Top 60+ Cloud Computing Interview Questions and Answers [2024]

Most organizations are using Cloud Computing to store their business data and access it from wherever they want. This is the main reason why Cloud Computing professionals are in high demand all around the world. In this Cloud Computing Interview Questions blog, we cover some of the popular questions that are asked by recruiters of most organizations in any Cloud Computing job interview. Here are the top 60+ Cloud Computing questions that you can prepare for before going for a Cloud Engineer job interview.

Watch this Cloud Computing Interview Questions and Answers video:

Basic Cloud Computing Interview Questions for Freshers

1. Compare Cloud and On-premise Computing.

Criteria	Cloud	On-premise
Initial cost	Low	High
Maintenance and support	Hassle-free	Needs attention
Upgrade	Automatic	Manual
Scalability	Excellent	Good
Pay as you go	Yes	No

2. What is a Cloud?

A cloud is a collaboration of networks, hardware, services, storage, and interfaces that help in delivering computing as a service. It has three users:

End users
Business management users
Cloud service providers

3. What is Cloud Computing?

It is an advanced-stage technology implemented so that the cloud provides its services globally as per the user requirements. It provides a method to access several servers worldwide.

4. What are some of the key features of Cloud Computing?

Reliable
Scalable
Agile
Location Independent
Multi-tenant

5. What are the benefits of Cloud Computing?

The main benefits of Cloud Computing are:

Data backup and storage of data
Powerful server capabilities
Incremented productivity
Cost-effective and time-saving

6. Mention the layers of PaaS architecture.

Cloud Controller

Automatically creates virtual machines and controllers
Deploys applications
Connects to services
Automatically scales up and down

Storage Services

Object
NoSQL
Relational
Block storage

Applications Stored in Storage Services

Simple-to-scale applications
Easier recovery from failure

7. What are the cloud service models?

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Software as a Service (SaaS)

8. Write about Function as a Service.

FaaS provides users with a fully functional platform where they can create, manage and run their applications without having to worry about maintaining the infrastructure.

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9. What are the components of Windows Azure?

Windows Azure Platform Services

Cloud
SQL Azure
App Fabric: Allows fabric cloud

10. What are the main constituents of the cloud ecosystem?

Cloud service providers
Cloud consumers
Direct consumers

11. Who are the cloud consumers in a cloud ecosystem?

People and teams who use different types of cloud services, within your organization.

12. Who are the direct consumers in a cloud ecosystem?

The individuals who utilize the service provided by your company, build within a cloud environment.

13. Who are the Cloud service providers in a cloud ecosystem?

Cloud service providers are the companies that sell their cloud services to others. Sometimes these companies also provide cloud services internally to their partners, employees, etc.

14. What are the differences occurred in distributed operations?

FC: Master–Slave operations
Nova: Parallel process and its shared database

15. Which agent is equivalent of Nova Compute?

Azure Agent

16. Mention the reliability and availability of Cloud Computing.

Use of Fault Domains:

Two virtual machines are in a single fault domain if a single piece of hardware can bring down both virtual machines.
Azure automatically distributes instances of a role across fault domains.

Use of Upgrade Domains:

When a new version of the software is rolled out, then only one up-gradation of the domain is done at a time.
It ensures that any instance of the service is always available.
There is an availability of the applications in multiple instances.

Storage and Network Availability:

Copies of data are stored in different domains.
it is a mechanism to guard against DoS and DDoS attacks.

17. Explain the Cloud Computing Architecture.

Cloud Computing Architecture brings together two components of cloud computing – the front-end and the back-end. It is important to bring the correct services together for the benefit of both internal and external people. If need be, cloud management should be able to quickly make the required changes.

18. What are the Cloud Storage Levels?

Files
Blocks
Datasets
Objects

19. What are the differences between the three main Cloud service models: IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS?

The differences between the three main Cloud service models are defined further:

IaaS: IaaS stands for Infrastructure as a Service that offers networking resources, services and storage on-demand. Example: AWS

PaaS: PaaS stands for Platform as a service, which allows users to develop, run, and manage applications offered by the third party. Example: Salesforce Lightning, AWS lambda etc.

SaaS: SaaS stands for Software as a service also known as on-premise software, which delivers applications remotely over the internet. Example: Salesforce

20. List some of the major benefits of using Cloud Computing.

Some of the major benefits of using Cloud Computing are as follows:
i) Easy accessibility
ii) Centralized data security
iii) Cost Saving
iv) Automatic Software Updates
v) Mobility

21. Explain the concept of a Virtual Machine (VM) and its role in Cloud Computing.

A Virtual Machine in Cloud Computing can be understood as a virtual computer that runs on the top of a physical computer. It can store data, connect to networks, and can also do other computing functions.

