AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate (DEA-C01) Exam Guide

Introduction
The AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate (DEA-C01) exam validates a candidate’s
ability to implement data pipelines and to monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize cost
and performance issues in accordance with best practices.

The exam also validates a candidate’s ability to complete the following tasks:

• Ingest and transform data, and orchestrate data pipelines while applying
programming concepts.
• Choose an optimal data store, design data models, catalog data schemas, and
manage data lifecycles.
• Operationalize, maintain, and monitor data pipelines. Analyze data and ensure
data quality.
• Implement appropriate authentication, authorization, data encryption, privacy,
and governance. Enable logging.

Target candidate description

The target candidate should have the equivalent of 2–3 years of experience in data
engineering. The target candidate should understand the effects of volume, variety,
and velocity on data ingestion, transformation, modeling, security, governance,
privacy, schema design, and optimal data store design. Additionally, the target
candidate should have at least 1–2 years of hands-on experience with AWS services.

Recommended general IT knowledge

The target candidate should have the following general IT knowledge:

• Setup and maintenance of extract, transform, and load (ETL) pipelines from
ingestion to destination
• Application of high-level but language-agnostic programming concepts as
required by the pipeline
• How to use Git commands for source control
• How to use data lakes to store data
• General concepts for networking, storage, and compute

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Recommended AWS knowledge

The target candidate should have the following AWS knowledge:

• How to use AWS services to accomplish the tasks listed in the Introduction
section of this exam guide
• An understanding of the AWS services for encryption, governance, protection,
and logging of all data that is part of data pipelines
• The ability to compare AWS services to understand the cost, performance, and
functional differences between services
• How to structure SQL queries and how to run SQL queries on AWS services
• An understanding of how to analyze data, verify data quality, and ensure data
consistency by using AWS services

Job tasks that are out of scope for the target candidate

The following list contains job tasks that the target candidate is not expected to be
able to perform. This list is non-exhaustive. These tasks are out of scope for the exam:

• Perform artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) tasks.

• Demonstrate knowledge of programming language-specific syntax.
• Draw business conclusions based on data.

Refer to the Appendix for a list of in-scope AWS services and features and a list of
out-of-scope AWS services and features.

Exam content
Response types

There are two types of questions on the exam:

• Multiple choice: Has one correct response and three incorrect responses
(distractors)
• Multiple response: Has two or more correct responses out of five or more
response options

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Select one or more responses that best complete the statement or answer the
question. Distractors, or incorrect answers, are response options that a candidate with
incomplete knowledge or skill might choose. Distractors are generally plausible
responses that match the content area.

Unanswered questions are scored as incorrect; there is no penalty for guessing. The
exam includes 50 questions that affect your score.

Unscored content

The exam includes 15 unscored questions that do not affect your score. AWS collects
information about performance on these unscored questions to evaluate these
questions for future use as scored questions. These unscored questions are not
identified on the exam.

Exam results

The AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate (DEA-C01) exam has a pass or fail
designation. The exam is scored against a minimum standard established by AWS
professionals who follow certification industry best practices and guidelines.

Your results for the exam are reported as a scaled score of 100–1,000. The minimum
passing score is 720. Your score shows how you performed on the exam as a whole
and whether you passed. Scaled scoring models help equate scores across multiple
exam forms that might have slightly different difficulty levels.

Your score report could contain a table of classifications of your performance at each
section level. The exam uses a compensatory scoring model, which means that you do
not need to achieve a passing score in each section. You need to pass only the overall
exam.

Each section of the exam has a specific weighting, so some sections have more
questions than other sections have. The table of classifications contains general
information that highlights your strengths and weaknesses. Use caution when you
interpret section-level feedback.

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Content outline

This exam guide includes weightings, content domains, and task statements for the
exam. This guide does not provide a comprehensive list of the content on the exam.
However, additional context for each task statement is available to help you prepare
for the exam.

The exam has the following content domains and weightings:

• Domain 1: Data Ingestion and Transformation (34% of scored content)

• Domain 2: Data Store Management (26% of scored content)
• Domain 3: Data Operations and Support (22% of scored content)
• Domain 4: Data Security and Governance (18% of scored content)

Domain 1: Data Ingestion and Transformation

Task Statement 1.1: Perform data ingestion.

Knowledge of:
• Throughput and latency characteristics for AWS services that ingest data
• Data ingestion patterns (for example, frequency and data history)
• Streaming data ingestion
• Batch data ingestion (for example, scheduled ingestion, event-driven
ingestion)
• Replayability of data ingestion pipelines
• Stateful and stateless data transactions

Skills in:
• Reading data from streaming sources (for example, Amazon Kinesis,
Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka [Amazon MSK], Amazon
DynamoDB Streams, AWS Database Migration Service [AWS DMS], AWS
Glue, Amazon Redshift)
• Reading data from batch sources (for example, Amazon S3, AWS Glue,
Amazon EMR, AWS DMS, Amazon Redshift, AWS Lambda, Amazon
AppFlow)
• Implementing appropriate configuration options for batch ingestion
• Consuming data APIs

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 • Setting up schedulers by using Amazon EventBridge, Apache Airflow, or
time-based schedules for jobs and crawlers
• Setting up event triggers (for example, Amazon S3 Event Notifications,
EventBridge)
• Calling a Lambda function from Amazon Kinesis
• Creating allowlists for IP addresses to allow connections to data sources
• Implementing throttling and overcoming rate limits (for example,
DynamoDB, Amazon RDS, Kinesis)
• Managing fan-in and fan-out for streaming data distribution

Task Statement 1.2: Transform and process data.

Knowledge of:
• Creation of ETL pipelines based on business requirements
• Volume, velocity, and variety of data (for example, structured data,
unstructured data)
• Cloud computing and distributed computing
• How to use Apache Spark to process data
• Intermediate data staging locations

Skills in:
• Optimizing container usage for performance needs (for example, Amazon
Elastic Kubernetes Service [Amazon EKS], Amazon Elastic Container Service
[Amazon ECS])
• Connecting to different data sources (for example, Java Database
Connectivity [JDBC], Open Database Connectivity [ODBC])
• Integrating data from multiple sources
• Optimizing costs while processing data
• Implementing data transformation services based on requirements (for
example, Amazon EMR, AWS Glue, Lambda, Amazon Redshift)
• Transforming data between formats (for example, from .csv to Apache
Parquet)
• Troubleshooting and debugging common transformation failures and
performance issues
• Creating data APIs to make data available to other systems by using AWS
services

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Task Statement 1.3: Orchestrate data pipelines.

Knowledge of:
• How to integrate various AWS services to create ETL pipelines
• Event-driven architecture
• How to configure AWS services for data pipelines based on schedules or
dependencies
• Serverless workflows

Skills in:
• Using orchestration services to build workflows for data ETL pipelines (for
example, Lambda, EventBridge, Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache
Airflow [Amazon MWAA], AWS Step Functions, AWS Glue workflows)
• Building data pipelines for performance, availability, scalability, resiliency,
and fault tolerance
• Implementing and maintaining serverless workflows
• Using notification services to send alerts (for example, Amazon Simple
Notification Service [Amazon SNS], Amazon Simple Queue Service [Amazon
SQS])

Task Statement 1.4: Apply programming concepts.

Knowledge of:
• Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) (implementation,
testing, and deployment of data pipelines)
• SQL queries (for data source queries and data transformations)
• Infrastructure as code (IaC) for repeatable deployments (for example, AWS
Cloud Development Kit [AWS CDK], AWS CloudFormation)
• Distributed computing
• Data structures and algorithms (for example, graph data structures and tree
data structures)
• SQL query optimization

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 Skills in:
• Optimizing code to reduce runtime for data ingestion and transformation
• Configuring Lambda functions to meet concurrency and performance needs
• Performing SQL queries to transform data (for example, Amazon Redshift
stored procedures)
• Structuring SQL queries to meet data pipeline requirements
• Using Git commands to perform actions such as creating, updating, cloning,
and branching repositories
• Using the AWS Serverless Application Model (AWS SAM) to package and
deploy serverless data pipelines (for example, Lambda functions, Step
Functions, DynamoDB tables)
• Using and mounting storage volumes from within Lambda functions

Domain 2: Data Store Management

Task Statement 2.1: Choose a data store.

