Top 100+ AWS Interview Questions & Answers

1) Explain what AWS is?

AWS stands for Amazon Web Service; it is a collection of remote computing services also known as a cloud computing platform.  This new realm of cloud computing is also known as IaaS or Infrastructure as a Service.

2) Mention what the key components of AWS are?

The key components of AWS are

• Route 53:A DNS web service
• Simple E-mail Service:It allows sending e-mail using RESTFUL API call or via regular SMTP
• Identity and Access Management:It provides enhanced security and identity management for your AWS account
• Simple Storage Device or (S3):It is a storage device and the most widely used AWS service
• Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2): It provides on-demand computing resources for hosting applications. It is handy in case of unpredictable workloads
• Elastic Block Store (EBS):It offers persistent storage volumes that attach to EC2 to allow you to persist data past the lifespan of a single Amazon EC2 instance
• CloudWatch: To monitor AWS resources, It allows administrators to view and collect key Also, one can set a notification alarm in case of trouble.

3) Explain what S3 is?

S3 stands for Simple Storage Service. You can use S3 interface to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time and from anywhere on the web.  For S3, the payment model is “pay as you go.”

4) What is AMI?

AMI stands for Amazon Machine Image.  It’s a template that provides the information (an operating system, an application server, and applications) required to launch an instance, which is a copy of the AMI running as a virtual server in the cloud.  You can launch instances from as many different AMIs as you need.

5) Mention what the relationship between an instance and AMI is?

From a single AMI, you can launch multiple types of instances.  An instance type defines the hardware of the host computer used for your instance. Each instance type provides different computer and memory capabilities.  Once you launch an instance, it looks like a traditional host, and we can interact with it as we would with any computer.

6) What does an AMI include?

An AMI includes the following things

• A template for the root volume for the instance
• Launch permissions decide which AWS accounts can avail the AMI to launch instances
• A block device mapping that determines the volumes to attach to the instance when it is launched

7) How can you send a request to Amazon S3?

Amazon S3 is a REST service, and you can send a request by using the REST API or the AWS SDK wrapper libraries that wrap the underlying Amazon S3 REST API.

8) Mention what the difference between Amazon S3 and EC2 is?

The difference between EC2 and Amazon S3 is that

EC2	S3
It is a cloud web service used for hosting your application	It is a data storage system where any amount of data can be stored
It is like a huge computer machine which can run either Linux or Windows and can handle application like PHP, Python, Apache or any databases	It has a REST interface and uses secure HMAC-SHA1 authentication keys

9) How many buckets can you create in AWS by default?

By default, you can create up to 100 buckets in each of your AWS accounts.

10) Explain can you vertically scale an Amazon instance? How?

Yes, you can vertically scale on Amazon instance. For that

• Spin up a new larger instance than the one you are currently running
• Pause that instance and detach the root webs volume from the server and discard
• Then stop your live instance and detach its root volume
• Note the unique device ID and attach that root volume to your new server
• And start it again

11) Explain what T2 instances is?

T2 instances are designed to provide moderate baseline performance and the capability to burst to higher performance as required by the workload.

12) In VPC with private and public subnets, database servers should ideally be launched into which subnet?

With private and public subnets in VPC, database servers should ideally launch into private subnets.

13) Mention what the security best practices for Amazon EC2 are?

For secure Amazon EC2 best practices, follow the following steps

• Use AWS identity and access management to control access to your AWS resources
• Restrict access by allowing only trusted hosts or networks to access ports on your instance
• Review the rules in your security groups regularly
• Only open up permissions that you require
• Disable password-based login, for example, launched from your AMI

14) Explain how the buffer is used in Amazon web services?

The buffer is used to make the system more robust to manage traffic or load by synchronizing different component.  Usually, components receive and process the requests in an unbalanced way. With the help of buffer, the components will be balanced and will work at the same speed to provide faster services.

15) While connecting to your instance what are the possible connection issues one might face?

The possible connection errors one might encounter while connecting instances are

• Connection timed out
• User key not recognized by the server
• Host key not found, permission denied
• An unprotected private key file
• Server refused our key or No supported authentication method available
• Error using MindTerm on Safari Browser
• Error using Mac OS X RDP Client

16) What are key-pairs in AWS?

Key-pairs are secure login information for your virtual machines. To connect to the instances, you can use key-pairs which contain a public-key and private-key.

17)  What are the different types of instances?

Following are the types of instances:

• General purpose
• Computer Optimized
• Memory Optimized
• Storage Optimized
• Accelerated Computing

18) Is the property of broadcast or multicast supported by Amazon VPC?

No, currently Amazon VPI not provide support for broadcast or multicast.

19) How many Elastic IPs is allows you to create by AWS?

