AWS Cloud Practitioner Interview Questions
With its advanced services and technology, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is rapidly growing in the world of cloud computing. Furthermore, it has become one of the most profitable and fastest-growing tech companies in the world in recent years. As a result of this expansion, the demand for professionals as well as those just starting out in the cloud has skyrocketed. Keeping this in mind, AWS offers a variety of certificates, the most popular of which is the Cloud Practitioners certification. To put it another way, this certification is the key to getting into the Amazon Web Services world and having a secure future. Passing this exam can provide you with a plethora of new work prospects.
However, one thing that can be challenging is the interview procedure for a decent job in a top company. Many people pass the exam but are rejected during the interview phase. So, in this blog, we’ll discuss the top AWS Cloud Practitioner exam interview questions that will assist you during the recruiting process.
What is Amazon Web Services (AWS)?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud computing platform that provides a wide range of services and tools for building and running applications and services in the cloud. AWS is provided by Amazon, the largest e-commerce company in the world.
AWS allows customers to rent computing resources such as virtual machines (VMs), storage, and databases, over the internet, with no upfront investment or long-term commitment required. With AWS, customers can scale their resources up or down as needed, pay only for what they use, and avoid the costs and complexities of managing infrastructure.
AWS offers a wide range of services across various categories, including compute, storage, database, networking, security, analytics, and more. These services can be used individually or in combination, to build and run a wide range of applications and services, from simple websites and mobile apps to large-scale enterprise applications and big data analytics.
AWS is widely used by businesses of all sizes, across various industries and regions, and has become one of the largest and most popular cloud computing platforms in the world.
What are the key components of AWS?
The key components of AWS are:
- Compute: AWS provides a variety of compute services, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), and AWS Lambda, to help customers run their applications and services in the cloud.
- Storage: AWS offers several storage services, including Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), and Amazon Glacier, for storing and retrieving any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere.
- Database: AWS provides several database services, including Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Redshift, to help customers store, manage, and analyze data.
- Networking: AWS provides network services, including Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Amazon Route 53, and AWS Direct Connect, to help customers secure and optimize their network infrastructure in the cloud.
- Security and Identity: AWS provides security and identity services, including Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM), Amazon Cognito, and Amazon GuardDuty, to help customers secure their AWS resources and meet their security and compliance requirements.
- Analytics: AWS provides a variety of analytics services, including Amazon QuickSight, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon Kinesis, to help customers process and analyze large amounts of data.
- Developer Tools: AWS provides several developer tools, including Amazon CodeCommit, Amazon CodeBuild, and Amazon CodeDeploy, to help customers develop, build, and deploy their applications faster and more efficiently.
These are the main components of AWS, but the platform continues to evolve and expand, offering a growing number of services for customers to build and run their applications and services in the cloud.
What are some of the most common AWS services and what are they used for?
Here are some of the most common AWS services and what they are used for:
- Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2): A web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud, allowing customers to launch and manage virtual machines (VMs).
- Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3): An object storage service that provides scalable and highly durable storage, designed for use cases ranging from backup and archive to big data analytics and internet-scale applications.
- Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS): A managed relational database service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale relational databases in the cloud.
- Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC): A service that enables customers to launch AWS resources into a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud, where they have complete control over the network.
- Amazon Route 53: A highly available and scalable domain name system (DNS) web service that provides domain name registration and traffic management.
- Amazon CloudFront: A global content delivery network (CDN) service that speeds up the delivery of static and dynamic web content, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images.
- Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS): A fully managed message queue service for storing and transmitting messages between cloud applications and microservices.
- Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS): A fully managed pub/sub messaging service for distributing messages to multiple subscribers in parallel.
These are just a few of the many AWS services that are available. Depending on the specific requirements and use cases, customers can choose from a wide range of services to build and run their applications and services in the cloud.
How does AWS ensure security of customer data?
AWS ensures the security of customer data through multiple mechanisms, including:
- Physical security: AWS data centers are secured with multiple layers of physical security, including security cameras, biometric scans, and security personnel.
- Network security: AWS uses various network security measures such as firewalls, Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs), and security groups to control and monitor inbound and outbound traffic.
- Data encryption: AWS provides options for encrypting data at rest and in transit, using industry-standard encryption algorithms and key management services.
- Identity and access management: AWS provides Identity and Access Management (IAM) services that allow customers to control and monitor access to AWS resources.
- Compliance: AWS has a wide range of certifications and accreditations, including SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS, to demonstrate its commitment to security and privacy.
