Cloud Computing Interview Questions And Answers

Please find below list of Cloud Computing Interview Questions And Answers as follows:

What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing is an internet based new age computer technology. It is the next stage technology that uses the clouds to provide the services whenever and wherever the user need it.It provides a method to access several servers world wide.

What are the benefits of Cloud Computing?

Efficiency; Efficiency in business operations is achieved within the following ways through the utilization of cloud computing:

Accessibility; Cloud computing facilitates the access of applications and data from any location worldwide and any device with an online connection.

Cost savings; Cloud computing over businesses with scalable computing resources hence saving them on the worth of acquiring and maintaining them. These resources are purchased on a pay-as-you-go basis which suggests businesses pay just for the resources they use. This has proven to be less expensive than acquiring the resources on their own.

Security; Cloud providers especially those private cloud services which have strived to implement the simplest security standards and procedures to guard client’s data saved within the cloud.

Disaster recovery; Cloud computing is the foremost efficient means for little, medium and even large enterprises to backup and restore their data and applications in a fast and reliable way.

Flexibility and Increased collaboration; with the capabilities of cloud computing, individuals from different places can collaborate in business projects without necessarily having to satisfy.

What is cloud?

The cloud is made up of servers and a combination of networks, storage, service, hardware that help companies to save their money and convenience for users.

It has three users :

End users

Business management users

cloud service provider

What are the different data types used in cloud computing?

The various cloud data types include – emails, text, Boolean, decimal, locale, number, date, images, contacts, etc.

Which are the different layers that define cloud architecture?

The 4 layers of Cloud

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Function as a service (FaaS)

What are some of the key features of Cloud Computing?

The following are some of the key features of cloud computing:

Agility: Helps in quick and inexpensive re-provisioning of resources.

Location Independence: This means that the resources can be accessed from everywhere.

Multi-Tenancy: The resources are shared amongst a large group of users.

Reliability: Resources and computation can be dependable for accessibility.

Scalability: Dynamic provisioning of data helps in scaling.

What do you mean by cloud delivery models?

Cloud delivery models are models that represent the computing environments. These are as follows:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is the delivery of services, including an operating system, storage, networking, and various utility software elements, on a request basis.

Platform as a Service (PaaS): Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a mechanism for combining Infrastructure as a Service with an abstracted set of middleware services, software development, and deployment tools. These allow the organization to have a consistent way to create and deploy applications on a cloud or on-premises environment.

Software as a Service (SaaS): Software as a Service (SaaS) is a business application created and hosted by a provider in a multi-tenant model.

Function as a Service (FaaS): Function as a Service (FaaS) gives a platform for customers to build, manage and run app functionalities without the difficulty of maintaining infrastructure. One can thus achieve a “serverless” architecture.

What are the different versions of the cloud?

There are two primary deployment models of the cloud: Public and Private.

Public Cloud: The set of hardware, networking, storage, services, applications, and interfaces owned and operated by a third party for use by other companies or individuals is the public cloud. These commercial providers create a highly scalable data center that hides the details of the underlying infrastructure from the consumer. Public clouds are viable because they offer many options for computing, storage, and a rich set of other services.

Private Cloud: The set of hardware, networking, storage, services, applications, and interfaces owned and operated by an organization for the use of its employees, partners, or customers is the private cloud. This can be created and managed by a third party for the exclusive use of one enterprise. The private cloud is a highly controlled environment not open for public consumption. Thus, it sits behind a firewall.

Hybrid Cloud: Most companies use a combination of private computing resources and public services, called the hybrid cloud environment.

Multi-Cloud: Some companies, in addition, also use a variety of public cloud services to support the different developer and business units – called a multi-cloud environment

Which platforms are used for large scale cloud computing?

The following platforms are used for large scale cloud computing:

Apache Hadoop

MapReduce

What are the Cloud Storage Levels?

Cloud storage device mechanisms provide common levels of data storage, such as:

Files – These are collections of data that are grouped into files that are located in folders.

Blocks – A block is the smallest unit of data that is individually accessible. It is the lowest level of storage and the closest to the hardware.

Datasets – Data sets organized into a table-based, delimited, or record format.

Objects – Data and the associated metadata with it are organized as web-based resources.

Each of the above data storage levels is associated with a certain type of technical interface. This interface corresponds to a particular type of cloud storage device and the cloud storage service used to expose its API.