5 VPC Elastic IP addresses are allowed for each AWS account.

20) Explain default storage class in S3

The default storage class is a Standard frequently accessed.

21) What are the roles?

Roles are used to providing permissions to entities which you can trust within your AWS account. Roles are very similar to users. However,  with roles, you do not require to create any username and password to work with the resources.

22) What are the edge locations?

Edge location is the area where the contents will be cached. So, when a user is trying to accessing any content, the content will automatically be searched in the edge location.

23) What is VPC? 

VPC stands for Virtual Private Cloud. It allows you to customize your networking configuration. It is a network which is logically isolated from another network in the cloud. It allows you to have your IP address range,  internet gateways, subnet and security groups.

24) Explain snowball

Snowball is a data transport option. It used source appliances to a large amount of data into and out of AWS. With the help of snowball, you can transfer a massive amount of data from one place to another. It helps you to reduce networking costs.

• When should I use AWS snowball?

You can use Snowball Edge Storage Optimized if you have a large backlog of data to transfer or if you frequently collect data that needs to be transferred to AWS and your storage is in an area where high-bandwidth internet connections are not available or cost-prohibitive.

• What is one function of an AWS snowball?

AWS Snowball, a part of the AWS Snow Family, is a data migration and edge computing device that comes in two options. Snowball Edge Storage Optimized devices provide both block storage and Amazon S3-compatible object storage, and 40 vCPUs. They are well suited for local storage and large scale-data transfer.

• What is the difference between snowball and snowball edge?

The AWS Snowball Edge device differs from the standard Snowball because it can bring the power of the AWS Cloud to your on-premises location, with local storage and compute functionality. Snowball Edge devices have three options for device configurations – storage optimized, compute optimized, and with GPU

The AWS Snowball Edge device differs from the standard Snowball because it can bring the power of the AWS Cloud to your on-premises location, with local storage and compute functionality. Snowball Edge devices have three options for device configurations – storage optimized, compute optimized, and with GPU

• How much does AWS snowball cost?

What does Snowball cost? The 50TB Snowball costs $200 per use, and you can keep it for up to 10 days without overage charges. The 80TB Snowball costs $250 per use.

25) What is a redshift?

Redshift is a big data warehouse product. It is fast and powerful, fully managed data warehouse service in the cloud.

 

• How does AWS redshift work?

In Redshift, each Compute Node is partitioned into slices, and each slice receives part of the memory and disk space. The Leader Node distributes data to the slices, and allocates parts of a user query or other database operation to the slices. Slices work in parallel to perform the operations.

• Is AWS redshift a database? 

Amazon RDS is a relational database for primary data, running software like SQL, MySQL, Aurora, MariaDB, Oracle and PostgreSQL. ... Redshift is Amazon's analytic database with ParAccel technology this is designed for heavy lifting, crunching big data queries against large datasets.

• What is the difference between redshift and s3?

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is a service for storing objects, and Amazon Redshift Spectrum enables you to run Amazon Redshift SQL queries against exabytes of data in Amazon S3.

• Is redshift a PaaS or SaaS?

Data Platform as a Service (PaaS)—cloud-based offerings like Amazon S3 and Redshift or EMR provide a complete data stack, except for ETL and BI. Data Software as a Service (SaaS)—an end-to-end data stack in one tool.  

26) What are the advantages of auto-scaling?

Following are the advantages of autoscaling

• Offers fault tolerance
• Better availability
• Better cost management

27) What is meant by subnet?

A large section of IP Address divided into chunks is known as subnets.

28) Can you establish a Peering connection to a VPC in a different region?

No, It’s only possible between VPCs in the same region.

29) What is SQL?

Simple Queues Services also known as SQL. It is distributed queuing service which acts as a mediator for two controllers.

30) How many subnets can you have per VPC?

You can have 200 subnets per VPC.

31) DNS  and Load Balancer service comes under which type of cloud service?

DNS and Load Balancer and DNS services come under IAAS-storage cloud service.

32) What is the role of AWS CloudTrail?

CloudTrail is a specially designed tool for logging and tracking API calls. It helps to audit all S3 bucket accesses.

33) When EC2 officially launched?

EC2 officially launched in the year 2006.

34) What is SimpleDB?

SimpleDB is a data repository of structure record which encourages data doubts and indexing both S3 and EC2are called SimpleDB.

35) Explain Amazon ElasticCache

Amazon Elasticcache is a web service which makes it easy to deploy, scale and store data in the cloud.

36) What is AWS Lambda?

Lambda is an Amazon compute service which allows you to run code in the  AWS Cloud without managing servers.

37) Name the types of AMI provided by AWS

The types of AMI provided by AWS are:

1. Instance store backed
2. EBS backed

38) Name the AWS service exists only to redundantly cache data and images?