22. Give examples of real-world applications of Cloud Computing.

Below are some examples of real-world applications of Cloud Computing:

Online Streaming Services
E-commerce Businesses
Social Media Platforms
Educational Platforms

23. What are some popular Cloud storage solutions?

Below are some of the most prominent Cloud storage solutions:

Google Drive
Microsoft OneDrive
Dropbox
Amazon Drive
iCloud Drive

Intermediate Cloud Computing Interview Questions

24. What are the serverless components in cloud computing with their advantages and disadvantages?

These components allow you to create apps without the stress of managing the infrastructure.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Cost-effective	Can cause late responses
Increases productivity	Not ideal for high-computing operations
Scalable	More vulnerable when it comes to security
No server management	Debugging is challenging

25. Give the best example of the open-source Cloud Computing.

OpenStack

26. What are microservices and their importance in the cloud?

Microservices help create apps that consist of codes that are independent of one another and the platform they were developed on. Microservices are important in the cloud because of the following reasons:

Each of them is built for a particular purpose. This makes app development simpler.
They make changes easier and quicker.
Their scalability makes it easier to adapt the service as needed.

27. What is an AMI? How do we implement it?

AMI is Amazon Machine Image, which basically is a copy of your root file system. It feeds the information required to launch an instance.

We implement AMI by specifying an AMI whenever we want to launch an instance. Multiple instances can be launched from a single AMI with the same configuration.
In the case of launching instances with different configurations, we would need to launch different AMIs.

AMI

AMI includes one or more snapshots of your EBS volumes, in the case of instance-store-backed AMIs, along with a template for the root volume of your instance (like an operating system, an application server, and applications).

It launches the permissions that decide which AWS accounts can use the AMI for launching instances. It also needs a block device mapping for specifying the volumes in order to attach them to the instances whenever they are launched.

28. Why Hybrid Clouds are so important?

Cloud Bursting:
Access capacity and specialized software are available in the public cloud and not in the private cloud.
Examples: Virtual Amazon and Dynamo

Leveraging the best of both public and private is the Hybrid Clouds.

vCloud:

It is a VMware cloud.
It is expensive.
It gives enterprise quality.

OpenStack:

It has commodity servers and storage.
It is less reliable.
We can run web servers on OpenStack.
the database is built on vCloud.

29. List the platforms that are used for large-scale Cloud Computing.

The platforms that are used for large-scale Cloud Computing are:

30. Mention the different types of models used for the deployment in Cloud Computing.

The different deployment models in Cloud Computing are:

31. Explain security management in terms of Cloud Computing.

Identity management access provides the authorization of application services.
Access control permission is given to users to have complete controlling access of another user who is entering into the cloud environment.
Authentication and Authorization permits only authorized and authenticated users to have access to the data and applications.

32. Which are the layers of Cloud Computing?

The different layers used by cloud architecture are as follows:

CLC or Cloud Controller
Walrus
Cluster Controller
Storage Controller (SC)
Node Controller (NC)

33. Explain the full form and the usage of 'Eucalyptus' in Cloud Computing.

The full form of ‘Eucalyptus’ is ‘Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs to Useful Systems.

Eucalyptus is an open-source software infrastructure in Cloud Computing, which enables us to implement clusters on the Cloud Computing platform. It is mainly used to build public, hybrid, and private Clouds. It has the capability to convert one’s own data center into a private Cloud; it provides its functionalities to various other organizations.

34. Mention the names of some large cloud providers and databases.

Google Bigtable
Amazon Simple Database
Cloud-based SQL (Sequential Query Language)

35. Explain the difference between cloud and traditional data centers.

The traditional data center is expensive due to heating and hardware/software issues. Mostly, the expenditure is on the maintenance of the data centers.
Cloud is scaled up when there is an increase in demand, hence such expenditure issues are not faced in Cloud Computing.

36. What is meant by Edge Computing?

Edge computing is a part of the distributed computing structure. It brings companies closer to the sources of data. This benefits businesses by giving them better insights, good response time and better bandwidth.

37. Describe the Cloud Computing architecture.

Cloud Computing architecture is divided into two categories, and they are:

Front End: Front End Cloud Computing architecture contains client-side interfaces and applications, which are required to access the Cloud Computing platforms and are used by the clients. Some examples are Web servers (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc.) and mobile devices, etc.
Back End: Back End manages all the resources that are required to provide Cloud Computing services and is used by the service providers. It includes data storage, virtual machines, servers, traffic control mechanisms, etc.

