Preparing for an AWS Cloud Architect interview can be challenging, given the breadth of knowledge required about cloud technologies.
This guide provides a comprehensive list of 30 common AWS Cloud Architect interview questions and answers, helping you navigate through the most critical topics.
Advertisement30 AWS Cloud Architect Interview Questions and Answers
1. What is AWS and what are its core services?
Answer: AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a comprehensive cloud computing platform provided by Amazon. Its core services include computing power (EC2), storage (S3), databases (RDS, DynamoDB), network services (VPC), and more.
2. Explain the difference between EC2 and S3.
Answer: EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is a service that provides scalable computing capacity in the cloud, allowing users to run virtual servers. S3 (Simple Storage Service) is a scalable storage service that allows users to store and retrieve any amount of data at any time.
3. What is an AWS VPC?
Answer: A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is a service that allows users to provision a logically isolated section of the AWS cloud where they can launch AWS resources in a virtual network that they define.
4. What is an IAM role?
Answer: An IAM (Identity and Access Management) role is a set of permissions that define what actions are allowed on which resources. Roles can be assumed by AWS services or users to obtain temporary access.
5. How does AWS ensure high availability?
Answer: AWS ensures high availability through multiple data centers across different geographic regions, using redundancy, auto-scaling, load balancing, and a failover mechanism.
6. What is the purpose of AWS CloudFormation?
Answer: AWS CloudFormation is a service that allows developers to define and provision AWS infrastructure as code using a declarative template format.
7. Explain the difference between horizontal and vertical scaling.
Answer: Horizontal scaling involves adding more instances or resources to handle increased load (e.g., adding more EC2 instances), while vertical scaling involves upgrading existing resources (e.g., increasing the size of an EC2 instance).
8. What is AWS Lambda?
Answer: AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that lets users run code without provisioning or managing servers. Users only pay for the compute time consumed.
9. Describe AWS Auto Scaling.
Answer: AWS Auto Scaling automatically adjusts the number of EC2 instances in response to changing demand, helping maintain application performance and reducing costs.
10. What is the difference between RDS and DynamoDB?
Answer: Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) is a managed relational database service, while DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database service that provides key-value and document data models.
11. What are security groups in AWS?
Answer: Security groups act as virtual firewalls for controlling inbound and outbound traffic to AWS resources, allowing users to specify rules based on protocol, port, and source/destination IP.
12. What is AWS Direct Connect?
Answer: AWS Direct Connect is a service that allows users to establish a dedicated network connection from their premises to AWS, enhancing bandwidth and reducing network costs.
13. How can you monitor AWS resources?
Answer: AWS provides several monitoring services, including Amazon CloudWatch, which offers insights into operational performance, and AWS CloudTrail, which logs API calls for resource tracking.
14. What is the difference between public and private subnets?
Answer: A public subnet has a route to the internet via an internet gateway, allowing external access. A private subnet is isolated from the internet but can access the internet through a NAT gateway.
15. What are AWS Elastic Load Balancers?
Answer: Elastic Load Balancers distribute incoming application traffic across multiple targets (EC2 instances, containers) to ensure high availability and fault tolerance.
16. Explain Amazon S3 storage classes.
Answer: Amazon S3 offers several storage classes, including Standard (frequent access), Intelligent-Tiering (automatic tiering), Infrequent Access, and Glacier (archival storage), catering to different access patterns and cost considerations.
17. What is a CloudFront distribution?
Answer: Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that securely delivers data, videos, applications, and APIs with low latency by caching content at edge locations around the world.
18. What is an AMI in AWS?
Answer: An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) provides the information required to launch an EC2 instance, including the operating system, application server, and applications.
19. What is the AWS Well-Architected Framework?
Answer: The AWS Well-Architected Framework is a set of best practices to help cloud architects build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure for applications.
20. Explain what AWS organizations is.
Answer: AWS Organizations allows users to manage multiple AWS accounts from a single location, enabling policy-based management, billing consolidation, and resource sharing among accounts.
21. What is AWS Elastic Beanstalk?
Answer: AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that simplifies the deployment and management of applications by handling the infrastructure provisioning and scaling.
22. Describe AWS CodePipeline.
Answer: AWS CodePipeline is a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) service that automates the build, test, and deployment phases of application delivery.
23. How does Amazon RDS automate backups?
Answer: Amazon RDS automates backups by creating snapshots of the database instance at user-defined intervals and retaining them for a specified period, enabling point-in-time recovery.
24. What is AWS Multi-AZ deployment?
Answer: Multi-AZ (Availability Zone) deployment in RDS automatically replicates data to a standby instance in a different AZ for failover, enhancing availability and reliability.
25. Explain AWS Secrets Manager.
Answer: AWS Secrets Manager is a service that helps users protect access to their applications, services, and IT resources without the upfront investment and on-going maintenance costs of operating their own infrastructure.
26. What is serverless architecture?
Answer: Serverless architecture is a cloud computing model that allows developers to build and run applications without managing servers, using services like AWS Lambda and API Gateway.
27. What is an Elastic IP?
Answer: An Elastic IP is a static public IP address that can be associated with an AWS resource, allowing users to dynamically remap the address to any instance within their account.
28. How can you use AWS CloudTrail for auditing?
Answer: AWS CloudTrail records API calls made in the AWS account, enabling users to track resource changes and user activity for compliance and auditing purposes.
29. What are the benefits of using AWS?
Answer: Benefits of using AWS include cost savings, scalability, flexibility, security, and a wide range of services and tools to support various application needs.
30. How does AWS pricing work?
Answer: AWS pricing is based on a pay-as-you-go model, where users pay for the resources they use without upfront costs, allowing them to scale their usage up or down depending on demand.