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AWS Interview Prep

Use this page as a revision map. Every tutorial in the AWS track already ends with interview questions — work those first, then stress-test the themes below.

How to practise

  1. Answer out loud in two minutes without notes
  2. Draw the VPC, IAM, and data flow on a whiteboard
  3. Name the failure mode and the first three AWS CLI commands
  4. Tie the topic to cost, security, and the shared responsibility model

High-yield themes

  • IAM users vs roles vs instance profiles
  • Shared responsibility model (AWS vs customer)
  • Public vs private subnets and routing (IGW vs NAT)
  • Security groups vs NACLs — stateful vs stateless
  • SSM Session Manager vs bastion SSH
  • S3 Block Public Access and bucket policies
  • ALB vs NLB selection and health checks
  • RDS cost, Multi-AZ, and backup windows
  • CloudWatch metrics vs logs vs alarms
  • CloudTrail for API audit and AccessDenied triage
  • Free Tier hygiene and billing surprises (NAT, ALB, RDS)
  • First-hour unreachable app: IAM deny vs SG vs route table

Hands-on prompts interviewers love

  • Walk through IAM and VPC Triage as if it were a production incident
  • Explain how you would administer EC2 with no port 22 open (SSM and S3 lab)
  • Compare two designs: NAT Gateway vs VPC endpoints for private S3 access
  • Defend a trade-off: ALB path routing vs separate NLB for TCP workload