Top 15 AWS Interview Questions and Answers for Beginners

Table of Contents

AWS Interview Questions and Answers for Beginners

Also Read: 32 Important Python Data Structures Interview Questions and Answers

We will also explain to you how to answer aws interview questions and answers mcq in a very simplistic manner. It serves as a guide for someone who wants to give interview on aws, wants to know about the most asked questions.

1. How many buckets can you create in AWS by default ?

Ans. By default, you can create upto 100 buckets in each of your AWS accounts.

2. What is the maximum retention period for SQS Messages ?

Ans. 14 days. After that all messages would have been lost.

3. What is the limit to the number of parameters or outputs in a template ?

Ans. You can include up to 60 parameters and 60 outputs in a template

4. What are the various Route 53 routing policies ?

Ans. The various Route 53 routing policies are as follows:-

Simple routing policy - Use for a single resource that performs a given function for your domain, for example, a web server that serves content for the abc.com website.
Failover routing policy - Use when you want to configure active-passive failover.
Geolocation routing policy - Use when you want to route traffic based on the location of your users.
Geoproximity routing policy - Use when you want to route traffic based on the location of your resources and, optionally shift traffic from resources in one location to resources in another.
Latency Routing Policy - Use when you have resources in multiple locations and you want to route traffic to the resource that provides the best latency.
Multivalue answer routing policy - Use when you want Route 53 to respond to DNS Queries with up to eight healthy records selected at random.
Weighted routing policy - Use to route traffic to multiple resources in proportions

5. Describe a SNS Notification by an example.

Ans. An example of the notification is shown below, here you can see different parts of a SNS message.

POST / HTTP/1.1
x-amz-sns-message-type: Notification
x-amz-sns-message-id: 22b80b92-fdea-42c2-8f9d-bdfb0c7bf324
x-amz-sns-topic-arn: arn:aws:sns:us-west-2:12348485:MyTopic:c7993-26c4-47e89
Content-Length: 773
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Host: myhost.example.com
Connection: Keep-Alive
User-Agent: Amazon Simple Notification Service Agent

{
"Type" : "Notification",
"MessageId": "22bhfhfhf-fdea-4c2c-8ffgf-bjghfjgjg",
"TopicArn": "arn:aws:sns:us-west-2:12347575859:MyTopic",
"Subject": "My First Message",
"Message": "Hello World",
"Timestamp": "2012-05-02T00:54:06.655Z",
"SignatureVersion": "1",
"Signature": "EXAMPLEvGGHbgjGHJKJLKLbhjoEIRFFJFJFlfgsvhjnjbjJWONJAHefjdjlcl",
"SigningCertURL": "https://sns.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/SimpleNotificationService-f3443egedjk",
"UnsubscribeURL": "https://sns.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/?Action=Unsubscribe&Subscription"
}

6. What are the push notification platform currently aws supported ?

Ans. Currently the following push notifications platforms are supported:-

Amazon Device Messaging(ADM)
Apple Push Notification Service(APNS)
Google Cloud Messaging(GCM)
Windows Push Notification Service(WNS) for Windows 8+ and Windows 8.1+
Microsoft Push Notification Service(MPNS) for Windows Phone 7+
Baidu Cloud Push for Android devices in China.

7. Explain what is T2 instances ?

Ans.T2 instances are designed to provide moderate baseline performance and the capability to burst to higher performance as required by workload.

8. Mention what is the difference between Amazon S3 and EC2 ?

Ans. The difference between EC2 and Amazon S3 is that

EC2:-

a)It is a cloud web service used for hosting your application
b)It is like a huge computer machine which can run either Linux or Windows and can handle application like PHP, Python, Apache or any databases

S3:-

a)It is a data storage system where any amount of data can be stored
b)It has a REST interface and uses secure HMAC-SHA1 authentication keys

9. Explain can you vertically scale an Amazon instance ?

Ans. Yes, you can vertically scale on Amazon instance. For that:-

a)Spin up a new larger instance than the one you are currently running

b)Pause that instance and detach the root webs volume from the server and discard

c)Then stop your live instance and detach its root volume

d)Note the unique device ID and attach that root volume to your new server

e)And start it again

10. Explain what is AMI ?

Ans. AMI stands for Amazon Machine Image. It’s a template that provides the information(an operating system, an application server and applications) required to launch an instance, which is a copy of the AMI running as a virtual server in the cloud. You can launch instances from as many different AMIs as you need.

