AWS Solutions Architect Job Interview General Questions

Cloud computing is gaining popularity among enterprises due to numerous advantages like flexibility, reduced costs, improved efficiencies, better disaster recovery, and many more. Cloud Computing providers make the migration happen and provide thick competition in the cloud computing world. AWS Solution Architect General Questions are key to crack the interview of Cloud computing.

To crack an AWS Solution Architect interview you should be prepared with general-based questions and service-based questions. If you are planning to start your career for an AWS Solution Architect and preparing for a job interview, the following general questions about AWS will help you a lot. The situation is there’s a huge competition for this profile so you have to prepare yourself in both training and certification and in the interview. Get ready with the understanding of the key concepts, the trends, and best practices for working with the AWS architecture.

You can also watch this video and go through the questions.

1) What is AWS?

AWS stands for Amazon Web Service; it is also known as a cloud computing platform as it is a collection of remote computing services. This new domain of cloud computing is also known as Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS.

2) Describe the key components of AWS?

The key components of AWS are:

• Simple Storage Device or (S3): It is the most widely used AWS service and also a storage device.
• Route 53: It is called a DNS Web Service.
• Simple E-mail Service: It is used for sending an e-mail via regular SMTP or by using the RESTFUL API call.
• Identity and Access Management: Its purpose is to provide identity management and enhanced security for a user’s AWS account.
• Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2): The purpose of EC2 is to provide on-demand computing resources for hosting applications. It is convenient for unpredictable workloads.
• Elastic Block Store (EBS): It offers determined storage volumes that connect to EC2 to allow you to endure data past the lifespan of a single Amazon EC2 instance.
• Cloud Watch: It allows administrators to view and collect the key to monitoring AWS resources. Also, it can be used to set a notification alarm in case of trouble.

3) Explain S3?

S3 is the abbreviation for Simple Storage Service. S3 interface is used to store and retrieve numerous amount of data, at any time, and also from anywhere on the web. The payment model for S3 is known as “pay as you go.”

4) What is Amazon Machine Image?

Amazon Machine Image is AMI. AMI is a template providing the information (an application server, an operating system, and applications) required for launching an instance. That instance is a copy of the AMI which is running as a virtual server in the cloud. The instances from different AMIs are launched as per requirement.

5) Describe the relationship between an instance and AMI?

You can launch multiple types of instances from a single AMI. An instance type defines the host computer hardware which is used for your instance. Different computer and memory capabilities are provided by each instance type. Once an instance is launched, it resembles a traditional host, which is used for interaction as done with any computer.

6) What does an AMI include?

An AMI consists of the following things:

• A template that is used as the base volume for the instance.
• A block device mapping to determine the volumes to attach to the instance when it is launched.
• Startup permissions decide which AWS accounts can leverage the AMI to start instances.

7) How to send a request to Amazon S3?

As Amazon S3 is a REST Service, by using the REST API or the AWS SDK wrapper libraries that wrap the elemental Amazon S3 REST API a request is sent.

8) Differentiate between Amazon S3 and EC2?

Difference between EC2 and Amazon S3 is as follows:

9) In AWS how many buckets can be created by default?

In each AWS account, you can create up to 100 buckets by default.

10) Explain the process to vertically scale on Amazon Instance?

The steps to vertically scale on Amazon instance are:

• Upgrade from the current instance to a new larger instance.
• Pause the previous instance and discard it by detaching the root web volumes from the servers.
• Now stop the live instance and also detach its root volume.
• Attach the root volume to the new server after you note the unique device ID.
• And finally, restart it.

11) Describe the T2 instances?

T2 instances are designed such as to provide balanced baseline achievement and also it has the capacity to gust to higher achievement based on the requirement of the workload.

12) Which subnet should be preferred to launch database servers?

Among the private and public subnets in VPC, private subnet should be preferred ideally for launching the database servers.

13) Enlist few best Security practices for Amazon EC2?

Following are the best security practices for secure Amazon EC2:

• To control access to your AWS resources using AWS identity and access management.
• Limit the access to ports of instance by allowing only trusted hosts or networks.
• Analyze the rules regularly in your security groups.
• Open the permissions based on the requirement only.
• Disable password-based login.

14) Explain the use of a buffer in Amazon web services?

To make the system more robust for managing the traffic or load by synchronizing different components the buffer is used. Generally, receiving and processing of the requests are in an unbalanced way by the components. But when the buffer is used, the components are balanced and work at the same speed to provide proper service.

15) What are the possible connection issues one might face while connecting to the instance?

While connecting instances the possible connection issues one might face are:

• Connection Time out
• User key unrecognizable by the server
• Host key not found, permission denied
• A private key file which is unprotected
• Server refusing key or No support authentication method available
• On Safari Browser Error using Mind Term
• Error while using Mac OS X RDP Client

16) What do you mean by key-pairs in AWS?

The secured login information used for virtual machines is called as Key Pairs. For connecting to the instances, key-pairs containing a public-key and private-key are used.

17) Explain the different types of instances?

The different types of instances are:

• General-purpose
• Computer Optimized
• Memory-Optimized
• Storage Optimized
• Accelerated Computing

18) Does Amazon VPC support the property of broadcast or multicast?

No, currently support for the property of broadcast or multicast is not provided by Amazon VPC.

19) How many Elastic IPs are can create an AWS account combined?

Five VPC Elastic IP addresses are necessary for creating the AWS account.

20) Explain S3’s default storage class?

The default storage class in S3 is a Standard that is frequently accessed.

21) What do you understand by the roles?