Knowledge of:
• Storage platforms and their characteristics
• Storage services and configurations for specific performance demands
• Data storage formats (for example, .csv, .txt, Parquet)
• How to align data storage with data migration requirements
• How to determine the appropriate storage solution for specific access
patterns
• How to manage locks to prevent access to data (for example, Amazon
Redshift, Amazon RDS)

Skills in:
• Implementing the appropriate storage services for specific cost and
performance requirements (for example, Amazon Redshift, Amazon EMR,
AWS Lake Formation, Amazon RDS, DynamoDB, Amazon Kinesis Data
Streams, Amazon MSK)
• Configuring the appropriate storage services for specific access patterns and
requirements (for example, Amazon Redshift, Amazon EMR, Lake
Formation, Amazon RDS, DynamoDB)

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 • Applying storage services to appropriate use cases (for example, Amazon
S3)
• Integrating migration tools into data processing systems (for example, AWS
Transfer Family)
• Implementing data migration or remote access methods (for example,
Amazon Redshift federated queries, Amazon Redshift materialized views,
Amazon Redshift Spectrum)

Task Statement 2.2: Understand data cataloging systems.

Knowledge of:
• How to create a data catalog
• Data classification based on requirements
• Components of metadata and data catalogs

Skills in:
• Using data catalogs to consume data from the data’s source
• Building and referencing a data catalog (for example, AWS Glue Data
Catalog, Apache Hive metastore)
• Discovering schemas and using AWS Glue crawlers to populate data
catalogs
• Synchronizing partitions with a data catalog
• Creating new source or target connections for cataloging (for example, AWS
Glue)

Task Statement 2.3: Manage the lifecycle of data.

Knowledge of:
• Appropriate storage solutions to address hot and cold data requirements
• How to optimize the cost of storage based on the data lifecycle
• How to delete data to meet business and legal requirements
• Data retention policies and archiving strategies
• How to protect data with appropriate resiliency and availability

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 Skills in:
• Performing load and unload operations to move data between Amazon S3
and Amazon Redshift
• Managing S3 Lifecycle policies to change the storage tier of S3 data
• Expiring data when it reaches a specific age by using S3 Lifecycle policies
• Managing S3 versioning and DynamoDB TTL

Task Statement 2.4: Design data models and schema evolution.

Knowledge of:
• Data modeling concepts
• How to ensure accuracy and trustworthiness of data by using data lineage
• Best practices for indexing, partitioning strategies, compression, and other
data optimization techniques
• How to model structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data
• Schema evolution techniques

Skills in:
• Designing schemas for Amazon Redshift, DynamoDB, and Lake Formation
• Addressing changes to the characteristics of data
• Performing schema conversion (for example, by using the AWS Schema
Conversion Tool [AWS SCT] and AWS DMS Schema Conversion)
• Establishing data lineage by using AWS tools (for example, Amazon
SageMaker ML Lineage Tracking)

Domain 3: Data Operations and Support

Task Statement 3.1: Automate data processing by using AWS services.

Knowledge of:
• How to maintain and troubleshoot data processing for repeatable business
outcomes
• API calls for data processing
• Which services accept scripting (for example, Amazon EMR, Amazon
Redshift, AWS Glue)

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 Skills in:
• Orchestrating data pipelines (for example, Amazon MWAA, Step Functions)
• Troubleshooting Amazon managed workflows
• Calling SDKs to access Amazon features from code
• Using the features of AWS services to process data (for example, Amazon
EMR, Amazon Redshift, AWS Glue)
• Consuming and maintaining data APIs
• Preparing data transformation (for example, AWS Glue DataBrew)
• Querying data (for example, Amazon Athena)
• Using Lambda to automate data processing
• Managing events and schedulers (for example, EventBridge)

Task Statement 3.2: Analyze data by using AWS services.

Knowledge of:
• Tradeoffs between provisioned services and serverless services
• SQL queries (for example, SELECT statements with multiple qualifiers or
JOIN clauses)
• How to visualize data for analysis
• When and how to apply cleansing techniques
• Data aggregation, rolling average, grouping, and pivoting

Skills in:
• Visualizing data by using AWS services and tools (for example, AWS Glue
DataBrew, Amazon QuickSight)
• Verifying and cleaning data (for example, Lambda, Athena, QuickSight,
Jupyter Notebooks, Amazon SageMaker Data Wrangler)
• Using Athena to query data or to create views
• Using Athena notebooks that use Apache Spark to explore data

Task Statement 3.3: Maintain and monitor data pipelines.

Knowledge of:
• How to log application data
• Best practices for performance tuning
• How to log access to AWS services
• Amazon Macie, AWS CloudTrail, and Amazon CloudWatch

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 Skills in:
• Extracting logs for audits
• Deploying logging and monitoring solutions to facilitate auditing and
traceability
• Using notifications during monitoring to send alerts
• Troubleshooting performance issues
• Using CloudTrail to track API calls
• Troubleshooting and maintaining pipelines (for example, AWS Glue,
Amazon EMR)
• Using Amazon CloudWatch Logs to log application data (with a focus on
configuration and automation)
• Analyzing logs with AWS services (for example, Athena, Amazon EMR,
Amazon OpenSearch Service, CloudWatch Logs Insights, big data
application logs)

Task Statement 3.4: Ensure data quality.

Knowledge of:
• Data sampling techniques
• How to implement data skew mechanisms
• Data validation (data completeness, consistency, accuracy, and integrity)
• Data profiling

Skills in:
• Running data quality checks while processing the data (for example,
checking for empty fields)
• Defining data quality rules (for example, AWS Glue DataBrew)
• Investigating data consistency (for example, AWS Glue DataBrew)

Domain 4: Data Security and Governance

Task Statement 4.1: Apply authentication mechanisms.

Knowledge of:
• VPC security networking concepts
• Differences between managed services and unmanaged services
• Authentication methods (password-based, certificate-based, and role-based)
• Differences between AWS managed policies and customer managed policies

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 Skills in:
• Updating VPC security groups
• Creating and updating IAM groups, roles, endpoints, and services
• Creating and rotating credentials for password management (for example,
AWS Secrets Manager)
• Setting up IAM roles for access (for example, Lambda, Amazon API Gateway,
AWS CLI, CloudFormation)
• Applying IAM policies to roles, endpoints, and services (for example, S3
Access Points, AWS PrivateLink)

Task Statement 4.2: Apply authorization mechanisms.

Knowledge of:
• Authorization methods (role-based, policy-based, tag-based, and attribute-
based)
• Principle of least privilege as it applies to AWS security
• Role-based access control and expected access patterns
• Methods to protect data from unauthorized access across services

Skills in:
• Creating custom IAM policies when a managed policy does not meet the
needs
• Storing application and database credentials (for example, Secrets Manager,
AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store)
• Providing database users, groups, and roles access and authority in a
database (for example, for Amazon Redshift)
• Managing permissions through Lake Formation (for Amazon Redshift,
Amazon EMR, Athena, and Amazon S3)

Task Statement 4.3: Ensure data encryption and masking.

Knowledge of:
• Data encryption options available in AWS analytics services (for example,
Amazon Redshift, Amazon EMR, AWS Glue)
• Differences between client-side encryption and server-side encryption
• Protection of sensitive data
• Data anonymization, masking, and key salting

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 Skills in:
• Applying data masking and anonymization according to compliance laws or
company policies
• Using encryption keys to encrypt or decrypt data (for example, AWS Key
Management Service [AWS KMS])
• Configuring encryption across AWS account boundaries
• Enabling encryption in transit for data.

Task Statement 4.4: Prepare logs for audit.

