AWS DevOps Interview Questions

Intermediate AWS DevOps Interview Questions

11. Describe the features of AWS DynamoDB.

Ans. Some features of DynamoDB are:

• NoSQL database: DynamoDB is a NoSQL database, which means that it provides flexible data-storing capabilities without requiring a fixed schema. 
   
• Encryption: It provides encryption at rest and in transit to help protect your data from unauthorized access. It supports AWS Key Management Service (KMS) for encryption key management.
   
• Global tables: It supports global tables, which allows you to replicate your tables across multiple AWS regions. This provides low-latency access to our data from anywhere in the world and helps ensure high availability and disaster recovery.

12. What is the difference between DevOps and Agile development?

Ans. Agile development is an iterative methodology in which teams work in short spans, usually two to four weeks, and release working software. It helps in improving according to the changing needs of the customers and releasing new versions faster, whereas DevOps emphasizes automation, continuous integration (CI), continuous delivery (CD), and continuous deployment (CD). The goal of DevOps is to create an efficient software delivery pipeline that can quickly and reliably deliver software to production. They are often used together for best results.

13. Write the important DevOps KPIs?

Ans.  There are three important DevOps KPIs:

• Deployment frequency: It measures how frequently new code changes are being deployed to production. A high deployment frequency is an indicator of a DevOps team that is able to deliver changes quickly and reliably.
   
• Mean time to recover (MTTR): This measures the average time it takes to restart from a production incident. A low MTTR is an indicator of a DevOps team that is able to detect and resolve issues quickly, minimizing the impact of incidents on end-users.
   
• Change failure rate: It measures the percentage of production changes that result in an incident or outage. A low change failure rate is an indicator of a DevOps team that is able to deliver changes in a way that is safe and reliable, minimizing the risk of production incidents.

14. What is AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)?

Ans. It is a tool that makes use of Kubernetes easier on AWS without having to worry about the complex infrastructure for deploying applications. Kubernetes is an open-source tool that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of stored apps in containers.

AWS EKS also works with other AWS services like Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), where you store container images, and Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) for shared storage. This way, we can easily create and manage your cool container apps on AWS.

15. What is AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS)?

Ans. AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS) is a comprehensive solution for container orchestration that simplifies the management of Docker containers on either EC2 instances or AWS Fargate, a serverless compute engine designed for containers.

With ECS, customers can use powerful features such as load balancing, automatic scaling and service discovery to make their containerized applications always run at peak performance and readily available. Furthermore, ECS can integrate with other AWS services such as Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon EC2 Container Registry (ECR), Amazon S3, and Amazon CloudWatch, providing a unified and integrated experience for customers.

16. What is Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and how does it relate to DevOps?

Ans. In DevOps, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a critical practice that involves managing and providing infrastructure resources, such as virtual machines, containers, and networks, using machine-readable definition files, scripts, or templates. In IaC, infrastructure is treated as an application code that can be managed using the same tools, processes, and version control systems. 

IaC plays an important role in DevOps by automating, testing, and deploying infrastructure in a reliable and repeatable manner. By implementing IaC, DevOps teams can reduce the time and effort required to manage infrastructure, increase efficiency, and minimize the risk of error.

17. What is the role of monitoring and logging in DevOps?

Ans. Monitoring involves collecting and analyzing data from different system parts, such as servers, databases, and networks, to ensure smooth operations and detect potential issues early. Monitoring tools can quickly notify the team of any anomalies or errors, allowing prompt response to mitigate potential impacts.

Logging, on the other hand, involves recording events and activities that occur within the system, such as user actions and errors. This is useful for identifying the root cause of problems and fixing them.

18. Provide an example of a use case of a Lambda function in a DevOps workflow?

Ans. Lambda functions are a powerful serverless computing service provided by AWS, allowing users to execute code without managing servers. These functions can be used in various ways within DevOps to automate tasks and streamline the delivery pipeline. For example, suppose we have to create a new development environment for each new feature branch. This task involves several manual steps, such as installing dependencies and configuring the environment. Here the Lambda function can be developed to simplify and automate these processes. 

19. What is continuous integration in DevOps?

Ans. Continuous Integration (CI) is a crucial practice in DevOps that focuses on the frequent and automated integration of code changes from multiple developers into a shared codebase. Its primary objective is to identify issues and bugs early in the development cycle, thereby facilitating faster resolution.

CI automates the integration and testing of code changes, which reduces the likelihood of errors and saves time. A shared repository and automated build system promote collaboration and communication among developers, leading to improved code quality and faster development.

By continuously integrating code changes, developers can ensure that the application is always in a state to release, facilitating faster and more efficient deployment. Overall, CI is a key component of a successful DevOps strategy, enabling teams to deliver high-quality software rapidly and consistently.