38. List out the different layers that define Cloud architecture.

The different layers used by Cloud architecture are:

CLC (Cloud Controller)
Walrus
Cluster Controller
SC (Storage Controller)
NC (Node Controller)

39. What are system integrators in Cloud Computing?

System integrators in Cloud Computing provide the strategy for the complicated process, which is used to design a Cloud platform.

Since integrators have all the knowledge about data center creation, it allows them to create more accurate hybrid and private Cloud networks.

40. Explain the use of “EUCALYPTUS” in Cloud Computing.

EUCALYPTUS is an open-source software infrastructure in Cloud Computing, which stands for Elastic Utility Computing Architecture, used to implement clusters in Cloud Computing platforms.

41. What is Amazon SQS?

Amazon SQS acts as a communicator, which is used to communicate between different components of Amazon.

Advanced Cloud Computing Interview Questions for Experienced

42. What are the uses of APIs in cloud services?

APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are used to eliminate the necessity to write complete programs.
Here, instructions are provided to make communication between one or more applications.
Creation of applications is made easy and accessible for the link of cloud services with other systems.

43. Mention different data center deployments of Cloud Computing.

Cloud Computing consists of different data centers as follows:

Containerized data centers: Containerized data centers are packages that contain a consistent set of servers, network components, and storage delivered to large warehouse kind of facilities. Here, each deployment is relatively unique.
Low-density data centers: Containerized data centers promote heavy density which in turn causes much heat and significant engineering troubles. Low-density data centers are the solution to this problem. Here, the equipment is established far apart so that it cools down the generated heat.

44. List down the three basic functioning clouds in Cloud Computing.

Professional cloud
Personal cloud
Performance cloud

45. What are the characteristics of cloud architecture that differ from traditional cloud architecture?

The characteristics are:

In cloud, the hardware requirement is fulfilled as per the demand created for cloud architecture.
Cloud architecture is capable of scaling up resources when there is a demand.
Cloud architecture is capable of managing and handling dynamic workloads without any point of failure.

46. What are the building blocks of cloud architecture?

Reference architecture
Technical architecture
Deployment operation architecture

47. Explain AWS.

AWS stands for Amazon Web Services which is a collection of remote computing services also known as Cloud Computing. This technology is also known as IaaS or Infrastructure as a Service.

48. Mention the key components of AWS.

The key components of AWS are as follows:

AWS Route 53: AWS Route 53 is a DNS (Domain Name Server) web-based service platform.
Simple E-mail Service (AWS SES): Sending of e-mail is done by using a RESTFUL API call or via regular SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol).
Identity and Access Management (AWS IAM): Improvised security and identity management are provided for an AWS account.
Simple Storage Device (S3): It is a huge storage medium, widely used for AWS services.
Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2): It allows on-demand computing resources for hosting applications and is essentially useful for unpredictable workloads.
Elastic Block Stores (EBS): They are storage volumes attached to EC2 and allow the data lifespan of a single EC2.
CloudWatch: Amazon CloudWatch is used to monitor AWS resources, and it allows administrators to view and collect the keys required. Access is provided so that one can set a notification alarm in the case of trouble.

49. Explain how you can vertically scale an Amazon instance.

This is one of the essential features of AWS and cloud virtualization. We spinup a newly developed large instance where we pause that instance and detach the root EBS volume from the server and discard. Later, we stop our live instance and detach its root volume connected. here, we note down the unique device ID and attach the same root volume to the new server, and we restart it again. This results in a vertically scaled Amazon instance.

50. Explain the security usage in the Amazon Web Services model.

AWS supports security groups.
Access is provided to create a security group for a jump box with SSH access only for port 22 open. Later, a webserver group and a database group are created. The webserver group provides 80 and 443 from around the world, but only port 22 will be vital among the jump box group. The database group allows port 3306 from the webserver group and port 22 from the jump box group. The addition of any machines to the webserver group can store in the database. No one can directly SSH to any of our boxes.

51. What are reasons that make Amazon so big?

In Amazon, the backup storage of EBS volumes is maintained by inserting the snapshot facility via an API call or via a GUI interface like Elasticfox.
Performance is improved by using Linux software RAID and striping across four volumes.

52. How does Resource Replication take place in Cloud Computing?

Resource Replication creates duplicates of the same resource. Replication is employed when a resource is needed more and more. The resource is virtualized to replicate cloud-based resources.

53. What is Containers as a Service (CaaS)?

CaaS is a system that allows developers to run, scale, manage, upload, and organize containers by using virtualization.

A container is a software pack. It allows teams to scale their apps to highly available cloud infrastructures.

Hope that you will find these interview questions for the role of Cloud Engineer useful. Do let us know in the comments section below!