11. Explain what is S3 ?

Ans. S3 stands for Simple Storage Service. You can use S3 interface to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time and from anywhere on the web. For S3, the payment model is “pay as you go”.

12. How can you send request to Amazon S3 ?

Ans. Amazon S3 is a REST service, you can send request by using the REST API or the AWS SDK wrapper libraries that wrap the underlying Amazon S3 REST API.

13. Difference between AWS SWF and AWS Step function ?

Ans. The major difference between above two services is the coordination between stages (orchestration logic). In SWF this is handled by “Deciders”. There can be multiple deciders in a SWF workflow.

In Step Functions this is handled by the “State Definition” and there can be only one per workflow.

14. What are the languages supported for creating AWS Lambda function ?

Ans. Following languages are supported for creating lambda function:-
a)C#
b)Go
c)Java
d)Node.js
e)Python

15. List all AWS Services.

Ans. Below are the list of Services.

Compute Services:-

Auto Scaling - Launches or terminates EC2 instances based on policies, schedules, and health checks.

Batch - Run batch jobs at scale.

Blox - Open source projects for building custom schedulers on ECS.

EC2 Container Service (ECS) - Supports Docker containers on EC2 instances.

EC2 Systems Manager - Easily configure and manage EC2 and on-premises systems.

Elastic Beanstalk - Provides quick deployment and management of applications in the cloud.

Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) - Provides scalable virtual private servers using Xen.

Elastic GPUs - Attach low-cost GPUs to EC2 instances for graphics acceleration.

Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) - Automatically distributes incoming traffic across multiple EC2 instances.

Lambda - Runs code in response to events and automatically manages EC2 instances.

Lightsail - Launch and manage simple virtual private servers.

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) - Creates a logically isolated set of EC2 instances which can be connected to an existing network using a VPN connection.

Networking Services:-

Direct Connect - Provides dedicated connections to AWS for faster and cheaper data throughput.

Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) - Automatically distributes incoming traffic across multiple EC2 instances.

Route 53 - Provides a highly available and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service.

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) - Creates a logically isolated set of EC2 instances which can be connected to an existing network using a VPN connection.

Enterprise Applications:-

WorkDocs - Provides a fully managed, secure enterprise storage and sharing service.

WorkMail - Provides managed email and calendaring service.

WorkSpaces - Provides a cloud-based desktop experience to end-users.

Workspaces Application Manager (WAM) - Simplifies deployment and management of WorkSpaces.

Analytics Services:-

Athena - Query data on S3 instantly.

Data Pipeline - Provides workload management by processing and moving data between services.

Elastic MapReduce (EMR) - Hosts a Hadoop and Spark framework running on EC2 and S3.

Elasticsearch Service (ES) - Managed Elasticsearch, a popular open-source search and analytics engine.

Glue - Prepare and load data to data stores.

Kinesis - Provides real-time data processing over large, distributed data streams.

Kinesis Analytics - Write standard SQL queries on streaming data without having to learn any new programming skills.

Kinesis Firehose - Captures and automatically loads streaming data into S3 and Redshift.

Quicksight - Provides cloud-powered business intelligence for 1/10th the cost of traditional BI solutions.

Redshift - Provides petabyte-scale data warehousing with columnar storage and multi-node compute.

Artificial Intelligence:-

Lex - Build conversational interfaces through voice or text.

Machine Learning - Provides managed machine learning technology.

Polly - Turn text into lifelike speech.

Rekognition - Deep learning-based image analysis.

Management Tools:-

CloudFormation - Provides a file-based interface for provisioning other resources.

CloudTrail - Provides logs of all activity.

CloudWatch - Provides monitoring for AWS cloud resources and applications, starting with EC2.

Command Line Interface (CLI) - Provides a CLI to manage all services.

Config - Provides a detailed view of all resources.

Management Console (AWS Console) - A web-based interface to manage all services.

OpsWorks - Provides configuration of EC2 services using Chef.

Personal Health Dashboard - Your personalized view of service health.

Service Catalog - Service Catalog allows IT administrators to create, manage, and distribute portfolios of approved products to end users, who can then access the products they need in a personalized portal.

Security and Identity Services:-

Certificate Manager - Lets you easily provision, manage, and deploy SSL/TLS certificates for use with AWS services.