AWS Edge locations are service which redundantly cache data and images.

39) Explain Geo Restriction in CloudFront

A Geo-restriction feature helps you to prevent users of specific geographic locations from accessing content which you’re distributing through a CloudFront web distribution.

40) What is Amazon EMR?

EMR is a survived cluster stage which helps you to interpret the working of data structures before the intimation.  Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark on the Amazon Web Services helps you to investigate a large amount of data. You can prepare data for the analytics goals and marketing intellect workloads using Apache Hive and using other relevant open source designs.

41) What is boot time taken for the instance stored backed AMI?

The boot time for an Amazon instance store-backend AMI is less than 5 minutes.

42) Do you need an internet gateway to use peering connections?

Yes, the Internet gateway is needed to use VPC (virtual private cloud peering) connections.

43) How to connect EBS volume to multiple instances?

We can’t be able to connect EBS volume to multiple instances.  Although, you can connect various EBS Volumes to a single instance.

44) List different types of cloud services

Various types of cloud services are:

• Software as a Service (SaaS),
• Data as a Service (DaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

45) State the difference between An Instance  and AMI

AMI is a template consisting software configuration part. For example Operating systems, applications, application server if you start an instance, a duplicate of the AMI in a row as an attendant in the cloud.

46) What are the different types of Load Balancer in AWS services?

Two types of Load balancer are:

1. Application Load Balancer
2. Classic Load Balancer

47) In which situation you will select provisioned IOPS over standard RDS storage?

You should select provisioned IOPS storage over standard RDS storage if you want to perform batch-related workloads.

48) What are the important features of Amazon cloud search?

Important features of the Amazon cloud are:

• Boolean searches
• Prefix Searches
• Range searches
• Entire text search
• AutoComplete advice

49) Can vertically scaling is allows in  Amazon Instance?

Yes, you can vertically estimate one Amazon instance.

50) What is the use of lifecycle hooks in Autoscaling?

Lifecycle hooks are used for autoscaling to put an additional wait time to a scale in or scale out event.

51) What are various layers of Cloud Architecture explained in AWS training?

Different layers of cloud architecture are:

• Cloud controller
• Cluster controller
• Storage Controller
• Node Controller

52) What are the storage class available in Amazon s3?

Storage classes available with Amazon s3 are:

• Amazon S3 standard
• Amazon S3 standard-infrequent Access
• Amazon S3 Reduced Redundancy Storage
• Amazon Glacier

53) Name some of the DB engines which can be used in AWS RDS

1. MS-SQL DB
2. MariaDB
3. MYSQL DB
4. OracleDB
5. PostgreDB  
 

54. Define and explain the three basic types of cloud services and the AWS products that are built based on them?

The three basic types of cloud services are:

• Computing
• Storage
• Networking

Here are some of the AWS products that are built based on the three cloud service types:
Computing - These include EC2, Elastic Beanstalk, Lambda, Auto-Scaling, and Lightsat.
Storage - These include S3, Glacier, Elastic Block Storage, Elastic File System.
Networking - These include VPC, Amazon CloudFront, Route53

55. What is the relation between the Availability Zone and Region?

AWS regions are separate geographical areas, like the US-West 1 (North California) and Asia South (Mumbai). On the other hand, availability zones are the areas that are present inside the regions. These are generally isolated zones that can replicate themselves whenever required.

56. How do you upgrade or downgrade a system with near-zero downtime?

You can upgrade or downgrade a system with near-zero downtime using the following steps of migration:

• Open EC2 console
• Choose Operating System AMI
• Launch an instance with the new instance type
• Install all the updates
• Install applications
• Test the instance to see if it’s working
• If working, deploy the new instance and replace the older instance
• Once it’s deployed, you can upgrade or downgrade the system with near-zero downtime.

 

57. What are the tools and techniques that you can use in AWS to identify if you are paying more than you should be, and how to correct it?

You can know that you are paying the correct amount for the resources that you are using by employing the following resources:

• Check the Top Services Table

  It is a dashboard in the cost management console that shows you the top five most used services. This will let you know how much money you are spending on the resources in question.

• Cost Explorer

  There are cost explorer services available which will help you to view and analyze your usage costs for the last 13 months. You can also get a cost forecast for the upcoming three months.

• AWS Budgets

  This allows you to plan a budget for the services. Also, it will enable you to check if the current plan meets your budget and the details of how you use the services.

• Cost Allocation Tags

  This helps in identifying the resource that has cost more in a particular month. It lets you organize your resources and cost allocation tags to keep track of your AWS costs.