54. Can you explain how Cloud Computing differs from traditional data center operations?

The process of storing, processing and managing the data online on servers is known as Cloud Computing, whereas storing, processing and managing these records or data through physical servers is traditional data centers.

55. What is Cloud migration and what are its benefits?

The process of transferring data, applications and some other IT resources from an organization’s on-premises to Cloud based infrastructure is known as Cloud migration. Below are some of the mentioned advantages of Cloud migration:

Cost Optimization
Scalability and Elasticity
Performance and Reliability
Speed

56. What are containerized data centres?

Containerized data centres can be classified as those data centers that allow a high level of customization with servers and other resources.

57. What are some issues with Cloud Computing?

Below are some of the issues with Cloud Computing:

Security issues
Legal and Compliance issues
Performance issue
Quality of service related issues
Data Management issues

58. What do you mean by rate limiting?

Rate limiting is a way to limit the network traffic, which runs within the app rather than the server and tracks the IP addresses and the time between each request. Other than limiting network traffic, it can also eliminate certain suspicious and malicious activities.

59. How does Cloud-native foundation define Cloud-native applications?

The Cloud-native applications are elaborated below:

Container packaged: Standard container packaging formats should be used to package applications.
Dynamically managed: Should follow the standard format to discover, deploy, and scale applications.
Microservices oriented: decompose applications into modular, independent services.

60. What is encapsulation?

Encapsulation in Cloud refers to the techniques of packaging the software code along with all of its dependencies, so that it can consistently run on both Cloud and also on-premises.

61. What is a Cloud usage monitor?

Cloud usage monitor is an autonomous, lightweight software program that gathers and processes usage data of IT resources. These monitors can exist in various formats like resource agent, polling agent, and monitoring agent.

62. List some Cloud-enabling technologies.

Some Cloud-enabling technologies are as follows:

Broadband Networks
Virtualization
Data Center
Web Technology

Cloud Computing Salary Trends

The average annual salary of a Cloud Engineer in India is Rs 7.2 lakhs, with salaries ranging from Rs. 2.9 lakhs to Rs. 13.0 lakhs, as per the information available on AmbitionBox.
A recent report that was updated in 2024 on Glassdoor shows that the average salary of Cloud Computing enthusiasts in India is Rs. 5.5 lakhs per annum, ranging from Rs. 3L to Rs. 8L.
According to the reports updated in 2024 on Glassdoor, the average salary for a Cloud Engineer is $1,13,898 per year.
Variations in cloud computing roles and salaries.

Job Role	Average Annual Base Salary (USA)
Cloud Engineer	$102,530
Cloud Architect	$122,766
Cloud Developer	$95,197
Cloud Administrator	$72,918

Cloud Computing Job Trends

Cloud Computing is the process of distributing computing services over the internet, including storage, processing power, software, and many more. With this facility, the need for actual hardware is removed, thus, allowing users to access and use these resources on-demand from distant data centers.

According to SPER market research, the Cloud Computing market in India is booming, with expected growth to reach USD 35.15 billion by 2033 with a CAGR of 18.54%, as per the information present on LinkedIn.
According to the data provided on LinkedIn, presently, there are 29000+ Cloud Computing jobs are active in India.
There are currently, 7184 Cloud Computing jobs and vacancies are active on Indeed in India.
As of the latest data available, 3,850 Open Cloud Computing jobs in India on Glassdoor.
As per the data available on LinkedIn, there are 102000+ Cloud Computing job openings in the United States.
8,434 Open Cloud Computing jobs in the United States, as per information available on Glassdoor.

Cloud Computing Roles and Responsibilities

A Cloud Engineer is an IT expert whose role is to operate the technological infrastructure of an organization. Cloud Engineers work with programmers, developers, project managers, and security experts to create efficient cloud computing solutions that meet organizational requirements.

Senior Cloud Engineer at Sapiens

Bengaluru, Karnataka

Responsibilities:

Knowledge of Azure/AWS/GCP

Should be able to plan, design, and develop Azure/AWS data platform services in the cloud

Should have networking knowledge like firewalls, VPNs, CNI, proxies, and load balancer

Have hands-on experience on Azure services like Azure Data Lake Storage, Event Hubs, HDInsight, Azure Functions, Azure Monitor, Azure AKS, and Azure DWH Services
Scripting and automation knowledge are preferred (Terraform)
Knowledge of Web services, API, REST, and SOAP

Requirements:

Degree in computer science or similar field
Experience with CI/CD systems
Azure, AWS, and GCP certifications will be preferred.
Good communication and collaboration skills
Client management skills

Senior Cloud Service Architect at NTT

Bengaluru, Karnataka