Knowledge of:
• How to log application data
• How to log access to AWS services
• Centralized AWS logs

Skills in:
• Using CloudTrail to track API calls
• Using CloudWatch Logs to store application logs
• Using AWS CloudTrail Lake for centralized logging queries
• Analyzing logs by using AWS services (for example, Athena, CloudWatch
Logs Insights, Amazon OpenSearch Service)
• Integrating various AWS services to perform logging (for example, Amazon
EMR in cases of large volumes of log data)

Task Statement 4.5: Understand data privacy and governance.

Knowledge of:
• How to protect personally identifiable information (PII)
• Data sovereignty

Skills in:
• Granting permissions for data sharing (for example, data sharing for
Amazon Redshift)
• Implementing PII identification (for example, Macie with Lake Formation)
• Implementing data privacy strategies to prevent backups or replications of
data to disallowed AWS Regions
• Managing configuration changes that have occurred in an account (for
example, AWS Config)

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Appendix
In-scope AWS services and features

The following list contains AWS services and features that are in scope for the exam.
This list is non-exhaustive and is subject to change. AWS offerings appear in
categories that align with the offerings’ primary functions:

Analytics:

• Amazon Athena
• Amazon EMR
• AWS Glue
• AWS Glue DataBrew
• AWS Lake Formation
• Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
• Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
• Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink
• Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)
• Amazon OpenSearch Service
• Amazon QuickSight

Application Integration:

• Amazon AppFlow
• Amazon EventBridge
• Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow (Amazon MWAA)
• Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)
• Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)
• AWS Step Functions

Cloud Financial Management:

• AWS Budgets
• AWS Cost Explorer

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Compute:

• AWS Batch
• Amazon EC2
• AWS Lambda
• AWS Serverless Application Model (AWS SAM)

Containers:

• Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR)

• Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)
• Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS)

Database:

• Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility)

• Amazon DynamoDB
• Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra)
• Amazon MemoryDB for Redis
• Amazon Neptune
• Amazon RDS
• Amazon Redshift

Developer Tools:

• AWS CLI
• AWS Cloud9
• AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK)
• AWS CodeBuild
• AWS CodeCommit
• AWS CodeDeploy
• AWS CodePipeline

Frontend Web and Mobile:

• Amazon API Gateway

Machine Learning:

• Amazon SageMaker

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Management and Governance:

• AWS CloudFormation
• AWS CloudTrail
• Amazon CloudWatch
• Amazon CloudWatch Logs
• AWS Config
• Amazon Managed Grafana
• AWS Systems Manager
• AWS Well-Architected Tool

Migration and Transfer:

• AWS Application Discovery Service

• AWS Application Migration Service
• AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS)
• AWS DataSync
• AWS Schema Conversion Tool (AWS SCT)
• AWS Snow Family
• AWS Transfer Family

Networking and Content Delivery:

• Amazon CloudFront
• AWS PrivateLink
• Amazon Route 53
• Amazon VPC

Security, Identity, and Compliance:

• AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

• AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS)
• Amazon Macie
• AWS Secrets Manager
• AWS Shield
• AWS WAF

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Storage:

• AWS Backup
• Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)
• Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)
• Amazon S3
• Amazon S3 Glacier

Out-of-scope AWS services and features

The following list contains AWS services and features that are out of scope for the
exam. This list is non-exhaustive and is subject to change. AWS offerings that are
entirely unrelated to the target job roles for the exam are excluded from this list:

Analytics:

• Amazon FinSpace

Business Applications:

• Alexa for Business

• Amazon Chime
• Amazon Connect
• Amazon Honeycode
• AWS IQ
• Amazon WorkDocs
• Amazon WorkMail

Compute:

• AWS App Runner

• AWS Elastic Beanstalk
• Amazon Lightsail
• AWS Outposts
• AWS Serverless Application Repository

Containers:

• Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA)

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Database:

• Amazon Timestream

Developer Tools:

• AWS Fault Injection Simulator (AWS FIS)

• AWS X-Ray

Frontend Web and Mobile:

• AWS Amplify
• AWS AppSync
• AWS Device Farm
• Amazon Location Service
• Amazon Pinpoint
• Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES)

Internet of Things (IoT):

• FreeRTOS
• AWS IoT 1-Click
• AWS IoT Device Defender
• AWS IoT Device Management
• AWS IoT Events
• AWS IoT FleetWise
• AWS IoT RoboRunner
• AWS IoT SiteWise
• AWS IoT TwinMaker

Machine Learning:

• Amazon CodeWhisperer
• Amazon DevOps Guru

Management and Governance:

• AWS Activate
• AWS Managed Services (AMS)

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Media Services:

• Amazon Elastic Transcoder

• AWS Elemental Appliances and Software
• AWS Elemental MediaConnect
• AWS Elemental MediaConvert
• AWS Elemental MediaLive
• AWS Elemental MediaPackage
• AWS Elemental MediaStore
• AWS Elemental MediaTailor
• Amazon Interactive Video Service (Amazon IVS)
• Amazon Nimble Studio

Migration and Transfer:

• AWS Mainframe Modernization

• AWS Migration Hub

Storage:

• EC2 Image Builder

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Essential Amazon Web
Services (AWS) Tools
used by Data Engineers
( ALL SERIES IN SINGLE DOCUMENT )
OVERVIEW
👨‍🎓Data engineers have a vast toolkit when working with AWS, covering all aspects of data
ingestion, processing, storage, and analysis. Here's a breakdown of some key AWS services data
engineers rely on:

➡ Data Ingestion & Management:

👉 Amazon S3: Object storage for raw data, scalable and cost-effective.
👉 Amazon Kinesis : Streaming platform for real-time data ingestion.
👉 Amazon SQS: Queueing service for buffering and managing data flow.
👉 AWS Data Pipeline: Orchestration service for building and managing data pipelines.
👉 AWS Glue: Serverless ETL service for data extraction, transformation, and loading.

➡ Data Storage & Processing:

👉 Amazon Redshift : Scalable data warehouse for large-scale data analysis.

👉 Amazon DynamoDB: NoSQL database for fast and flexible data storage.
👉 Amazon Elasticsearch Service: Highly scalable search and analytics platform.
👉 Amazon EMR: Hadoop and Spark cluster service for big data processing.
👉 Amazon Lambda: Serverless compute service for running code without provisioning or
managing servers.
👉 Amazon SageMaker: Machine learning platform for building, training, and deploying models.

➡ Data Analysis & Visualization:

👉 Amazon Athena: Serverless interactive query service for analyzing data in S3.
👉 Amazon QuickSight: Cloud-based business intelligence service for data visualization and
reporting.
👉 Amazon OpenSearch Service: Open-source search and analytics platform with near real-time
capabilities.
👉 Amazon CloudWatch: Monitoring and observability service for tracking resource utilization and
performance.

➡ Additional Services:

👉 IAM: Identity and access management for controlling access to AWS resources.
👉 CloudFormation: Infrastructure as code service for automating the provisioning and
management of AWS resources.
👉 CloudTrail: Logging service for tracking API calls made to AWS services.

➡ Bonus Tip: Remember, the specific services used will depend on your specific data engineering
needs and project requirements. Don't hesitate to explore and experiment with different services to
find the best fit for your workflow.

Amazon S3
👉 Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is a scalable and widely used object storage service
provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It allows data engineers to store and retrieve any amount
of data at any time, making it a popular choice for building data lakes, storing backups, hosting
static websites, and supporting various data-intensive applications.

➡ How Data Engineers Use S3:

👉 Data Lake: S3 serves as a central data lake, a repository for all the raw data ingested from
various sources. It's the first stop for most data pipelines, where data engineers can stage, organize,
and pre-process it before feeding it into downstream applications.
👉 Backup and Archiving: S3 offers cost-effective storage for backups and archives of valuable
data. Its durability and scalability make it perfect for long-term data retention, ensuring your
information is safe and accessible even years later.
👉 Static Content Hosting: S3 can host static websites and web applications with ease. With its high
availability and global distribution, it delivers content quickly and reliably to users worldwide.
👉 Data Sharing and Collaboration: S3 simplifies data sharing within your team or with external
collaborators. You can set granular access permissions for different users and groups, ensuring
secure and controlled data access.
👉 Big Data Processing: S3 seamlessly integrates with various big data processing frameworks like
Hadoop and Spark. Data engineers can directly read and write data from S3 within these platforms,
eliminating the need for separate data transfer processes.