In AWS, Roles are providing permissions to the entities which you can trust within your account. Roles and users are similar to each other. However, while working with the resources it does not require creating the username and password, unlike users.

22) Describe the term edge locations?

The contents are cached in an area which is called the Edge location. Whenever a user tries to access any content, the content will be automatically searched in the edge location.

23) Explain VPC?

VPC is an abbreviation for Virtual Private Cloud. It helps in the customization of the networking configuration.VPC is a network in the cloud that is logically isolated from the other network. VPC provides you with IP address range, subnet, internet gateways, and security groups.

24) What is a snowball?

A data transport option is called Snowball. Snowball uses source appliances for huge data in and out of AWS. Snowball helps in transferring a massive amount of data in different places. It is helpful in reducing networking costs.

25) What is a redshift?

Redshift is a big data warehouse product that is fast and powerful, fully managed data warehouse service in the cloud.

26) Enlist the advantages of auto-scaling?

The advantages of auto-scaling are:

• It offers tolerance for fault.
• Proper availability
• Effective cost management

27) Define subnet?

A subnet is a huge segment of IP Addresses divided into chunks.

28) Is it possible to establish a Peering connection to a VPC in a different region?

No, the peering connection to a VPC is possible in only the same region.

29) Define SQL with reference to AWS?

SQL is called Simple Queues Services. It acts as a mediator for two controllers which helps in the distribution of the queuing service.

30) How many subnets can be used per VPC?

200 subnets per VPC can be used.

31) Categorize the DNS and Load Balancer service in cloud service?

DNS and Load Balancer services belong to the IAAS-storage cloud service.

32) Explain AWS Cloud Trail?

AWS Cloud Trail is a special tool for logging and tracking API calls. It also helps in auditing the S3 bucket access.

33) When was EC2 officially launched?

In the year 2006 EC2 was officially launched.

34) What do you understand by SimpleDB?

A data depository is a structured record that strengthens the data doubts and indexing of both S3 and EC2 is Simple DB.

35) Define Amazon ElasticCache?

A web service that is easy to deploy, scale, and store data in the cloud is Amazon ElasticCache.

36) Define AWS Lambda?

An Amazon computes service which permits you to run code in the AWS Cloud without controlling servers is AWS Lambda.

37) What types of AMI are provided by AWS?

AWS provides the following types of AMI:

• Instance store backed
• EBS backed

38) Which AWS service redundantly cache data and images?

AWS service which redundantly cache data and images are AWS Edge locations.

39) What do you mean by the term Geo Restriction in CloudFront?

Geo-restriction is a feature that helps us to prevent specific geographic locations users from accessing content that has been distributed through a CloudFront web distribution.

40) Explain Amazon EMR?

Amazon EMR is a survived cluster stage which is helpful in data structures as it illustrates the working before the intimation. Apache Spark and Apache Hadoop on Amazon Web Services are helpful in investigating data of a magnificent amount. Using Apache Hive the data for the analytics goals and marketing intellect workloads can be prepared. It also uses other relevant open-source designs.

41) Specify the boot time required for the instance stored backed AMI?

The boot time required for an Amazon instance store-backend AMI is less than 5 minutes.

42) Is there a requirement of an Internet gateway to use peering connections?

Yes, there is a requirement of an Internet gateway while using VPC (virtual private cloud peering) connections.

43) Is it possible to connect the EBS volume to multiple instances?

It is not possible to connect the EBS volume to multiple instances. In fact, it is possible to connect numerous EBS Volumes to a single instance.

44) Mention the various types of cloud services?

The various types of cloud services are:

• Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Data as a Service (DaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

45) What is the difference between an AMI and an Instance?

A template consisting of the software configuration part is AMI. For example Application, application server, operating systems. On the other hand, if you start an Instance, it is a duplicate of the AMI in a row as an attendant in the cloud.

46) Specify the types of Load Balancer in AWS services?

AWS Services uses two types of load balancers:

• Classic Load Balancer
• Application Load Balancer

47) When will be the provisioned IOPS selected over Standard RDS storage?

While performing the batch-related workloads selection of provisioned IOPS storage happens after comparing to standard RDS storage.

48) Mention the important features of the Amazon cloud search?

The important features of the Amazon cloud are below:

• Range search
• Boolean search
• AutoComplete advice
• Prefix Search
• Entire text search

49) Does Amazon Instance allow vertical scaling?

Yes, Amazon Instance allows vertical scaling.

50) Brief the purpose of life cycle hooks is Auto scaling?

The purpose of Lifecycle hooks in Autoscaling is to put an additional wait time to a scale in or scale out event.

51) Enlist different layers of Cloud Architecture?

Different layers of cloud architecture are:

• Cloud controller
• Node Controller
• Storage Controller
• Cluster controller

52) Specify the various storage classes available in Amazon s3?

The Storage classes that are available with Amazon s3 are:

• Amazon S3 standard
• Glacier
• Amazon S3 Reduced Redundancy Storage
• Amazon S3 standard-infrequent Access

53) Specify few DB engines which can be used in AWS RDS?

• MS-SQL DB
• OracleDB
• PostgreDB
• MariaDB
• MYSQL DB

I hope the questions above provide extensive help to aspiring AWS Solution Architects.

We are here to help you with every step in your journey, thus apart from this Interview Questions, we do provide a curriculum that covers the concepts which are helpful to crack the Solution Architect Exam! The details for the course of AWS Training are available here.

The topics covered in AWS Architect Interview questions blog are the essential skills which a recruiter looks for in an AWS Solution Architect Professional. For a detailed study, you can refer to our AWS Tutorial.

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