Are you interested in making a career in cloud computing? If yes, then you must have a strong understanding of AWS. AWS is among the most popular cloud service platforms today, and if you have AWS knowledge, there are plenty of opportunities to explore.
This page has a list of AWS interview questions covering topics like compute, networking, databases, monitoring, troubleshooting, etc. All these questions are prepared after reviewing the commonly asked interview questions.
The questions will help you prepare for careers like AWS Cloud Engineer, DevOps Engineer, and Solutions Architect. Take the time to review, understand, and practice. Take the time to review, understand, and practice. If you regularly practice these questions, you’ll feel much more confident walking into your AWS interview.
Answer: The distinguishing characteristics of cloud architecture in comparison to traditional architecture are as follows:
- On-demand resource allocation: Cloud architecture enables the provisioning of hardware resources based on demand, allowing for flexible scaling up or down as needed.
- Scalability: Cloud architecture has the ability to scale resources dynamically to accommodate changing workloads, ensuring optimal performance and resource utilization.
- High availability and fault tolerance: Cloud architecture is designed to handle dynamic workloads without relying on a single point of failure. It provides built-in redundancy and fault-tolerant mechanisms to ensure continuous availability of services.
Answer: A Data Lake is a centralized data repository that stores structured and unstructured data at any scale. It allows organizations to store vast amounts of data in its raw, unprocessed form. Data Lakes provide the capability to apply various analytical tools and techniques to derive insights and perform advanced analytics without the need to structure the data beforehand. They can store data from diverse sources such as business applications, mobile applications, and IoT devices.
Answer: Serverless Computing is a cloud computing model offered by AWS that allows developers to build and run applications without the need to manage servers or infrastructure. In a serverless environment, developers can focus solely on writing and deploying code while the cloud provider takes care of all the underlying infrastructure management tasks, such as patching, capacity provisioning, and scaling. Serverless computing enables developers to rapidly develop and deploy applications, reduces operational overhead, and provides automatic scaling based on demand.
Answer: Amazon EC2 is known as Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing Platform. It provides a robust computing platform to handle any workload with the latest processors, storage, Operating Systems, and networking capabilities. It simplifies the computing process for developers. And this service reduces time by allowing quick scaling as per the requirements.
Answer: Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is a service provided by AWS that automatically adjusts the number of Amazon EC2 instances in a scalable and cost-effective manner. It automatically scales the number of instances based on predefined policies and conditions, ensuring that the application can handle variations in demand. EC2 Auto Scaling detects and replaces unhealthy instances, distributes instances across multiple availability zones for high availability, and optimizes resource utilization based on workload patterns.
Answer: Fleet management in Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling refers to the continuous monitoring and management of Amazon EC2 instances and applications within an Auto Scaling group. It includes health checks to identify and replace unhealthy instances, automatically balancing instances across availability zones, and optimizing resource allocation to ensure efficient and reliable operation of applications. Fleet management helps maintain the desired performance, availability, and cost optimization of the Auto Scaling group in the cloud environment.
Answer: Amazon CloudFront is a service known as a Content Delivery Network (CDN). It offers high security and performance and is designed to be developer-friendly. With a global network of 310+ Points of Presence (PoPs) distributed worldwide, CloudFront effectively reduces latency. It utilizes automated mapping and intelligent routing mechanisms to minimize latency. In addition, CloudFront ensures data security by applying traffic encryption and access control measures.
Answer: SQS has two types of queues:
- Standard Queues: This is the default queue type in SQS. It provides an unlimited number of transactions per second and at least once message delivery guarantee.
- FIFO Queues: FIFO queues are designed to preserve the exact order in which messages are sent and received. They ensure strict ordering of messages, making them suitable for applications that require precise sequencing.
Answer: Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed, serverless, NoSQL key-value database service. It offers essential features such as built-in security, in-memory caching, continuous backups, data export tools, and automated multi-region replication. DynamoDB enables running high-performance applications at any scale. It particularly supports internet-scale applications with high concurrency and millions of requests per second.
Answer: Amazon S3 Glacier is a storage class designed for data archiving. It provides flexible and high-performance data retrieval options. Data stored in S3 Glacier can be accessed within milliseconds, making it suitable for fast retrieval. It offers a cost-effective solution for long-term data storage. S3 Glacier includes three storage classes: Glacier Instant Retrieval Storage, S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, and S3 Glacier Deep Archive.
Answer: Amazon Redshift is a data warehousing service that enables analysis of data stored in data warehouses, databases, and data lakes. It leverages Machine Learning (ML) and AWS-designed hardware to deliver optimal performance for analyzing structured and semi-structured data. Redshift supports SQL-based queries and can automatically create, train, and deploy ML models to generate predictive insights.
Answer: Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) is a service that automatically distributes incoming application traffic across various destinations and virtual appliances. It operates within one or more availability zones. ELB provides tools for securing applications, including integrated certificate management, SSL/TLS decryption, and user authentication. There are three types of load balancers in ELB: Application Load Balancer, Gateway Load Balancer, and Network Load Balancer.
Answer: Sticky sessions, also known as session affinity, refer to a feature of load balancers. During sticky sessions, the load balancer associates a user’s session with a specific target. As a result, all requests from that user during the session are directed to the same target. This ensures a continuous experience for the user. The cookie AWSELB is typically used to define the duration of the sticky session with the instance.
Answer: AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a service that aids developers quickly and easily deploy and manage applications in the cloud. Developers only need to upload their application code, and Elastic Beanstalk takes care of everything else, including capacity provisioning, auto-scaling, load balancing, and application health monitoring. It simplifies the process of application deployment and management.
Answer: Some benefits of AWS Elastic Beanstalk include the following:
- Easy and simple deployment and management of applications.
- Automatic scaling based on application traffic.
- Improved developer productivity with simplified deployment processes.
- Cost-effectiveness as charges are based on the AWS service resources used.
- Customizability by allowing users to select configurations of AWS services for application development.
- Automatic updates and management of the application platform by AWS professionals.
Answer: AWS CloudTrail is a service that monitors and records user activities on the AWS infrastructure. It provides visibility into the actions performed on AWS resources and helps identify suspicious activities through CloudTrail insights and Amazon EventBridge features. CloudTrail allows for better control and auditing of resources and facilitates response activities. Log files generated by CloudTrail can be analyzed using Amazon Athena.
Answer: Amazon ElastiCache is an in-memory caching service that can serve as a data store for applications. It functions as a database, cache, message broker, or queue. ElastiCache improves application and database performance by storing data in memory, allowing for faster access times and reducing the load on backend databases. It enables accessing data in microseconds, leading to improved application responsiveness. VIF = Variance of model / Variance of the model with a single independent variable.
Answer: Amazon Lightsail is a service designed to simplify the process of building and managing websites and applications. It offers easy-to-use virtual private server instances, storage, and databases at a cost-effective price. Additionally, Lightsail allows for the creation and deletion of development sandboxes, enabling users to test new ideas without any risks.
Answer: Amazon ECS, also known as Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), provides a high-performance hosting platform for securely storing application images. ECS offers features such as image compression, encryption, and access control. It simplifies the management of containerized applications by allowing images to be stored in containers and accessed without the need for additional management tools.
Answer: Amazon EFS is a serverless Elastic File System that provides a simple and scalable file storage solution. With EFS, files can be added or removed from the file system without the need for provisioning or manual management. File systems can be created using various methods, including the EC2 launch instance wizard, EFS Console, CLI, and API. EFS automatically moves frequently accessed files to optimize costs.