- Monitoring and logging: AWS provides customers with tools to monitor and log activity on their AWS resources, helping them to detect and respond to security threats.
AWS customers are also responsible for securing their own data and applications, following best practices and the AWS Shared Responsibility Model.
What are the different pricing models for AWS services?
AWS offers several pricing models for its services, including:
- On-Demand: Pay for the services you use, by the hour or the second, without any long-term commitments or upfront payments.
- Reserved Instances: Purchase compute capacity for a one or three-year term, and pay a lower hourly rate compared to On-Demand pricing.
- Spot Instances: Bid on spare Amazon EC2 instances and pay the Spot price, which is usually lower than On-Demand pricing.
- Dedicated Hosts: Rent physical servers that provide you with full control over the host and its instances.
- Savings Plans: Get up to 72% discount on On-Demand prices, in exchange for a commitment to use a specified amount of compute capacity over a one or three-year term.
- AWS Cost Optimization: Use services like Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Trusted Advisor, and AWS Budgets to monitor and optimize your AWS costs.
Can you describe the basic architecture of an AWS infrastructure setup?
The basic architecture of an AWS infrastructure setup typically includes the following components:
- Virtual Private Cloud (VPC): A VPC is a virtual network that provides isolated network space within AWS, allowing customers to launch resources in a logically-isolated section of the AWS Cloud.
- Subnets: Within a VPC, resources are organized into subnets, which are used to segment the network and control access to resources.
- Internet Gateway: An Internet Gateway is a VPC component that provides a connection between the VPC and the Internet.
- Route Tables: Route tables are used to control the flow of traffic within a VPC, specifying which subnets are connected to the Internet and which are isolated.
- Security Groups: Security groups are used to control access to resources, allowing administrators to specify which incoming traffic is allowed and which is blocked.
- Elastic IP Addresses: Elastic IP addresses are static IP addresses that can be assigned to EC2 instances, allowing resources to be easily reached from the Internet.
- Amazon EC2: EC2 is a web service that provides scalable computing capacity in the cloud. EC2 instances are virtual machines that can be used to run applications and services.
- Amazon S3: S3 is a simple storage service that provides scalable and cost-effective storage for data. S3 can be used to store and manage a wide range of data types, including backups, media files, and big data analytics data.
These are the key components of a basic AWS infrastructure setup. The exact architecture will vary depending on the specific requirements of the application or service being deployed, but these components form the foundation of most AWS deployments.
How does AWS support disaster recovery?
AWS provides several features and services to help customers implement disaster recovery (DR) solutions. Here are a few key ways that AWS supports disaster recovery:
- Multiple Availability Zones: AWS customers can launch resources across multiple Availability Zones within a region, which provides geographical diversity and reduces the risk of outages. In the event of a failure in one Availability Zone, resources can automatically fail over to another zone.
- Backup and Restore: AWS services like Amazon S3 and Amazon RDS provide built-in backup and restore functionality, allowing customers to easily store and recover data.
- Replication: AWS services like Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora provide multi-AZ replication, which automatically replicates data across Availability Zones to provide high availability.
- Site-to-Site Replication: AWS offers several solutions, such as AWS Storage Gateway and AWS Direct Connect, that allow customers to replicate data between their on-premises environment and AWS, providing a secondary backup and disaster recovery site.
- Auto Scaling: AWS Auto Scaling can automatically adjust capacity in response to changing demand, helping ensure that applications remain available even in the event of a failure.
- CloudFormation and AWS Elastic Beanstalk: These services provide infrastructure as code, making it easier to automate and manage DR processes.
AWS provides a flexible and scalable platform for disaster recovery, enabling customers to design and implement DR solutions that meet their specific needs and requirements.
What is Amazon S3 and what are its use cases?
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is an object storage service that provides scalable and cost-effective storage for data. S3 stores data as objects within buckets, which are collections of data that can be managed as a single unit.
S3 provides a highly durable and available storage solution, as objects are stored across multiple devices in multiple facilities and are automatically replicated to provide protection against data loss.
Here are some common use cases for Amazon S3:
- Backup and archiving: S3 is commonly used for backing up and archiving data, as it provides a durable and cost-effective storage solution.
- Big data analytics: S3 is often used as a data lake for big data analytics, as it provides a scalable and flexible storage solution that can handle large amounts of data.
- Static website hosting: S3 can be used to host static websites, which do not require server-side processing.
- Media storage: S3 is frequently used to store and serve large amounts of unstructured data such as images, videos, and audio files.
