Question

Difficulty: HardIdentify design principles of the AWS Cloud

An enterprise is migrating its legacy document-indexing application to AWS. The application currently runs on a cluster of self-managed virtual machines that parse uploaded files, extract text, and index the content into a local database. The migration team's initial plan is to deploy a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group, running a self-managed search index cluster on those instances. A solutions architect reviews this plan and recommends replacing the self-managed search index cluster with Amazon OpenSearch Service, and using AWS Lambda to trigger the parsing and indexing process directly from Amazon S3 uploads. Which design principle of the AWS Cloud is the architect primarily advocating for by recommending Amazon OpenSearch Service and AWS Lambda over self-managed EC2 instances?

  1. Services not serversAnswer
  2. B
    Loose coupling
  3. C
    Elasticity
  4. D
    Disposable resources

Answer

Services not servers
The correct answer is 'Services not servers'. This design principle encourages utilizing managed services (such as Amazon OpenSearch Service) and serverless technologies (such as AWS Lambda) to offload the operational burden of provisioning, configuring, patching, and securing physical servers and operating systems. This allows the organization to focus on writing code and developing features rather than managing infrastructure.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the migration team's initial architecture.
The initial design relies on Amazon EC2 instances running self-managed virtual servers and a self-managed search cluster.
Understanding the baseline helps identify what operational overhead is present.
2
Evaluate the solutions architect's proposed recommendations.
The architect suggests using Amazon OpenSearch Service (a managed service) and AWS Lambda (a serverless service) instead of self-managed virtual machines.
Identifying the target services determines the operational model transition.
3
Map the change in operational model to AWS Cloud design principles.
Moving from self-managed servers on EC2 to fully managed and serverless offerings directly shifts administrative tasks (like OS patching, server provisioning, and cluster management) to AWS, which represents the principle of 'services not servers'.
This links the architecture recommendation to the correct design principle.

Key Concept

The AWS Cloud design principle of 'services not servers' encourages organizations to leverage managed services and serverless architectures to minimize administrative overhead and focus on business logic rather than infrastructure maintenance.
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