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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

92 questions in Cost & FinOps.

  1. Network & Egress Costs advanced

    A live-streaming platform's largest infrastructure line item is data transfer. What architectural levers reduce it, and which are unavailable?

    2 min answer egresscdnpeeringbitrate
  2. Network & Egress Costs advanced

    A microservice estate spread across three availability zones has a large unexplained network charge. Explain and fix.

    2 min answer networkingfinopsarchitecture
  3. Network & Egress Costs intermediate

    A social platform discovers that data egress is its largest single cost line. Which architectural changes reduce it most, and which are ineffective?

    2 min answer sharechategresscdncache-hit
  4. Network & Egress Costs intermediate

    Data egress and cross-zone transfer charges are shaping an architecture's cost. What design decisions actually reduce them, and what is commonly done that does not help?

    2 min answer egresscross-zonecdndata-gravity
  5. FinOps Practice advanced

    An interviewer says - your platform team has found a change that would cut roughly £400000 a year of cloud spend and would take two engineers a quarter to deliver. Talk me through how you decide, and what you would want to know before you answer.

    3 min answer finopsprioritisationcommitmentsengineering time
  6. FinOps Practice advanced

    Cloud spend has grown 60% in a year while revenue grew 15%. The CFO wants a 30% reduction. How do you respond?

    3 min answer finopscostunit-economicsgovernance
  7. FinOps Practice advanced

    How would you make cost a routine engineering concern without slowing delivery?

    2 min answer finopsculturedesign-reviewanomaly-detection
  8. FinOps Practice intermediate

    What distinguishes a FinOps practice that works from one that produces reports nobody acts on?

    2 min answer finopspracticeownershipculture
  9. Licence & Vendor Costs advanced Multiple choice

    A data tooling vendor licences its product per environment plus per named seat. The platform team is about to give every pull request an ephemeral preview environment containing the full stack. Which change keeps the licence bill flat without abandoning preview environments?

    2 min answer licensingpreview-environmentsnon-productioncost-governance
  10. Licence & Vendor Costs intermediate Multiple choice

    A design-collaboration SaaS at Canva's scale licenses stock photography and fonts on a per-use royalty. Exports have grown fivefold in 2026 while royalty reporting is still derived from the asset CDN's request logs, and the vendor's audit says the reported numbers no longer match usage. Which change fixes reporting without changing what users can do?

    3 min answer licensingmeteringroyaltiescdn
  11. Licence & Vendor Costs advanced

    A per-core database licence makes horizontal scaling more expensive than vertical. How does that change your design, and would you challenge it?

    2 min answer licensingconstraintsscalingprocurement
  12. Licence & Vendor Costs advanced

    A team's licence and managed-service costs are growing faster than its infrastructure. How should it decide what to bring in-house?

    2 min answer elasticlicensingbuild-vs-buytco