- Disaster recovery: S3 can be used as part of a disaster recovery strategy, as it provides a durable and accessible storage solution that can be used to store critical data.
These are just a few examples of the many use cases for Amazon S3. With its scalability, durability, and low cost, S3 is a popular choice for storing and managing a wide range of data in the cloud.
What is Amazon EC2 and how does it work?
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides scalable computing capacity in the cloud. EC2 enables users to launch virtual machines (known as instances), which can be used to run applications and services.
EC2 instances are created from machine images known as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), which are preconfigured with an operating system and other software. Users can choose from a variety of AMIs provided by AWS or create their own custom AMIs.
Once an EC2 instance is launched, it can be accessed just like a physical server, allowing users to install and run applications, store and retrieve data, and perform other computing tasks. EC2 instances can be easily resized or terminated as needed, making it easy to adjust computing capacity to meet changing demands.
EC2 is integrated with other AWS services such as Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, and Amazon VPC, allowing users to build complex, multi-tier applications that run on the cloud. Further, EC2 also supports a variety of operating systems, including Linux, Windows, and Unix, making it a flexible and versatile platform for running a wide range of applications and services.
Can you explain the difference between scalability and availability in AWS?
Scalability and availability are two important concepts in cloud computing and AWS.
Scalability refers to the ability of a system to handle increased workloads by adding resources. In AWS, this can be achieved by adding more instances, increasing the size of instances, or adding more storage. Scalability allows organizations to easily increase their computing capacity as needed to meet changing demands.
Availability refers to the ability of a system to remain operational and accessible to users, even in the event of a failure. In AWS, this is achieved through various features such as availability zones, auto-scaling, and load balancing. By spreading resources across multiple locations and automatically adding more resources as needed, AWS helps ensure that applications remain available to users, even if individual components fail.
Both scalability and availability are important considerations when designing and building applications in AWS, and they often work together to provide a highly available and scalable computing environment.
1. Define and explain the three fundamental categories of cloud services, as well as the AWS products built on top of them.
The following are the three basic categories of cloud services:
Computing \sStorage \sNetworking
Here are some AWS products that are based on the three types of cloud services:
- EC2, Elastic Beanstalk, Lambda, Auto-Scaling, and Lightsat are examples of computing services.
- S3, Glacier, Elastic Block Storage, and Elastic File System are examples of storage.
- VPC, Amazon CloudFront, and Route53 are examples of networking.
2. What is auto-scaling, and how does it work?
Auto-scaling is a feature that allows you to provision and launch more instances as needed. It enables you to dynamically raise or reduce resource capacity based on demand.
3. What is CloudFront geo-targeting?
Geo-targeting is a concept that allows businesses to serve customized content to their customers based on their geographic location without having to change the URL. This allows you to produce tailored content for a certain geographic area’s audience while keeping their demands in mind.
4. What is the procedure for securing your cloud data?
Security is critical in cloud computing, and it must be ensured that no people or organisation may access a client’s data when transitioning from one point to another and that no information is leaked. However, one of the most efficient ways to secure data is to separate it and then encrypt it using one of the agreed-upon methods.
5. In AWS, how do you build up a system to track website data in real-time?
Amazon CloudWatch allows you to keep track on the status of numerous AWS services as well as custom events. It allows you to keep track of:
- Lifecycle events in Amazon EC2 Auto-scaling state changes
- Events that have been scheduled
- Calls to the AWS API
- Sign-in events on the console
6. What distinguishes AWS CloudFormation from AWS Elastic Beanstalk?
- Firstly, AWS CloudFormation enables you to provision and describe all of your cloud environment’s infrastructure resources. AWS Elastic Beanstalk, on the other hand, provides an environment that makes it simple to deploy and run cloud applications.
- Next, AWS CloudFormation caters to the infrastructure requirements of a wide range of applications, including legacy and existing business applications. AWS Elastic Beanstalk, on the other hand, is used in conjunction with developer tools to assist you manage the lifespan of your applications.
7. What happens if one of the resources in a stack is unable to be created?
If a resource in the stack cannot be produced, CloudFormation will roll back and terminate all resources created in the CloudFormation template. When you’ve used up all of your Elastic IP addresses or don’t have access to an EC2 AMI, this is a useful function.
8. What is the AWS Cloud Economics Center, and what does it do?
Amazon Web Services features the Cloud Economics Center, which allows you to buy and use infrastructure on demand, paying only for what you need. Furthermore, this returns more funds to the company, resulting in increased innovation and faster expansion.