What are serverless components in cloud computing?

Serverless components in cloud computing allow the building of applications to take place without the complexity of managing the infrastructure. One can write code without having provision to a server.

Serverless machines take care of virtual machines and container management. Multithreading, hardware allocating are also taken care of by the serverless components.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of serverless computing?

Serverless computing has the following advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages:

It is cost-effective.

The operations on serverless computing are simplified.

Serverless computing helps boost productivity.

It offers scaling options.

It involves zero server management.

Disadvantages:

Serverless code can cause response latency.

It is not ideal for high-computing operations because of resource limitations.

For serverless computing, the responsibility of security comes under the service company and not the consumer, which might be more vulnerable.

Debugging serverless code is a bit more challenging

What is SaaS (software as a service)?

Software as a service (SaaS) is a software distribution model in which a third-party provider hosts applications and makes them available to their customers over the Internet. SaaS is one of three main categories of cloud computing, alongside infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS)

What is Paas (platform as a service)?

Platform as a service (PaaS) is a cloud computing model wherein a third-party provider delivers hardware and software tools. These tools usually comprise those needed for the development of applications. PaaS services are provided to users over the internet. The provider hosts the hardware and software. As a result, PaaS gives users the flexibility to use service without installing hardware and software to run an application.

What is a private cloud?

A private cloud delivers similar advantages to public cloud-like scalability and self-service. In the private cloud, this is done by using a proprietary architecture. Private clouds focus on the needs and demands of a single organization.

What is the public cloud?

Be it a public or private cloud, the primary objective is to deliver services using the internet. Unlike a private cloud, public cloud services are third-party applications that can be used by anybody who wants to access them. The service may be free or be sold on demand.

Public clouds are open to people for use and deployment. For example Google and Amazon etc. The public clouds focus on a few layers like cloud application, providing infrastructure, and providing platform markets.

What are Hybrid Clouds?

A hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment where we can use the services available to us locally, use third-party private services, and public services as well to meet the demand. By allowing workloads to move between private and public clouds as computing needs and costs change, hybrid cloud gives businesses greater flexibility and more data deployment options.

Hybrid clouds are a combination of public clouds and private clouds. It is preferred over both clouds because it applies the most robust approach to implement cloud architecture. It includes the functionalities and features of both worlds. It allows organizations to create their cloud and allow them to give control over someone else as well.

What is the difference between cloud computing and mobile computing?

Cloud Computing is when you store your files and folders in a “cloud” on the Internet, this will give you the flexibility to access all your files and folders wherever you are in the world– but you do need a physical device with Internet access to access it.

Mobile computing is taking a physical device with you. This could be a laptop or mobile phone or some device. Mobile computing and cloud computing are somewhat analogous. Mobile computing uses the concept of cloud computing. Cloud computing provides the users with the data which they require while in mobile computing, applications run on the remote server and give the user access for storage and managing the data.

What are the security benefits of cloud computing?

Complete protection against DDoS: Distributed Denial of Service attacks have become very common and are attacking the cloud data of companies. So the cloud computing security ensures restricting traffic to the server. Traffic that can be a threat to the company and their data is thus averted.

Security of data: As data develops, data breaching becomes a significant issue and the servers become soft targets. The security solution of cloud data helps in protecting sensitive information and also helps the data to stay secure against a third party.

Flexibility feature: Cloud offers flexibility, and this makes it popular. The user has the flexibility to avoid server crashing in case of excess traffic. When the high traffic is over, the user can scale back to reduce the cost.

Cloud computing authorizes the application server, so it is used in identity management. It provides permissions to the users so that they can control the access of another user who is entering into the cloud environment

What are some large cloud providers and databases?

Following are the most used large cloud providers and databases:

– Google BigTable

– Amazon SimpleDB

– Cloud-based SQL

List the open-source cloud computing platform databases?

Following are the open-source cloud computing platform databases:

– MongoDB

– CouchDB

– LucidDB

Explain the difference between cloud and traditional data centers.

In a traditional data centre, the major drawback is the expenditure. A traditional data centre is comparatively expensive due to heating, hardware, and software issues. So, not only is the initial cost higher, but the maintenance cost is also a problem.

Cloud being scaled when there is an increase in demand. Mostly the expenditure is on the maintenance of the data centres, while these issues are not faced in cloud computing.

