Troubleshooting - 22% |
| Given a scenario, use the troubleshooting methodology to resolve cloud-related issues. | - Always consider corporate policies, procedures, and impacts before implementing changes.- Identify the problem
- Question the user and identify user changes to the computer and perform backups before making changes - Inquire regarding environmental or infrastructure changes - Establish a theory of probable cause (question the obvious)
- If necessary, conduct external or internal research based on symptoms - Test the theory to determine cause
- Once the theory is confirmed, determine the next steps to resolve the problem - If the theory is not confirmed, re-establish a new theory or escalate - Establish a plan of action to resolve the problem and implement the solution
- Verify full system functionality and, if applicable, implement preventive measures
- Document the findings, actions, and outcomes throughout the process.
|
| Given a scenario, troubleshoot security issues. | - Privilege- Missing
- Incomplete
- Escalation
- Keys
- Authentication - Authorization - Security groups - Network security groups
- Directory security groups
- Keys and certificates - Expired
- Revoked
- Trust
- Compromised
- Misconfigured
- Misconfigured or misapplied policies - Data security issues - Unencrypted data
- Data breaches
- Misclassification
- Lack of encryption in protocols
- Insecure ciphers
- Exposed endpoints - Misconfigured or failed security appliances - Unsupported protocols - External/internal attacks |
| Given a scenario, troubleshoot deployment issues. | - Connectivity issues- Cloud service provider (CSP) or Internet service provider (ISP) outages
- Performance degradation - Configurations - Applications in containers - Misconfigured templates - Missing or incorrect tags - Insufficient capacity - Scaling configurations
- Compute
- Storage
- Bandwidth issues
- Oversubscription
- Licensing issues - Vendor-related issues - Migrations of vendors or platforms
- Integration of vendors or platforms
- API request limits
- Cost or billing issues
|
| Given a scenario, troubleshoot connectivity issues. | - Network security group misconfigurations - Common networking configuration issues - Peering
- Incorrect subnet
- Incorrect IP address
- Incorrect IP space
- Routes
1. Default 2. Static 3. Dynamic - Firewall
1. Incorrectly administered micro-segmentation - Network address translation (NAT)
1. VPN 2. Source 3. Destination - Load balancers
1. Methods 2. Headers 3. Protocols 4. Encryption 5. Back ends 6. Front ends - DNS records
- VLAN/VXLAN/GENEVE
- Proxy
- Maximum transmission unit (MTU)
- Quality of service (QoS)
- Time synchronization issues
- Network troubleshooting tools - ping
- tracert/traceroute
- flushdns
- ipconfig/ifconfig/ip
- nslookup/dig
- netstat/ss
- route
- arp
- curl
- Packet capture
- Packet analyzer
- OpenSSL client
|
| Given a scenario, troubleshoot common performance issues. | - Resource utilization- CPU
- GPU
- Memory
- Storage
1. I/O 2. Capacity - Network bandwidth
- Network latency
- Replication
- Scaling
- Application - Memory management
- Service overload
- Incorrectly configured or failed load balancing |
| Given a scenario, troubleshoot automation or orchestration issues. | - Account mismatches - Change management failures - Server name changes - IP address changes - Location changes - Version/feature mismatch - Automation tool incompatibility- Deprecated features
- API version incompatibility
- Job validation issue - Patching failure |