AWS Solutions Architect Interview Questions and Answers (Part1)

 AWS Solutions Architect Interview Questions and Answers (Part1)

Q1. What Is Amazon EC2?

A1. EC2 is short for Elastic Compute Cloud, and it provides scalable computing capacity. Using Amazon EC2 eliminates the need to invest in hardware, leading to faster development and deployment of applications. You can use Amazon EC2 to launch as many or as few virtual servers as needed, configure security and networking, and manage storage. It can scale up or down to handle changes in requirements, reducing the need to forecast traffic. EC2 provides virtual computing environments called “instances.”

Q2. What Are Some of the Security Best Practices for Amazon EC2?

A2. Security best practices for Amazon EC2 include using Identity and Access Management (IAM) to control access to AWS resources; restricting access by only allowing trusted hosts or networks to access ports on an instance; only opening up those permissions you require, and disabling password-based logins for instances launched from your AMI.

Q3. What Is Amazon S3?

A3. S3 is short for Simple Storage Service, and Amazon S3 is the most supported storage platform available. S3 is object storage that can store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere. Despite that versatility, it is practically unlimited as well as cost-effective because it is storage available on demand. In addition to these benefits, it offers unprecedented levels of durability and availability. Amazon S3 helps to manage data for cost optimization, access control, and compliance.

Q4. Can S3 Be Used with EC2 Instances, and If Yes, How?

A4. Amazon S3 can be used for instances with root devices backed by local instance storage. That way, developers have access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of websites. To execute systems in the Amazon EC2 environment, developers load Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) into Amazon S3 and then move them between Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2.

Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 are two of the best-known web services that make up AWS.

Q5. What Is Identity Access Management (IAM) and How Is It Used?

A5. Identity Access Management (IAM) is a web service for securely controlling access to AWS services. IAM lets you manage users, security credentials such as access keys, and permissions that control which AWS resources users and applications can access.

Q6. What Is Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and Why Is It Used?

A6. A VPC is the best way of connecting to your cloud resources from your own data center. Once you connect your datacenter to the VPC in which your instances are present, each instance is assigned a private IP address that can be accessed from your data center. That way, you can access your public cloud resources as if they were on your own private network.

Q7. What Is Amazon Route 53?

A7. Amazon Route 53 is a scalable and highly available Domain Name System (DNS). The name refers to TCP or UDP port 53, where DNS server requests are addressed.

Q8. What Is Cloudtrail and How Do Cloudtrail and Route 53 Work Together?

A8. CloudTrail is a service that captures information about every request sent to the Amazon Route 53 API by an AWS account, including requests that are sent by IAM users. CloudTrail saves log files of these requests to an Amazon S3 bucket. CloudTrail captures information about all requests. You can use information in the CloudTrail log files to determine which requests were sent to Amazon Route 53, the IP address that the request was sent from, who sent the request, when it was sent, and more.

Q9. When Would You Prefer Provisioned IOPS over Standard Rds Storage?

A9. You would use Provisioned IOPS when you have batch-oriented workloads. Provisioned IOPS delivers high IO rates, but it is also expensive. However, batch processing workloads do not require manual intervention.

Q10. How Do Amazon Rds, Dynamodb, and Redshift Differ from Each Other?

A10. Amazon RDS is a database management service for relational databases. It manages patching, upgrading, and data backups automatically. It’s a database management service for structured data only. On the other hand, DynamoDB is a NoSQL database service for dealing with unstructured data. Redshift is a data warehouse product used in data analysis.

Q11. What Are the Benefits of AWS’s Disaster Recovery?

A11. Businesses use cloud computing in part to enable faster disaster recovery of critical IT systems without the cost of a second physical site. The AWS cloud supports many popular disaster recovery architectures ranging from small customer workload data centre failures to environments that enable rapid failover at scale. With data centres all over the world, AWS provides a set of cloud-based disaster recovery services that enable rapid recovery of your IT infrastructure and data.

Q12. Describe the key components of AWS?

A12. The key components of AWS are:

Simple Storage Device or (S3): It is the most widely used AWS service and also a storage device.

Route 53: It is called a DNS Web Service.