What do you mean by CaaS?

CaaS is a terminology used in the telecom industry as Communication As a Service. CaaS offers enterprise user features such as desktop call control, unified messaging, and desktop faxing.

What are the advantages of cloud services?

Following are the main advantages of cloud services:

Cost-saving: It helps in the utilization of investment in the corporate sector. So, it is cost saving.

Scalable and Robust: It helps in developing scalable and robust applications. Previously, the scaling took months, but now, scaling takes less time.

Time-saving: It helps in saving time regarding deployment and maintenance.

What is hypervisor in Cloud Computing?

Ans: It is a virtual machine screen that can logically manage resources for virtual machines. It allocates, partition, isolate or change with the program given as virtualization hypervisor. Hardware hypervisor allows having multiple guest Operating Systems running on a single host system at the same time.

It is also known as Virtual Machine Manager. There are two types of hypervisors as defined below:

Type 1: The guest Vm runs directly over the host hardware, e.g. Citrix XenServer, VMware ESXI.

Type 2: The guest Vm runs over hardware through a host OS, e.g. oracle virtual box, Vmware Player.

Disadvantages of SaaS cloud computing layer

1) Security

Actually, data is stored in the cloud, so security may be an issue for some users. However, cloud computing is not more secure than in-house deployment.

2) Latency issue

Since data and applications are stored in the cloud at a variable distance from the end-user, there is a possibility that there may be greater latency when interacting with the application compared to local deployment. Therefore, the SaaS model is not suitable for applications whose demand response time is in milliseconds.

3) Total Dependency on the Internet

Without an internet connection, most SaaS applications are not usable.

4) Switching between SaaS vendors is difficult

Switching SaaS vendors involves the difficult and slow task of transferring the very large data files over the internet and then converting and importing them into another SaaS also.

What is IaaS in Cloud Computing?

Ans: IaaS i.e. Infrastructure as a Service which is also known as Hardware as a Service. In this type of model, organizations usually give their IT infrastructures such as servers, processing, storage, virtual machines and other resources. Customers can access the resources very easily on the internet using the on-demand pay model.

IaaS cloud computing platform eliminates the need for every organization to maintain the IT infrastructure.

IaaS is divided into three aspects: public, private and hybrid. The private cloud can offer that infrastructure resides at the customer end, while the public cloud, is located at the cloud computing data Centre end and the hybrid cloud is a combination of both public and private cloud.

IaaS provides us with various services which are listed below:

Compute: Computing various services which are included as virtual CPUs, Virtual main memory for virtual machines at the user end.

Storage: IaaS provider provides back end support for storage for storing files.

Network: Network as a Service provides networking components such as routers, switches and bridges for virtual machines.

Load Balancers: it gives load balancing at the infrastructure layer.

Advantages of IaaS in Cloud Computing:

Shared Infrastructure

IaaS gives shared users to share the same physical infrastructure.

Web Access to the resources

IaaS allows IT users to access resources over the internet.

On demand as per usage model

Iaas providers provide services only as client’s pay as you go model.

Business model focus

Iaas Providers give business core organization focus rather than IT infra.

Update versions of Software

There is scalability of services provided as there is no worrisome of software upgrade and troubleshoot the issues related to IT infrastructure.

Disadvantages of IaaS in Cloud Computing

Security

Security is the main concern in IaaS as it is not 100percent sure.

Maintenance and up gradation

Although IaaS providers maintain the software but not for all.

Interoperability issues

It is difficult to migrate Virtual Machine form one IaaS provider to another, so customers experience problem related to vendor lock.

Main Iaas Cloud Service providers are Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform etc.

What is PaaS in Cloud Computing?

Ans: Platform as Service which is abbreviated as PaaS it is the runtime environment for developers to create, test, run and debug web applications. We can easily buy these web applications from the cloud service provider on a pay as you go basis and access them easily using the internet. There is back scalability which is managed by the cloud service provider, so end users do not need to worry about managing the infrastructure.

PaaS includes infrastructure, servers, storage and networking and platform-middleware, development tools, database management systems, and business intelligence to support the web application life cycle.

PaaS providers give support for programming languages, Applications frameworks, Databases and other tools

Advantages of PaaS in cloud computing

Simple Development: Paas allows developers to focus on development and innovation without worrying about infrastructure management.

