Top 25 AWS Cloud Engineer Interview Questions and Answers

AWS stands for Amazon Web Services, which is a comprehensive cloud computing platform provided by Amazon. It offers a wide range of services including computing power, storage options, and networking capabilities. AWS is used because it provides flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness, allowing businesses to deploy applications quickly and efficiently.

EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It allows users to run virtual servers and manage applications.
S3 (Simple Storage Service), on the other hand, is a scalable storage solution that allows users to store and retrieve any amount of data at any time. In short, EC2 is for compute resources, while S3 is for storage.

IAM (Identity and Access Management) is a service that helps you securely control access to AWS services and resources. It allows you to create and manage AWS users and groups, and set permissions to allow or deny their access to resources. IAM is crucial for maintaining security and governance in AWS.

A VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) is a logically isolated section of the AWS cloud where you can define and control your own virtual network. You can launch AWS resources into your VPC and configure both public and private subnets, route tables, and network gateways.

AWS S3 ensures data durability by automatically creating multiple copies of each object across multiple devices in multiple facilities. Amazon S3 is designed for 99.999999999% (11 nines) durability, ensuring that your data remains safe and accessible.

AWS CloudFormation is a service that enables you to model and set up your Amazon Web Services resources so that you can spend less time managing those resources and more time focusing on your applications. It provides a common language for describing and provisioning all infrastructure resources in your cloud environment.

AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. You can trigger Lambda functions in response to events such as changes in data or system state, allowing you to build applications that are event-driven and highly scalable.

Security Groups are virtual firewalls that control inbound and outbound traffic to your AWS resources like EC2 instances. You can specify rules based on IP addresses, protocols, and ports to enhance the security posture of your cloud infrastructure.

EBS (Elastic Block Store) provides block-level storage volumes for use with EC2 instances, whereas EFS (Elastic File System) provides a scalable file storage solution for use with AWS Cloud services and on-premises resources. EBS is typically used for single-instance access, while EFS allows multiple instances to access the same file system.

You can monitor AWS resources using AWS CloudWatch, which provides monitoring and logging services for your AWS infrastructure. It allows you to collect and track metrics, monitor log files, set alarms, and automatically react to changes in your AWS resources.

The AWS Well-Architected Framework provides best practices and guidelines to help you build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure for applications in the cloud. It consists of five pillars: Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, and Cost Optimization.

AWS Route 53 is a scalable and highly available Domain Name System (DNS) web service. It allows you to route end users to Internet applications by translating human-friendly domain names into IP addresses. Route 53 also offers domain registration and health checking capabilities.

AWS Auto Scaling is a service that automatically adjusts the capacity of your application to maintain steady, predictable performance at the lowest possible cost. It enables you to scale your resources up or down according to demand, ensuring that you have the appropriate number of instances running at all times.

AWS Elastic Load Balancing automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets, such as EC2 instances, containers, and IP addresses. This ensures high availability and fault tolerance for your applications, improving their overall performance.

A public subnet is a subnet that is accessible from the Internet, where resources can communicate with external systems. A private subnet, however, is not directly accessible from the Internet and is typically used for database servers or internal applications that do not require external access.

Data in transit within AWS can be secured using SSL/TLS encryption protocols. You can also use AWS services such as AWS Certificate Manager to manage SSL/TLS certificates and ensure secure communication between clients and your web applications.

Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) is a managed database service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale relational databases in the cloud. It provides support for several database engines, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and SQL Server, while automating tasks such as backups, patching, and scaling.

Regions are geographical areas where AWS has data centers, while Availability Zones are isolated locations within those regions. This architecture provides high availability and redundancy, allowing users to deploy applications across multiple Availability Zones to enhance fault tolerance.

AWS maintains a wide range of compliance certifications and standards, including GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS. They provide customers with tools and resources to help them meet their compliance requirements, such as AWS Artifact for access to compliance reports and AWS Config for configuration management.

The AWS Shared Responsibility Model outlines the security responsibilities of AWS and the customer. AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud (infrastructure), while the customer is responsible for security in the cloud (data, applications, etc.). This model helps clarify the division of responsibilities.

AWS Tags are key-value pairs that help you organize and manage your AWS resources. Tags can be used for billing, resource organization, and access control, enabling better management of resources across your AWS environment.

To ensure high availability, you can deploy your applications across multiple Availability Zones and use services like Elastic Load Balancing and Auto Scaling. This setup allows your application to handle failures in one zone while continuing to operate in others.

AWS Direct Connect is a cloud service that provides a dedicated network connection from your premises to AWS. It allows for more consistent network performance compared to Internet-based connections and can reduce bandwidth costs for large data transfers.

AWS Global Accelerator is a networking service that improves the availability and performance of your applications with users worldwide. It directs traffic to optimal endpoints over the AWS global network, ensuring lower latency and improved reliability.