19 Cloud Computing Interview Questions and Answers

Cloud computing has experienced rapid growth and adoption over the past few years.

From startups and small businesses to large enterprises, everyone uses cloud computing for their operations. Additionally, companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are leading the industry and developing first-rate cloud-based services that make the lives of other businesses and end users easier.

Needless to say, this massive growth of cloud computing is due to all the benefits that cloud computing offers to its users. High scalability and flexibility to adjust servers and resources, lower IT costs with a pay-as-you-go model without investing in expensive hardware, increased performance and speed, and many other benefits.

No wonder cloud computing generated nearly $400 billion in revenue in 2021. This growth was also facilitated by COVID-19, when working from home was only possible through online means and the use of various cloud-based services and technologies.

Demand for cloud computing experts

The increasing popularity and usage of cloud computing has also increased the demand for cloud computing professionals. Cloud computing jobs are proliferating to accommodate the increasing requirements for cloud infrastructure development and maintenance.

Whether you’re an experienced cloud engineer or a newcomer, recruiters are always looking for new talent from a variety of locations, professions, and roles. If you want to build a career in the cloud and ace your interviews with flying colors, here are some cloud computing interview questions for freshers and experienced candidates.

Check these out to prepare for a cloud computing job.

What are the different layers that define a cloud architecture?

Answer: Digging deeper into cloud computing will deepen your knowledge. Cloud architecture consists of four tiers. Let’s check them one by one:

• Physical layer: This layer includes the network, physical servers, etc.
• Infrastructure layer: Consists of networks, storage resources, virtual servers, etc. This is where services such as networks and servers are provided to consumers, providing access to scalable storage, computing power, and on-demand resources.
• Platform layer: This layer includes services or components such as Google Application Engine and Windows Azure. We provide services that provide complete tools to deploy and develop applications.
• Software layer: End users connect directly to this layer. This includes software such as Dropbox, Salesforce, and Gmail that consumers can access over the Internet. It has two important features: configurability and extensibility.

What is on-demand functionality? How is it connected to cloud computing?

Answer: On-demand functionality is an option that allows users to quickly upgrade resources in real-time on demand. On-demand capabilities provide resources such as speed, servers, networks, software applications, and storage capacity instantly when you need them. Apart from cloud resources, consumers also have services like podcasts and mobile internet available on demand.

Most service providers provide a control panel where you can make changes and check the status of your server. You can expand or expand your resources at any time as needed. Here, all resources are located in a single central system called a pool, to which users can quickly add resources.

Security benefits of cloud computing?

Answer: The security benefits of cloud computing include:

• High availability: Built-in redundancy ensures your cloud applications are always available, allowing you to monitor application security and remediate issues in real time.
• Data Security: Data is critical to any business, and cloud-based security solutions can protect sensitive data and protect it from intruders.
• DDoS protection: Security solutions with DDoS protection can track traffic volumes and stop unwanted risks associated with distributed denial of service (DDoS). These solutions prevent attackers from flooding your site or application with so much traffic that it becomes unresponsive.
• 24/7 visibility: Monitoring your applications 24/7 is necessary to have continuous visibility into your applications to measure risk and make real-time business decisions.
• Threat detection: The ability to detect cyber threats through endpoint scanning is a major advantage of cloud computing. This helps minimize risk to your organization’s assets.
• Regulatory compliance: Cloud-based security solutions help organizations such as public agencies and businesses stay compliant by meeting regulatory requirements and protecting personal and financial data.

What are cloud storage tiers?

Answer: Cloud storage is a model that stores digital information such as photos, videos, documents, etc. on a virtual server. This allows you to access your data anytime, anywhere. There are four levels of cloud storage.

• Private cloud storage: This is a secure, expensive, and scalable cloud storage type that is suitable for large organizations. In this case, all data is stored on the company’s intranet and protected by its own firewall. Users have complete control over their data.
• Public cloud storage: This is an affordable, reliable, and easily scalable cloud storage type. It requires no maintenance, making it suitable for medium-sized businesses as well as individual users. Anyone with user privileges can access data on public clouds (e.g. Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, etc.).
• Hybrid cloud storage: This is a secure, scalable, and affordable type of cloud storage. It offers easy customization and great control, making it suitable for small as well as medium-sized businesses. Hybrid cloud storage is a combination of public and private cloud storage. Users have access to both the world-class security features of a private cloud and the personalization features of a public cloud.
• Community cloud storage: This is affordable, scalable, and secure cloud storage. Suitable for healthcare, financial, and legal companies, it provides cloud solutions for certain companies with strict compliance policies.

