Top 50 AWS Solution Architect Associate Interview Questions and Answers 2024

Last Update: September 4, 2024 Post Views: 988

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - The associate is a category of technical certifications offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) for beginners and professionals who run enterprise architecture programs and solutions architects

1. What is AWS?

Answer: AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a comprehensive cloud computing platform provided by Amazon. It offers many cloud-based services, including computing power, storage options, networking, databases, machine learning, analytics, and more. These services are designed to help businesses scale and innovate more quickly and cost-effectively without significant upfront investments in physical infrastructure.

2. What are  some of AWS Services ?

Answer:

  • Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud): Provides scalable virtual servers (compute instances) to run applications.
  • Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service): Offers scalable object storage for data backup, archiving, 
  • AWS Lambda: A serverless computing service that automatically runs code responding to events and scales computing resources as needed.
  • Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service): Managed database service for various relational database engines.
  • Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud): Enables users to create isolated networks within the AWS cloud for better control and security.

3. What is EC2?

Answer: 

● Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is a service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that allows you to rent virtual servers in the cloud. These virtual servers, called "instances," can run applications, host websites, process data, and more

● Think of EC2 as a flexible, on-demand computer that you can access over the Internet:

● You can choose this computer's size, power, and capacity based on your needs.

● You only pay for the time you use the computer.

● You can quickly add more computers (scale up) or remove them (scale down) as needed.

● Imagine you need a powerful computer to run a specific application but don’t want to buy one. With EC2, you can "rent" a computer from Amazon, use it for as long as you need, and then stop paying when you're done.

Also Read: AWS Cloud Certification

4. What is S3?

Answer: S3 (Simple Storage Service) is an object storage service that offers scalable storage for data backup, archiving, and analytics. It is designed for durability, availability, and scalability.

5. What is a VPC?

Answer: VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) is a virtual network dedicated to an AWS account. It allows users to launch AWS resources into a virtual network that they define.

6. What is IAM?

Answer: IAM (Identity and Access Management) is a service that enables you to securely manage access to AWS services and resources. It allows you to create and manage users, groups, and roles to control who can access your AWS resources.

Also Read: Video Tutorial on AWS

7. What is the difference between IAM roles and IAM users?

Answer: IAM roles delegate access to AWS resources to entities that are not IAM users, such as applications running on EC2 instances. IAM users, on the other hand, are individual users who can interact with AWS resources using their credentials.

8. What is CloudFormation?

Answer: CloudFormation is a service that allows you to define and provision AWS infrastructure as code using templates. It enables you to create and manage a collection of related AWS resources, provisioning and updating them orderly and predictable.

9. What is the difference between S3 and EBS?

Answer: S3 is an object storage service suitable for storing and retrieving large amounts of data, while EBS is a block storage service designed for use with EC2 instances, providing persistent block-level storage volumes.

10. What is the difference between public and private subnets in a VPC?

Answer: Public subnets route traffic to an internet gateway, allowing instances in the subnet to communicate with the Internet, while private subnets do not have direct access to the Internet and are used for instances that should not be publicly accessible.

Also Read: AWS Exam Dumps

11. How do you secure access to your EC2 instances?

Answer: Access to EC2 instances can be secured using IAM roles, security groups, and network ACLs. IAM roles can be used to control access to AWS resources, security groups act as virtual firewalls to control traffic to and from instances, and network ACLs control traffic at the subnet level.

12. What is an Auto Scaling group?

Answer: An Auto-Scaling group is a collection of EC2 instances managed as a logical grouping for automatic scaling. Auto-scaling groups automatically adjust the number of instances in response to changing demand.

13. How does CloudWatch help in monitoring AWS resources?

Answer: CloudWatch is a service that provides real-time monitoring and logging of AWS resources. It can be used to monitor metrics, set alarms, and automatically respond to changes in AWS resources.

14. What is the difference between horizontal and vertical scaling?

Answer: Horizontal scaling involves adding more instances to distribute the load across multiple machines, while vertical scaling involves increasing the capacity of a single machine, such as adding more CPU, memory, or storage to handle increased load.

15. What is AWS Lambda?

Answer: AWS Lambda is a serverless computing service that allows you to run code without provisioning or managing servers. It automatically scales and manages the underlying infrastructure required to run your code in response to events.

