Introduction:

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a dominant player in the cloud computing space, and its services have revolutionized the way businesses deploy, manage, and scale applications. For aspiring AWS professionals, understanding common interview questions is crucial for success. In this blog, we will explore 11 frequently asked AWS interview questions and provide comprehensive answers to help you ace your next AWS interview.

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:

1. Name 5 AWS services you have used and what are the use cases?

I have used Amazon S3 for storing and retrieving data, Amazon EC2 for running virtual servers, Amazon RDS for managing relational databases, Amazon DynamoDB for managing NoSQL databases, and Amazon Lambda for running serverless code.

2. What are the tools used to send logs to the cloud environment?

Some tools that can be used to send logs to a cloud environment include AWS CloudWatch Logs, AWS Kinesis Data Firehose, and AWS S3.

3. What are IAM Roles? How do you create/manage them?

IAM roles are a type of IAM identity that you can create in your AWS account that has specific permissions. You can create an IAM role using the AWS Management Console, the AWS CLI, or the IAM API. To create an IAM role, you need to sign in to the AWS Management Console, open the IAM console, click on the ‘Roles’ and choose the ‘Create role’ option. Then you can select the type of trusted entity (such as an AWS service) that can assume the role and attach the necessary permissions policies to the role.

4. How to upgrade or downgrade a system with zero downtime?

To upgrade or downgrade a system with near-zero downtime, you can use a migration process that involves choosing an operating system AMI, launching an instance with the new instance type, installing all updates and applications, testing the instance to see if it’s working, and then deploying the new instance and replacing the older instance.

5. What is infrastructure as code and how do you use it?

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the process of managing and provisioning IT infrastructure using code rather than manual configuration. This allows teams to automate the setup and management of their infrastructure, making it more efficient and consistent. IaC also enables version control, trackability, and audibility of infrastructure changes and can be integrated into CI/CD pipelines as part of the SDLC.

6. What is a load balancer? Give scenarios of each kind of balancer based on your experience.

A load balancer is a device or service that distributes incoming network traffic across multiple servers to ensure that no single server becomes overwhelmed with traffic. There are several types of load balancers including hardware-based load balancers, software-based load balancers, and cloud-based load balancers. Each type of load balancer has its use cases depending on factors such as cost, scalability, performance requirements, and security needs.

7. What is CloudFormation and why is it used for?

CloudFormation is an AWS service that allows you to model and set up your AWS resources using a template file. It can create, provision, and update resources consistently and quickly. It also handles the configuration and lifecycle of the resources. The template file can describe a collection of related resources with dependencies.

8. Difference between AWS CloudFormation and AWS Elastic Beanstalk?

The main difference between AWS CloudFormation and AWS Elastic Beanstalk is that CloudFormation is an infrastructure-as-code tool that allows you to create and manage a collection of related AWS resources using templates in JSON or YAML format while Elastic Beanstalk is a platform as a service that automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring.

9. What are the kinds of security attacks that can occur on the cloud? And how can we minimize them?

Some common security attacks on cloud environments include unauthorized access to data, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, cloud misconfiguration resulting in data leaks or breaches, and insecure APIs leading to data breaches or unauthorized access to data. To minimize these attacks it’s important to implement strong access controls including multi-factor authentication, use encryption for data at rest and in transit, regularly monitor logs for suspicious activity, configure firewalls and other security measures correctly.

10. Can we recover the EC2 instance when we have lost the key?

Yes! If you have lost your key pair for an EC2 instance you can recover it by creating an image of your running EC2 instance then launching an instance from this image with a new key pair.

11. What is a gateway?

A gateway is a node in a computer network that serves as an entrance to another network. It connects two networks so that devices on one network can communicate with devices on another network.

12. What is the difference between Amazon RDS, DynamoDB, and Redshift? Amazon RDS is a managed relational database service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud; Amazon DynamoDB is a managed NoSQL database service that provides fast performance at any scale; Amazon Redshift is a fully managed data warehouse service that makes it simple to analyze large amounts of structured data using standard SQL.

13. Do you prefer to host a website on S3? What’s the reason if your answer is either yes or no?

Yes! I would prefer hosting a website on S3 because it’s easy to set up static website hosting on S3 by creating an S3 bucket with public read access and configuring it for static website hosting. Additionally hosting on S3 is cost-effective especially if you stay under certain usage limits.

Conclusion:

With the growing popularity of AWS and the increasing demand for skilled AWS professionals, preparing for AWS interviews is essential. By familiarizing yourself with these interview questions and their answers, you can confidently demonstrate your expertise and stand out in the competitive job market. Best of luck on your AWS journey!

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