Are you looking to excel in your next cloud architect technical interview? If so, this
video is for you.
Hi, my name is Michael Gibbs. And I'm the founder and CEO of Go Cloud Architects. And
we're an organization dedicated towards building high performance cloud computing careers.
I've been working in technology for well over 25 years. And I've been coaching and mentoring
others for over two decades.
Today, we're going to give you five cloud architect interview questions, or solution
architect interview questions, whichever term you prefer to help you prepare for your first
cloud architect role or your first solutions architect role. When we give you these five
questions, what we're really looking for is the following. Do you know the materials?
But more importantly, can you communicate the materials? That's one of these key things.
So, focus on your communication and delivery at least as much as your technology knowledge,
because if you know it, but can't explain it, the hiring manager is still never got
to know. So, let's talk about some questions. The first question we're going to present
today is when connecting to AWS, when would you use a direct connection? And when would
you use a VPN?
So what we're trying to figure out here is do you know the differences, architecturally
speaking, and the strengths and weaknesses of each approach? So, people would know to
use direct connection for the following reasons. They need guaranteed bandwidth and they need
guaranteed latency. And they need a guaranteed performance.
See, with a direct connection, there's some things that happen along the way, but it's
effectively like you have a wire between two different locations. And the latency on the
wire doesn't change. And if you've got a 10 gigabit link, you're going to always have
10 gigabits.
And that's what's so good about a direct connection. It's basically a wire. The latency is consistent.
Meaning how long it takes to go from both ends of the wire. So the latency is consistent
and the performance is consistent. The bandwidth is consistent. If you've got 10 gigs, you're
always going to get 10 gigs.
By comparison a VPN is you connect to the internet on both sides. And then you create
a tunnel and you encrypt your data over the internet. So the internet's not private and
that's why you have to encrypt your data. When you use a VPN, it's typically cheaper
because you're not buying a direct connection from two different locations. You're just
connecting to the internet. VPNs are really simple to set up because you can basically
create any connection to any place that has internet connectivity, which is wonderful.
Here's the problem with VPNs. Getting to the internet is one thing, but internet bandwidth
and performance is not guaranteed. Your internet service provider may guarantee you access
to them, but once you get on their network and off their network and on the internet,
there are no guarantees.
Internet is basically what's called best effort delivered. Meaning, if I try to reach a webpage,
it doesn't mean it's going to get there. It should. It'll try, but it's not guaranteed.
It's best effort. Which means the performance on the internet can be all good, perfect,
or horrible. There's no guarantees.
The other thing there's no guarantees of is latency. So, over a wire, if it takes three
milliseconds or four milliseconds, it's always going to do that. But when you're dealing
with the internet, because your speed is not guaranteed, your performance is not guaranteed
and your latency is not guaranteed, you can run into variations in latency. So, if message
one takes two milliseconds and message two takes 100 milliseconds and then message three
takes five, message two is going to arrive long after message three and that may be a
problem.
So, VPNs are good because they're economical, they're easy to set up and they're cheap.
But the problem with VPNs is there's no guaranteed performance. There's no guaranteed latency.
There's no guaranteed jitter meaning variations in latency. That are not to occur. So you
use a direct connection when you need to guarantee performance. And you use a VPN, basically
speaking, if your needs are flexible.
The next thing we're going to ask you today in these solution architect interview questions
to help you master your cloud architect technical interview, is what is BGP and why is it used?
So, we want you to know that BGP is an exterior gateway protocol. That it's a path vector
protocol that operates on TCP port 179. We want you to know that BGP is used because
it's an exterior gateway protocol.
And when you connect an entity to an external entity, that's when you use exterior gateway
protocols. And that's why organizations use BGP to connect to AWS or GCP as opposed to
something like OSPF or EIGRP because they're using an exterior gateway protocol.
The other reason BGP is used is it's highly tuneable and highly scalable. For example,
an internet routing table has basically three quarters of a million routes. And BGP can
easily handle that, whereas an interior gateway protocol could not. So that's why organizations
use BGP to connect to external entities like AWS.
The next question, I want you to think about this and the reason you got to ask these kind
of cloud architect advisor questions is the cloud architect is as an adviser. They're
a business strategist and they're a designer. So, let's say you're asked the question. You
are designing a video streaming solution on the cloud and the application developers don't
know whether you should use TCP or UDP. Which should they choose and why?
So the reason you might be asked a question like this is people really want to understand
if you understand what TCP is and UDP is. So, for example, if you're designing a video
streaming solution, it can't be TCP. It must be UDP. So, TCP is used for reliable transfer.
UDP is used for real time.
Why can't you use TCP for streaming? Here's the reason. Let's say I had a sentence, "Mike
likes BGP. Mike likes BGP." That's the sentence. If I send it via UDP and the message was "Mike
BGP," that's fine because it lost the word like. Now, it's preferable if it comes out
as, "Mike likes BGP." But if it just is Mike and BGP, that's fine.
What if the message by comparison basically, was delivered out of order because TCP retransmits
the data. What if it says, "Like BGP Mike," because Mike came out of order. That's what
could happen on TCP with retransmissions.
So all streaming things must be UDP. UDP is better, faster for these applications. There's
no sliding windows. Performance is going to be what it's going to be. And there's no retransmission
of lost data. So now you know, if you're ever asked by a hiring manager, if you would design
a solution, how you would do it for real-time streaming, that means voice or video, it must
be UDP.
The next question is one of those behavioral presentation kind of questions. And they're
going to ask you very frequently. I've been asked this on a lot of interviews. What is
CXO relevancy? And what does it mean to present differently to a CXO versus an engineer?
Well, first you need to know that a CXO is a C-level executive. When you present to the
CXO, your presentation must be very different. For the most part, they're not technical people.