16. What is the difference between Amazon RDS and Amazon DynamoDB?

Answer: Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) is a managed relational database service that supports multiple database engines, while Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database service.

17. What is the AWS Shared Responsibility Model?

Answer: The AWS Shared Responsibility Model defines the division of responsibilities between AWS and the customer for security and compliance. AWS is responsible for the protection of the cloud infrastructure, while the customer is responsible for securing their data and applications in the cloud.

18. What is the AWS Well-Architected Framework?

Answer: The AWS Well-Architected Framework is a set of best practices for designing and operating secure, resilient, and efficient cloud infrastructure. It guides architecture design principles across five pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization.

19. What is the need for an Encryption key?

Answer: To encrypt a volume or a snapshot, you need an encryption key. Encryption keys are managed by AWS Key Management Service (KMS). When encrypting the EBS volume, one can use an AWS Managed Key (Default key) or Customer Managed Key (CMK)

20. What is AWS CloudTrail?

Answer: AWS CloudTrail is a service that records actions taken by a user, role, or AWS service in your AWS account. It enables governance, compliance, operational auditing, and risk auditing of your AWS account.

21. What is an AWS CloudFormation stack?

Answer: An AWS CloudFormation stack is a collection of AWS resources created and managed as a single unit. It allows you to manage related resources together, enabling you to create, update, and delete them in a predictable and repeatable way.

22. What is Amazon VPC Peering?

Answer: Amazon VPC Peering is a networking connection between two VPCs that enables you to route traffic between them using private IP addresses.

23. How does AWS Direct Connect work?

Answer: AWS Direct Connect is a network service that provides a dedicated network connection between your on-premises data center and AWS. It allows you to bypass the public internet and establish a private, dedicated connection to AWS.

24. What is AWS CloudFront?

Answer: AWS CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) service that delivers data, videos, applications, and APIs to users globally with low latency and high transfer speeds.

25. What is AWS Key Management Service (KMS)?

Answer: AWS Key Management Service (KMS) is a managed service that allows you to create and control the encryption keys used to encrypt your data.

26. How many IP Addresses are reserved in each Subnet in VPC?

Answer: AWS reserves 1st Four IPs and the Last IP in each. For example, Say 10.0.0.0/24 10.0.0.0 Network ID, 10.0.0.1 VPC router, 10.0.0.2 DNS Related, 10.0.0.3 Future Use, 10.0.0.255 Broadcast

27. What is Internet Gateway?

Answer:

  • An Internet Gateway allows communication between your VPC and the Internet.
  • VPC without an Internet gateway cannot communicate with the internet
  • An internet gateway enables resources (like EC2 instances) in your subnets to access the internet
  • Only one Internet Gateway per VPC
  • An Internet Gateway is a horizontally scaled, redundant, and highly available VPC component.
  • Internet Gateway supports both IPv4 & IPv6.

28. What is Amazon S3 Glacier?

Answer: Amazon S3 Glacier is a low-cost storage service for long-term data archiving and backup.

29. What is a Security Group?

Answer: A security group is a virtual firewall. If you associate a security group with an EC2 instance, it controls the instance's inbound and outbound traffic.

30. What is the Difference between the security group and N-ACL?

Answer:

  • Security Group Operates at the instance level
  • Security Group Supports allow rules only
  • Security GroupIs stateful: Return traffic is automatically allowed, regardless of any rules
  • Security GroupIt evaluates all rules before deciding whether to allow traffic
  • Security Group Applies to an instance only if someone specifies the security group when launching the instance, or associates the security group with the instance later on.
  • N-ACL Operates at the subnet level
  • N-ACL Supports allow rules and deny rules
  • N-ACL Is stateless: Return traffic must be explicitly allowed by rules
  • N-ACL It processes rules in number order when deciding whether to allow traffic
  • N-ACL Automatically applies to all instances in the subnets it’s associated with (therefore, you don’t have to rely on users to specify the security group)


31. What are the EC2 Families?

Answer:

  • General Purpose
  • Memory Optimized
  • Compute Optimized
  • Storage Optimized
  • GPU Compute Instance

32. What is a NAT Instance?

Answer: NAT instance allows private subnet EC2 instance to go to the internet

33. What are AWS Saving Plans?

Answer: Savings Plans are a flexible pricing model that offers lower prices on EC2 Usage (1 or 3 years). Savings Plans automatically apply to any applicable compute usage across regions, regardless of size, tenancy, and OS.

