If you're looking for a cloud architect interview questions, this video is for you. Hi, my name is
Michael Gibbs, and I've been working in technology for over 25 years. And I've been working in
networking, security, and cloud computing, and I've been coaching others or mentoring others
for over 20 years. And today we're going to talk about cloud architect interview questions.
So why are we going to be talking about questions on an interview? So the real thing is, as a hiring
manager, when we hire someone, we need to make sure they can do the following things. We need
to make sure they can do the job, we need to make sure that candidate is trustworthy, we need to see
if the candidate can speak and present themselves. Well, we want to see if the candidate responds
to things with a level of emotional intelligence, because we look for people that have higher levels
of emotional intelligence. We'll look for someone's attitude. We really want a good
positive attitude, and we want to see if they can bring value to our team. So in order to do this,
we have to ask a set of technical questions. And the way you respond to these questions will let
us know your levels of technical competency, communication skills, collaboration, skills,
empathy, and your soft skills. So that's why we ask a series of questions.
So we'll ask a series of technical questions, and non-technical questions. Today we're going
to focus on technical questions. We're going to give you five technical questions we commonly
ask on cloud architect interviews, and these questions will tell us whether someone's competent
or not competent. And it's very important to practice and have a large set of prepared answers
to common questions, because it's not that you're really preparing per question, per se.
You're making sure you have enough understanding of the technology to
answer the questions, and that's going to make you a better cloud architect.
So there's about 50 questions that we routinely ask people on cloud architect interviews.
And over the next eight weeks, we will have one video per week. And we will dedicate this
video to asking you cloud architect interview questions. We'll ask at least five questions
every week, so by the end of the eight weeks, you'll have gotten our 50 favorite
best interview questions that you're likely to encounter in a cloud architect interview.
So the first question we like to ask people is, "How can you scale a relational database?"
Now, why am I asking that question? The reason I'm asking that question, for one thing,
is I want to see if the client actually knows what our relational database even is.
And can they separate that from their favorite branded database that they heard about in their
certification training? The next thing I want to know is I want to know if they ask me, "What
is your traffic like? Is it read traffic, or is it right traffic?" Because if it's all right traffic,
they're adding read replicas, for example, isn't going to make a difference. And if the constraint
is actually right traffic, then adding a killing system will make the difference. So I want to see
if this potential cloud architect can actually ask the right questions. And if they ask the question,
"What is the type of traffic that's being used by your database?" And I say, It's a combination
of read and right," I'm looking for someone that can say, "Okay, then you can take a fall
of multiple steps. Since a lot of your traffic is read. You can create read replicas, and you can
offload the read work to the read replicas, which will free up resources on the master database."
And then if they say, "You can further reduce load on read replicas by adding some caching,
then I'd say, "Okay, great. Now they know two ways to really substantially reduce read load."
And then if they say, "In order to reduce write load or smooth out the right load,
so you don't have peaks and valleys, you can use a killing system," then I know this cloud
architect really understands how relational databases work. That's why I ask that question.
My questions are always going to be open-ended because I need to see if they're competent.
The next question I'm going to ask people is, "What is virtualization? How does it work,
and why would you use it?" And then I ask that question, and the reason I'm asking that
question is all the compute instances that you see in the cloud are virtual machines.
So I want to know if someone has any concept of how the cult is built. I want to know that they
understand that an instance is nothing more than a virtual machine. I want to know that
they've actually set up virtualization before, because it's really hard to design something
if you're not sure what it is. So I want them to be able to tell me, virtualization is when
you take a bare metal server out a hypervisor, and the hypervisor logically partitions your
physical hardware. So basically you can create multiple logical computers inside of a computer.
And each logical computer will have its own operating system. And you'll be able to set the
memory, the CPU resources, and other matters. If a client can tell me that in an interview, I'm very
interested in them. Why? Because they know how the cloud works, or at least how virtualization works.
See, the cloud is nothing more than a virtualized network in a data center. And
if you don't understand the data center and you don't understand the network, it's very hard to
actually build cloud solutions. So I'm going to ask these architecture infrastructure questions
of cloud architects, and many, many, many other people will do the same one don't interview.
The next thing that I'm going to ask the person is, "What is the difference between block storage
and object storage?" I'm going to ask how they work and what are the advantages and
disadvantages of each, as well as some use cases. We have to ask these questions because we need to
know if the candidate understands storage, what good are all the compute instances in the world
if you don't have a place to store your data and you don't have a place where you can use the data.
So I need to know, do they understand what block storage is and where to use it,
and what object storage is and where do you use it? And then I need them to tell me why
you would use them. I need them to tell me that if you need storage on a virtual machine that
doesn't go away with reboot, you're going to use something like block storage, because it's
designed for that. And if you've got a static website or you want to distribute software,
you're going to use something like object storage, because it's designed for that. If you're going to
create a data lake, for example, you're going to use object storage because it has that metadata.