9. What do you mean when you say AWS Pricing?
AWS pricing is based on a pay-as-you-go model for over 160 cloud services. Furthermore, with AWS, you only pay for services that you use for as long as you need them. This also doesn’t necessitate any long-term commitments or complicated licences.
10. What exactly is S3?
Simple Storage Service (S3) is an acronym for Simple Storage Service. The S3 interface allows you to store and retrieve unlimited quantity of data at any time and from any location on the internet. The payment strategy for S3 is “pay as you go.”
11. What exactly does an AMI entail?
The following items are included in an AMI:
- A template for the instance’s root volume.
- Which AWS accounts can use the AMI to launch instances is determin by launch permissions.
- When the instance is launch, a block device mapping decides which volumes should be attach to it.
12. How do you make an Amazon S3 request?
You can send a request to Amazon S3 using the REST API or the AWS SDK wrapper libraries, which wrap the underlying Amazon S3 REST API.
13. What are AWS key-pairs?
Secure login information for your virtual machines is stor in key-pairs. You can use key-pairs with a public-key and a private-key to connect to the instances.
14. Is Amazon VPC compatible with the broadcast or multicast properties?
No, at this time, Amazon VPI does not offer broadcast or multicast.
15. Is AWS authorised to create a certain number of Elastic IPs?
Each AWS account is grant 5 VPC Elastic IP addresses.
16. Describe the S3 default storage class.
Standard often utilised is the default storage class.
17. What are the different roles?
Within your AWS account, roles are use to grant permissions to entities you may trust. Users and roles are pretty similar. To work with the resources, you do not need to create a username and password with roles.
18. Describe the snowball.
Snowball is a type of data conveyance. It employed source appliances to move a lot of data into and out of Amazon Web Services. Snowball allows you to transmit a large volume of data from one location to another. It aids in the reduction of networking costs.
19. What is a redshift, and how does it work?
Redshift is a product for massive data warehouses. It’s a cloud-based, fully managed data warehousing service that’s quick and powerful.
20. What are some of the benefits of auto-scaling?
The benefits of autoscaling are as follows:
- Allows for fault tolerance
- Improved accessibility
- Improved cost control
21. What does the term “subnet” mean?
Subnets are big groups of IP addresses that are separate into parts.
22. Is it possible to connect to a VPC in a different region via Peering?
Yes, we can connect to a VPC in a separate area using peering.
23. What exactly is SQS?
SQS stands for Simple Queue Service. It’s a distributed queuing service that serves as a middleman between two controllers.
24. What is the name of the AWS service that exists solely to cache data and images redundantly?
AWS Edge locations are services that cache data and images in a redundant manner.
25. Describe the Geo Restriction feature in CloudFront.
A geo-restriction feature allows you to restrict access to material distributed through a CloudFront web distribution to users in certain geographic locations.
26. What is Amazon EMR, and how does it work?
EMR is a surviving cluster stage that aids in the interpretation of data structure behaviour prior to intimation. On Amazon Web Services, Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark allow you examine vast amounts of data. You can use Apache Hive and other similar open-source designs to prepare data for analytics and marketing intelligence workloads.
27. Explain the distinction between an instance and an AMI.
AMI is a template that includes a software setup section. For example, if you start an instance, a duplicate of the AMI in a row as an attendant in the cloud, for example, operating systems, apps, and application servers.
28. In AWS services, what are the different types of load balancers?
Two types of Load balancers are:
- Application Load Balancer
- Classic Load Balancer
29. What is the purpose of creating subnets?
Subnetting is the process of separating a large network into smaller networks. Subnets, on the other hand, can be construct for a variety of reasons, including lowering congestion by ensuring that traffic designate for a subnet stays in that subnet. And, as a result, the traffic entering into the network is rout more efficiently, reducing the network’s load.
30. Is it possible to upload a file to Amazon S3 that is larger than 100 megabytes?
Yes, you can use AWS’s multipart upload function to upload your files. Larger files can be submit in numerous pieces using the multipart upload function. Furthermore, by uploading these pieces in simultaneously, it can reduce upload time. After the upload is complete, the pieces will be combined into a single object or file, which will be use to recreate the original file from which the parts were form.
Conclusion for AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Interview Questions
For many people, getting a well-paid job at Amazon Web Services is a dream come true. The cloud practitioner test, on the other hand, necessitates a thorough comprehension and knowledge of the AWS cloud. Also, make sure to read through each question on the blog thoroughly. If the answer you’re searching for isn’t here, you can post a question in the comments and our AWS specialists will assist you in finding it.