58. Is there any other alternative tool to log into the cloud environment other than console?

The that can help you log into the AWS resources are:

• Putty
• AWS CLI for Linux
• AWS CLI for Windows
• AWS CLI for Windows CMD
• AWS SDK
• Eclipse

59. What services can be used to create a centralized logging solution?

The essential services that you can use are Amazon CloudWatch Logs, store them in Amazon S3, and then use Amazon Elastic Search to visualize them. You can use Amazon Kinesis Firehose to move the data from Amazon S3 to Amazon ElasticSearch.

60. What are the native AWS Security logging capabilities?

Most of the AWS services have their logging options. Also, some of them have an account level logging, like in AWS CloudTrail, AWS Config, and others. Let’s take a look at two services in specific:

AWS CloudTrail

This is a service that provides a history of the AWS API calls for every account. It lets you perform security analysis, resource change tracking, and compliance auditing of your AWS environment as well. The best part about this service is that it enables you to configure it to send notifications via AWS SNS when new logs are delivered.

AWS Config 

This helps you understand the configuration changes that happen in your environment. This service provides an AWS inventory that includes configuration history, configuration change notification, and relationships between AWS resources. It can also be configured to send information via AWS SNS when new logs are delivered.

61. What is a DDoS attack, and what services can minimize them?

DDoS is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator accesses a website and creates multiple sessions so that the other legitimate users cannot access the service. The native tools that can help you deny the DDoS attacks on your AWS services are:

• AWS Shield
• AWS WAF
• Amazon Route53
• Amazon CloudFront
• ELB
• VPC

62. You are trying to provide a service in a particular region, but you do not see the service in that region. Why is this happening, and how do you fix it?

Not all Amazon AWS services are available in all regions. When Amazon initially launches a new service, it doesn’t get immediately published in all the regions. They start small and then slowly expand to other regions. So, if you don’t see a specific service in your region, chances are the service hasn’t been published in your region yet. However, if you want to get the service that is not available, you can switch to the nearest region that provides the services.

63. How do you set up a system to monitor website metrics in real-time in AWS?

Amazon CloudWatch helps you to monitor the application status of various AWS services and custom events. It helps you to monitor:

• State changes in Amazon EC2
• Auto-scaling lifecycle events
• Scheduled events
• AWS API calls
• Console sign-in events

64. What are the different types of virtualization in AWS, and what are the differences between them?

The three major types of virtualization in AWS are: 

• Hardware Virtual Machine (HVM)

  It is a fully virtualized hardware, where all the virtual machines act separate from each other. These virtual machines boot by executing a master boot record in the root block device of your image.

• Paravirtualization (PV)

  Paravirtualization-GRUB is the bootloader that boots the PV AMIs. The PV-GRUB chain loads the kernel specified in the menu.

• Paravirtualization on HVM

  PV on HVM helps operating systems take advantage of storage and network I/O available through the host.

65. Name some of the AWS services that are not region-specific

AWS services that are not region-specific are:

• IAM
• Route 53
• Web Application Firewall 
• CloudFront

66. What are the differences between NAT Gateways and NAT Instances?

While both NAT Gateways and NAT Instances serve the same function, they still have some key differences.

AWS Interview Questions for Amazon EC2

67. What is the difference between stopping and terminating an EC2 instance? 

While you may think that both stopping and terminating are the same, there is a difference. When you stop an EC2 instance, it performs a normal shutdown on the instance and moves to a stopped state. However, when you terminate the instance, it is transferred to a stopped state, and the EBS volumes attached to it are deleted and can never be recovered.

68. What are the different types of EC2 instances based on their costs?

The three types of EC2 instances are:

• On-demand Instance

  It is cheap for a short time but not when taken for the long term

• Spot Instance

  It is less expensive than the on-demand instance and can be bought through bidding. 

• Reserved Instance

  If you are planning to use an instance for a year or more, then this is the right one for you.

69. How do you set up SSH agent forwarding so that you do not have to copy the key every time you log in?

Here’s how you accomplish this:

1. Go to your PuTTY Configuration
2. Go to the category SSH -> Auth
3. Enable SSH agent forwarding to your instance

70. What are Solaris and AIX operating systems? Are they available with AWS?

Solaris is an operating system that uses SPARC processor architecture, which is not supported by the public cloud currently.
AIX is an operating system that runs only on Power CPU and not on Intel, which means that you cannot create AIX instances in EC2.
Since both the operating systems have their limitations, they are not currently available with AWS.