CloudHSM - Helps meet corporate, contractual and regulatory compliance requirements for data security by using dedicated Hardware Security Module (HSM) appliances within the AWS cloud.

Directory Service - A managed service that allows you to connect your resources with an existing on-premises Microsoft Active Directory or to set up a new, stand-alone directory in the AWS Cloud.

Identity and Access Management (IAM) - An implicit service, the authentication infrastructure used to authenticate access to the various services.

Inspector - An automated security assessment service that helps improve the security and compliance of applications deployed on AWS.

Key Management Service (KMS) - A managed service that makes it easy for you to create and control the encryption keys used to encrypt your data.

Shield - Managed DDoS Protection.

WAF - A web application firewall service that monitors and manages CloudFront distributions.

Internet of Things Service:-

IoT - Enables secure, bi-directional communication between internet-connected things (such as sensors, actuators, embedded devices, or smart appliances) and the AWS cloud over MQTT and HTTP.

Mobile Services:-

API Gateway - Service for publishing, maintaining and securing web service APIs.

Cognito - Provides user identity and data synchronization.

Device Farm - App testing service for iOS, Android and Fire OS apps on physical devices.

Mobile Analytics - Service for collecting, visualizing, and understanding app usage data.

Mobile Hub - Provides an integrated console that helps you build, test, and monitor your mobile apps.

Pinpoint - Targeted push notifications for mobile apps.

Simple Notification Service (SNS) - Provides a hosted multi-protocol "push" messaging for applications.

Storage and Content Delivery Services:-

CloudFront - A content delivery network (CDN) for distributing objects to locations near the requester.

Elastic Block Store (EBS) - Provides persistent block-level storage volumes for EC2.

Elastic File System (EFS) - A file storage service for EC2 instances.

Glacier - Provides a low-cost, long-term storage option, intended for archiving data.

Import/Export - Accelerates moving large amounts of data into and out of AWS using portable storage devices for transport.

Simple Storage Service (S3) - Provides Web Service based storage.

Storage Gateway - An iSCSI block storage virtual appliance with cloud-based backup.

Databases:-

Aurora - MySQL and PostgreSQL compatible relational database with improved performance.

DynamoDB - Provides a scalable, low-latency NoSQL online Database Service backed by SSDs.

ElastiCache - Provides in-memory caching for web apps (Memcached, Redis).

Redshift - Provides petabyte-scale data warehousing with columnar storage and multi-node compute.

Relational Database Service (RDS) - Provides a scalable database server with MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB support.

Schema Conversion Tool - App that helps you convert your database schema from an Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server database, to an RDS MySQL DB instance or an Aurora DB cluster.

SimpleDB - Allows developers to run queries on structured data.

Application Services:-

API Gateway - Service for publishing, maintaining and securing web service APIs.

AppStream - Flexible, low-latency streaming service for apps and games.

CloudSearch - Provides basic full-text search and indexing of textual content.

DevPay - Provides billing and account management.

Elastic Transcoder (ETS) - Provides video transcoding of S3 hosted videos.

Flexible Payments Service (FPS) - Provides an interface for micropayments.

Simple Email Service (SES) - Provides bulk and transactional email sending.

Simple Notification Service (SNS) - Provides a hosted multi-protocol "push" messaging for applications.

Simple Queue Service (SQS) - Provides a hosted message queue for web applications.

Simple Workflow (SWF) - A workflow service for building scalable, resilient applications.

Step Functions - Coordinate components of distributed applications.

Developer Tools:-

CodeBuild - Build and test code.

CodeCommit - Hosted Git version control service.

CodeDeploy - Provides automated code deployment to EC2 instances.

CodePipeline - Continuous delivery service.

Command Line Interface (CLI) - Provides a CLI to manage all services.

X-Ray - Analyze and debug your applications.

Miscellaneous Services:-

Fulfillment Web Service - Provides a programmatic web service for sellers to ship items to and from Amazon using Fulfillment by Amazon.

Mechanical Turk - Manages small units of work distributed among many persons.

Partner Network (APN) - Provides partners with the technical information and sales and marketing support to increase business opportunities.

Product Advertising API - Provides access to product data and electronic commerce functionality.

Also Read: Create an EC2 Instance in AWS

Reference: AWS Documentation

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