20. Describe the difference between continuous deployment and continuous delivery.

Ans. Continuous Delivery (CD) is a DevOps practice that automates building, testing, and preparing software changes for release. However, these changes are not automatically deployed to production. Instead, the development team or business stakeholders must manually approve and deploy the changes after a human review. This improves quality control and reduces the risk of issues and errors, whereas Continuous Deployment (CDep) is a practice that automates building, testing, and deploying software changes to production as soon as they are ready. This results in a faster and more efficient delivery process. 

Advanced AWS DevOps Interview Questions

21. How can DevOps be used to improve security in the software development process?

Ans. DevOps practices can significantly enhance security in the software development process by integrating security measures at every stage of the development lifecycle. Here are some ways DevOps can achieve this:

• Collaboration: DevOps places a high emphasis on collaboration between development, operations, and security teams. Through this, they can share knowledge and expertise, ensuring that security practices are embedded into the software development process.
   
• Automation: DevOps automates security testing and scanning, detecting vulnerabilities early in the development process. This includes code, infrastructure, and application security testing, allowing teams to remediate security issues quickly.
   
• Continuous monitoring: DevOps promotes continuous monitoring of applications and infrastructure, enabling real-time detection of security incidents. Quick response to potential threats helps mitigate damages caused by security incidents.
   
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): IaC tools automate the creation and configuration of infrastructure, reducing the risk of human error. This also enables teams to track and audit infrastructure changes, improving security.
   
• Secure coding practices: DevOps advocates for adopting secure coding practices, such as threat modelling, code reviews, and security testing. These practices help identify and address security vulnerabilities before they impact production, ensuring secure software systems.

22. What is the importance of automation in DevOps?

Ans. In DevOps, automation is important as it enables teams to optimize processes, minimize manual efforts, and enhance efficiency. We have listed some reasons why automation is indispensable in DevOps:

• Acceleration: It allows DevOps teams to streamline the building, testing, and deployment of applications, thus reducing the time and effort required. 
   
• Improved efficiency: Automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks allows DevOps teams to focus on more complex and high-value work, increasing productivity and reducing errors.
   
• Consistency and repeatability: Automation ensures that processes are consistent and repeatable, essential for deploying applications at scale. This reduces the risk of errors, improves quality, and ensures consistent deployment across various environments.
   
• Continuous improvement: By automating testing and deployment processes, DevOps teams can gather feedback and data on application performance, utilizing it to drive continuous improvement.

23. What are the different phases in DevOps?

Ans. DevOps is a software development methodology prioritizes collaboration and communication between development and operations teams. It involves a series of key phases, each with specific objectives and tasks:

1. Plan: This phase involves working with stakeholders to establish project requirements, goals, and timelines. It also includes creating a plan for implementation, testing, and deployment.
    
2. Code: The code phase involves writing and testing the actual code for the application. Developers collaborate with other team members to ensure the code meets project requirements.
    
3. Build: The code is built into executable software and tested to verify its functionality. Automation can be utilized to expedite and streamline the build process.
    
4. Test: The testing phase ensures that the application functions correctly and satisfies the project requirements. Various testing methods, like unit testing, are typically employed.
    
5. Deploy: Once the application is totally tested and ready for production, it is deployed. DevOps teams use automation tools to facilitate a rapid and effective deployment process while closely monitoring the deployment to ensure its success.
    
6. Operate: The application is monitored to verify its functionality and meet user needs. The team quickly addresses issues and continuously improves the application's performance and reliability.
    
7. Monitor: Finally, the monitoring phase tracks the application's performance, detecting and addressing any problems. This information is used to optimize and improve the application continually.

24. What are some strategies for automating code deployments in AWS?

Ans. Automating code deployments in AWS can be achieved using several strategies, each with unique benefits.

•  One common approach is continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), which involves automatically testing and deploying code changes to production using tools like AWS CodePipeline, AWS CodeBuild, and AWS CodeDeploy.
   
• Another strategy is infrastructure as code (IaC), where entire environments can be created and deployed automatically by defining the infrastructure using tools like AWS CloudFormation or Terraform. This includes the creation of EC2 instances, load balancers, security groups, and more.
   
• To enable zero-downtime deployments and easy rollbacks, the blue/green deployment approach can be used. This involves creating two identical environments, one for production (green) and the other for testing (blue), and switching traffic from blue to green once testing is complete.
   
• Canary deployments are another approach that involves routing a small percentage of traffic to a new deployment to test its stability and performance. If successful, the percentage of traffic is gradually increased until the new deployment serves all traffic.
   
• Finally, serverless deployments using AWS Lambda functions and other serverless services can deploy code without infrastructure management, enabling fast and efficient deployments with automatic scaling based on demand.

25. Name some major companies using AWS DevOps.

Ans.  Many major companies are using AWS DevOps, including:

• Netflix: It uses various AWS tools, including Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, and AWS Lambda, to power its streaming service.
   