34. What is Amazon Redshift?

Answer: Amazon Redshift is a fully managed data warehouse service that allows you to run complex queries on large datasets using SQL.

35. What is Amazon Kinesis?

Answer: Amazon Kinesis is a platform for streaming data on AWS, offering capabilities to collect, process, and analyze real-time streaming data.

36. What is AWS Directory Service?

Answer: AWS Directory Service is a managed service that allows you to connect your AWS resources to an existing on-premises Microsoft Active Directory or to set up a new, standalone directory in the cloud.

37. What is EC2 Spot Instance?

Answer: AWS Spot Instances allow customers to use computer capacity without upfront commitments at prices cheaper (80-90%) than on-demand instance pricing

38. What are the EBS Snapshots?

Answer: EBS Snapshots are point-in-time Images/copies of your EBS volume

39. What is SNS?

Answer: SNS is a fast, flexible, fully managed push notification service. Messages published to SNS topics will be delivered to the subscribers immediately (endpoint or clients)

40. What is Relational Database?

Answer: A Relational Database is a data structure that allows you to link information from tables or different types of tables. It Normalizes data into Structures, Which means it requires a schema that strictly defines tables, columns, indexes, and relations between tables

41. What is DynamoDB?

Answer: Amazon DynamoDB is a fast and flexible NoSQL database service for any applications that need consistent, single-digit millisecond latency at any scale

42. What is Amazon Route 53?

Answer: Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service

43. What is NAT Gateway?

Answer: A NAT Gateway (Network Address Translation Gateway) is a service typically used in AWS cloud environments to enable EC2 instances in a private subnet to connect to the Internet while preventing inbound connections from the Internet to those EC2 instances.

44. What is an AWS dedicated Host?

Answer: An AWS Dedicated Host is a physical server entirely dedicated to you and provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It allows you to run your Amazon EC2 instances on a server not shared with other customers, providing more control over how you use and manage your server resources.

45. What is Elastic IP in AWS?

Answer: An Elastic IP (EIP) in AWS is a static, public IPv4 address that you can allocate to your AWS account and use for communication over the internet. It is designed to provide a persistent, static IP address you can associate with your AWS resources, such as EC2 instances, for reliable internet communication.

46. What is EC2 Termination Protection?

Answer: EC2 Termination Protection is an AWS feature that prevents an EC2 instance from being accidentally terminated. When termination protection is enabled for an EC2 instance, any attempts to terminate the instance (such as through the AWS Management Console, CLI, or API) will fail unless the termination protection is first disabled.

47. What is Cluster Placement Group in AWS?

Answer: A Cluster Placement Group in AWS is a logical grouping of EC2 instances within a single Availability Zone (AZ), enabling high-bandwidth, low-latency networking between those instances. This placement strategy optimizes network performance for applications that require high throughput and fast communication between instances.

48. What is Spread Placement Group?

Answer: Spread Placement Group is a logical grouping of instances placed on distinct, underlying hardware to reduce the risk of simultaneous failures. This placement strategy is designed to spread instances across multiple physical hardware to ensure that a failure of one hardware component (such as a server rack) does not affect all cases in the group.

49. What is Elastic Load Balancer?

Answer: An Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) in AWS is a fully managed service that automatically distributes incoming application or network traffic across multiple targets, such as Amazon EC2 instances, containers, IP addresses, or Lambda functions, across multiple Availability Zones. It helps ensure high availability, fault tolerance, and scalability for your applications by balancing traffic across healthy instances and automatically scaling as traffic demands change.

50. What is Auto Scaling in AWS?

Answer: Auto Scaling in AWS is a service that automatically adjusts the number of EC2 instances or other AWS resources in your application based on predefined conditions, ensuring your application has the right amount of resources to handle current demand. This helps maintain application availability and optimizes costs by scaling resources up or down as needed.

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