Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to dominate the cloud computing landscape, and with the growing reliance on cloud technologies, the demand for professionals skilled in AWS is skyrocketing. Whether you’re preparing for an AWS certification exam, a job interview, or just looking to enhance your cloud knowledge, understanding key AWS concepts and services is essential.
In this blog post, we have compiled a list of top 51 AWS questions that are highly relevant in 2024. These questions cover a broad range of topics from basic concepts to more advanced AWS services and best practices. Let’s dive in!
Basic AWS Questions
- What is AWS? AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a cloud platform offering a wide variety of services, including computing power, storage, and databases, over the internet.
- What are the main benefits of using AWS? AWS provides scalability, flexibility, cost-efficiency, security, and a global network of data centers.
- What is the AWS Free Tier? The AWS Free Tier offers limited access to a variety of AWS services free of charge for 12 months after signing up.
- What is an AWS region and availability zone? An AWS region is a geographical location, and an availability zone is a data center within a region. Regions contain multiple availability zones to offer high availability.
- What is the AWS Management Console? The AWS Management Console is a web-based interface for managing AWS resources and services.
- What is an AMI (Amazon Machine Image)? An AMI is a pre-configured virtual machine image that contains an operating system and software necessary for launching an EC2 instance.
- What is EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)? EC2 is a web service that allows users to rent virtual servers on demand to run applications and manage compute resources.
- What is S3 (Simple Storage Service)? S3 is an object storage service that provides scalable and durable storage for data backups, web assets, and more.
- What is the difference between S3 and EBS (Elastic Block Store)? S3 is object storage, while EBS is block storage. S3 is ideal for storing large amounts of data, whereas EBS is used for persistent storage attached to EC2 instances.
- What is the purpose of IAM (Identity and Access Management)? IAM helps you manage access to AWS services and resources securely by defining user roles and permissions.
Intermediate AWS Questions
- What is VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)? VPC is a virtual network that allows you to launch AWS resources into a logically isolated environment.
- What is the difference between public and private subnets in VPC? A public subnet allows resources to communicate with the internet, while a private subnet does not.
- What is an ELB (Elastic Load Balancer)? ELB automatically distributes incoming traffic across multiple EC2 instances to ensure high availability and fault tolerance.
- What is an Auto Scaling Group? Auto Scaling automatically adjusts the number of EC2 instances based on demand, ensuring scalability and cost efficiency.
- What is CloudWatch? CloudWatch is a monitoring service for AWS resources that provides metrics, logs, and alarms to track resource utilization and performance.
- What is CloudFormation? CloudFormation is a service that allows you to define and provision AWS infrastructure using templates.
- What is RDS (Relational Database Service)? RDS is a managed service for setting up, operating, and scaling relational databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server.
- What is DynamoDB? DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database service that provides fast and predictable performance with seamless scalability.
- What is Lambda? Lambda is a serverless compute service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers.
- What is AWS Glue? AWS Glue is a managed ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) service that helps you prepare and load data for analytics.
Advanced AWS Questions
- What is Elastic Beanstalk? Elastic Beanstalk is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering that allows you to deploy, manage, and scale applications quickly without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.
- What is the difference between a Spot Instance and an On-Demand Instance? Spot Instances are available at a lower cost but can be terminated with short notice, while On-Demand Instances are more expensive but come with guaranteed availability.
- What is Route 53? Route 53 is AWS’s DNS (Domain Name System) web service, which provides domain registration, DNS routing, and health checking.
- What is the purpose of AWS Direct Connect? AWS Direct Connect establishes a dedicated network connection between your on-premises data center and AWS to improve bandwidth and reduce latency.
- What is the difference between AWS Aurora and RDS? Aurora is a MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database designed for high performance and availability, while RDS supports a variety of relational databases.
- What is AWS Key Management Service (KMS)? AWS KMS is a managed service that enables you to create and control encryption keys used to encrypt your data.
- What is the AWS Well-Architected Framework? The Well-Architected Framework helps you build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure for your applications.
- What are AWS Security Groups? Security Groups act as virtual firewalls to control inbound and outbound traffic for AWS resources such as EC2 instances.
- What is AWS Trusted Advisor? Trusted Advisor is an AWS service that provides real-time guidance to help you provision resources following AWS best practices.
- What is AWS Organizations? AWS Organizations helps you manage multiple AWS accounts from a central location, offering consolidated billing and account management.
AWS DevOps and Automation Questions
- What is AWS CodePipeline? AWS CodePipeline is a fully managed continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) service for automating the build, test, and deploy phases of your application.
- What is AWS CodeDeploy? AWS CodeDeploy automates the deployment of applications to various compute services like EC2, Lambda, and on-premises servers.
- What is AWS Systems Manager? AWS Systems Manager provides operational insights and automation for AWS resources, enabling you to manage infrastructure at scale.
- What is AWS OpsWorks? AWS OpsWorks is a configuration management service that helps you automate the deployment and management of applications using Chef or Puppet.
- What is the difference between AWS CodeCommit and GitHub? CodeCommit is a fully managed source control service from AWS, while GitHub is a popular third-party Git-based source control platform.
- What is AWS CloudTrail? AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables you to monitor and log account activity related to actions taken on AWS resources.
- What is AWS Batch? AWS Batch enables you to run large-scale parallel and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads on AWS.
- What is AWS X-Ray? AWS X-Ray is a service that helps developers analyze and debug production applications by tracking requests as they travel through AWS services.
Security and Compliance Questions
- What is AWS Shield? AWS Shield is a managed DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) protection service that safeguards applications from malicious attacks.
- What is AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall)? AWS WAF is a security service that helps protect your web applications from common web exploits like SQL injection and cross-site scripting.
- What is AWS Cognito? AWS Cognito is a service for user authentication, authorization, and management in web and mobile applications.
- What is AWS Macie? AWS Macie is a security service that uses machine learning to automatically discover, classify, and protect sensitive data.
- What is VPC Peering? VPC Peering allows you to connect two VPCs to route traffic between them as if they are part of the same network.
- What is the AWS Shared Responsibility Model? The Shared Responsibility Model outlines the security responsibilities of AWS and its customers. AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud, while customers are responsible for security in the cloud.
- What is AWS Security Hub? AWS Security Hub provides a comprehensive view of your security state across AWS services, helping you identify and remediate security issues.
Cost Management and Monitoring Questions
- What is AWS Cost Explorer? AWS Cost Explorer helps you visualize, analyze, and manage your AWS spending and usage patterns.
- What is the AWS Pricing Calculator? The AWS Pricing Calculator helps you estimate the cost of AWS services based on your usage requirements.
- What is AWS Budgets? AWS Budgets helps you track your AWS spending and usage, setting custom cost and usage budgets to monitor and alert you.
- What is AWS Trusted Advisor’s Cost Optimization? Trusted Advisor offers recommendations to help you reduce costs by identifying underutilized resources and potential savings.
- What is EC2 Spot Fleet? EC2 Spot Fleet allows you to provision a fleet of EC2 instances across various instance types and availability zones using Spot Instances.
- What are AWS Reserved Instances? Reserved Instances allow you to reserve capacity for EC2 instances at a discounted rate compared to on-demand pricing, providing cost savings for long-term workloads.
Conclusion
With the continuous growth of AWS in the cloud computing world, preparing for an AWS-related job or certification exam requires a deep understanding of its services and features. These 51 AWS questions cover a wide range of topics that are essential for anyone looking to excel in the AWS ecosystem in 2024. Whether you’re a beginner or an advanced user, these questions will help you strengthen your cloud knowledge and keep you up to date with AWS’s latest advancements. Happy learning!