AWS Solution Architect interview questions & concepts

IBM
awssax

Go to company page IBM

awssax
Mar 6, 2019 38 Comments

Please add questions as you see fit. Good luck!
#amazon #aws #sa #interview

Security

IDS
encryption at rest/in transit
symmetric and asymmetric encryption.
Web Application Firewall Vs Firewall?
Where are customer encryption keys stored
How would you mitigate a DOS?
What is identity management?

Storage

Different types of storage
NAS vs SAN
RAID levels
Can RAID1 be used for Gaming?
IOPS
TPH/latency
EBS
Dedupe vs WAN optimization
Why hash a file
Containerization- Docker
object storage Vs file system
Puppet & Chef
If need to construct 3-tier layer of storage, how can you inline each tier?
Discuss durability vs availability Discuss SSD vs traditional disk
How would you analyze objects stored in S3 and share them with users

Networking:

Load balancing
DNS
TCP vs. UDP
UDP Unicast vs Multicast
When would DNS protocol use TCP vs. UDP transport protocol?
hypervisor dns router & switch
Hypervisor- distinguish multiple VMs running on it and isolate them from the underlying h/w?
Virtualization
content delivery network
cluster
IPSec VS SSL VPN
MPLS
How to speed up a high latency link/high speed link?
CDN - How does a CDN make web sites faster?
OSI
Optimize data flow over a high bandwidth/high latency link
Firewalls
Route 53
Port numbers for (DNS, HTTP, Telnet)
CIDR
QOS and bandwidth control
Bastion host

Database

Difference between SQL and No SQL
hadoop - explain mapreduce
differene between oltp / dw
Describe how to best organize a data mart database
cluster and mirroring
database caching server
db tuning
Sharding
JSON vs. XML
How would you provide high availability for a database deployed on an instance in the cloud?
Why is it hard to horizontally scale a SQL database?
How can a database be scaled?
What is database indexing and why is it important
What ports do databases use

Design

- Build a web site
- Desing a solution architecture for a web based small company?
- Design fault tolerant, load balanced video stream service
- Plan an e-commerce site for a small business
- Describe how you would architect a very critical website on the cloud?
- Given that you have a content rich E-commerce website, what kind of Storage Tier would you use to support the website?
- Draw a hybrid solutions for an enterprise customer that needs to store files online in a private cloud with 99.95% SLA and specify which AWS component you will need to use and details about security, access control etc
- There is a customer from the relevant domain (for me, it was public sector) that wants to create a site that shows some information, and also, push alerts for the end-users. Expecting Millions of end-users. Describe how to build this application. Consider - security, scalability and availability.
- Describe a web application and all of its components.
- What if Google decides to host youtube.com on AWS, how do you design your solution?

Architecture

SOA Java and C
horizontal Vs vertical scaling
LAMP stack
HA Architecture
Lambda Architecture

Computer Science

what does kernel do difference between java & C
OOP
continuous integration
continuous development
CI/CD tools
Monolithic application
loosely coupled application
Command line interpreter vs compiler
Java compilation
JVM compatibility
function of stacks? (POP(), PUSH() , TOP())
identify a circular linked list
bubble sort vs merge sort
Given n-million data elements, which would be the best,efficient, and faster sort method? What is the average, best, and worst case performance?
BIG-O Notation

Troubleshooting/MISC

- What would you do if a web application could not talk to the database?
- How to manage web application state between EC2 instances running in an auto scaling group?
- What kind of Metrics would you monitor for the E-commerce website application front-end?
- How do you use CIDR for Troubleshoot a webpage that can't access the DB
- Troubleshoot why you can't access a webpage server
- Explain how to scale from a single 5 user database to a 50 user, 500 user, 5000 user and then 5 million user database and explain how to overcome each hurdle.
- Which algorithm does an Elastic Load Balancer use?
- How do you architect a design that is fault tolerant?
- Whats a three tier web page architect,and how do you monitor to see a bottleneck and how do you improve it
- If you collected logs and wanted to store them for 14 days then move them over to permanent storage for a few years how would you do this
- What is a web application firewall and how do you use it, what layer is it on?
- How would you monitor utilization of equipment in a datacenter ?
- What else would you do for a high volume distributed app web site

38

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 TOP 38 Comments
  • This seems like a lot for someone new to an SA role. I am recently AWS SA Associate certified, and I can tell you I wouldn't know a lot of the answers to many of these things. Hell, the exam didn't even touch on some of these topics.
    May 7, 2020 5
    • Petco
      ovHp66

      Go to company page Petco

      ovHp66
      Just got the offer last week. By the way, the only price USP that oracle has is network bandwidth data charges, which are cheaper for now. I have several years of experience solutioning for oracle products and their hawkish behavior with license and support price tags have given them bad reputation with many many large and small companies; so their best bet is unicorns like Zoom. Ultimately, the only meaningful way they can make progress in cloud is riding the coattails of Azure or AWS.
      May 9, 2020
    • Nice, did you accept? Well working @bankofamerica for so long, I have been part of many migrations and mergers, but my role has ultimately been the same, so my experience is primarily with the application that I own. The majority of my efforts have been around upgrade, migration, implementation, and support for that product, which touches many of the critical MSFT technologies at the bank. I have been racking my brain for "examples" of wins and loses, but have been hard pressed, since my application is internal customer facing only. I don't plan on making up some bullshit stories either, just going to be real. Fact of the matter is, I could stay in my current role until I retire, but financial companies are slow to adopt the cloud (Bofa has been negotiating with AWS for five years) and working with on prem technology and hardware is like making punch cards for mainframes. I want to do something else, but your ability to transfer jobs in the bank is determined on your location. Regardless, I don't see a lot of movement in the cloud arena for Bofa (at least not with AWS) so I need to get to getting. I figure if I don't pass this interview, I will just grind harder, do more tinkering in my free tier account, and maybe work harder on networking to see if I can get some tips. The role I applied for is pre-sales SA for small business unit at AWS. Recruiter said they are growing the team, but with Covid-19 I'm thinking "what small businesses are going to be around much longer?" Regardless, I feel AWS has done the due diligence to see a need, so..figured I would give it a try. I just want to work with motivated people who want to grow, not scared techs who are comfortable and praying for packages.
      May 16, 2020
  • IBM
    awssax

    Go to company page IBM

    awssax
    OP
    I compiled a list from Glassdoor interview questions. I’m gonna interview soon, so I thought I’d share the list as I couldn’t find a more complete one on blind.
    Mar 6, 2019 1
  • Amazon
    bay-zohs

    Go to company page Amazon

    bay-zohs
    Fizzbuzz
    Mar 6, 2019 1
  • ADP
    mando99

    Go to company page ADP

    mando99
    Passed the interview. Thank you very much.
    Feb 16, 2021 0
  • New / Other
    ¯\_(ツ)__/¯

    New Other

     ¯\_(ツ)__/¯
    IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS vs CaaS vs FaaS ect ect etc
    Mar 6, 2019 0