AWS Cloud Interview Questions and Answers

Introduction

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud is an important platform whose significance lies in its scalability, reliability, and cost-effectiveness, making it indispensable for businesses of all sizes. It offers a variety of services, including computing power, storage, and databases, accessible on-demand. For beginners preparing for AWS interviews, understanding core concepts like EC2 instances, S3 storage, and IAM roles can demonstrate a foundational grasp of cloud computing principles.

Q1: What Kind Of Cloud Is AWS?

A: AWS is a leading provider of public cloud services. This means that AWS offers computing resources, like servers and storage, over the internet to the general public. Businesses and individuals can access these resources on-demand, without needing to invest in and maintain their own physical infrastructure. AWS operates data centers around the world, grouped into regions and availability zones, to ensure low latency and high availability for its services.

Q2: What's AWS Cloud Used For?

A: The AWS cloud is used for a variety of purposes across different industries. For businesses, it offers a scalable and cost-effective way to host and manage their applications and data. Startups and small businesses often use AWS to quickly launch new products and services without the need for large upfront investments in hardware. Enterprises leverage AWS for a wide range of workloads, from running mission-critical applications to conducting big data analytics and machine learning experiments. Additionally, individuals and developers use AWS to learn new skills, build personal projects, and collaborate with others on innovative solutions.

Q3: What's The Connection Between Availability Zones And Regions?

A: Think of Availability Zones (AZs) as individual neighborhoods within a larger city, which is represented by the Region, in Amazon Web Services (AWS). Each AZ is designed to keep running even if there's a hiccup in another AZ. They're strategically located apart from each other, sometimes even hundreds of miles away, and each one has its own power, cooling, and internet setup. On the other hand, a Region encompasses the whole area and includes several AZs, offering a wider geographical coverage.

Q4: How Does AWS Keep Data Safe And Follow Rules?

A: AWS employs a variety of tools and compliance programs to ensure the security and regulatory compliance of customer data. These measures include robust security controls, adherence to various compliance certifications and standards, and a shared security responsibility model. This model means that both AWS and the customer share the responsibility for keeping data secure and complying with regulations.

Q5: How Does AWS Help Customers Grow Or Shrink Their Services?

A: AWS provides customers with tools like Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing to manage the ups and downs of their resource needs automatically. Auto Scaling lets customers adjust the number of resources they're using based on demand, helping them scale up during busy times and scale down during quieter periods. Elastic Load Balancing distributes incoming traffic across multiple resources to ensure optimal performance and availability.

Q6: What's The Difference Between AWS CloudFormation And AWS Elastic Beanstalk?

A: AWS CloudFormation is like the architect's blueprint for your cloud setup. It helps you specify and create all the different parts of your cloud infrastructure, such as servers, databases, and networking components. You define what you need, and CloudFormation takes care of setting it all up for you. On the other hand, AWS Elastic Beanstalk is more like having a team of builders who can quickly assemble and deploy your applications onto the cloud. It provides a platform where you can upload your application code, and Elastic Beanstalk handles all the behind-the-scenes work of provisioning and managing the necessary infrastructure to run your application smoothly.

Q7: What Does EC2 Stand For?

A: EC2 stands for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. It's a fundamental service provided by AWS that allows you to rent virtual servers, known as instances, in the cloud. With EC2, you have full control over these instances, including the ability to choose their size, operating system, and other configurations. This flexibility makes EC2 suitable for a wide range of computing tasks, from running simple websites to hosting complex applications and performing data analysis.

Q8: How Can You Use Query To Filter Results?

A: As you explore using the AWS CLI, you will find that there is a wealth of information about your AWS environment that can be retrieved using the tool. Command-line output is comprehensive. Running the command aws ec2 describe-instances returns dozens of values describing each instance running: InstanceId, PublicDnsName, PrivateDnsName, InstanceType , and much more. There are times when you don’t want to return all of those values, though. What do you do if you want to retrieve only a list of the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) IDs that your instances are running so that you can make sure that your fleet is running your preferred image?

That’s where the --query option comes in. This option allows you to filter results so that only the output with the parameters you specify are returned. Query uses the JMESPath query language as its input for filtering to the results you specify.

Q9: What Are The Different Types Of Load Balancers In AWS And What Are They Used For?

A: AWS offers three main types of load balancers:

• Application Load Balancer (ALB): This type of load balancer is ideal for managing web applications that require flexible routing and support for secure connections (TLS termination).

• Network Load Balancer (NLB): NLB is well-suited for handling high volumes of traffic quickly and efficiently, making it ideal for applications that require extreme performance. It also provides the capability to maintain static IP addresses for your applications.

• Gateway Load Balancer (GLB): GLB simplifies the deployment, scaling, and management of third-party virtual appliances, allowing customers to easily integrate and manage these appliances within their AWS environment.

Q10: Can You Give An Example Of Query In Practical Use Cases?

A: Here are some examples of query in practical use cases. Perhaps you want to obtain the metadata for your Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) instances, but only those that are running in the us-east-1e Availability Zone:

aws rds describe-db-instances \

--query 'DBInstances[?AvailabilityZone==`us-east-1e`]' \

--output text

Maybe you want a list of your AWS IoT things that are Intel Edison devices:

aws iot list-things --query 'things[?thingTypeName==`IntelEdison`]' --output text

Or maybe you’ve been tasked with identifying a list of the instances with their associated instance type that are running in your environment so that they can be targeted as candidates for upgrades to newer generation types:

aws ec2 describe-instances \

--query 'Reservations[*].Instances[*].[InstanceId, LaunchTime, InstanceType]' \

--output text

Q11: What Are AWS Software Development Kits (SDKs)?

