AWS Solutions Architect: Key Services & Concepts

What is the primary difference between S3 Standard and S3 Glacier?

S3 Standard is designed for frequent access with low latency, while S3 Glacier is for long-term archival with retrieval times ranging from minutes to hours.

What is the purpose of an IAM Role?

An IAM Role is an identity with specific permissions that can be assumed by users, applications, or AWS services to perform actions without using long-term credentials.

When should you use EC2 Spot Instances?

Spot Instances should be used for fault-tolerant, flexible applications (like batch processing) where you want to minimize costs by using spare AWS capacity.

What does AWS CloudTrail record?

AWS CloudTrail records API calls and account activity, providing a history of actions taken by users, roles, or AWS services for auditing and compliance.

What is the function of an Internet Gateway (IGW) in a VPC?

An Internet Gateway allows communication between instances in a VPC and the internet, acting as a target in VPC route tables for internet-bound traffic.

What is the main benefit of Amazon Route 53?

Route 53 is a highly available and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service that routes end users to internet applications.

What is the scope of an Amazon S3 bucket name?

S3 bucket names must be globally unique across all AWS accounts and regions.

When would you choose an Application Load Balancer (ALB) over a Network Load Balancer (NLB)?

Choose an ALB for HTTP/HTTPS traffic requiring advanced routing at Layer 7, whereas NLB is for high-performance TCP/UDP traffic at Layer 4.

How does Amazon EFS differ from Amazon EBS?

EFS is a managed network file system that can be mounted by multiple EC2 instances simultaneously, while EBS is a block storage volume typically attached to a single instance.

What is the primary use case for RDS Read Replicas?

Read Replicas are used to scale the read performance of a database by offloading read traffic from the primary instance.