Lower Risk: No need of investment on hardware equipment’s and software.

Prebuilt business functionality: Some Paas Providers have prebuilt framework so that users does not need to build everything from scratch and hence can directly start projects.

Instant Community: PaaS vendors have share community where developers can share experiences.

Scalability: Applications deployed can scale with one users

Disadvantages of PaaS in Cloud Computing

Vendor lock-in: Development according to the particular vendor can be easy but migration to another cloud provider can be a problem.

Data privacy: Corporate data, whether can be important or not, will always be private. It should always be an insecure environment.

Synchronization of system applications: We have integrated many applications with local and on the cloud, so there is the problem of increased complexity when mixing local data with cloud data.

Most PaaS cloud providers are Salesforce, Windows Azure, and Google App Engine etc.

What are Cloud-Native Applications?

‘Cloud native’ is a software framework designed with containers, microservices, dynamic orchestration, and also continuous delivery of software. Every part of the cloud-native application has within it its own container and is dynamically orchestrated with other containers to optimize the way the resources are utilized.

What is meant by Edge Computing?

Edge and cloud are complementary. These are both parts of a broader concept called the distributed cloud. A majority of those pursuing edge computing strategies are now viewing edge as part of their overall cloud strategy.

Edge computing, unlike cloud computing, is all about the physical location and issues related to latency. Cloud and edge combine the strengths of a centralized system, along with the advantages of distributed operations at the physical location where things and people connect. In IoT scenarios, the edge is very common. Cloud is different from the edge, in that it has never been about location. As opposed, it has always been about the independence of location.

What do you mean by encapsulation in cloud computing?

A container is a packaged software code along with all of its dependencies so that it can run consistently across clouds and on-premises. This packaging up of code is often called encapsulation. Encapsulating code is important for developers as they don’t have to develop code based on each individual environment.

What are the different Datacenters deployed for Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is made up of various data centers put together in a grid form. It consists of the data centers like:

Containerized Data Centers

Low-Density Data Centers

What are Containerized Data Centers?

Containerized Data Centers are the traditional data centers that allow a high level of customization with servers, mainframes, and other resources. These require planning, cooling, networking, and power to access and work.

What are Low-Density Data Centers?

Low-Density Data Centers are optimized to give high performance. The space constraint is being removed and there is an increased density in these data centers. One drawback it has is that with high density the heat issue also creeps in. These data centers are quite suitable to develop the cloud infrastructure.

What are the security risks in cloud computing?

Ans: Various factors are responsible for cloud computing to be advantageous for which include improved scalability, excellent accessibility, mobility, storage etc. Cloud Computing still have security issues and are given below:

1) Data Loss: Data Loss is a common cloud computing risk.it is given as data that is stored on the cloud is either leaked, deleted, corrupted or misused by a user, application. It mainly occurs when critical data is in somebody’s hand, the hard disk is not working properly and software is not updated.

2) Hacked Interfaces and Insecure APIs: Interfaces through which we can connect to the internet for most of the cloud services as APIs and interfaces are connected to cloud services through third parties as such they can be easily attacked by hackers as they are in the public domain.

3) Data Breach: Data Breach is the process in which secured data is retrieved illegally in an unauthorized way as such an organization’s data is hacked by hackers.

4) Business lock-in: Various issues arise due to the transfer of data from one organization to another as there are different platforms for different companies so it is difficult to move from one cloud to another.

5) Denial of Service Attacks: Denial of Service Attacks occurs when the system receives traffic beyond the threshold to congest the server. DoS Attackers usually attacks web servers of large organizations like banking sectors, media companies and government companies. To recover from these types of attacks, we have to deal with money and time.

6) Increased Complexity for IT workers: Shifting, integrating and operating cloud services which are complex for IT workers.IT workers must require extra capability and skills to manage, integrate and maintain the data on the cloud.

7) Specter and Meltdown: It allows stealing data from computers that are currently available on it. It can run on personal computers and various electronic devices. It can store the password, your personal information such as images, emails and business documents in the memory.

8) Account Hijacking: It is one of the serious security risks in cloud computing where hackers can steal sensitive information regarding the cloud account which includes bank accounted-mail accounts and social media accounts to perform illegal activities.

What is on-demand functionality? How is it provided in cloud computing?

Cloud computing provides a on-demand access to the virtualized IT resources. It can be used by the subscriber. It uses shared pool to provide configurable resources. Shared pool contains networks, servers, storage, applications and services.