➡ Examples:

👉 Example 1: A data engineer working on a customer recommendation system stores all user
interaction data (clicks, purchases, etc.) in S3. This data lake serves as the source for training and
running machine learning models that personalize recommendations for each user.
👉 Example 2: A team developing a real-time analytics platform uses S3 as a buffer for streaming
data from sensors and devices. By pre-processing and storing the data in S3, they can enable near
real-time analysis and reporting without overwhelming their processing systems.
👉 Example 3: A company needs to archive old financial records for regulatory compliance. S3's
cost-effective storage and long-term data retention capabilities make it the perfect solution for
storing and accessing these files without breaking the bank.

Amazon Kinesis
👉 Kinesis is a managed streaming service that handles the high-velocity ingestion and processing
of data in real-time. It can handle data from various sources, like sensor readings, social media
feeds, clickstream data, and more. Unlike traditional batch processing, Kinesis doesn't wait for data
to accumulate – it analyzes it as it arrives, enabling immediate reactions and decisions.

➡ How Data Engineers Use Kinesis:

👉 Fraud Detection: By analyzing real-time transaction streams, data engineers can identify
suspicious activity and flag potential fraud attempts as they happen.
👉 IoT Platform Analytics: Kinesis streams sensor data from connected devices, allowing engineers
to monitor performance, predict maintenance needs, and optimize operations in real-time.
👉 Personalization and Recommendations: Analyzing real-time user behavior through website
clicks, app interactions, and purchase logs, Kinesis helps personalize content and recommendations,
improving user engagement and conversion rates.
👉 Live Dashboards and Reporting: By processing data streams in real-time, Kinesis enables data
engineers to build dynamic dashboards and reports that reflect the latest information, providing
insightful snapshots into current trends and activities.
👉 Event-Driven Architectures: Kinesis integrates seamlessly with other AWS services and triggers
actions based on real-time data events. For example, a new social media comment might trigger a
sentiment analysis or automated customer outreach.

➡ Examples:

👉 Example 1: A stock trading platform uses Kinesis to stream real-time market data feeds. Data
engineers can analyze these streams to identify price fluctuations, trigger trading alerts, and inform
investment decisions instantly.
👉 Example 2: A fitness wearable app utilizes Kinesis to capture user activity data in real-time. This
data feeds personalized workout recommendations, tracks progress towards goals, and provides
instant feedback during exercise sessions.
👉 Example 3: A news aggregator platform employs Kinesis to collect and analyze news articles as
they are published. This enables the platform to present users with curated and trending news
content based on their real-time interests.

Amazon SQS
👉 SQS is a managed message queuing service that allows applications to communicate
asynchronously. Instead of directly sending data from one application to another, you can send it to
an SQS queue. This acts as a temporary buffer, decoupling the sender and receiver. The receiving
application can then pull messages from the queue at its own pace, ensuring smooth processing
even if it's slower than the sender.

➡ How Data Engineers Use SQS:

👉 Decoupling Applications: SQS breaks the tight coupling between data producers and
consumers, ensuring each component operates independently and scales easily. This improves
overall system resilience and flexibility.
👉 Buffering Spikes: When data arrives in bursts, SQS acts as a buffer, preventing downstream
systems from getting overwhelmed. It queues messages efficiently until the receiving application is
ready to process them, smoothing out data flow and preventing bottlenecks.
👉 Micro-tasking and Workflows: SQS enables breaking down large tasks into smaller, independent
messages. These messages can then be processed by multiple workers in parallel, accelerating
overall processing and improving efficiency.
👉 Event-Driven Architectures: SQS integrates seamlessly with other AWS services and triggers
actions based on messages in the queue. This allows building flexible and reactive applications that
respond to events in real-time.
👉 Retry and Error Handling: SQS offers built-in mechanisms for retrying failed messages and
handling errors gracefully. This ensures robust data processing and prevents data loss even in case
of temporary failures.
➡ Examples:

👉 Example 1: A data pipeline ingests large datasets from various sources. Instead of directly
pushing data to a data warehouse, the pipeline sends messages to an SQS queue. This allows the
warehouse to process data at its own pace without slowing down the ingestion process.
👉 Example 2: A video encoding service receives video files for processing. These files are uploaded
to S3 and a message is sent to an SQS queue. Worker applications read the queue and encode the
videos independently, scaling automatically based on the workload.
👉 Example 3: A customer support system uses SQS to handle high volumes of incoming support
tickets. Tickets are added to an SQS queue, and support agents can pick them up at their own pace,
ensuring efficient ticket management even during peak times.

AWS Data Pipeline

👉 Data Pipeline is a managed service that allows you to define and automate data transformations
and movements within AWS. You can easily build data pipelines that extract, transform, and load
(ETL) or extract, load, and transform (ELT) data from various sources like databases, files, and AWS
services, delivering it to your desired destination, like data warehouses, analytics platforms, or
applications.

➡ How Data Engineers Use AWS Data Pipeline:

👉 Automating Data Flow: Instead of manually moving data, data engineers can build pipelines
that run automatically with scheduled triggers or event-driven responses, ensuring consistent and
reliable data processing.
👉 Orchestrating Complex Workflows: Data Pipeline allows chaining multiple data processing
activities together, from simple data extraction to complex transformations and loading, creating
multi-step data journeys with ease.
👉 Handling Different Data Formats: Data Pipeline supports various data formats like CSV, JSON,
XML, and more, making it versatile for integrating data from diverse sources.
👉 Error Handling and Logging: Data Pipeline offers built-in mechanisms for handling errors,
retrying failed tasks, and logging activities, ensuring transparency and smooth pipeline execution.
👉 Cost-effective Orchestration: You only pay for the resources your pipelines use, making it a
cost-efficient solution for running data workflows of any size.

➡ Examples:

👉 Example 1: A data engineer builds a pipeline that extracts sales data from different stores every
hour, transforms it into a standardized format, and loads it into a Redshift data warehouse for daily
sales analysis.
👉 Example 2: A pipeline automatically ingests sensor data from IoT devices in real-time, performs
basic filtering and aggregation, and feeds it into a machine learning model for predictive
maintenance insights.
👉 Example 3: A data pipeline retrieves customer reviews from different platforms, analyzes
sentiment using a natural language processing service, and sends summarized feedback reports to
marketing and product teams.

AWS Glue
👉 Glue simplifies data integration by automatically discovering and cataloging data sources within
your AWS environment. It connects to various databases, data lakes (like S3), and other AWS
services, providing a centralized view of your data assets. Additionally, Glue offers ETL (Extract,
Transform, Load) capabilities, letting you cleanse, transform, and prepare your data for downstream
applications.
➡ How Data Engineers Use AWS Glue:

👉 Data Discovery and Cataloging: Glue scans and catalogs data sources, automatically building a
metadata repository that describes your data assets, their structure, and location. This makes it
easier to find, understand, and utilize your data.
👉 ETL Job Creation and Management: Build and schedule ETL jobs for transforming and preparing
your data for analysis. Glue offers a visual interface for constructing data pipelines, simplifying even
complex ETL workflows.
👉 Prebuilt Transformers and Scripts: Glue provides a library of prebuilt transformers and user-
defined scripts for common data manipulations. This cuts down development time and ensures
consistent data preparation across your projects.
👉 Scalable and Serverless: Glue runs on a serverless architecture, eliminating infrastructure
management and scaling transparently based on your data processing needs. You only pay for the
resources you use, making it cost-effective for any project size.
👉 Real-time and Batch Processing: Glue supports both real-time and batch processing, allowing
you to handle both streaming and static data sources efficiently.