• Airbnb: It manages its infrastructure and automates deployments using tools like AWS Elastic Beanstalk and AWS CodeDeploy.
   
• Intuit: The financial software company uses AWS DevOps to accelerate its software delivery process, leveraging AWS CloudFormation and AWS CodePipeline to automate infrastructure and code deployments.
   
• Adobe: It speeds up its software development and deployment processes, focusing on continuous integration and delivery using AWS tools like AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodePipeline, and AWS CodeBuild.
   
• Expedia: It automates its infrastructure and software deployments using AWS Elastic Beanstalk and AWS CloudFormation.

26. Write some features of the AWS Control Tower?

Ans. AWS Control Tower is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) service designed to help set up and manage a secure and compliant multi-account AWS environment using pre-packaged and customizable best practices. 

• This service offers a centralized portal for account provisioning, management, and monitoring, along with pre-configured security and compliance rules that adhere to industry standards and best practices. 
   
• With AWS Control Tower, users can automate the process of setting up a secure and compliant landing zone using best practices for account structure, networking, security, and governance. 
   
• Additionally, AWS Control Tower allows users to customize and enforce policies across their AWS environment to ensure compliance with their organization's standards and best practices. 
   
• This service provides continuous monitoring and reporting on the user's AWS environment to ensure the accounts are secure and compliant. 
   
• Lastly, they offer centralized governance for compliance management across the user's AWS environment, enabling access, policies, and compliance to be managed from a single console.

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

Ans. AWS Key Management Service (KMS) is a managed service designed to help in the creation and administration of encryption keys, which are critical to protecting our data. KMS allows us to manage the entire lifecycle of our keys, including their creation, rotation, and revocation. It provides encryption capabilities for data at rest and in transit across several AWS services, such as Amazon S3, etc.

KMS leverages Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) to ensure the best possible security for your keys and features built-in auditing and monitoring functionality to help you meet regulatory requirements. You can tailor your key management strategy with KMS, either using AWS-managed keys, customer-managed keys, or both. Additionally, you can use KMS to manage access permissions for your keys, which lets you grant specific users or AWS services access to your keys while also ensuring proper segregation of duties. Overall, KMS provides a scalable and secure approach to key management, allowing you to safeguard your data with ease. 

28. Write the steps to use AWS CodeBuild.

Ans. AWS CodeBuild is a managed continuous integration service that streamlines the build, test, and deployment processes for developers. By automating these processes, CodeBuild provides a flexible and scalable build system that saves time and reduces errors.

These are the essential steps to use AWS CodeBuild:

1. Create a Build project 

2. Set up the Build environment 

3. Configure build settings

4. Initiate a build

5. Monitor the build progress

6. Deploy the build artefacts

29. What is AWS autoscaling, and how it works?

Ans. AWS autoscaling is a powerful feature provided by Amazon Web Services that automatically adjusts our compute resources to meet the needs of your application. By adding or removing EC2 instances in response to traffic to your application, it ensures that your application has sufficient resources to operate efficiently.

Autoscaling is accomplished by setting policies that define the minimum and maximum instances of resources. These scaling policies are created using various metrics, including CPU utilization, network traffic, or custom metrics. Autoscaling continuously monitors these metrics and makes necessary adjustments by adding or removing instances.

It is an excellent service for optimizing our expenditure as we only have to pay for what we actually need. When the demand for resources decreases, AWS automatically revokes the extra resources, thus saving our cost.

Overall, AWS autoscaling is a flexible and effective tool that allows your application to handle varying traffic levels and maintain optimal performance.

30. What is docker? Also, explain its architecture and use cases.

Ans. Docker is an open-source platform that simplifies the creation, deployment, and operation of applications within portable containers. Containers are self-contained units that package everything needed to run an application, including code, libraries, and configuration settings.

The three primary components of Docker are:

• Docker Engine: This is the central part of Docker that handles the running and management of containers. Developers can use a command-line tool and a server to create and manage containers.
   
• Docker Hub: A cloud-based service where developers can store and share container images. This repository functions like a vast library of container images, which is accessible to everyone to utilize for their applications.
   
• Docker Compose: A tool used for simplifying the creation and operation of complicated applications that consist of several interconnected containers.

Docker has numerous use cases, such as:

1. Microservices: Docker is highly suitable for building complex applications made up of numerous smaller services that can run independently within their own container. This approach makes it simpler to manage and scale different parts of the application separately.

2. DevOps: Docker is an essential component of several DevOps workflows, as it facilitates the creation of consistent environments for development, testing, and production.

3. Cloud Migration: Docker simplifies the process of transferring applications to the cloud because containers can be easily deployed on any cloud platform.

Conclusion

In this article, we discussed some top important AWS DevOps interview questions and their answers. Apart from this, we should know about the practical implementation of AWS DevOps tools. 

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