Even at the CIO level, they're executives. Executives are extremely busy people. Because
they're so busy, they're going to have an attention span of a few seconds at max. So
you got to get your concept to the executive out to the point. And you must talk about
things that they care about.
The CEO is tasked with the organization's strategy and increasing shareholder value
and improving their performance, meaning revenue growth or profitability growth. The CEO cares
about that. So when you present tech to the CEO, you have to show that's what's going
to happen.
The CFO cares about the organization's finances. They're the gatekeeper of the organization's
money. When you're presenting to the CFO, you better be really good at basically doing
some ROI modeling and showing that the value provided by your solution, provides greater
value and savings or profitability to the company than it's cost. You have to do that.
And when you're speaking to the Chief Information Officer, they need to know that your technology
solution is going to meet the CEO's goals and needs. So, you've got to present this
and that it's going to work. Now, when you're dealing with engineers, they might need a
lot of depth. And you see, you have to present the right message for the right audience at
the right time.
So presenting to executives, short to the point and the solution. Presenting to engineers,
you might have to also go deep in the weeds of how it works, but that's the difference.
As an architect, you're going to be with executive and you're also going to be with engineers
and you have to be able to speak all the languages. You may get asked this question.
The next question that's pretty common, it's another behavioral question. And it is, how
does your background and experience prepare you to be a solution architect? This is one
that gets really tricky. First and foremost, you need to understand the solutions architect
role. The solutions architect is an architect. They're our system designer. That means they
are not SysOp person. They are not a DevOp person. They are not a programmer.
So, if you start talking about those things, they don't necessarily prepare you to be an
architect. What does prepare you to be an architect? Communication skills, presentation
skills, and knowledge of all the systems you're going to be interacting with, which is the
network and the data center. So if someone says to you, "Well, how does your background
and experience prepare you to be an architect?" Tie those things in.
My background and experience helped me to be a great architect because I worked in sales
for several years. And in those several years that I worked in sales, I learned how to communicate
with executives, how to consult with executives, how to consult with clients, ask their needs
and design a solution that would work for them and persuade them that it was the right
solution.
In addition to the time that I spent in sales, I spent a lot of time in networking. And networking
is the foundation of the cloud. And so that helps prepare me. And I've spent the last
year learning about cloud computing. And I've learned about the AWS, the GCP services. And
oh, by the way, I also have an extreme security background and I'm a CISSP. So I know how
to design the network and how to design the security systems and how to communicate with
executives. And the few things that I need to learn, I can learn.
That's how a new cloud architect that doesn't have a lot of cloud computing experience still
gets hired. You've got to show them the background of the experience that matters. So, if you
say, "I've got these certifications," that's not going to be the win. If you say, "I know
how to do Python scripts," again, it's not going to be a win for a solution architect
job. It will be for our SysOps job, but not for a solution architect job.
So, when you're preparing for a solution architect, talk about the things that matter. Your soft
skills, your emotional intelligence, your presentation skills, your design skills, your
knowledge of the network of the data center. Those are things they're going to close it
for you. Those are things you go for the win.
So today, what did we talk about? The differences between a direct connection and a VPN, and
when you would use them. What is BGP and why you would use it. If you were going to design
a video streaming application, would you use UDP or TCP? So we talked about the need to
use UDP for real-time applications.
We then talked about CXO relevancy and how do you present to the CXO versus the engineer.
And then we talked about how you would answer the behavioral question, how does your background
and experience prepare you to be a solutions architect?
Now on that example, I just made up a person who happened to work in sales and had some
tech background. And I was just trying to show you how their background and experience
could make them a great cloud architect. You got to show the hiring manager that you're
the right person for the job. And then your background and experience can make their life
better. So that's why we talked about that.
I would like to thank you for watching this video, and I'll tell you about some offers
we have to help the cloud computing community. Every Monday and every Friday, we have a completely
free how to get your first cloud architect job webinar. And on this webinar, we spend
an hour presenting and we tell you everything you need to do to get hired.
And after we spend that hour presenting, we open it up and we let you ask questions on
these live Zoom sessions. And we will answer any questions you have about how to play in
your career, or build your career, or get your first cloud architect job. Again, we
do that free on Monday on Thursdays, the link is in the description below.
Now, on every Tuesday, we have this fun online Zoom party. People come from all over the
world, then I give them a cloud architect experience. I present a challenging situation
of a client. And the students that attend this call, this free call, they come in and
they design an architecture. And so, migration from a data center to the cloud, which is
one of the most common things you'll ever do in your career. So we do that as free training
for the community. It's lots of fun. We do it every Tuesday.
Now, most Wednesdays, but not all of them. If we have time, we do a completely free YouTube
live. And on this YouTube live, we will answer any cloud architect career questions. If you
want to ask us what certifications to do, what skills to learn, things to get hired,
we do this completely free and we do it on most Wednesdays at 9:00 AM, but not all of
them. And when we talk about times, we're talking about Eastern timezone.
If you're working on certification, we've got lots of great options for you. We are
going to be doing a completely free and live AWS advanced networking course on the week
of July 13th. I'll leave the link in the description below. We're going to have a lot of fun. It's
going to be a live class. We're going to basically have 20 minutes of lecture followed by 10
minutes of questions every day for the four or five days that we run this class. We did
one for the certified solution architect professional. 7,000 plus people attended. Lots of people
called us and told us how happy they were. So that's why we're doing this completely
free.
If you are working on a AWS certified solution architect associate, we have a completely
free course on book. I'll leave the link in the description below. And if you're looking
for the AWS certified solution architect professional exam and training, we have a completely free
course. Again, I'll leave the link in the description below.
Thank you so much for watching this video. We'd love to connect with you via YouTube.
We're very grateful to be part of this community. And we're so thankful you saw this video.
And we will see you in another video very soon.