➡ Examples:

👉 Example 1: A data engineer uses Glue to catalog data from various customer databases and S3
buckets. They then build ETL jobs to cleanse and format the data, preparing it for customer
segmentation analysis in Amazon Redshift.
👉 Example 2: A team analyzes web logs using Glue. They leverage the service to discover log data
in S3, transform it into structured format, and feed it into a machine learning model for predicting
user behavior and enhancing website personalization.
👉 Example 3: A company needs to integrate real-time sensor data from IoT devices with historical
sensor data stored in S3. Glue's real-time capabilities enable seamless data ingestion and
transformation, allowing for continuous monitoring and predictive maintenance insights.
Amazon Redshift
👉 Redshift is a fully managed data warehouse designed for large-scale data analysis. It excels at
storing and analyzing massive datasets from various sources, like relational databases, data lakes,
and application logs. Unlike traditional databases, Redshift utilizes a parallel processing
architecture, meaning it distributes your data across multiple nodes, enabling lightning-fast queries
and analytical tasks even on datasets spanning billions of rows.

➡ How Data Engineers Use Amazon Redshift:

👉 Large-scale Data Analysis: Redshift empowers data engineers to analyze massive datasets for
trends, patterns, and correlations that might be invisible in smaller samples. This unlocks
opportunities for data-driven decision making, business optimization, and scientific discovery.
👉 Building Data Marts: Redshift allows creating smaller, targeted data marts from the main data
warehouse, focusing on specific business functions or departments. This improves query
performance and data accessibility for various teams within an organization.
👉 Data Visualization and Reporting: Redshift integrates seamlessly with popular business
intelligence tools, enabling data engineers to create interactive dashboards and reports for
visualizing complex data insights in a user-friendly manner.
👉 Machine Learning Integration: Redshift plays a crucial role in preparing data for machine
learning models. By pre-processing, cleansing, and joining data in Redshift, data engineers provide
models with high-quality fuel for accurate predictions and intelligent applications.
👉 Cost-effective Scalability: Redshift scales effortlessly with your data needs, allowing you to pay
only for the resources you use. This makes it cost-effective for both small and large-scale data
analytics projects.

➡ Examples:

👉 Example 1: A retail company leverages Redshift to analyze millions of customer transactions.

They perform complex queries to identify buying patterns, predict customer churn, and personalize
marketing campaigns for increased sales.
👉 Example 2: A biopharmaceutical company uses Redshift to analyze clinical trial data from
thousands of patients. By querying vast datasets, researchers discover potential drug interactions,
identify promising treatment candidates, and accelerate medical advancements.
👉 Example 3: A financial institution utilizes Redshift to combat fraud. They analyze real-time
transaction data to detect suspicious activity, prevent financial losses, and ensure customer security.
Amazon DynamoDB
👉 DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database that stores data in key-value pairs. Unlike
traditional relational databases, it doesn't rely on schema and can handle diverse data structures
effortlessly. This flexibility makes it ideal for applications requiring high availability, fast
performance, and the ability to scale instantly with changing data demands.

➡ How Data Engineers Use Amazon DynamoDB:

👉 Building Scalable Applications: DynamoDB's inherent scalability allows data engineers to build
applications that seamlessly handle increasing data volumes without infrastructure management or
performance bottlenecks.
👉 Mobile and IoT Applications: Its fast response times and flexible data model make DynamoDB
perfect for mobile and IoT applications, where real-time data access and dynamic schema
adaptations are crucial.
👉 Session Management and Caching: Data engineers leverage DynamoDB to store user sessions,
application configurations, and frequently accessed data as a high-performance cache, ensuring
smooth user experiences and efficient data access.
👉 NoSQL Data Storage for Unstructured Data: When dealing with unstructured data like sensor
readings, social media posts, or logs, DynamoDB's flexible structure eliminates schema limitations
and simplifies data storage and retrieval.
👉 Global Scale and Geographically Distributed Data: DynamoDB seamlessly replicates data across
multiple AWS regions, ensuring high availability and low latency for globally distributed
applications and geographically dispersed data access needs.

➡ Examples:

👉 Example 1: A social media platform utilizes DynamoDB to store user profiles, posts, and
connections. Its scalability handles the ever-growing user base, and its flexibility accommodates
evolving data structures as new features are introduced.
👉 Example 2: A ride-hailing app uses DynamoDB to store driver and passenger locations, booking
information, and real-time traffic data. Its fast response times ensure quick ride matching and
efficient route planning, while its scalability adapts to peak demand periods.
👉 Example 3: A fitness tracker app stores sensor data from wearables in DynamoDB. The flexible
data model adapts to different sensor types, and the high availability ensures continuous data
access for users to track their health and fitness goals.

Amazon Elasticsearch Service

👉 ES is a managed service based on the open-source Elasticsearch search engine. It allows you to
store, search, and analyze large volumes of text and semi-structured data with incredible speed and
accuracy. Its capabilities extend beyond simple keyword searches, offering advanced features like
faceted navigation, geospatial search, and real-time analytics, making it a versatile tool for diverse
data exploration and analysis needs.

➡ How Data Engineers Use Amazon Elasticsearch Service:

👉 Building Search-based Applications: Integrate ES into your applications to offer users intuitive
and powerful search experiences. From e-commerce sites to internal documentation platforms, ES
delivers lightning-fast and relevant results, enhancing user interactions and information discovery.
👉 Log Analysis and Monitoring: Analyze application logs, security logs, and website traffic data in
real-time using ES. Its ability to ingest and analyze high volumes of data makes it perfect for
identifying trends, detecting anomalies, and troubleshooting issues in your systems.
👉 Content and Media Search: Power websites and applications with intelligent search for text,
images, videos, and other multimedia content. ES's faceted search and relevance ranking features
ensure users find exactly what they need, enhancing engagement and content discoverability.
👉 Personalization and Recommendation Engines: Implement AI-powered personalization and
recommendation systems based on user search history, preferences, and past interactions. ES's
analytics capabilities allow you to extract insights from user data and deliver personalized
experiences that drive engagement and conversions.

➡ Examples:
👉 Example 1: A travel booking platform leverages ES to provide users with instant search results
for hotels, flights, and experiences based on various criteria like location, budget, and preferences.
The platform uses ES's faceted search to refine results and personalize recommendations,
improving user experience and conversion rates.
👉 Example 2: A news website integrates ES to power its search engine, allowing users to quickly
find relevant articles based on keywords, topics, and even entities mentioned in the text. ES's near-
real-time indexing ensures users access the freshest information with lightning-fast search speeds.

Amazon EMR
👉 EMR stands for Elastic MapReduce, a managed cluster service for processing big data on AWS.
It simplifies running popular open-source big data frameworks like Apache Spark, Apache Hadoop,
and Apache Hive, eliminating the need for manual infrastructure management and configuration.
By providing pre-configured clusters and scaling them automatically, EMR empowers data
engineers to focus on writing and executing their big data processing logic efficiently.

➡ How Data Engineers Use Amazon EMR:

👉 Large-scale Data Processing: Analyze petabytes of data efficiently using various frameworks like
Spark for real-time analytics, Hadoop for batch processing, and Hive for data warehousing needs.
EMR allows them to leverage the processing power of distributed clusters without infrastructure
complexities.
👉 ETL Workflows: Build and automate complex Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) pipelines that
ingest data from various sources, clean and transform it, and load it into data warehouses or
analytics platforms for further analysis.
Machine Learning Model Training: Train large-scale machine learning models on vast datasets using
frameworks like Spark MLlib or TensorFlow on EMR clusters, accelerating model development and
deployment.
👉 Log Analysis and Security: Analyze massive log files and security data in real-time using EMR to
identify trends, detect anomalies, and improve security posture.
👉 Data Lake Processing: Explore and analyze data stored in data lakes (like Amazon S3) using
EMR, extracting valuable insights and transforming raw data into actionable knowledge.

