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Quiz

2627 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 areas2627 Architecture Fundamentals81 Distributed Systems101 Data Architecture90 Cloud Architecture77 Networking86 API & Integration Architecture78 Reliability & Resilience88 Observability81 Performance & Capacity Engineering90 Security Architecture85 Cost Architecture & FinOps82 Business Architecture93 Architecture Communication91 Enterprise Architecture91 Legacy Modernization82 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

82 questions in Cost & FinOps.

  1. Cloud Pricing Models intermediate

    A live-streaming platform at Twitch's scale is sizing the bandwidth bill for a new regional tier. Sustained outbound is 40 Gbps with peaks near 120 Gbps. Estimate the monthly cost on cloud list egress against a committed CDN contract, and say which assumption dominates the error.

    3 min answer twitchegresscdnbandwidth
  2. Cloud Pricing Models intermediate Multiple choice

    A media platform's workload is bursty rendering plus steady serving. Which pricing models fit which parts, and what is the common mistake?

    2 min answer pricingcommitmentsspotserverless
  3. Cloud Pricing Models beginner

    From 1 February 2024 a major cloud provider began billing every public IPv4 address at roughly $0.005 per address-hour. Your estate runs about 2000 instances plus managed databases, load balancers and per-branch preview environments. Roughly what did that add per year, and what should change because of it?

    3 min answer cloud pricingipv4estimationorphaned resources
  4. Compute Optimisation advanced

    A platform's accelerator fleet reports high utilisation, yet throughput per accelerator is far below the hardware's capability. Where does the waste usually hide?

    2 min answer compute-optimisationutilisationbatchingdata-pipeline
  5. Compute Optimisation advanced

    A team migrates its stateless serving fleet to an ARM instance family for roughly 20% better price-performance on paper. What has it given up, and when does that bill arrive?

    2 min answer arminstance-familybuild-matrixcommitments
  6. Compute Optimisation intermediate Multiple choice

    At 09:10 a checkout service starts returning 503s. Its autoscaler has taken the fleet from 30 to 180 pods in twenty minutes, CPU per pod sits at 22%, and the database reports connection waits. That day's compute bill is four times normal and traffic is up only 30%. Which explanation fits every symptom?

    3 min answer autoscalingconnection poolingfeedback loopcost spike
  7. Compute Optimisation advanced

    Which compute cost lever has the largest payoff, and why is it the one teams attempt last?

    2 min answer computespotarchitecturecost
  8. Cost Allocation advanced

    A multi-tenant platform needs to know what each customer costs to serve. What makes this hard, and how is it approached?

    2 min answer cost-allocationmulti-tenancyshared-resourcesattribution
  9. Cost Allocation intermediate

    Forty percent of your cloud spend is untagged. What do you do?

    2 min answer taggingallocationgovernanceenforcement
  10. Cost Allocation advanced

    Tag coverage is at 98% and teams still argue about their bill every month. Roughly a fifth of the spend is shared - the service mesh, the log pipeline, NAT gateways, the Kafka cluster, and the commitment discounts. How would you allocate it?

    3 min answer cost-allocationshared-costsshowbackcommitments
  11. Cost & FinOps advanced

    A design review presents a new event-driven platform. What cost questions do you ask before approving it?

    2 min answer finopscost-modelreviewegress
  12. Cost & FinOps intermediate

    A platform's cloud spend grows faster than traffic for six quarters, with no single team responsible. Why do cost-reduction sprints fail to hold, and what is the reframing that works?

    2 min answer finopsunit-economicsattributiongovernance