What is the difference between cloud computing and mobile computing?

Mobile computing and cloud computing are slightly same in concept. Mobile computing uses the concept of cloud computing . Cloud computing provides users the data which they required while in mobile computing, applications run on the remote server and gives user the access for storage and manage.

Why API’s is used in cloud services?

API’s (Application Programming Interfaces) is used in cloud platform because:

It provide an alternative way that you don’t need to write the fully fledged program.

It makes communication between one or more applications.

It creates applications and link the cloud services with other systems.

What do you mean by VPN? What does it contain?

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. VPN is a private cloud that manage the security of the data during the communication in the cloud environment. With VPN, you can make a public network as private network.

What are the most essential things that must be followed before going for cloud computing platform?

Compliance

Loss of data

Data storage

Business continuity

Uptime

Data integrity in cloud computing

Which services are provided by Window azure operating system?

There are three core services provided by Window azure operating system:

Compute

Storage

Management

How would you secure data for transport in the cloud?

When transporting data in a cloud computing environment, keep two things in mind: Make sure that no one can intercept your data as it moves from point A to point B in the cloud, and make sure that no data leaks (malicious or otherwise) from any storage in the cloud.

A virtual private network (VPN) is one way to secure data while it is being transported in a cloud. A VPN converts the public network to a private network instead. A well-designed VPN will incorporate two things:

A firewall will act as a barrier between the public and any private network.

Encryption protects your sensitive data from hackers; only the computer that you send it to should have the key to decode the data.

Check that there is no data leak with the encryption key implemented with the data you send while it moves from point A to point B in a cloud.

What is the usage of utility computing?

Utility computing, or The Computer Utility, is a service provisioning model in which a service provider makes computing resources and infrastructure management available to the customer as needed and charges them for specific usage rather than a flat rate

Utility computing is a plug-in managed by an organization that decides what type of services has to be deployed from the cloud. It facilitates users to pay only for what they use.

What are the security benefits of cloud computing?

What is the difference between scalability and elasticity?

Scalability is a characteristic of cloud computing that is used to handle the increasing workload by increasing in proportion amount of resource capacity. By the use of scalability, the architecture provides on-demand resources if the traffic is raising the requirement. Whereas, Elasticity is a characteristic that provides the concept of commissioning and decommissioning of a large amount of resource capacity dynamically. It is measured by the speed at which the resources are on-demand and the usage of the resources.

Can you name some of the top cloud computing providers?

The Cloud computing industry is showing rapid growth. However, some of the top cloud computing providers include:

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Microsoft Azure

Google Cloud

IBM Cloud

VMware

Define Distributed Cloud?

The distributed cloud refers to the distribution of public cloud services across physical locations. This can be for operation, governance, updates, and the evolution of the services. In this, the location of the cloud services is a critical component of the model.

What do you understand by Multi-cloud?

Multicloud can be defined as using multiple cloud computing and storage services in a single heterogeneous architecture. Moreover, this also refers to the distribution of cloud assets, software, and applications over several cloud-hosting environments. With multi-cloud architecture utilizing two or more public clouds, a multi-cloud environment aims to remove the dependency on any single cloud provider. Further, in a multi-cloud environment, synchronization between different vendors is not essential to complete a computation process.

Explain the level of security in the cloud?

Security is important when it comes to applications and services used by the user. However, there are many levels of security that the cloud offers:

Identity management: This allows and authorizes the application service or hardware component to be used by authorized users.

Access control: This checks the permissions that have to be provided to the users so that they can control the access of other users entering the cloud environment.

Authorization and authentication: This provides provision for allowing the authorized and authenticated people only for accessing and changing the applications and data.

Can you name the types of virtualization in cloud computing?

The various types of virtualization in cloud computing are:

Memory Virtualization

Storage Virtualization

Data Virtualization

Hardware Virtualization

Software Virtualization

Network Virtualization

Desktop Virtualization

Define Load Balancing in Cloud Computing.

Load balancing refers to the distribution of workloads over multiple computing resources. This helps in reducing the prices related to management systems and increases the handiness of resources. Moreover, it helps in transferring masses to servers globally as hostile distributing it over native servers.

I hope you have understood what all Cloud Computing Interview Questions and how to answer it in interview. Happy Learning !!

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