➡ Examples:

👉 Example 1: A company analyzes website clickstream data from millions of users using Spark on
EMR. They gain insights into user behavior, personalize recommendations, and improve website
conversion rates.
👉 Example 2: A research institute analyzes genomic data from thousands of patients using
Hadoop on EMR. They discover genetic markers associated with diseases and accelerate medical
research.
👉 Example 3: A financial services company builds ETL pipelines on EMR to ingest and process
financial transactions from various sources. They gain insights into customer behavior and optimize
their offerings.

Amazon Lambda
👉 Lambda lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. Simply upload your code
(functions), and Lambda takes care of everything else – allocating resources, running the code, and
scaling automatically based on demand. This serverless approach means you focus on writing the
code, not infrastructure complexities.

➡ How Data Engineers Use Amazon Lambda:

👉 Serverless Data Processing: Build serverless data pipelines that trigger automatically based on
events like new data arriving in S3, changes in databases, or API calls. This eliminates the need for
dedicated servers and simplifies data processing workflows.
👉 Microservices Architecture: Break down complex data processing tasks into smaller,
independent Lambda functions, enabling modularity, scalability, and easier code management.
👉 Real-time Data Processing: Process data streams in real-time using Lambda's near-
instantaneous trigger capabilities. This allows for applications like fraud detection, log analysis, and
real-time analytics dashboards.
👉 API Gateway Integration: Create serverless APIs using Lambda functions, allowing you to build
RESTful APIs without managing servers or scaling infrastructure.
👉 Data Transformation and Cleaning: Cleanse, transform, and prepare data for further analysis or
storage using Lambda functions triggered by data arrival events.

➡ Examples:

👉 Example 1: A company builds a serverless ETL pipeline using Lambda functions triggered by
new data uploads to S3. The functions automatically clean, transform, and load the data into a data
warehouse.
👉 Example 2: A retail website uses Lambda functions to trigger personalized product
recommendations based on user actions. This improves customer experience and increases sales.
👉 Example 3: A financial services company detects fraudulent transactions in real-time using
Lambda functions triggered by payment events. This helps prevent financial losses and protects
customers.

Amazon SageMaker
👉 SageMaker removes the complexities of machine learning development by offering a managed
environment with various tools and services. You can quickly launch Jupyter notebooks for
experimentation, leverage pre-built algorithms for common tasks, or build custom models with
your preferred frameworks. SageMaker handles infrastructure management, scaling resources, and
automating repetitive tasks, allowing you to focus on the core ML tasks.

➡ How Data Engineers Use Amazon SageMaker:

👉 Experimentation and Prototyping: Use Jupyter notebooks with pre-built SageMaker libraries to
rapidly experiment with different algorithms and data sets, accelerating model development.
👉 Model Training and Tuning: Choose from a wide range of pre-built algorithms or bring your
own custom models. SageMaker automates hyperparameter tuning and resource allocation,
optimizing model performance.
👉 Model Deployment and Management: Easily deploy trained models into production with a few
clicks. SageMaker manages infrastructure scaling and provides real-time monitoring for model
performance.
👉 Machine Learning Pipelines: Build and automate end-to-end ML pipelines that involve data
preparation, training, deployment, and monitoring, streamlining the ML workflow.
👉 Collaboration and Reproducibility: Share notebooks and models within teams, ensuring project
consistency and reproducible results.

➡ Examples:

👉 Example 1: A retail company uses SageMaker to build a recommendation engine that analyzes
customer purchase history and predicts future purchases. This leads to personalized product
recommendations and increased sales.
👉 Example 2: A financial services company trains a fraud detection model on SageMaker using
historical transaction data. This helps identify fraudulent transactions in real-time and prevent
financial losses.
👉 Example 3: A healthcare organization builds a medical imaging analysis model on SageMaker to
analyze X-rays and identify potential abnormalities. This assists doctors in diagnoses and improves
patient care.
Amazon Athena
👉 Athena is a serverless query engine that allows you to run interactive SQL queries directly on
data stored in S3. It eliminates the need for complex data warehousing solutions or managing
infrastructure, making it a cost-effective and scalable option for big data analysis.

➡ How Data Engineers Use Amazon Athena:

👉 Exploring Data Lakes: Easily query and analyze data stored in data lakes without the need for
data transformation or ETL pipelines. This allows for quick exploration and identification of trends
and patterns.
👉 Ad-hoc Analysis: Empower business analysts and data scientists to perform ad-hoc analysis on
large datasets without relying on data engineers to prepare the data. This fosters collaboration and
accelerates decision-making.
👉 Cost-effective Analytics: Pay only for the queries you run, making Athena ideal for occasional or
exploratory analysis where traditional data warehouses might be cost-prohibitive.
👉 Integration with Existing Tools: Seamlessly integrate Athena with other AWS services like
Amazon Redshift , Amazon QuickSight, and Amazon EMR for a comprehensive data analytics
ecosystem.

➡ Examples:

👉 Example 1: A marketing team uses Athena to analyze website clickstream data stored in S3 to
understand user behavior and optimize marketing campaigns.
👉 Example 2: A financial services company uses Athena to query historical transaction data to
identify fraudulent activities and improve security measures.
👉 Example 3: A research institute uses Athena to analyze large genomic datasets stored in S3 to
identify genetic markers associated with diseases and accelerate medical research.

Amazon QuickSight
👉 QuickSight is a serverless, cloud-based BI platform that simplifies data visualization creation and
sharing. Data engineers can connect to various data sources (databases, data lakes, etc.), prepare
and transform data, and build interactive dashboards with drag-and-drop simplicity. QuickSight
empowers users to explore data, identify trends, and gain actionable insights through intuitive
visualizations like charts, graphs, and maps.

➡ How Data Engineers Use Amazon QuickSight:

👉 Building Interactive Dashboards: Create visually appealing and informative dashboards tailored
to specific audiences (management, marketing, sales). Embed filters, drill-downs, and actions to
enable deep-dive analysis within the dashboard.
👉 Data Storytelling: Craft compelling narratives by combining visualizations with text, images, and
annotations to guide users through key insights and data exploration.
👉 Empowering Business Users: Facilitate self-service analytics by enabling business users to create
and customize their own reports and dashboards, reducing reliance on data engineers for basic
analysis.
👉 Collaboration and Sharing: Securely share dashboards and reports with colleagues and
stakeholders, fostering data-driven decision-making across teams.
➡ Examples:

👉 Example 1: A retail company builds a QuickSight dashboard that displays real-time sales trends,
inventory levels, and customer demographics. This empowers store managers to optimize product
placement and promotions.
👉 Example 2: A financial services company creates interactive dashboards for risk analysts to
visualize market trends, identify potential risks, and make informed investment decisions.
👉 Example 3: A healthcare organization builds a QuickSight dashboard for medical professionals
to analyze patient data, track treatment progress, and gain insights into patient populations.

Amazon OpenSearch Service

👉 OpenSearch Service is a fully managed offering based on the popular OpenSearch open-source
search engine. It simplifies deploying, scaling, and managing OpenSearch clusters, allowing data
engineers to focus on building search and analytics applications without infrastructure complexities.
It offers diverse capabilities like:

Full-text Search: Locate relevant information within text-heavy documents with ease.
Structured Search: Search and filter data based on specific fields and attributes.
Geospatial Search: Find data associated with geographical locations.
Real-time Analytics: Analyze data streams and gain insights as they arrive.
Aggregation and Visualization: Summarize and visualize search results for deeper understanding.

➡ How Data Engineers Use Amazon OpenSearch Service:

👉 Log Analysis: Gain insights into system logs, application logs, and security logs to identify errors,
detect anomalies, and improve performance.
👉 E-commerce Search: Build powerful product search experiences for online stores, enabling
customers to find what they need quickly and easily.
👉 Website Search: Implement website search functionality to improve user experience and
navigation.
👉 Enterprise Search: Facilitate search across various enterprise data sources (documents, code,
emails) for knowledge discovery and improved decision-making.
👉 Fraud Detection: Analyze transaction data to identify suspicious activity and prevent fraudulent
transactions.