71. How do you configure CloudWatch to recover an EC2 instance?

Here’s how you can configure them:

• Create an Alarm using Amazon CloudWatch
• In the Alarm, go to Define Alarm -> Actions tab
• Choose Recover this instance option

72. What are the common types of AMI designs?

There are many types of AMIs, but some of the common AMIs are:

• Fully Baked AMI
• Just Enough Baked AMI (JeOS AMI)
• Hybrid AMI

AWS Interview Questions for S3

73. How can you recover/login to an EC2 instance for which you have lost the key?

Follow the steps provided below to recover an EC2 instance if you have lost the key:

1. Verify that the EC2Config service is running
2. Detach the root volume for the instance
3. Attach the volume to a temporary instance
4. Modify the configuration file
5. Restart the original instance

74. What are some critical differences between AWS S3 and EBS?

Here are some differences between AWS S3 and EBS

75. How do you allow a user to gain access to a specific bucket?

You need to follow the four steps provided below to allow access. They are:

1. Categorize your instances
2. Define how authorized users can manage specific servers.
3. Lockdown your tags
4. Attach your policies to IAM users

76. How can you monitor S3 cross-region replication to ensure consistency without actually checking the bucket?

Follow the flow diagram provided below to monitor S3 cross-region replication:

AWS Interview Questions for VPC

77. VPC is not resolving the server through DNS. What might be the issue, and how can you fix it?

To fix this problem, you need to enable the DNS hostname resolution, so that the problem resolves itself.

78. How do you connect multiple sites to a VPC?

If you have multiple VPN connections, you can provide secure communication between sites using the AWS VPN CloudHub. Here’s a diagram that will show you how to connect various sites to a VPC:

79. Name and explain some security products and features available in VPC?

Here is a selection of security products and features:

• Security groups - This acts as a firewall for the EC2 instances, controlling inbound and outbound traffic at the instance level.
• Network access control lists - It acts as a firewall for the subnets, controlling inbound and outbound traffic at the subnet level.
• Flow logs - These capture the inbound and outbound traffic from the network interfaces in your VPC.

80. How do you monitor Amazon VPC?

You can monitor VPC by using:

• CloudWatch and CloudWatch logs
• VPC Flow Logs

General AWS Interview Questions

81. How can you add an existing instance to a new Auto Scaling group?

Here’s how you can add an existing instance to a new Auto Scaling group:

• Open EC2 console
• Select your instance under Instances
• Choose Actions -> Instance Settings -> Attach to Auto Scaling Group
• Select a new Auto Scaling group
• Attach this group to the Instance
• Edit the Instance if needed
• Once done, you can successfully add the instance to a new Auto Scaling group

82. What are the factors to consider while migrating to Amazon Web Services?

Here are the factors to consider during AWS migration:

• Operational Costs - These include the cost of infrastructure, ability to match demand and supply, transparency, and others.
• Workforce Productivity 
• Cost avoidance
• Operational resilience
• Business agility

83. What is RTO and RPO in AWS?

RTO or Recovery Time Objective is the maximum time your business or organization is willing to wait for a recovery to complete in the wake of an outage. On the other hand, RPO or Recovery Point Objective is the maximum amount of data loss your company is willing to accept as measured in time.

84. If you would like to transfer vast amounts of data, which is the best option among Snowball, Snowball Edge, and Snowmobile?

AWS Snowball is basically a data transport solution for moving high volumes of data into and out of a specified AWS region. On the other hand, AWS Snowball Edge adds additional computing functions apart from providing a data transport solution. The snowmobile is an exabyte-scale migration service that allows you to transfer data up to 100 PB.

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AWS Interview Questions for CloudFormation

85. How is AWS CloudFormation different from AWS Elastic Beanstalk?

Here are some differences between AWS CloudFormation and AWS Elastic Beanstalk:

• AWS CloudFormation helps you provision and describe all of the infrastructure resources that are present in your cloud environment. On the other hand, AWS Elastic Beanstalk provides an environment that makes it easy to deploy and run applications in the cloud.
• AWS CloudFormation supports the infrastructure needs of various types of applications, like legacy applications and existing enterprise applications. On the other hand, AWS Elastic Beanstalk is combined with the developer tools to help you manage the lifecycle of your applications.

86. What are the elements of an AWS CloudFormation template?

AWS CloudFormation templates are YAML or JSON formatted text files that are comprised of five essential elements, they are:

• Template parameters
• Output values
• Data tables
• Resources
• File format version

87. What happens when one of the resources in a stack cannot be created successfully?

If the resource in the stack cannot be created, then the CloudFormation automatically rolls back and terminates all the resources that were created in the CloudFormation template. This is a handy feature when you accidentally exceed your limit of Elastic IP addresses or don’t have access to an EC2 AMI.

AWS Interview Questions for Elastic Block Storage

88. How can you automate EC2 backup using EBS?

Use the following steps in order to automate EC2 backup using EBS:

1. Get the list of instances and connect to AWS through API to list the Amazon EBS volumes that are attached locally to the instance.
2. List the snapshots of each volume, and assign a retention period of the snapshot. Later on, create a snapshot of each volume.
3. Make sure to remove the snapshot if it is older than the retention period.