Apart from these, there are three types of cloud storage:

• Object storage: Object storage has massive metadata characteristics and scalability. Object storage services and solutions such as Amazon S3 are ideal for building advanced, modern apps from scratch that require flexibility and scalability.
• File storage: It’s like a file system that allows some apps to access shared documents. File storage is typically supported using network attached storage (NAS) servers. Solutions like Amazon EFS are suitable for large content repositories, media stores, home directories, development environments, and more.
• Block storage: Enterprise apps such as ERP systems and databases may require dedicated low-latency storage on every host. This is where block storage comes in handy. These systems, such as Amazon EBS, have virtual servers on each host and provide ultra-low latency for high-performance workloads.

Would you like to discuss the various open source cloud computing platform databases?

Answer: The open source cloud computing platform databases are:

• MongoDB: An open source database based on NoSQL documentation that stores and records data in table rows. Documents from different categories are grouped together and all data is stored in one document. Written in C++ language.
• CouchDB: An Apache server-based database that allows access to any data via the Couch Replication protocol. It speaks JSON and supports binary data for your storage needs.
• LucidDB: LucidDB is written in C++ and Java. It is an open source relational database management system used for business intelligence and data warehousing. Additionally, it enables improved performance on a single Windows or Linux server.

The difference between elasticity and scalability in cloud computing

answer:

Cloud computing elasticity : The ability to automatically adapt to resources in real time (for example, by adding virtual machines as close together as possible). In other words, it maintains responsiveness even when the load increases rapidly.

Cloud computing scalability: The ability to respond to changing needs over time without impacting performance. Responsiveness remains as the load gradually increases over time. Scalability helps in stable growth over time in a planned manner.

What are the different components required for cloud computing?

Answer: Here is the list of components required for cloud computing.

• Client infrastructure: This is the front-end part that provides a nice interface for users to easily interact with the cloud.
• Application: This is the platform (software or app) that allows clients to access the cloud.
• Services: There are various cloud service models required depending on the client’s requirements.

1. 1. SaaS (Software as a Service)
   2. PaaS (Platform as a Service)
   3. IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

• Runtime cloud: Provides a runtime and execution environment for virtual machines.
• Storage: This component provides storage for storing your data in the cloud and managing it when you need it. Can be accessed by different clients simultaneously.
• Infrastructure: Includes hardware components, software components, and other storage resources. Services are available at the application, network, and host level.
• Management: Manage components such as applications, storage services, and runtime clouds.
• Security: Includes a set of technologies, policies, controls, and applications. Used to protect data, infrastructure, IP, applications, etc.
• Internet: This is the medium used for communication between backend and frontend components. Provides an easy way to interact with each other.

What types of clouds are there?

Answer: List of different types of clouds:

• Public cloud: Provides cloud services to clients and provides an easy solution for small organizations to get started with a small investment. Serve multiple users at once, including IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Alibaba Cloud.
• Private cloud: Dedicated to a single user or group. This is done behind the group or user’s firewall. The benefits of a private cloud include protection of customer information, SLAs, and compliance.
• Hybrid cloud: Formed by combining features of public and private clouds.
• Community cloud: Designed to serve specific communities depending on their needs, such as industry or business.

What is resource replication in cloud computing?

Ans: Resource replication in cloud computing means creating different instances from the same resource. Resource replication comes into play when you need to improve resource performance and availability. Virtualization operations are performed to replicate IT resources using a replication mechanism.

What are the different platforms in cloud architecture?

Answer: There are many cloud architecture platforms around the world with unique features.

• AWS (Amazon Web Services): A secure platform that provides content delivery, database storage, and other features. Additionally, it will be easier for you to grow and expand your business.
• Microsoft Azure: This platform is used to test, build, manage, and deploy services and applications. A wide range of services can help meet your company’s needs.
• Google Cloud Platform: Provides infrastructure services and tools. Services include networking, big data, IoT, data transfer, compute, storage, and databases.
• IBM Cloud: Offers both Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). Businesses have access to IT resources, including networking, storage, computing power, and more.
• Alibaba Cloud: Provides cutting-edge technology across databases, security, storage, computing, networking, and more.
• Huawei Cloud: Provides secure, sustainable, reliable, and stable cloud services to help businesses grow easily.
• Oracle Cloud: Has managed data centers that provide servers, networks, applications, services, and storage over the internet.

I will explain “EUCALYPTUS” in cloud computing.

Answer: Eucalyptus is an open source software that provides S3 compatible cloud storage and EC-2 compatible computing platform. Deploy efficient and scalable private and hybrid clouds within your IT infrastructure. It also supports high-performance cloud computing and can be deployed on Linux OS distributions such as RHEL/CentOS, Debian, OpenSUSE, and Ubuntu.

Features:

• Compatible with AWS (EBS, S3, EC2).
• Supports flexible IP management.
• Provides a web-based interface for configuration.
• It also provides policies and SLAs.
• Supports hypervisor technology.