➡ Examples:

👉 Example 1: A gaming company uses OpenSearch Service to analyze player logs in real-time,
identifying bugs, balancing gameplay, and personalizing game experiences.
👉 Example 2: A media streaming platform utilizes OpenSearch Service to power its content search,
enabling users to discover movies, shows, and music efficiently.
👉 Example 3: A research institute leverages OpenSearch Service to analyze large datasets of
scientific publications, accelerating research and discovery.

Amazon CloudWatch
👉 Amazon CloudWatch is a service used for monitoring and observing resources in real-time, built
for DevOps engineers, developers, site reliability engineers (SREs), and IT managers. CloudWatch
provides users with data and actionable insights to monitor their respective applications, stimulate
system-wide performance changes, and optimize resource utilization. CloudWatch collects
monitoring and operational data in the form of logs, metrics, and events, providing its users with an
aggregated view of AWS resources, applications, and services that run on AWS. The CloudWatch
can also be used to detect anomalous behavior in the environments, set warnings and alarms,
visualize logs and metrics side by side, take automated actions, and troubleshoot issues.

➡ How Data Engineers Use Amazon CloudWatch:

👉 Integrations: Seamlessly integrate CloudWatch with other AWS services like Lambda, S3, and
Step Functions to create comprehensive monitoring and observability workflows.
👉 APIs and SDKs: Leverage APIs and SDKs to programmatically interact with CloudWatch data,
automating tasks and integrating it into your CI/CD pipelines.
👉 Anomaly Detection: Use machine learning-powered anomaly detection to identify unusual
patterns in metrics and logs, proactively detecting potential issues before they become critical.

➡ Examples:

👉 Examples 1: A data engineer sets up CloudWatch to monitor the performance of a large-scale

batch processing job running on EMR. They track metrics like CPU utilization, memory usage, and
job completion times to identify any bottlenecks and optimize the job configuration.
👉 Examples 2: A DevOps team uses CloudWatch to monitor the health and availability of their
production web application. They receive alerts in real-time if any metrics exceed predefined
thresholds, allowing them to quickly diagnose and resolve issues before they impact users.
👉 Examples 3: A security engineer uses CloudWatch to monitor logs from various AWS services for
potential security threats. They set up custom filters and alerts to detect suspicious activity and take
immediate action if needed.
Amazon IAM
👉 AWS Identity & Access Management (IAM) and Access Management (IAM) is a web service that
helps you securely control access to AWS resources. With IAM, you can centrally manage
permissions that control which AWS resources users can access. You use IAM to control who is
authenticated (signed in) and authorized (has permissions) to use resources.

➡ How Data Engineers Use Amazon IAM:

👉 Individual User Accounts: Create individual user accounts for each data engineer and assign
specific IAM roles with appropriate permissions.
👉 IAM Roles: Create roles for groups of users with similar access needs, simplifying permission
management. Users can assume roles with the required permissions for specific tasks, enhancing
flexibility and security.
👉 Federated Access: Integrate with external identity providers (ACTIVE Directory, Okta, etc.) for
seamless user authentication and authorization, allowing data engineers to use their existing
credentials to access AWS resources.

➡ Examples:

👉 Examples 1: A data engineer creates an IAM role with read-only access to a specific S3 bucket
containing sensitive data. They assign this role to a data analyst who needs to analyze the data
without granting write permissions.
👉 Examples 2: A DevOps team creates IAM roles with specific permissions for deploying and
managing different environments (development, staging, production). Data engineers can assume
these roles based on the environment they need to work with.
👉 Examples 3: A company integrates IAM with their Active Directory, allowing data engineers to
use their existing credentials to access AWS resources, simplifying access management and
reducing the need for separate AWS credentials.
Amazon CloudFormation
👉 Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the service offered by the AWS cloud it is mainly used to
provision the service in the AWS like EC2, S3, Autoscaling, load balancing and so on you can
provision all the service automation with the Infrastructure as a code (IAC), instead of managing all
of them manually you can manage with the help of AWS Cloudformation.

➡ How Data Engineers Use Amazon CloudFormation:

👉 Provision Data Pipelines: Define your data pipelines (ETL, ELT) as CloudFormation templates,
including resources like S3 buckets, Redshift clusters, and Lambda functions.
👉 Automated Data Lake Creation: Use CloudFormation to provision and configure data lakes with
S3 buckets, IAM policies, and access controls, streamlining data storage and access.
👉 Versioning and Rollbacks: Easily roll back to previous deployments if issues arise, thanks to
CloudFormation's versioning capabilities.

➡ Examples:

👉 Examples 1: A data engineer creates a CloudFormation template to deploy an ETL pipeline

consisting of an S3 bucket for data storage, a Lambda function for data transformation, and a
Redshift cluster for data warehousing. This template can be reused and deployed across different
environments.
👉 Examples 2: A DevOps team uses CloudFormation to provision a data lake with fine-grained
access control for different user groups. The template defines S3 buckets, IAM roles, and policies,
ensuring secure access to sensitive data.
👉 Examples 3: A large organization uses CloudFormation stacks to deploy their data infrastructure
across multiple AWS accounts and regions, maintaining consistency and simplifying infrastructure
management.
Amazon CloudTrail
👉 With AWS CloudTrail, you can monitor your AWS deployments in the cloud by getting a history
of AWS API calls for your account, including API calls made by using the AWS Management
Console, the AWS SDKs, the command line tools, and higher-level AWS services. You can also
identify which users and accounts called AWS APIs for services that support CloudTrail, the source
IP address from which the calls were made, and when the calls occurred. You can integrate
CloudTrail into applications using the API, automate trail creation for your organization, check the
status of your trails, and control how administrators turn CloudTrail logging on and off.

➡ How Data Engineers Use Amazon CloudTrail:

👉 Detect Unauthorized Access: Identify potential security threats and suspicious activity by
analyzing CloudTrail logs for unusual patterns or unauthorized API calls.
👉 Compliance Reporting: Simplify compliance audits by generating reports on user activity,
resource changes, and API calls, demonstrating adherence to regulatory requirements.
👉 Forensic Analysis: Investigate security incidents or troubleshoot issues by analyzing CloudTrail
logs for specific events or activities.

➡ Examples:

👉 Examples 1: A data engineer sets up CloudTrail to track all API calls related to S3 buckets used
for storing sensitive data. This helps them detect any unauthorized access attempts and ensure data
security.
👉 Examples 2: A DevOps team uses CloudTrail logs to generate compliance reports for PCI-DSS,
demonstrating their adherence to security regulations for their cloud infrastructure.
👉 Examples 3: A security analyst investigates a potential security incident by analyzing CloudTrail
logs for suspicious API calls and user activity within a specific timeframe.
 ar
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AWS Data Engineering
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Interview Questions
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 AWS Data Engineering Interview Questions - 2-

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AWS General Topics 3
Amazon S3 7

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AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) 10
Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) 13

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Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce) 16
AWS Glue 20

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Glue & EMR Comparison 23
Glue Data Catalog 24
Glue Streaming ETL 27
AWS Lambda
Amazon Kinesis
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35
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Amazon Athena 39
Amazon Redshift 43
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL 47
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Amazon DynamoDB 49
AWS Step functions 53
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AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) 58

Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) 61
Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) 64
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Deepa Vasanthkumar – Medium

Deepa Vasanthkumar -| LinkedIn
 AWS Data Engineering Interview Questions - 3-

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AWS General Topics

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AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a comprehensive, evolving cloud computing platform

provided by Amazon. It provides a mix of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as
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a service (PaaS), and packaged software as a service (SaaS) offerings. AWS services
can offer organizations tools such as compute power, database storage, and content
delivery services.

Here are some common AWS interview questions along with detailed answers to help
you prepare for your interview.