A: AWS provides a number of SDKs for use by programmers. Although we don’t expect that a systems operator would use an SDK directly on a regular basis, as a knowledgeable AWS resource, it’s important that you understand that the SDKs and the underlying APIs they use exist, and that you have some general knowledge about how they are used. 

There are a few reasons for this. For one thing, some of these languages—Python, for example—straddle the lines between programming languages that developers use to compile executable code and scripting languages that administrators use to perform infrastructure tasks. That leads into the next reason why we’re talking about SDKs: The line between development and operations is increasingly blurry. As operations and development responsibilities merge into the new world of DevOps, it’s important for those in charge of operations to understand the basics of how applications integrate with infrastructure.

It’s through the AWS SDKs and the APIs that underlie them that applications built on AWS can manage infrastructure as code. The concept of infrastructure as code is powerful, disruptive, and sets the cloud apart from the old IT world.

Q12: What Are Some Of The Programming Languages Where AWS SDKs Are Available?

A:  AWS SDKs were available for the following program-ming languages:

• Android

• Browser (JavaScript)

• iOS

• Java

• .NET

• Node.js

• PHP

• Python

• Ruby

• Go

• C++

There are also two purpose-specific SDKs:

• ■ AWS Mobile SDK

• ■ AWS IoT Device SDK

The language-specific SDKs contain APIs that allow you easily to incorporate the connectivity and functionality of the wider range of AWS Cloud services into your code without the difficulty of writing those functions yourself. Extensive documentation accompanies each SDK, giving you guidance as to how to integrate the functions into your code.

Q13: What Is Boto And How To Install It?

A: The AWS SDK for Python is also known as Boto. Like the other AWS SDKs and many of our tools, it is available as an open source project in GitHub for the community to view freely, download, and branch under the terms of its license. There is an active Boto community, including a chat group, which can help answer questions. 

Given that Boto is an SDK for Python, it requires Python to be installed prior to its own installation. The method of doing so depends on the operating system involved. You can find more information about installing Python at http://www.python.org/. Another prerequisite is pip, a Python tool for installing packages, which can be found at https://pip.pypa.io/.

After installing Python and pip, you install Boto using the following command:

pip install boto3

Q14: How To Use Resource Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)?

A: To start using the Boto class in Python, invoke it by calling boto3.resource and passing in a service name in single quotes. For example, if you wanted to

perform an action using Amazon EC2, you would execute something similar to the following:

ec2 = boto3.resource('ec2')

You now have an object called ec2, which you can use to act on Amazon EC2 instances in your AWS account. You can then instantiate a method object pointing to a specific

instance in your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC):
myinstance = ec2.Instance('i-0bxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx')

Perhaps you want to stop an Amazon EC2 instance programmatically, possibly at the end of a shift to save money when it’s not being used. You can then issue a command to stop that instance:

myinstance.stop()

You can start the instance back up again automatically prior to the beginning of the next shift:

myinstance.start()

Acting on infrastructure resources isn’t your only option with Boto. You can also retrieve information from the APIs about your resources. For example, perhaps you want to find out what AMI is being used for the instance in question. You can do that by passing the following command:

instance.image_id

A string is returned for this command containing the AMI ID of the named instance.

Q15: What Are AWS Internet Of Things (IoT) And AWS Mobile Software Development Kits (SDKs)?

A: There are two purpose-specific SDKs: The AWS IoT Device SDK and the AWS Mobile SDK. Like the general-usage SDKs, these purpose-specific SDKs also provide developers with the ability to use prebuilt libraries that make it easier for them to focus on innovation in their code, not in how they connect to the infrastructure that runs it. The IoT and Mobile SDKs are different because they are purpose-built to streamline connecting physical devices, like phones and tablets or sensors and hubs, to the cloud. The SDKs are provided for a variety of languages commonly used on their respective platforms.

These SDKs are available for the following languages/platforms:

AWS Mobile SDK

• Android

• iOS

• Unity

• .NET

• Xamarin

• React Native

AWS IoT Device SDK

• Embedded C

• JavaScript

• Arduino Yún

• Java

• Python

• iOS

• Android

• C++

Many of these SDKs provide their source code in GitHub. Each contains extensive documentation and helpful sample code to allow developers to get up and running quickly.

Q16: What Are The 3 Types Of Cloud Services AWS Offers?

A: AWS provides a comprehensive suite of cloud services, categorized into three main types:

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): With IaaS, AWS offers virtualized computing resources, such as virtual machines, storage, and networking, on a pay-as-you-go basis. Customers have full control over the underlying infrastructure and can deploy and manage their applications as needed.

• Platform as a Service (PaaS): PaaS offerings from AWS provide higher-level abstractions and pre-built tools for developing, deploying, and managing applications. This allows developers to focus more on writing code and less on managing infrastructure. Examples include AWS Elastic Beanstalk for application deployment and AWS Lambda for serverless computing.

• Software as a Service (SaaS): AWS also hosts a wide range of ready-to-use software applications that customers can access over the internet. These applications cover various use cases, such as customer relationship management (CRM), productivity, collaboration, and more. Popular examples include Amazon S3 for cloud storage, Amazon RDS for managed databases, and Amazon WorkSpaces for virtual desktops.

Conclusion

JanBask Training's AWS courses offer a structured and comprehensive learning path for individuals looking to master the AWS Cloud platform. These courses are designed to provide hands-on experience and practical knowledge, equipping learners with the skills needed to excel in AWS environments. By enrolling in JanBask Training's AWS courses, beginners can confidently navigate the complexities of AWS Cloud and enhance their prospects in the job market.