Cloud Platforms

AWS, Azure, GCP, serverless, managed services

297 bites

Test yourself: Top 30 Cloud Platforms interview questions →Multiple choice, with the correct answer and why it is correct on every question. Free, no sign-in.

Everything in Cloud Platforms, page 6

intermediate1 min read

Process running but load balancer says unhealthy

The probe path, port, protocol, or expected status may mismatch; a security group may block the probe; the app may be up but not ready.

intermediate1 min read

Connecting two VPCs privately

VPC peering is simple but non-transitive and full-mesh; a Transit Gateway scales hub-and-spoke; PrivateLink exposes one service narrowly.

easy1 min read

How cloud DNS resolves a URL to an IP

Recursive resolver queries root, then TLD, then your authoritative cloud DNS zone; the matching record returns an IP, cached per TTL.

easy1 min read

Layer 4 vs Layer 7 load balancers

L4 routes on IP and TCP/UDP ports fast and protocol-blind; L7 inspects HTTP for host, path, and headers.

easy2 min read

Public and private subnet VPC design

Web server in a public subnet routed to an internet gateway, database in a private subnet with no inbound from the internet, NAT for outbound.

advanced2 min read

Block storage availability across AZ failure

Block volumes are AZ-bound, so use snapshots, synchronous replication, or app-level replication, trading cost for lower RTO/RPO.

advanced2 min read

Object store vs NFS consistency models

S3 gives strong read-after-write per object with no partial updates; NFS offers close-to-open with shared mutable files.

advanced1 min read

Maximizing object-store throughput for small files

Spread keys across prefixes for partition parallelism, batch small files, parallelize and use multipart uploads.

intermediate1 min read

Object storage tiers and lifecycle automation

Tiers trade storage price for retrieval cost and latency; automate with lifecycle rules or intelligent tiering.

intermediate1 min read

Protecting object storage from accidental loss

Enable versioning, MFA delete or object lock, cross-region replication, and least-privilege policies.

intermediate1 min read

Shared file system access across many VMs

Use a managed NFS service like EFS or Filestore; watch per-operation latency, throughput modes, and metadata-heavy small-file workloads.

intermediate1 min read

Diagnosing high I/O wait on a database volume

Check IOPS and throughput against the volume limit, look for burst-credit exhaustion, then move to provisioned IOPS or a larger volume.

easy1 min read

Serving user images securely from object storage

Store images in a private bucket, serve via a CDN with origin access control, use signed URLs for private content.

easy1 min read

Object vs block vs file storage

Object stores flat keyed blobs over HTTP, block gives raw volumes for one VM, file offers a shared hierarchical mount.

advanced1 min read

Cost-effective fault-tolerant batch processing

Spot fleets across types, a durable work queue, idempotent checkpointed tasks, retries.

advanced1 min read

Optimizing low-latency VM-to-VM networking

Cluster placement groups, enhanced networking and SR-IOV, larger instances for more bandwidth.

intermediate1 min read

The instance metadata service explained

A local endpoint exposing instance identity, region, and temporary role credentials.

intermediate1 min read

Managing state across ephemeral instances

Keep instances stateless, externalize sessions to Redis, data to managed databases, files to object storage.

intermediate1 min read

On-Demand vs Reserved vs Spot pricing

On-Demand for unpredictable bursty work, Reserved or Savings Plans for steady baseline, Spot for interruptible fault-tolerant jobs.

intermediate1 min read

Designing an auto-scaling web tier

Front with a load balancer, define a launch template, an auto-scaling group across AZs, and target-tracking policies.

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