Simple E-mail Service: It is used for sending an e-mail via regular SMTP or by using the RESTFUL API call.

Identity and Access Management: Its purpose is to provide identity management and enhanced security for a user’s AWS account.

Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2): The purpose of EC2 is to provide on-demand computing resources for hosting applications. It is convenient for unpredictable workloads.

Elastic Block Store (EBS): It offers determined storage volumes that connect to EC2 to allow you to endure data past the lifespan of a single Amazon EC2 instance.

Cloud Watch: It allows administrators to view and collect the key to monitoring AWS resources. Also, it can be used to set a notification alarm in case of trouble.

Q13. What is Amazon Machine Image?

A13. Amazon Machine Image is AMI. AMI is a template providing the information (an application server, an operating system, and applications) required for launching an instance. That instance is a copy of the AMI which is running as a virtual server in the cloud. The instances from different AMIs are launched as per requirement.

Q14. Describe the relationship between an instance and AMI?

A14. You can launch multiple types of instances from a single AMI. An instance type defines the host computer hardware which is used for your instance. Different computer and memory capabilities are provided by each instance type. Once an instance is launched, it resembles a traditional host, which is used for interaction as done with any computer.

Q15. What does an AMI include?

A15. An AMI consists of the following things:

A template that is used as the base volume for the instance.

A block device mapping to determine the volumes to attach to the instance when it is launched.

Start-up permissions decide which AWS accounts can leverage the AMI to start instances.

Q16. How to send a request to Amazon S3?

A16. As Amazon S3 is a REST Service, by using the REST API or the AWS SDK wrapper libraries that wrap the elemental Amazon S3 REST API a request is sent.

Q17. Differentiate between Amazon S3 and EC2?

A17. EC2 S3

Q18. In AWS how many buckets can be created by default?

A18. In each AWS account, you can create up to 100 buckets by default.Q19. Explain the process to vertically scale on Amazon Instance?

The steps to vertically scale on Amazon instance are:

Upgrade from the current instance to a new larger instance.

Pause the previous instance and discard it by detaching the root web volumes from the servers.

Now stop the live instance and also detach its root volume.

Attach the root volume to the new server after you note the unique device ID.

And finally, restart it.

Q19. Describe the T2 instances?

A19. T2 instances are designed such as to provide balanced baseline achievement and also it has the capacity to gust to higher achievement based on the requirement of the workload.

Q20. Which subnet should be preferred to launch database servers?

Q20. Among the private and public subnets in VPC, private subnet should be preferred ideally for launching the database servers.

Q21. Enlist few best Security practices for Amazon EC2?

A21. Following are the best security practices for secure Amazon EC2:

To control access to your AWS resources using AWS identity and access management.

Limit the access to ports of instance by allowing only trusted hosts or networks.

Analyse the rules regularly in your security groups.

Open the permissions based on the requirement only.

Disable password-based login.

Q22. Explain the use of a buffer in Amazon web services?

A22. To make the system more robust for managing the traffic or load by synchronizing different components the buffer is used. Generally, receiving and processing of the requests are in an unbalanced way by the components. But when the buffer is used, the components are balanced and work at the same speed to provide proper service.

Q23. What are the possible connection issues one might face while connecting to the instance?

A23. While connecting instances the possible connection issues one might face are:

Connection Time out

User key unrecognizable by the server

Host key not found; permission denied

A private key file which is unprotected

Server refusing key or No support authentication method available

On Safari Browser Error using Mind Term

Error while using Mac OS X RDP Client

Q24. What do you mean by key-pairs in AWS?

A24. The secured login information used for virtual machines is called as Key Pairs. For connecting to the instances, key-pairs containing a public-key and private-key are used.

Q25. Explain the different types of instances?

A25. The different types of instances are:

General-purpose

Computer Optimized

Memory-Optimized

Storage Optimized

Accelerated Computing

Q26. Does Amazon VPC support the property of broadcast or multicast?

A26. No, currently support for the property of broadcast or multicast is not provided by Amazon VPC.

Q27. How many Elastic IPs are can create an AWS account combined?

A27. Five VPC Elastic IP addresses are necessary for creating the AWS account.

Q28. Explain S3’s default storage class?

