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Quiz

2667 questions of the kind that actually get asked — in interviews, in architecture review boards, and by the person who has to run the thing at 3 AM. Every answer states the trade-off rather than the slogan, and says when the obvious choice is the wrong one.

All areas2667 Architecture Fundamentals81 Distributed Systems101 Data Architecture90 Cloud Architecture87 Networking86 API & Integration Architecture78 Reliability & Resilience88 Observability81 Performance & Capacity Engineering90 Security Architecture95 Cost Architecture & FinOps92 Business Architecture93 Architecture Communication91 Enterprise Architecture91 Legacy Modernization92 AI-Era Architecture86 Software Architecture & Engineering84 Architecture Patterns84 Architecture Decision-Making91 The Architect's Meta-Skills92 Delivery & Release Engineering93 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience92 Testing & Quality Architecture90 Data Platform Architecture88 Streaming & Real-Time Data93 Data Governance & Semantics81 Frontend & Experience Architecture91 Edge, Mobile & IoT88 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture90 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk88
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

42 questions in Cost & FinOps.

  1. Rightsizing intermediate

    An automated tool recommends reducing your instances by 60% based on average CPU utilisation. What do you check before accepting?

    2 min answer rightsizingheadroomfailure-domainsutilisation
  2. Showback & Chargeback intermediate

    A platform team wants engineering teams to reduce their infrastructure spend. Does showback or chargeback work better, and what determines the answer?

    2 min answer posthogshowbackchargebackincentives
  3. Showback & Chargeback intermediate

    An enterprise is deciding between showback and chargeback for cloud costs. What does each achieve, and what goes wrong with chargeback?

    2 min answer showbackchargebackincentivesgovernance
  4. Showback & Chargeback intermediate

    Cloud spend is growing faster than revenue and no individual team feels responsible. How should cost allocation be designed to actually change behaviour?

    2 min answer finopsshowbackchargebackallocation
  5. Spot & Interruptible Capacity intermediate

    A data platform wants to use interruptible capacity to reduce cost. Which workloads are suitable, and what must be true of them?

    2 min answer databricksspotpreemptioncheckpointing
  6. Spot & Interruptible Capacity intermediate

    A nightly batch job takes six hours on on-demand instances. Someone proposes spot to save 70%. What must be true?

    2 min answer finopsspotresilience
  7. Spot & Interruptible Capacity intermediate

    A recommendation platform runs large offline training and feature computation jobs. What must be true architecturally before spot capacity is usable, and what does it cost?

    2 min answer spotpreemptioncheckpointingbatch
  8. Spot & Interruptible Capacity intermediate

    Which workloads genuinely suit spot or preemptible capacity, what must be true of them, and what are the failure modes of over-applying it?

    2 min answer spotpreemptibleinterruptiblecheckpointing
  9. Storage Costs intermediate

    A content platform's storage costs are dominated by content that is rarely accessed. How should tiering, lifecycle and access patterns be designed?

    2 min answer pratilipistoragetieringlifecycle
  10. Storage Costs intermediate

    A video platform's storage grows monotonically while most content is watched rarely after its first weeks. What storage cost strategy applies, and what are the traps?

    2 min answer storage-costtieringlifecycleretention
  11. Storage Costs intermediate

    Storage spend is growing faster than data volume. What are the likely causes?

    2 min answer storagesnapshotstieringretention
  12. Total Cost of Ownership intermediate

    A repatriation business case sets this year's cloud invoice against a five-year amortised cost for owned hardware and shows a 40% saving. The arithmetic checks out and the staffing line is there. Review the model: what would you change, what would you leave alone, and which single line decides the argument?

    3 min answer tcorepatriationbuild vs buycapacity planning