AWS / Cloud Computing MCQ
Test your AWS and cloud computing knowledge with 100 multiple choice questions covering fundamentals to advanced concepts, with instant feedback and explanations.
What is "cloud computing"?
2What does "AWS" stand for?
3What is "Amazon EC2" primarily used for?
4What is "Amazon S3" used for?
5What is a "Region" in AWS?
6What is an "Availability Zone" (AZ)?
7What is "IAM" in AWS used for?
8What is the AWS "root user"?
9What is the difference between "horizontal scaling" and "vertical scaling"?
10What is "Amazon RDS"?
11What is the "pay-as-you-go" pricing model in cloud computing?
12What is a "Virtual Private Cloud" (VPC) in AWS?
13What is the difference between "public cloud" and "private cloud"?
14What is "Infrastructure as a Service" (IaaS)?
15What is "Platform as a Service" (PaaS)?
16What is "Software as a Service" (SaaS)?
17What is "Amazon CloudFront"?
18What is the purpose of an "Elastic Load Balancer" (ELB) in AWS?
19What does "Amazon EBS" provide?
20What is "Amazon Route 53"?
21What is the purpose of "tags" in AWS?
22What is "serverless computing"?
23What is "AWS Lambda"?
24What is the function of a "Security Group" in AWS?
25What is the "AWS Free Tier"?
26What is "elasticity" in the context of cloud computing?
27What is the purpose of "Amazon CloudWatch"?
28What is a "subnet" in the context of a VPC?
29What is the purpose of "Amazon SNS"?
30What is "Amazon SQS" used for?
31What is the "shared responsibility model" in cloud security?
32What is an "Amazon Machine Image" (AMI)?
33What is the purpose of "Amazon DynamoDB"?
34What is the function of an "Internet Gateway" in a VPC?
35What does the term "on-demand instance" mean in EC2 pricing?
36What is the main benefit of using "Auto Scaling" with EC2?
37What is the difference between "Amazon S3" storage classes like "Standard" and "Glacier"?
38What is the purpose of "AWS CloudFormation"?
39What is a "multi-cloud" strategy?
40What is the purpose of "Amazon EC2 instance types" (e.g. t3, m5, c5)?
What is the difference between an IAM "Role" and an IAM "User"?
2What is the difference between a "Network ACL" and a "Security Group" in a VPC?
3What is "Amazon ECS" and how does it relate to containers?
4What is the difference between "AWS Fargate" and running containers on EC2 directly via ECS?
5What is an "S3 bucket policy" and how does it differ from an IAM policy?
6What is "Amazon VPC Peering"?
7What is the purpose of "Auto Scaling Groups" (ASG) and "Launch Templates/Configurations"?
8What is "Amazon CloudTrail" used for?
9What is the difference between "stateless" and "stateful" applications in the context of cloud architecture?
10What is "Amazon ElastiCache" used for?
11What is "cross-region replication" in S3, and what is a common use case?
12What is the purpose of "AWS Auto Scaling" health checks, and what happens when an instance fails one?
13What is "AWS Key Management Service" (KMS) used for?
14What is the purpose of "AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store"?
15What does it mean for an AWS service to be "Multi-AZ" (e.g. "RDS Multi-AZ")?
16What is the difference between "RDS Read Replicas" and "Multi-AZ" deployments?
17What is "AWS Elastic Beanstalk"?
18What is the purpose of "VPC Endpoints"?
19What is the purpose of a "NAT Gateway" in a VPC?
20What is "Amazon Aurora"?
21What is the purpose of "Reserved Instances" in EC2 pricing?
22What is the purpose of "Spot Instances" in EC2, and what is their main trade-off?
23What is the purpose of "Amazon API Gateway"?
24What is the difference between "vertical" and "horizontal" Auto Scaling approaches in AWS, and which does AWS Auto Scaling primarily support?
25What is "AWS Organizations" used for?
26What is the purpose of "Amazon S3 Lifecycle Policies"?
27What is the purpose of "Amazon EFS" and how does it differ from EBS?
28What is "Amazon CloudWatch Alarms" used for, and what actions can they trigger?
29What is the purpose of "AWS Well-Architected Framework"?
30What does "idempotency" mean in the context of API design, and why is it important for services like AWS Lambda?
31What is the purpose of "Amazon GuardDuty"?
32What is the difference between "synchronous" and "asynchronous" invocation in AWS Lambda?
33What is the purpose of "AWS Trusted Advisor"?
34What is the purpose of "Elastic IP addresses" in AWS?
35What is the difference between "AWS CloudFormation" and "AWS CDK" (Cloud Development Kit)?
36What is the purpose of "Amazon RDS automated backups" and "snapshots"?
37What does "least privilege" mean as a security principle in AWS IAM policy design?
38What is the purpose of "Amazon SES"?
39What is the purpose of "AWS Secrets Manager" and how does it differ from Parameter Store for handling credentials?
40What is the purpose of "Amazon EventBridge" (formerly CloudWatch Events)?
How does "DNS-based failover" with Amazon Route 53 work in a multi-region active-passive architecture?
2What is the significance of "eventual consistency" versus "strong consistency" in distributed storage systems like S3 or DynamoDB?
3How does "AWS Global Accelerator" differ from "Amazon CloudFront"?
4What is a "cold start" in AWS Lambda, and what factors influence its duration?
5How does "DynamoDB" achieve horizontal scalability through "partitioning", and what role does the "partition key" play?
6What is the purpose of "VPC Flow Logs", and what information do they capture?
7How do "Service Control Policies" (SCPs) in AWS Organizations interact with IAM policies to determine effective permissions?
8What is the purpose of "AWS Step Functions", and how does it relate to orchestrating Lambda functions?
9How does "Amazon S3 Object Lock" support compliance requirements such as WORM (Write Once Read Many)?
10What is the difference between "AWS PrivateLink" and a "VPC Peering" connection for accessing services across VPCs or accounts?
11How does "Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration" improve upload performance, and what underlying technology does it use?
12What is the purpose of "AWS Lambda Provisioned Concurrency", and what trade-off does it introduce?
13How does "cross-account IAM role assumption" work, and what is the purpose of an "external ID" in this context?
14What is the difference between "AWS Direct Connect" and a "Site-to-Site VPN" for connecting on-premises infrastructure to a VPC?
15How does "DynamoDB Global Tables" provide multi-region replication, and what consistency model does it use?
16What is the purpose of "AWS Shield" and "AWS WAF", and how do they complement each other?
17How does "AWS Lambda" handle concurrency limits, and what is the difference between "account-level concurrency" and "reserved concurrency" for a specific function?
18What is "blue-green deployment", and how can AWS services like Elastic Beanstalk, CodeDeploy, or Route 53 support it?
19How does "AWS Config" differ from "AWS CloudTrail" in terms of what they track and their primary use cases?
20What is the significance of "idle timeout" and "connection draining" (deregistration delay) when an instance is removed from a Load Balancer target group?