Preparing for your first AWS interview? AWS is one of the most in-demand cloud skills today, and companies hiring freshers for Cloud Support, Junior Cloud Engineer, DevOps Trainee or Cloud Associate roles ask basic-to-intermediate AWS questions. Here is a curated list of the most frequently asked AWS interview questions for freshers with clear, simple answers.
Basic AWS Interview Questions
1. What is Cloud Computing?
On-demand delivery of IT resources (servers, storage, databases, networking, software) over the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Instead of buying and managing physical data centers, you rent resources from a provider like AWS.
2. What is AWS?
Amazon Web Services — the world’s leading cloud computing platform, providing 200+ fully featured services from data centers globally: compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning, security and more.
3. What are the main advantages of AWS?
Scalability, flexibility, cost-effectiveness (pay only for what you use), high availability and reliability, security, global infrastructure, and a wide range of services.
4. What is the AWS Global Infrastructure?
Regions (geographical areas, e.g. us-east-1, ap-south-1), Availability Zones (isolated data centers within a Region), and Edge Locations (used by CloudFront for content delivery).
5. Difference between Region and Availability Zone?
A Region is a separate geographic area. An Availability Zone is one or more discrete data centers within a Region with redundant power, networking and connectivity.
Compute
6. What is Amazon EC2?
Elastic Compute Cloud provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud, letting you launch virtual servers (instances) on demand.
7. What are the different EC2 instance types?
General Purpose, Compute Optimized, Memory Optimized, Storage Optimized and Accelerated Computing instances.
8. What is an AMI?
An Amazon Machine Image is a template containing the software configuration (OS, application server, applications) required to launch an EC2 instance.
9. Difference between stopping and terminating an EC2 instance?
Stop: the instance shuts down but can be restarted, and EBS volumes persist. Terminate: the instance is permanently deleted and the root volume is deleted by default.
10. What is Auto Scaling?
AWS Auto Scaling automatically adjusts the number of EC2 instances based on demand to maintain performance and optimise cost.
Storage
11. What is Amazon S3?
Simple Storage Service — object storage offering industry-leading scalability, availability, security and performance.
12. What are the storage classes in S3?
S3 Standard, Intelligent-Tiering, Standard-IA, One Zone-IA, Glacier Instant Retrieval, Glacier Flexible Retrieval and Glacier Deep Archive.
13. Difference between S3 and EBS?
S3 is object storage accessible from anywhere — static files, backups, data lakes. EBS is block storage attached to a single EC2 instance — databases and boot volumes.
14. What is EFS?
Elastic File System — a scalable, elastic file storage service that can be mounted on multiple EC2 instances simultaneously (a shared file system).
Databases
15. What is Amazon RDS?
Relational Database Service makes it easy to set up, operate and scale relational databases in the cloud (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server and Amazon Aurora).
16. Difference between RDS and DynamoDB?
RDS is a relational (SQL) database for structured data with joins. DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL key-value and document database — highly scalable with low latency.
17. What is Amazon Aurora?
A MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud — significantly faster than standard MySQL/PostgreSQL and fully managed by RDS.
Networking
18. What is Amazon VPC?
Virtual Private Cloud lets you provision a logically isolated section of AWS where you launch resources in a virtual network you define.
19. What is a Security Group?
A virtual firewall for your EC2 instances that controls inbound and outbound traffic at the instance level.
20. Difference between Security Group and NACL?
Security Group: stateful, instance level. NACL (Network ACL): stateless, subnet level.
21. What is an Internet Gateway?
A component that allows communication between instances in your VPC and the internet.
22. What is CloudFront?
A fast content delivery network (CDN) that securely delivers data, videos, applications and APIs to customers globally with low latency.
Identity & Security
23. What is IAM?
Identity and Access Management lets you securely manage access to AWS services and resources by creating users, groups, roles and policies.
24. Difference between IAM User and IAM Role?
IAM User: a permanent identity for a person or application. IAM Role: a temporary identity that can be assumed by users, applications or services.
25. What is the principle of Least Privilege?
Granting only the minimum permissions necessary for a user or role to perform their tasks.
Other Important Questions
26. What is Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)?
ELB automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets (EC2 instances, containers, etc.) to ensure high availability.
27. What are the types of Load Balancers in AWS?
Application Load Balancer (ALB), Network Load Balancer (NLB), Gateway Load Balancer and the older Classic Load Balancer.
28. What is Amazon CloudWatch?
A monitoring and observability service that collects metrics, logs and events from AWS resources and applications.
29. What is AWS Lambda?
A serverless compute service that runs your code without provisioning or managing servers — you pay only for the compute time you consume.
30. What is the Shared Responsibility Model?
AWS is responsible for security OF the cloud (infrastructure); customers are responsible for security IN the cloud (data, configuration, access management, etc.).
Bonus Tips for Freshers
- Be clear with the basics — Region, AZ, EC2, S3, VPC, IAM.
- Understand differences between popular services — S3 vs EBS vs EFS, RDS vs DynamoDB.
- Learn simple real-world use cases and practise explaining answers in plain language.
- Mention any hands-on Free-Tier projects you have built.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is cloud computing?
On-demand delivery of IT resources — servers, storage, databases, networking, software — over the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing, instead of buying and managing physical data centers.
What is AWS?
Amazon Web Services is the world’s leading cloud platform, offering 200+ fully featured services from data centers globally — compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning, security and more.
What is the difference between a Region and an Availability Zone?
A Region is a separate geographic area; an Availability Zone is one or more discrete data centers within a Region with redundant power, networking and connectivity.
What is the difference between stopping and terminating an EC2 instance?
Stop shuts the instance down but it can be restarted and its EBS volumes persist. Terminate permanently deletes the instance and, by default, deletes the root volume.
What is the difference between S3 and EBS?
S3 is object storage accessible from anywhere, ideal for static files, backups and data lakes. EBS is block storage attached to a single EC2 instance, ideal for databases and boot volumes.
What is the difference between a Security Group and a NACL?
A Security Group is a stateful virtual firewall at the instance level. A Network ACL is stateless and operates at the subnet level.
What is the difference between an IAM User and an IAM Role?
An IAM User is a permanent identity for a person or application. An IAM Role is a temporary identity that can be assumed by users, applications or AWS services.
What is the AWS Shared Responsibility Model?
AWS is responsible for security OF the cloud (infrastructure); the customer is responsible for security IN the cloud (data, configuration, access management, etc.).