But if you need higher performance storage, you're going to use block storage in a compute instance.
So I need to tell me that. And if they tell me that I know there are a great cloud architect
hire. And if they just tell me that object storage is S3, I know they're certified,
but I know they can't do the job as an architect. So that's why we're going over these
cloud architects interview questions, so that you can learn these questions
and then you can learn the technology so you can be a fantastic cloud architect.
The next question I got will tell me if someone has any knowledge of networking or not. I ask
people, "What is NAT, and why would you use it?" If someone tells me that NAT as how you connect
to the internet, I know they have no knowledge of basic networking whatsoever, but they have
passed an AWS certification exam and they know the meaning of a NAT instance and a net gateway.
But without understanding NAT, you will run into large numbers of challenges as a cloud architect,
so I have to ask this question. I need them to tell me that NAT is what's called Network Address
Translation, and it's really about translating one address into another address. Now, they
could be used to connect a private address to the internet by translating it into a public address,
or it could also be used if there's two organizations, for example, that just
merged and they're using the same overlapping IP address space until the addresses can be
changed between the organizations, you would use NAT, and you would translate one private address
into another private address, but something that's not overlapping. So if someone can tell
me what NAT actually is, and some use cases, and I've given you two, but there's many more,
I know they understand basic networking, and basic networking's required to be a cloud architect.
So the last question that we'll cover today is I ask people,
"What is meant by stateful when it comes to a firewall or an AWS security group?"
This will tell me if the person has any knowledge of stateful firewalls,
or any knowledge of security or any knowledge of what's called state. Why does it matter? Because
if you're going to design a security architecture, you must understand stateful firewalls.
If they tell me that because it's stateful you'll only need to apply it in one direction,
I know they don't understand statefullness, but they learned that on a AWS exam, for example.
If they tell me that state is when you initiate a connection and it goes through the firewall on
the way out to the internet, the fire wall looks at your connection and attracts what you've done.
And because it knows once you go to the web server, because you initiated the connection,
to allow you to return traffic back through the firewall, because you originated that traffic from
the safe side of the network. So the stateful means it knows what's going on the direct,
going out, and therefore it can allow it back in, or it knows of what's coming in
is allowed to go back out because it's tracking the state of the connection.
And knowing what stateful means, meaning tracking the state of the connection or
watching the flow and allowing return traffic thereafter, because it knows and understands
all that's going on with the traffic flow between the sender and the recipient, that's stateful.
So what are we all talking about the end of the day?
When you're on an interview, your goal is to show the hiring manager you are capable,
and let the hiring that you know far more than just simply the name of an AWS or GCP service. Let
them know that you understand how the technology works and it will help you get hired every time.
Show the hiring manager that you understand the architecture by answering these questions in a
way that prove that you understand the strengths and the weaknesses of each technology and why you
would use them. Because what does an architect do? They design a solution to solve a customer
challenge. And you have to understand the technology in order to design solutions.
So show the hiring manager this. Be able to tell the hiring manager
about any technology they ask you in the following manner.
What is the technology, how does the technology work, and why you would use it.
Do this, and you will prove to the hiring manager that you're in the top 10th of 1% and you will
be hired, and you will get paid more and you will have a wonderful cloud computing career.
Let me tell you about some free offerings our organization does to help the cloud architect
community. Every Monday and every Thursday, we have a free how to get your first cloud
architect job. On this webinar, we spend one hour and we teach you what hiring managers desire,
we teach you what to do with your resume, we teach you how to get exposure, we teach you
how to not get stuck in HR. When they're looking for experience that you don't have, and we teach
you what to do in order to get your first cloud architect job. We have these calls on Monday on
Thursday. The link in is in the description below. On every Tuesday starting at 9:00 AM,
we have a how to get real hands on experience webinar. During this webinar, we talk about how
to get real cloud architect. Hands-on experience something that will dazzle hiring managers with
your knowledge, something that will give you so much experience you'll be able to pass any
certification exam you desire, and you'll be able to show to the hiring manager they need to hire
you because you're that good. We hold these calls every Tuesday at 9:00 AM, Eastern Standard Time.
The next thing I'd like to tell you about is if you're working on AWS certification, more
specifically the AWS certified solution architect associate exam, we have a free ebook and it's a
comprehensive ebook, and it's literally everything you need to pass the AWS certified solution
architect associate exam. It's completely free and I'll drop a link in the description below.
It's a book we wrote to help the cloud architect community. Thank you so much for watching this
video, and I look forward to seeing you in another video next Wednesday. Take care. Bye.