89. What is the difference between EBS and Instance Store?

EBS is a kind of permanent storage in which the data can be restored at a later point. When you save data in the EBS, it stays even after the lifetime of the EC2 instance. On the other hand, Instance Store is temporary storage that is physically attached to a host machine. With an Instance Store, you cannot detach one instance and attach it to another. Unlike in EBS, data in an Instance Store is lost if any instance is stopped or terminated.

90. Can you take a backup of EFS like EBS, and if yes, how?

Yes, you can use the EFS-to-EFS backup solution to recover from unintended changes or deletion in Amazon EFS. Follow these steps:

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console
2. Click the launch EFS-to-EFS-restore button
3. Use the region selector in the console navigation bar to select region
4. Verify if you have chosen the right template on the Select Template page
5. Assign a name to your solution stack
6. Review the parameters for the template and modify them if necessary

91. How do you auto-delete old snapshots?

Here’s the procedure for auto-deleting old snapshots:

• As per procedure and best practices, take snapshots of the EBS volumes on Amazon S3.
• Use AWS Ops Automator to handle all the snapshots automatically.
• This allows you to create, copy, and delete Amazon EBS snapshots.

AWS Interview Questions for Elastic Load Balancing

92. What are the different types of load balancers in AWS?

There are three types of load balancers that are supported by Elastic Load Balancing:

1. Application Load Balancer
2. Network Load Balancer
3. Classic Load Balancer

93. What are the different uses of the various load balancers in AWS Elastic Load Balancing?

Application Load Balancer

Used if you need flexible application management and TLS termination.

Network Load Balancer

Used if you require extreme performance and static IPs for your applications.

Classic Load Balancer

Used if your application is built within the EC2 Classic network

AWS Interview Questions for Security

94. How can you use AWS WAF in monitoring your AWS applications?

AWS WAF or AWS Web Application Firewall protects your web applications from web exploitations. It helps you control the traffic flow to your applications. With WAF, you can also create custom rules that block common attack patterns. It can be used for three cases: allow all requests, prevent all requests, and count all requests for a new policy.

95. What are the different AWS IAM categories that you can control?

Using AWS IAM, you can do the following:

• Create and manage IAM users
• Create and manage IAM groups
• Manage the security credentials of the users
• Create and manage policies to grant access to AWS services and resources

96. What are the policies that you can set for your users’ passwords?

Here are some of the policies that you can set:

• You can set a minimum length of the password, or you can ask the users to add at least one number or special characters in it.
• You can assign requirements of particular character types, including uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and non-alphanumeric characters.
• You can enforce automatic password expiration, prevent reuse of old passwords, and request for a password reset upon their next AWS sign in.
• You can have the AWS users contact an account administrator when the user has allowed the password to expire. 

97. What is the difference between an IAM role and an IAM user?

The two key differences between the IAM role and IAM user are:

• An IAM role is an IAM entity that defines a set of permissions for making AWS service requests, while an IAM user has permanent long-term credentials and is used to interact with the AWS services directly.  
• In the IAM role, trusted entities, like IAM users, applications, or an AWS service, assume roles whereas the IAM user has full access to all the AWS IAM functionalities.

98. What are the managed policies in AWS IAM?

There are two types of managed policies; one that is managed by you and one that is managed by AWS. They are IAM resources that express permissions using IAM policy language. You can create, edit, and manage them separately from the IAM users, groups, and roles to which they are attached.

99. How does AWS IAM help your business?

IAM enables to:

• Manage IAM users and their access - AWS IAM provides secure resource access to multiple users
• Manage access for federated users – AWS allows you to provide secure access to resources in your AWS account to your employees and applications without creating IAM roles

AWS Interview Questions for Route 53

100. What is the difference between Latency Based Routing and Geo DNS?

The Geo Based DNS routing takes decisions based on the geographic location of the request. Whereas, the Latency Based Routing utilizes latency measurements between networks and AWS data centers. Latency Based Routing is used when you want to give your customers the lowest latency possible. On the other hand, Geo Based routing is used when you want to direct the customer to different websites based on the country or region they are browsing from.

101. What is the difference between a Domain and a Hosted Zone?

Domain

A domain is a collection of data describing a self-contained administrative and technical unit.

Hosted zone

A hosted zone is a container that holds information about how you want to route traffic on the internet for a specific domain. For example, lms.simplilearn.com is a hosted zone.

102. How does Amazon Route 53 provide high availability and low latency?

Here’s how Amazon Route 53 provides the resources in question:

Globally Distributed Servers

Amazon is a global service and consequently has DNS services globally. Any customer creating a query from any part of the world gets to reach a DNS server local to them that provides low latency.

