Cloud Fundamentals

Cloud Mastery: 101 to Architect

Cloud Mastery: 101 to Architect

The ultimate technical interview prep guide for AWS, Azure, GCP, and Oracle Cloud.

Topic 01

Cloud Fundamentals

☁️ What is Cloud Computing?
🍰 IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS
🌐 Public vs Private vs Hybrid
πŸ“ Regions & Availability Zones
🀝 Shared Responsibility Model

Q: What is the Shared Responsibility Model?

A: Cloud providers secure the infrastructure (hardware/data centers), while customers secure data, identity, OS, and application-level configurations.

Topic 02

Compute Services

πŸ’» Virtual Machines (VMs)
βš–οΈ Auto Scaling
πŸ“¦ Containers vs VMs
⚑ Serverless Computing
🚦 Load Balancers

Q: VM services in major clouds?

AWS EC2
Azure Virtual Machines
GCP Compute Engine
OCI Compute Instances
Topic 03

Storage Services

πŸ“ Object vs Block vs File
πŸ”₯ Hot vs Cold Storage
πŸ”„ Backup & Disaster Recovery
πŸ’Ž Durability vs Availability

Q: When should object storage be used?

A: For unstructured data like images, videos, backups, and logs with high durability and low cost.

Topic 04

Networking

πŸ›‘οΈ VPC / VNet / VCN
πŸ”’ Public vs Private Subnets
πŸšͺ Gateway vs NAT
🌍 DNS Basics

Q: Why use a private subnet?

A: To isolate backend resources (like databases) from direct internet access, significantly improving security.

Topic 05

Identity & Security

πŸ”‘ IAM Users & Roles
πŸ“œ RBAC vs ABAC
πŸ” Encryption at Rest/Transit
🚫 Zero Trust Model

Q: Why use IAM Roles instead of users?

A: Roles avoid long-lived credentials and improve security by providing temporary access via security tokens.

Topic 06

Databases

πŸ“Š SQL vs NoSQL
πŸ› οΈ Managed Databases
πŸ‘― Read Replicas
🌍 Multi-region Databases

Q: When choose NoSQL over SQL?

A: When massive horizontal scalability, flexible schema, and high write throughput are primary requirements.

Topic 07

DevOps & CI/CD

πŸ”„ CI vs CD
πŸ—οΈ Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
πŸ”΅ Blue-Green vs Canary
πŸ“Š Monitoring & Logging

Q: What problem does IaC solve?

A: Eliminates manual configuration drift and enables repeatable, version-controlled infrastructure provisioning.

Topic 08

HA & Disaster Recovery

⏱️ RTO vs RPO
βš–οΈ Active-Active vs Passive
πŸ—ΊοΈ Multi-AZ vs Multi-Region
🚨 Failover Strategies

Q: Difference between RTO and RPO?

A: RTO = maximum downtime allowed (recovery speed); RPO = maximum data loss allowed (time since last backup).

Topic 09

Cloud Cost Optimization

πŸ’° On-Demand vs Reserved
πŸ“‰ Spot Instances
πŸ“ Right-Sizing
πŸ“¦ Storage Tiering

Q: Best way to reduce cloud cost quickly?

A: Right-size underutilized resources and immediately terminate or shut down unused services.

Topic 10

System Design (Interview-Focused)

πŸ—οΈ Scalable Web Apps
πŸ“€ File Upload Service
πŸ‘₯ Design for 1M Users
🌐 Global Traffic Design

Q: First question to ask in system design?

A: Clarify requirements: scale (DAU/MAU), expected availability, latency requirements, and data consistency needs.

Cloud Mastery Interactive Series Β© 2024

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