LPI Updated 305-300 Exam Questions and Answers by cobie

IaaS is a type of cloud computing service that offers essential compute, storage, and networking resources on demand, on a pay-as-you-go basis. IaaS is one of the four types of cloud services, along with software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and serverless12. IaaS eliminates the need for enterprises to procure, configure, or manage infrastructure themselves, and they only pay for what they use23. Some examples of IaaS providers are Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services.

In an IaaS cloud, the most common method for provisioning new computing instances is to use an image file that contains a pre-installed operating system and software. This image file is also known as a machine image, a virtual appliance, or a template. The image file can be customized for a specific purpose, such as a web server, a database server, or a development environment. The image file can be stored in a repository or a library that is accessible by the cloud provider or the user. When a new instance is requested, the cloud provider copies the image file to a virtual disk and attaches it to the instance. The instance then boots from the virtual disk and runs the operating system and software from the image file. This method is faster and more efficient than installing the operating system and software from scratch for each new instance. It also ensures consistency and reliability across multiple instances that use the same image file. References:

• LPI Virtualization and Containerization Exam Objectives, Topic 305.1: Virtualization Concepts and Theory, Objective: Describe the concept of machine images and templates
• LPI Virtualization and Containerization Study Guide, Chapter 1: Virtualization Concepts and Theory, Section: Machine Images and Templates
• LPI LPIC-3 305 Certification Sample Questions and Practice Exam, Question 10: In an IaaS cloud, what is a common method for provisioning new computing instances with an operating system and software?

Sparse images are a type of virtual disk images that grow in size as data is written to them, but do not shrink when data is deleted from them. Sparse images may consume an amount of space different from their nominal size, which is the maximum size that the image can grow to. For example, a sparse image with a nominal size of 100 GB may only take up 20 GB of physical storage if only 20 GB of data is written to it. Sparse images allocate backend storage at the first usage of a block, which means that the physical storage is only used when the virtual machine actually writes data to a block. This can save storage space and improve performance, as the image does not need to be pre-allocated or zeroed out.

Sparse images are not automatically shrunk when files within the image are deleted, because the virtual machine does not inform the host system about the freed blocks. To reclaim the unused space, a special tool such as virt-sparsify1 or qemu-img2 must be used to compact the image. Sparse images can be used with both full virtualization and paravirtualization, as the type of virtualization does not affect the format of the disk image. Sparse images are not automatically resized when their maximum capacity is about to be exceeded, because this would require changing the partition table and the filesystem of the image, which is not a trivial task. To resize a sparse image, a tool such as virt-resize3 or qemu-img2 must be used to increase the nominal size and the filesystem size of the image. References: 1 (search for “virt-sparsify”), 2 (search for “qemu-img”), 3 (search for “virt-resize”).

The unshare command is used to run a process in a new Linux namespace12. It takes one or more flags to specify which namespaces to create or unshare from the parent process1. For example, to run a shell in a new mount, network, and PID namespace, one can use:

unshare -mnp /bin/bash

References:

• 1: unshare(1) - Linux manual page - man7.org
• 2: A gentle introduction to namespaces in Linux - Packagecloud