Instance Types
Which EC2 instance family is best for general-purpose workloads?
T or M family
What AWS feature acts as a virtual firewall controlling inbound and outbound traffic to EC2 instances?
Security Group
What type of storage persists even after an EC2 instance is stopped or terminated?
EBS (Elastic Block Store)
What AWS service distributes incoming traffic across multiple EC2 instances?
Elastic Load Balancer (ELB)
What pricing model lets you pay only for the compute time you use, with no long-term commitment?
On-Demand Instances
Which EC2 instance family is optimized for compute-intensive workloads?
C family
What AWS service allows you to create isolated virtual networks for EC2 instances?
VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)
What storage type is temporary and lost when the instance stops?
Instance Store
What feature automatically adjusts the number of EC2 instances based on demand?
Auto Scaling
What pricing option gives discounts up to 75% for 1- or 3-year commitments?
Reserved Instances
Which EC2 instance family is optimized for memory-intensive workloads, such as databases or caching?
R family
What provides a static IPv4 address that can be associated with an EC2 instance?
Elastic IP
What managed file system can be shared across multiple EC2 instances?
EFS (Elastic File System)
Name two types of Elastic Load Balancers.
Application Load Balancer (ALB) and Network Load Balancer (NLB)
What pricing model offers the lowest cost for interruptible workloads?
Spot Instances
Which EC2 instance family provides GPUs for machine learning or graphics processing?
P or G family
What is one key difference between a Security Group and a Network ACL?
Security Groups are stateful; Network ACLs are stateless
What type of storage is ideal for high-performance database workloads requiring low latency?
io2 or io2 Block Express EBS volumes
What’s the difference between vertical and horizontal scaling?
Vertical scaling increases instance size; horizontal scaling adds more instances
Name one factor that affects EC2 pricing besides instance type.
Region, operating system, storage, or network usage
What two main factors determine the performance differences between EC2 instance types?
vCPU count and memory size (also architecture or network performance)
How can an EC2 instance in a private subnet access the internet?
Use a NAT Gateway or NAT Instance
What is the main difference between General Purpose (gp3) and Provisioned IOPS (io1/io2) EBS volumes?
gp3 is general-purpose; io1/io2 provides guaranteed high IOPS performance
How can you achieve zero downtime during scaling events?
Use Auto Scaling with multiple Availability Zones and a load balancer
What’s the difference between Standard, Convertible, and Scheduled Reserved Instances?
Standard = fixed configuration; Convertible = can change type; Scheduled = run at specific times