Dependency

Route 53 provides a high level of dependability required by critical applications

Optimal Locations

Route 53 uses a global anycast network to answer queries from the optimal position automatically.

AWS Interview Questions for Config

103. How does AWS config work with AWS CloudTrail?

AWS CloudTrail records user API activity on your account and allows you to access information about the activity. Using CloudTrail, you can get full details about API actions such as the identity of the caller, time of the call, request parameters, and response elements. On the other hand, AWS Config records point-in-time configuration details for your AWS resources as Configuration Items (CIs).
You can use a CI to ascertain what your AWS resource looks like at any given point in time. Whereas, by using CloudTrail, you can quickly answer who made an API call to modify the resource. You can also use Cloud Trail to detect if a security group was incorrectly configured.

104. Can AWS Config aggregate data across different AWS accounts?

Yes, you can set up AWS Config to deliver configuration updates from different accounts to one S3 bucket, once the appropriate IAM policies are applied to the S3 bucket.

AWS Interview Questions for Database

105. How are reserved instances different from on-demand DB instances?

Reserved instances and on-demand instances are the same when it comes to function. They only differ in how they are billed.
Reserved instances are purchased as one-year or three-year reservations, and in return, you get very low hourly based pricing when compared to the on-demand cases that are billed on an hourly basis.

106. Which type of scaling would you recommend for RDS and why?

There are two types of scaling - vertical scaling and horizontal scaling. Vertical scaling lets you vertically scale up your master database with the press of a button. A database can only be scaled vertically, and there are 18 different instances in which you can resize the RDS. On the other hand, horizontal scaling is good for replicas. These are read-only replicas that can only be done through Amazon Aurora.

107. What is a maintenance window in Amazon RDS? Will your DB instance be available during maintenance events?

RDS maintenance window lets you decide when DB instance modifications, database engine version upgrades, and software patching have to occur. The automatic scheduling is done only for patches that are related to security and durability. By default, there is a 30-minute value assigned as the maintenance window and the DB instance will still be available during these events though you might observe a minimal effect on performance.

108. What are the consistency models in DynamoDB?

There are two consistency models In DynamoDB. First, there is the Eventual Consistency Model, which maximizes your read throughput. However, it might not reflect the results of a recently completed write. Fortunately, all the copies of data usually reach consistency within a second. The second model is called the Strong Consistency Model. This model has a delay in writing the data, but it guarantees that you will always see the updated data every time you read it.

109. What type of query functionality does DynamoDB support?

DynamoDB supports GET/PUT operations by using a user-defined primary key. It provides flexible querying by letting you query on non-primary vital attributes using global secondary indexes and local secondary indexes.

Short Answer Questions 

1. Suppose you are a game designer and want to develop a game with single-digit millisecond latency, which of the following database services would you use?

Amazon DynamoDB

2. If you need to perform real-time monitoring of AWS services and get actionable insights, which services would you use?

Amazon CloudWatch

3. As a web developer, you are developing an app, targeted primarily for the mobile platform. Which of the following lets you add user sign-up, sign-in, and access control to your web and mobile apps quickly and easily?

Amazon Cognito

4. You are a Machine Learning Engineer who is on the lookout for a solution that will discover sensitive information that your enterprise stores in AWS and then use NLP to classify the data and provide business-related insights. Which among the services would you choose?

AWS Macie

5. You are the system administrator in your company, which is running most of its infrastructure on AWS. You are required to track your users and keep tabs on how they are being authenticated. You wish to create and manage AWS users and use permissions to allow and deny their access to AWS resources. Which of the following services suits you best?

AWS IAM

6. Which service do you use if you want to allocate various private and public IP addresses to make them communicate with the internet and other instances?

Amazon VPC

7. This service provides you with cost-efficient and resizable capacity while automating time-consuming administration tasks

Amazon Relational Database Service

8. Which of the following is a means for accessing human researchers or consultants to help solve problems on a contractual or temporary basis?

Amazon Mechanical Turk

9. This service is used to make it easy to deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications using Kubernetes on AWS. Which of the following is this AWS service?

Amazon Elastic Container Service

10. This service lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. Select the correct service from the below options

AWS Lambda

11. As an AWS Developer, using this pay-per-use service, you can send, store, and receive messages between software components. Which of the following is it?

Amazon Simple Queue Service

12. Which service do you use if you would like to host real-time audio and video conferencing application on AWS, this service provides you with a secure and easy-to-use application?

Amazon Chime

AWS Interview Questions Multiple-Choice

1. Suppose you are a game designer and want to develop a game with single-digit millisecond latency, which of the following database services would you use?

