Title: AWS Cloud Fundamentals — LearnCoachAssist

Q: What is AWS?
A: Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive, secure, and scalable cloud computing platform provided by Amazon, offering over 200 fully featured services from data centers globally.

Q: What are the main benefits of using AWS cloud?
A: AWS provides benefits like agility, scalability, elasticity, global reach, pay-as-you-go pricing, security, and high reliability through its global infrastructure.

Q: What is cloud computing?
A: Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing, instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centers and servers.

Q: What are the three main cloud service models?
A: The models are Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for virtualized computing resources, Platform as a Service (PaaS) for development platforms, and Software as a Service (SaaS) for ready-to-use software applications.

Q: What is an AWS Region?
A: An AWS Region is a geographic area consisting of multiple isolated Availability Zones, each with independent power, cooling, and networking to enhance fault tolerance.

Q: What is an Availability Zone (AZ)?
A: An Availability Zone is an isolated location within a Region, comprising one or more data centers with redundant power, networking, and connectivity, designed for high availability.

Q: What are AWS Edge Locations?
A: Edge Locations are endpoints for AWS services like CloudFront and Route 53, used to cache content closer to users for low-latency delivery worldwide.

Q: What is the AWS Global Infrastructure?
A: It includes Regions (54+), Availability Zones (170+), and Edge Locations (400+ globally), enabling low-latency access, data residency, and disaster recovery.

Q: What is the AWS Shared Responsibility Model?
A: AWS is responsible for the security 'of' the cloud (infrastructure, hardware, software), while customers are responsible for security 'in' the cloud (data, OS, applications, IAM).

Q: What is an AWS Account?
A: An AWS Account is a unique identifier for billing and resource management; multiple accounts can be organized under AWS Organizations for governance.

Q: What is AWS Organizations?
A: AWS Organizations helps centrally manage policies across multiple AWS accounts with features like consolidated billing, service control policies (SCPs), and account grouping.

Q: What is AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)?
A: IAM is a service for securely controlling access to AWS resources by creating users, groups, roles, and policies defining permissions.

Q: What is an IAM User?
A: An IAM User is an identity for a person or application needing long-term access to AWS services, associated with credentials like access keys.

Q: What is an IAM Role?
A: An IAM Role is a temporary identity assumed by users, services, or applications to gain permissions without long-term credentials.

Q: What is an IAM Policy?
A: An IAM Policy is a JSON document defining permissions (allow/deny) for actions on AWS resources, attached to users, groups, or roles.

Q: What is the principle of least privilege in IAM?
A: Grant only the permissions necessary for a user or role to perform their tasks, minimizing security risks from over-privileged access.

Q: What is Amazon EC2?
A: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) provides resizable virtual servers (instances) in the cloud for running applications with choice of OS, CPU, memory, storage, and networking.

Q: What are EC2 Instance Types?
A: Instance types categorize EC2 instances by compute, memory, and networking capacity, such as General Purpose (M5), Compute Optimized (C5), Memory Optimized (R5).

Q: What is Amazon Machine Image (AMI)?
A: An AMI is a template for launching EC2 instances, containing OS, application server, and data needed to create a ready-to-run instance.

Q: What is Elastic Block Store (EBS)?
A: Amazon EBS provides block-level storage volumes for EC2 instances, offering persistent, high-performance storage with snapshots for backups.

Q: What is Amazon S3?
A: Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is object storage for internet-scale data with 99.999999999% durability, unlimited scalability, and features like versioning and lifecycle policies.

Q: What are S3 Storage Classes?
A: Classes include S3 Standard (frequent access), Intelligent-Tiering (automatic), Glacier (archival), and One Zone-IA (infrequent single AZ), optimized for cost and access patterns.

Q: What is Amazon VPC?
A: Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) lets you provision a logically isolated network section in AWS where you launch resources with control over IP ranges, subnets, routing, and gateways.

Q: What is a Subnet in VPC?
A: A Subnet is a range of IP addresses in your VPC divided across Availability Zones for resource placement, with public or private types.