Explain the difference between hybrid cloud and hybrid IT.

Answer: The differences between hybrid IT and hybrid cloud are:

Hybrid cloud: Combines features of both private and public clouds. Add the on-premises security capabilities of a private cloud and the benefits of a public cloud. Therefore, it provides the flexibility to host resources that allow businesses to run sensitive applications and workloads while providing access to resources such as IaaS and SaaS whenever they are needed.

Hybrid IT: Determine the delivery and deployment of applications, information, and digital services. The goal is to create a cloud-based delivery model that helps users when they need tools. Additionally, we enable the same service capabilities across your entire infrastructure, whether it’s a data center or a cloud service.

Learn about edge computing and connect to the cloud.

Answer: Edge computing is a modern distributed IT architecture that processes client data and computations at the closest possible network source. This reduces response time and saves bandwidth. Instead of processing raw data and transferring it to the main data center for analysis, we move some of the computing resources and storage out of the data center.

Edge computing involves processes that run in the cloud, so it is connected to the cloud. This moves some computing processes to edge devices such as edge servers and IoT devices. Performance is often improved when both computes are used at the same time.

In other words, businesses can take advantage of computing and benefit from cloud environments, and benefit from performance that cloud data centers don’t necessarily support due to latency issues.

What is AMI?

Answer: An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is a virtual machine that provides the information needed to launch an instance. You can simultaneously launch many instances with the same configuration from a single AMI. This includes Amazon EBS, snapshots, launch permissions, and device mapping.

Simply put, an AMI is a copy of the disks attached to your instance and can contain multiple disk images. The main component is a read-only image containing a Unix, Linux, or Windows operating system and additional software that provides some of the services.

What are APIs used in cloud services?

Answer: APIs provide authorization and authentication to access cloud services such as storage, monitoring, and computing infrastructure. The API contains the possible functionality of an application or service that needs to be performed during use. Here you can build applications and integrate business tools to make your administrative tasks more manageable.

Simply put, an API provides an interface or gateway for organizations to interact directly with cloud services according to a contract.

Describe the major components of AWS.

Answer: The major components of AWS are:

• Amazon Cluster: Businesses or organizations use AWS’s computer services ELB and EC2 to grow or shrink depending on their needs.
• Storage: Amazon offers simple storage devices or S3, CloudFront, and Elastic Block Storage (EBS). Various data can be stored according to your request.
• Database: Users can manage databases using EBS and EC2. AWS has two databases: Amazon Redshift and Relational Database Service (RDS). RDS is used to extend and manage Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQLServer. Redshift is used to store data in columns instead of rows.
• Management and security: Directories connect the AWS Cloud directly to your local location. I have CloudWatch to control my resources.
• Network: Improves network performance. That means a private cloud and integrated security.
• Analytics: AWS provides analytics services in areas such as orchestration, data transmission, real-time storage, and Hadoop.
• Application service: Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) stores information such as messages to automate workflows.
• Implementation and management: Health files are easy to monitor. Elastic Beanstalk measures and implements web applications using .NET, Node.js, Ruby, Python, PHP, and Java.
• Mobile Services: AWS offers two mobile services: Mobile Analytics and Amazon Cognito.

Describes public, static, and void classes.

answer:

Public class: Refers to methods that can be referenced by other objects and called by other types. Any class can access the subject.

Static class: Associated with a class that is not a specific class object. Here you can call static methods without creating a class instance.

Void class: This means the method has no return value.

What is a hypervisor in cloud computing?

Answer: Hypervisor is software used in cloud hosting to divide and allocate different resources to different hardware. Used as a key to enable virtualization. Simply put, it is software, firmware, or both that is installed on a single piece of hardware to host a virtual machine.

This allows a single server to run different VMs independently with separate operating systems. Therefore, a crash in one VM does not affect other VMs, applications, or operating systems.

Describes load balancing in cloud computing.

Answer: Load balancing is a method of partitioning or partitioning workloads and other properties in cloud computing. Cloud computing load balancing allows businesses to easily manage workload demands and application demands. This includes demand available over the internet to hold workload traffic.

Load balancing is important among services such as SMTP, FTP, POP/IMAP, DNS, and HTTP. Therefore, many companies increase availability and scalability through load balancing. This falls into two categories: software-based and hardware-based load balancing.

conclusion

Cloud computing is growing rapidly and shows little signs of slowing down. With cloud usage and demand increasing, building a career in cloud computing can be beneficial. Also, if you are an aspiring candidate, the above cloud computing interview questions for freshers and experienced professionals can help you prepare for the challenge.

You may also be interested in GCP certified learning resources.

Good luck!