Cloud Deployment & Architecture

🔹 Cloud Deployment & Architecture

1. Scenario: Your application is experiencing high traffic spikes, causing downtime.

Q: How will you handle this in a cloud environment?
A:

  • Implement Auto Scaling to dynamically adjust resources.
  • Use Load Balancers (AWS ALB, GCP LB, Azure LB) to distribute traffic.
  • Optimize database performance with caching (Redis, Memcached).
  • Move static assets to CDN (CloudFront, Cloud CDN, Azure CDN).

2. Scenario: You need a highly available multi-region deployment.

Q: What cloud architecture will you use?
A:

  • Deploy in multiple regions with a Global Load Balancer.
  • Use Database Replication (e.g., Aurora Global, CosmosDB Multi-Region).
  • Implement Route 53 Failover Routing (AWS) / Traffic Manager (Azure).
  • Ensure object storage is geo-redundant (AWS S3 CRR, Azure GRS, GCP Multi-Region Buckets).

3. Scenario: A cloud-hosted web app is slow for global users.

Q: How will you optimize performance?
A:

  • Deploy edge caching via CDN (CloudFront, Azure CDN, Cloud CDN).
  • Enable DNS-based load balancing (e.g., AWS Route 53, GCP Cloud DNS).
  • Use Proximity Placement Groups for low latency compute.
  • Optimize database reads using Read Replicas.

4. Scenario: You need a cloud-native microservices architecture.

Q: What services will you use?
A:

  • Container Orchestration: Kubernetes (EKS, GKE, AKS).
  • Service Mesh: Istio, Linkerd, AWS App Mesh.
  • Serverless: AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, Google Cloud Functions.
  • API Gateway: AWS API Gateway, Azure API Management.

🔹 Security & Compliance

5. Scenario: A developer accidentally exposes cloud credentials in a public GitHub repo.

Q: How will you mitigate the risk?
A:

  • Immediately revoke & rotate the compromised credentials.
  • Use AWS IAM Access Analyzer, Azure Security Center, GCP IAM Insights to detect misuse.
  • Implement secrets management (AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, GCP Secret Manager).
  • Enable MFA & least privilege access for IAM users.

6. Scenario: You suspect unauthorized access to your cloud resources.

Q: How will you investigate?
A:

  • Check Cloud Audit Logs (AWS CloudTrail, Azure Monitor, GCP Cloud Audit Logs).
  • Analyze IAM Role & Permission Changes.
  • Review Network Traffic (AWS VPC Flow Logs, Azure NSG Logs, GCP VPC Logs).
  • Enable intrusion detection (AWS GuardDuty, Azure Sentinel, Chronicle SIEM).

7. Scenario: A customer requires HIPAA compliance for healthcare data.

Q: How will you ensure compliance in the cloud?
A:

  • Use encrypted storage (AWS S3 SSE, Azure Storage Encryption, GCP CMEK).
  • Enable VPC peering & Private Link for secure communication.
  • Implement IAM policies with least privilege.
  • Conduct regular security audits & compliance scans (AWS Artifact, Azure Compliance Manager, GCP Security Command Center).

🔹 Cost Optimization & Billing

8. Scenario: Your cloud bill suddenly increases significantly.

Q: How will you analyze and reduce costs?
A:

  • Use Cost Explorer (AWS), Cost Analysis (Azure), Cost Breakdown (GCP).
  • Identify unused or underutilized resources (e.g., idle EC2, oversized VMs).
  • Switch to Reserved Instances, Spot Instances, or Savings Plans.
  • Enable Auto Scaling & Rightsizing recommendations.

9. Scenario: Your cloud storage costs are increasing rapidly.

Q: How can you optimize storage costs?
A:

  • Move infrequent access data to Glacier/Coldline storage.
  • Enable Lifecycle Policies to archive/delete old data.
  • Use Deduplication & Compression (Azure Blob Tiers, S3 Intelligent-Tiering).
  • Reduce EBS volume size if underutilized.

🔹 Networking & Connectivity

10. Scenario: You need a hybrid cloud setup with on-premises and cloud connectivity.

Q: What networking solution will you use?
A:

  • AWS Direct Connect / Azure ExpressRoute / GCP Cloud Interconnect.
  • VPN Gateway for secure tunnels.
  • Hybrid DNS resolution (Route 53 Resolver, Azure Private DNS, GCP Cloud DNS).
  • SD-WAN for optimized cloud access.

11. Scenario: A multi-region application faces high latency.

Q: How will you improve latency?
A:

  • Use AWS Global Accelerator, Azure Front Door, GCP Cloud CDN.
  • Deploy regional edge caches for static content.
  • Implement latency-based DNS routing.

🔹 Data Management & Storage

12. Scenario: A user accidentally deletes critical data from cloud storage.

Q: How will you recover?
A:

  • Enable Object Versioning (S3, Azure Blob, GCP Cloud Storage).
  • Restore from Backup (AWS Backup, Azure Backup, GCP Snapshots).
  • Use Recycle Bin (Azure Storage Soft Delete, GCP Retention Policies).

13. Scenario: Your database experiences performance degradation.

Q: How will you troubleshoot?
A:

  • Enable Read Replicas for high read traffic.
  • Use Database Caching (AWS ElastiCache, Azure Redis, GCP MemoryStore).
  • Optimize Query Performance with Indexing.

🔹 Serverless & Containers

14. Scenario: A Lambda function is taking too long to execute.

Q: How will you optimize it?
A:

  • Increase Memory Allocation to improve CPU power.
  • Optimize cold start time using Provisioned Concurrency.
  • Reduce function execution time by using efficient libraries.

15. Scenario: A Kubernetes pod keeps restarting.

Q: How will you debug?
A:

  • Check kubectl logs & describe pod output.
  • Analyze OOMKill (Out of Memory), CrashLoopBackOff errors.
  • Ensure proper liveness & readiness probes.

🔹 Disaster Recovery & Backup

16. Scenario: A cloud region goes down, causing downtime.

Q: How will you handle disaster recovery?
A:

  • Enable Multi-Region Failover with traffic routing.
  • Set up Cross-Region Replication for Databases & Storage.
  • Use Backup & Restore solutions (AWS Backup, Azure Site Recovery).

17. Scenario: A ransomware attack encrypts cloud-hosted files.

Q: What will you do?
A:

  • Restore from immutable backups (AWS S3 Object Lock, Azure Backup Immutable Vault).
  • Enable cloud-native security solutions (AWS GuardDuty, Azure Defender).

🔹 Cloud Automation & DevOps

18. Scenario: You need to automate cloud infrastructure provisioning.

Q: What tools will you use?
A:

  • Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Azure ARM, GCP Deployment Manager.
  • CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, AWS CodePipeline, Azure DevOps).

19. Scenario: Your team accidentally deploys an untested configuration to production.

Q: How will you prevent this?
A:

  • Use Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with staged deployments.
  • Implement Cloud Policy Guardrails (AWS SCP, Azure Policy, GCP Organization Policies).

20. Scenario: You need to monitor cloud resource performance.

Q: What tools will you use?
A:

  • AWS CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, GCP Operations Suite.
  • Enable Automated Alerts & Dashboards.