Q: What is an Internet Gateway (IGW)?
A: An Internet Gateway connects your VPC to the internet, enabling public subnets to communicate outbound and receive inbound traffic.

Q: What is a NAT Gateway?
A: Network Address Translation (NAT Gateway) allows private subnet instances to access the internet for updates while preventing inbound connections for security.

Q: What is Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)?
A: ELB automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets like EC2 instances for high availability and fault tolerance.

Q: What are the types of ELB?
A: Types include Application Load Balancer (ALB) for HTTP/HTTPS, Network Load Balancer (NLB) for TCP/UDP/TLS, and Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB) for virtual appliances.

Q: What is Amazon Route 53?
A: Route 53 is a scalable DNS web service providing domain registration, health checks, and traffic routing policies like latency-based or geolocation.

Q: What is Amazon CloudFront?
A: CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that speeds up distribution of static/dynamic web content by caching at Edge Locations globally.

Q: What is AWS Lambda?
A: AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service running code in response to events without provisioning or managing servers, charged per use.

Q: What is serverless computing?
A: Serverless lets developers build and run applications without managing infrastructure; AWS handles scaling, patching, and availability automatically.

Q: What is Amazon ECS?
A: Elastic Container Service (ECS) manages Docker containers at scale, supporting Fargate (serverless) or EC2 launch types for orchestration.

Q: What is Amazon EKS?
A: Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) runs Kubernetes clusters managed by AWS, simplifying operations with integration to VPC, IAM, and CloudWatch.

Q: What is Amazon RDS?
A: Relational Database Service (RDS) manages relational databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, with automated backups, patching, and Multi-AZ for HA.

Q: What is Amazon DynamoDB?
A: DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database offering single-digit millisecond latency, infinite scalability, and global tables for multi-region replication.

Q: What is Amazon ElastiCache?
A: ElastiCache is an in-memory data store supporting Redis or Memcached for caching to improve database performance and reduce load.

Q: What is AWS CloudWatch?
A: CloudWatch monitors AWS resources and applications, collecting metrics, logs, and events with alarms, dashboards, and automated actions.

Q: What is AWS CloudTrail?
A: CloudTrail records API calls and account activity for auditing, compliance, governance, and troubleshooting across AWS services.

Q: What is Amazon SNS?
A: Simple Notification Service (SNS) is a pub/sub messaging service sending notifications via email, SMS, HTTP, or other protocols.

Q: What is Amazon SQS?
A: Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a fully managed message queuing service decoupling microservices, workflows, and distributed systems.

Q: What is AWS Auto Scaling?
A: Auto Scaling automatically adjusts EC2 capacity based on demand, using scaling policies tied to CloudWatch metrics for cost optimization.

Q: What is Elastic File System (EFS)?
A: Amazon EFS provides scalable, shared file storage for EC2 instances with NFS protocol, accessible across AZs.

Q: What is AWS Shield?
A: AWS Shield provides DDoS protection; Standard is automatic and free, Advanced offers enhanced mitigation with support.

Q: What is AWS WAF?
A: Web Application Firewall (WAF) protects web apps from exploits like SQL injection and XSS using rules and rate limiting.

Q: What is AWS KMS?
A: Key Management Service (KMS) creates and manages cryptographic keys for encrypting data across AWS services.

Q: What are AWS Pricing Models?
A: Models include On-Demand (pay per hour), Reserved Instances (discount for commitment), Savings Plans (flexible reservations), and Spot Instances (bid for spare capacity).

Q: What is the AWS Well-Architected Framework?
A: It provides best practices across 6 pillars: Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization, Sustainability.

Q: What is AWS Cost Explorer?
A: Cost Explorer analyzes and visualizes AWS costs/trends with forecasts, recommendations, and RI purchase analysis for optimization.

Q: What is AWS Support?
A: Support plans include Basic (free), Developer, Business, and Enterprise with varying response times, TAMs, and proactive services.

Q: What is the AWS Free Tier?
A: Free Tier offers limited free usage of 100+ services for 12 months or always-free, ideal for learning and prototyping.