1. Amazon RDS
2. Amazon Neptune
3. Amazon Snowball
4. Amazon DynamoDB

2. If you need to perform real-time monitoring of AWS services and get actionable insights, which services would you use?

1. Amazon Firewall Manager
2. Amazon GuardDuty
3. Amazon CloudWatch
4. Amazon EBS

3. As a web developer, you are developing an app, targeted especially for the mobile platform. Which of the following lets you add user sign-up, sign-in, and access control to your web and mobile apps quickly and easily?

1. AWS Shield
2. AWS Macie
3. AWS Inspector
4. Amazon Cognito

4. You are a Machine Learning Engineer who is on the lookout for a solution that will discover sensitive information that your enterprise stores in AWS and then use NLP to classify the data and provide business-related insights. Which among the services would you choose?

1. AWS Firewall Manager
2. AWS IAM
3. AWS Macie
4. AWS CloudHSM

5. You are the system administrator in your company, which is running most of its infrastructure on AWS. You are required to track your users and keep tabs on how they are being authenticated. You wish to create and manage AWS users and use permissions to allow and deny their access to AWS resources. Which of the following services suits you best?

1. AWS Firewall Manager
2. AWS Shield
3. Amazon API Gateway
4. AWS IAM

6. Which service do you use if you want to allocate various private and public IP addresses in order to make them communicate with the internet and other instances?

1. Amazon Route 53
2. Amazon VPC
3. Amazon API Gateway
4. Amazon CloudFront

7. This service provides you with cost-efficient and resizable capacity while automating time-consuming administration tasks

1. Amazon Relational Database Service
2. Amazon Elasticache
3. Amazon VPC
4. Amazon Glacier

8. Which of the following is a means for accessing human researchers or consultants to help solve problems on a contractual or temporary basis?

1. Amazon Mechanical Turk
2. Amazon Elastic Mapreduce
3. Amazon DevPay
4. Multi-Factor Authentication

9. This service is used to make it easy to deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications using Kubernetes on AWS. Which of the following is this AWS service?

1. Amazon Elastic Container Service
2. AWS Batch
3. AWS Elastic Beanstalk
4. Amazon Lightsail

10. This service lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. Select the correct service from the below options

1. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling
2. AWS Lambda
3. AWS Batch
4. Amazon Inspector

11. As an AWS Developer, using this pay-per-use service, you can send, store and receive messages between software components. Which of the following is it?

1. AWS Step Functions
2. Amazon MQ
3. Amazon Simple Queue Service
4. Amazon Simple Notification Service

12. Which service do you use if you would like to host real-time audio and video conferencing application on AWS, this service provides you with a secure and easy-to-use application?

1. Amazon Chime
2. Amazon WorkSpaces
3. Amazon MQ
4. Amazon AppStream

13. As your company's AWS Solutions Architect, you are in charge of designing thousands of similar individual jobs. Which of the following services best meets your requirements?

1. AWS EC2 Auto Scaling
2. AWS Snowball
3. AWS Fargate
4. AWS Batch

14. You are a Machine Learning engineer and you are looking for a service that helps you build and train Machine Learning models in AWS. Which among the following are we referring to?

1. Amazon SageMaker
2. AWS DeepLens
3. Amazon Comprehend
4. Device Farm

15. Imagine that you are working for your company's IT team. You are assigned to adjusting the capacity of AWS resources based on the incoming application and network traffic. How would you do it?

1. Amazon VPC
2. AWS IAM
3. Amazon Inspector
4. Amazon Elastic Load Balancing

16. This cross-platform video game development engine that supports PC, Xbox, Playstation, iOS, and Android platforms allows developers to build and host their games on Amazon's servers.

1. Amazon GameLift
2. AWS Greengrass
3. Amazon Lumberyard
4. Amazon Sumerian

17. You are the Project Manager of your company's Cloud Architects team. You are required to visualize, understand and manage your AWS costs and usage over time. Which of the following services works best?

1. AWS Budgets
2. AWS Cost Explorer
3. Amazon WorkMail
4. Amazon Connect

18. You are the chief Cloud Architect at your company. How can you automatically monitor and adjust computer resources to ensure maximum performance and efficiency of all scalable resources?

1. AWS CloudFormation 
2. AWS Aurora
3. AWS Auto Scaling
4. Amazon API Gateway

19. As a database administrator. you will employ a service that is used to set up and manage databases such as MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL. Which service are we referring to?

1. Amazon Aurora
2. AWS RDS
3. Amazon Elasticache
4. AWS Database Migration Service

20. A part of your marketing work requires you to push messages onto Google, Facebook, Windows, and Apple through APIs or AWS Management Console. Which of the following services do you use?

1. AWS CloudTrail
2. AWS Config
3. Amazon Chime
4. AWS Simple Notification Service