๐๐ Day 40 DevOps Challenge - ๐ AWS Interview Questions for Practice ๐
Table of contents
- Question 1: Name 5 AWS services you have used and what are the use cases? ๐
- Question 2: What are the tools used to send logs to the cloud environment? ๐ค
- Question 3: What are IAM Roles? How do you create/manage them? ๐
- Question 4: How to upgrade or downgrade a system with zero downtime? โฌ๏ธโฌ๏ธ
- Question 5: What is infrastructure as code, and how do you use it? ๐ป
- Question 6: What is a load balancer? Give scenarios of each kind of balancer based on your experience. โ๏ธ
- Question 7: What is CloudFormation and why is it used for? โ๏ธ
- Question 8: Difference between AWS CloudFormation and AWS Elastic Beanstalk? ๐
- Question 9: What are the kinds of security attacks that can occur on the cloud? And how can we minimize them? ๐ก๏ธ
- Question 10: Can we recover the EC2 instance when we have lost the key? ๐
- Question 11: What is a gateway? ๐
- Question 12: What is the difference between Amazon RDS, DynamoDB, and Redshift? ๐๏ธ๐๐
- Question 13: Do you prefer to host a website on S3? What's the reason if your answer is either yes or no? ๐
Question 1: Name 5 AWS services you have used and what are the use cases? ๐
Answer:
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) ๐๏ธ:
- Use Case: Storing and retrieving data, such as files, images, and backups, in a scalable and durable manner. Used for data backup, website hosting, and content distribution.
Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) โ๏ธ:
- Use Case: Hosting virtual servers in the cloud. It's suitable for running applications, websites, and services, making it versatile for web hosting, app development, and workload management.
Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) ๐ฒ:
- Use Case: Managing relational databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server in the cloud. Commonly used for data-driven apps, e-commerce, and analytics.
Amazon Lambda โก:
- Use Case: Running serverless functions in response to events or triggers. Ideal for event-driven apps and task automation, without server management.
Amazon CloudWatch ๐:
Use Case: Monitoring and managing AWS resources and applications. Collects metrics, logs, and events for performance insights and resource optimization.
Question 2: What are the tools used to send logs to the cloud environment? ๐ค
Answer: Tools for sending logs to the cloud include Amazon CloudWatch Logs, Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, AWS Lambda, third-party log shippers like Fluentd and Logstash, cloud-native logging solutions, and dedicated log management services.
Question 3: What are IAM Roles? How do you create/manage them? ๐
Answer: IAM (Identity and Access Management) Roles are AWS entities that define permissions for AWS services or users to access resources securely. Roles are often used for EC2 instances to access other AWS services without exposing credentials. You create and manage roles through the AWS IAM console or CLI, defining policies and attaching them to roles.
Question 4: How to upgrade or downgrade a system with zero downtime? โฌ๏ธโฌ๏ธ
Answer: Achieving zero downtime typically involves strategies like Blue-Green deployment, canary releases, or rolling updates. These methods ensure new system versions are deployed gradually or side-by-side with the old system, allowing for seamless transitions and minimal disruptions.
Question 5: What is infrastructure as code, and how do you use it? ๐ป
Answer: Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the practice of defining and provisioning AWS infrastructure using code. Tools like AWS CloudFormation or Terraform are used to create, modify, and manage infrastructure resources declaratively, making infrastructure management more predictable, version-controlled, and automated.
Question 6: What is a load balancer? Give scenarios of each kind of balancer based on your experience. โ๏ธ
Answer: A load balancer distributes incoming network traffic across multiple servers to ensure high availability and improved performance. There are two main types:
Application Load Balancer (ALB): Used for routing HTTP/HTTPS traffic at the application layer. Common scenarios include distributing traffic to web servers, handling API requests, and supporting microservices.
Network Load Balancer (NLB): Operates at the transport layer (TCP/UDP) and is suitable for scenarios that require high throughput, such as handling database traffic or forwarding requests to instances with static IP addresses.
Question 7: What is CloudFormation and why is it used for? โ๏ธ
Answer: AWS CloudFormation is a service that allows you to define and provision AWS infrastructure as code (IaC). You create templates to describe the resources and their relationships in your AWS environment. CloudFormation automates the deployment and management of these resources, making it easier to maintain and version-control infrastructure.
Question 8: Difference between AWS CloudFormation and AWS Elastic Beanstalk? ๐
Answer:
AWS CloudFormation is an IaC service for provisioning and managing a wide range of AWS resources, including EC2 instances, RDS databases, and more. It provides granular control over infrastructure but requires you to define all resources explicitly.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that simplifies the deployment and management of web applications. It abstracts infrastructure details and is best suited for developers who want a streamlined way to deploy and run their applications without worrying about infrastructure management.
Question 9: What are the kinds of security attacks that can occur on the cloud? And how can we minimize them? ๐ก๏ธ
Answer: Common cloud security threats include data breaches, DDoS attacks, insider threats, and misconfigurations. To minimize them, follow best practices like strong IAM policies, encryption, regular audits, security groups, network segmentation, and employing security services like AWS GuardDuty and Amazon Web Services Web Application Firewall (AWS WAF).
Question 10: Can we recover the EC2 instance when we have lost the key? ๐
Answer: Yes, you can recover an EC2 instance if you've lost the key pair. You can create a new key pair and associate it with the instance. However, this typically involves stopping the instance, detaching its root volume, attaching it to another instance, modifying the SSH key, and reattaching the volume. The exact steps may vary depending on the scenario.
Question 11: What is a gateway? ๐
Answer: In the context of AWS, a gateway typically refers to a network component that connects different networks or services. For example, an API Gateway serves as an entry point for API requests, while a VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) Gateway connects an on-premises network to a VPC.
Question 12: What is the difference between Amazon RDS, DynamoDB, and Redshift? ๐๏ธ๐๐
Answer:
Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) is used for managing relational databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server. It's suitable for structured data and supports complex queries.
Amazon DynamoDB is a NoSQL database service for fast, flexible, and scalable document and key-value data. It's well-suited for applications that require high-speed and low-latency data access.
Amazon Redshift is a data warehousing service for large-scale data analytics. It's optimized for complex queries on large datasets and is ideal for business intelligence and data warehousing use cases.
Question 13: Do you prefer to host a website on S3? What's the reason if your answer is either yes or no? ๐
Answer: The choice of hosting a website on Amazon S3 depends on the website's requirements.
Yes, if it's a static website with minimal server-side processing, as S3 is cost-effective and highly scalable for static content delivery.
No, if the website requires dynamic content or server-side processing, in which case services like AWS EC2 or AWS Elastic Beanstalk may be more suitable to handle the application logic.