A28. The default storage class in S3 is a Standard that is frequently accessed.

Q29. What do you understand by the roles?

A29. In AWS, Roles are providing permissions to the entities which you can trust within your account. Roles and users are similar to each other. However, while working with the resources it does not require creating the username and password, unlike users.

Q30. Describe the term edge locations?

A30. The contents are cached in an area which is called the Edge location. Whenever a user tries to access any content, the content will be automatically searched in the edge location.

Q31. Explain VPC?

A31.VPC is an abbreviation for Virtual Private Cloud. It helps in the customization of the networking configuration.VPC is a network in the cloud that is logically isolated from the other network. VPC provides you with IP address range, subnet, internet gateways, and security groups.

Q32. What is a snowball?

A32. A data transport option is called Snowball. Snowball uses source appliances for huge data in and out of AWS. Snowball helps in transferring a massive amount of data in different places. It is helpful in reducing networking costs.

Q33. What is a redshift?

A33. Redshift is a big data warehouse product that is fast and powerful, fully managed data warehouse service in the cloud.

Q34. Enlist the advantages of auto-scaling?

A34. The advantages of auto-scaling are:

It offers tolerance for fault.

Proper availability

Effective cost management

Q35. Define subnet?

A35. A subnet is a huge segment of IP Addresses divided into chunks.

Q36. Is it possible to establish a Peering connection to a VPC in a different region?

A36. No, the peering connection to a VPC is possible in only the same region.

Q37. Define SQL with reference to AWS?

A37. SQL is called Simple Queues Services. It acts as a mediator for two controllers which helps in the distribution of the queuing service.

Q38. How many subnets can be used per VPC?

A38. 200 subnets per VPC can be used.

Q39.  Categorize the DNS and Load Balancer service in cloud service?

A39. DNS and Load Balancer services belong to the IAAS-storage cloud service.

Q40. Explain AWS Cloud Trail?

A40. AWS Cloud Trail is a special tool for logging and tracking API calls. It also helps in auditing the S3 bucket access.

Q41. When was EC2 officially launched?

A41. In the year 2006 EC2 was officially launched.

Q42. What do you understand by SimpleDB?

A42. A data depository is a structured record that strengthens the data doubts and indexing of both S3 and EC2 is Simple DB.

Q43. Define Amazon ElasticCache?

A43. A web service that is easy to deploy, scale, and store data in the cloud is Amazon ElasticCache.

Q44. Define AWS Lambda?

A44. An Amazon computes service which permits you to run code in the AWS Cloud without controlling servers is AWS Lambda.

Q45. What types of AMI are provided by AWS?

A45. AWS provides the following types of AMI:

Instance store backed

EBS backed

Q46. Which AWS service redundantly cache data and images?

A46. AWS service which redundantly cache data and images are AWS Edge locations.

Q47. What do you mean by the term Geo Restriction in CloudFront?

A47. Geo-restriction is a feature that helps us to prevent specific geographic locations users from accessing content that has been distributed through a CloudFront web distribution.

Q48. Explain Amazon EMR?

A48. Amazon EMR is a survived cluster stage which is helpful in data structures as it illustrates the working before the intimation. Apache Spark and Apache Hadoop on Amazon Web Services are helpful in investigating data of a magnificent amount. Using Apache Hive the data for the analytics goals and marketing intellect workloads can be prepared. It also uses other relevant open-source designs.

Q49. Specify the boot time required for the instance stored backed AMI?

A49. The boot time required for an Amazon instance store-backend AMI is less than 5 minutes.

Q50. Is there a requirement of an Internet gateway to use peering connections?

A50. Yes, there is a requirement of an Internet gateway while using VPC (virtual private cloud peering) connections.

Q51. Is it possible to connect the EBS volume to multiple instances?

A51. It is not possible to connect the EBS volume to multiple instances. In fact, it is possible to connect numerous EBS Volumes to a single instance.

Q52. Mention the various types of cloud services?

A52. The 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)

Q53. What is the difference between an AMI and an Instance?

A53. A template consisting of the software configuration part is AMI. For example Application, application server, operating systems. On the other hand, if you start an Instance, it is a duplicate of the AMI in a row as an attendant in the cloud.