Q. Explain the difference between Amazon S3 and EBS.

Deepa Vasanthkumar – Medium

Deepa Vasanthkumar -| LinkedIn
 AWS Data Engineering Interview Questions - 4-

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Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is an object storage service that offers
industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. This means
customers of all sizes and industries can use it to store and protect any amount of data

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for a range of use cases, such as websites, mobile applications, backup and restore,

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archive, enterprise applications, IoT devices, and big data analytics.

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Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) provides block level storage volumes for use with EC2
instances. EBS volumes are highly available and reliable storage volumes that can be

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attached to any running instance that is in the same Availability Zone. EBS is particularly
suited for applications that require a database, file system, or access to raw block level
storage.
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Q. What is IAM in AWS?

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IAM (Identity and Access Management) is a web service that helps you securely control
access to AWS resources. You use IAM to control who is authenticated (signed in) and
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authorized (has permissions) to use resources. IAM provides the ability to control users,
security credentials such as access keys, and permissions that control which AWS
resources users and applications can access.

Q. Describe a VPC and its components.

A VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) allows you to provision a logically isolated section of the
AWS Cloud where you can launch AWS resources in a virtual network that you define.
The main components of VPC are:

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- Subnets: A range of IP addresses in your VPC.

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- Route Tables: They determine where network traffic is directed.

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- Internet Gateways: Connects a network to the internet.

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- NAT Gateways: Allow private subnets to connect to the internet or other AWS services
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but prevent the internet from initiating a connection with those instances.
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- Security Groups: Act as a virtual firewall for your instance to control inbound and
outbound traffic.
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- Network ACLs: A layer of security for your VPC that acts as a firewall for controlling
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traffic in and out of one or more subnets.

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Q. How do you secure data at rest on AWS?

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Securing data at rest on AWS can be achieved by several methods:

- Encryption: Using AWS services such as Amazon S3, EBS, and RDS which support
encryption at rest. AWS offers integrated tools like AWS KMS (Key Management
Service) and AWS CloudHSM to manage and rotate encryption keys.

- Access Control: Implementing fine-grained access control using IAM roles and policies
to ensure only authorized users and systems can access your data.

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- Network Security: Utilizing VPCs and associated security features such as security
groups and network ACLs to isolate resources and control network access.

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Q. What are some strategies to reduce costs in AWS?

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- Reserved Instances: Purchase Reserved Instances for services like Amazon EC2 and

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Amazon RDS to save up to 75% compared to on-demand pricing.

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- Auto Scaling: Use Auto Scaling to automatically adjust the amount of computational
resources based on the server load, thus reducing costs by minimizing idle resources.
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- Right Sizing: Regularly review and adjust your configurations to ensure you are using
the optimal resources for your workloads.
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- Delete Unattached EBS Volumes: Regularly delete unattached EBS volumes, as you are
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billed for the storage that you provision.

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- Use Cost Explorer: AWS Cost Explorer helps you visualize and manage your AWS
spending over time.

Amazon S3

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is a key service in AWS, offering object storage
through a web service interface. Here are some common interview questions about
Amazon S3, accompanied by detailed answers to help you prepare for a technical
interview.

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Amazon S3 is an object storage service offered by Amazon Web Services that provides
scalable, high-speed, web-based storage for data backup, archival, and analytics. Unlike
file storage, which organizes data into a directory hierarchy, S3 stores data as objects

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within buckets. Each object is identified by a unique key and can contain up to 5 TB of

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data.

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Q. Can you explain the difference between S3 and EBS? - Amazon S3 is object storage
good for storing vast amounts of data in a non-structured format. Data is accessible

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from anywhere and is suited to static files, backups, and big data analytics.
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- Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) provides block-level storage volumes for persistent
data storage for use with EC2 instances. EBS is suitable for applications that require a
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database, file system, or access to raw block level storage.

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Q. What are S3 Buckets?

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An S3 bucket is a container for storing objects in Amazon S3. Each object is stored in a
bucket and retrieved via a unique, developer-assigned key. Buckets serve as the basic
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container in which data is stored in S3, and every object must be contained in a bucket.

Q. Describe the durability and availability of Amazon S3.

Amazon S3 provides high durability and availability. S3 is designed to deliver

9Q.999999999% (11 9's) durability over a given year, ensuring that data is virtually
indistinguishable from being lost. Furthermore, S3 Standard aims for 9Q.99% availability,
while the S3 Standard-IA (Infrequent Access) and One Zone-IA provide slightly lower
availability at a reduced cost.

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Q. What are some of the storage classes available in S3?

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S3 offers several storage classes:

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- S3 Standard: For frequently accessed data, offers high durability, availability, and
performance.

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- S3 Intelligent-Tiering: Moves data automatically between two access tiers when
access patterns change.
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- S3 Standard-IA: For data that is less frequently accessed but requires rapid access
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when needed.
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- S3 One Zone-IA: Similar to Standard-IA but data is stored in a single availability zone.
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- S3 Glacier and S3 Glacier Deep Archive: For archiving data with retrieval times ranging
from minutes to hours.
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Q. What is S3 Versioning?

S3 Versioning is a feature that allows you to keep multiple versions of an object in the
same bucket. This is used to preserve, retrieve, and restore every version of every object
stored in your S3 bucket. It helps protect from unintended overwrites and deletions.

Q. How does S3 Encryption work?

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S3 provides two means of encryption:

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- Server-Side Encryption (SSE): Where Amazon handles the encryption process, the
decryption, and key management. You can choose among three keys management

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options: SSE-S3 (uses keys managed by S3), SSE-KMS (uses AWS Key Management
Service), and SSE-C (where you manage the encryption keys).

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- Client-Side Encryption: Your data is encrypted on the client side before uploading it to
S3. an
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Q. Explain the S3 Lifecycle Policies.
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Lifecycle policies in S3 are used to manage your objects automatically as they transition
to different stages of their lifecycle. Policies can be used to transition objects to less
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expensive storage classes or schedule objects for automatic deletion after certain
periods, helping reduce costs by managing data according to its lifecycle.
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Q. What is the difference between S3 and S3 Glacier?

S3 is used for general, high-speed storage accessible at any time, suitable for a wide
range of applications including websites, mobile apps, and backups. S3 Glacier is a
lower-cost storage service optimized for data archiving and long-term backup, where
retrieval times of several minutes to hours are acceptable.

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AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

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AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is a crucial component of AWS that allows you to
provision a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud where you can launch AWS

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resources in a virtual network that you define.

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Q. What is a VPC? An Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is a service that allows you
to launch AWS resources into a virtual network that you've defined. This virtual network
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closely resembles a traditional network that you'd operate in your own data center, with
the benefits of using scalable infrastructure on AWS. It enables you to control your
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virtual networking environment, including selection of your IP address range, creation of
subnets, and configuration of route tables and network gateways.
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Q. What are subnets?

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In AWS, a subnet is a range of IP addresses in your VPC. You can launch AWS resources
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into a specified subnet. Use a public subnet for resources that need to be connected to
the internet, and a private subnet for resources that won’t be connected to the internet.
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Each subnet must reside entirely within one Availability Zone and cannot span zones.

Q. Explain the difference between a security group and a network access control list
(NACL).

- Security Group: Acts as a virtual firewall for your EC2 instances to control inbound and
outbound traffic. Security groups operate at the instance level, they support allow rules
only, and are stateful—responses to allowed inbound traffic are allowed to flow
outbound regardless of outbound rules.

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- Network Access Control List (NACL): Acts as a firewall for controlling traffic in and out
of one or more subnets. NACLs operate at the subnet level, they support allow and deny
rules, and are stateless—responses to allowed inbound traffic are subject to the rules for

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outbound traffic (and vice versa).

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Q. What is an Internet Gateway, and why is it used? An Internet Gateway (IGW) is a VPC

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component that allows communication between instances in your VPC and the internet.
It provides a target in your VPC route tables for internet-routable traffic, and performs

an
network address translation for instances that have been assigned public IPv4
addresses.
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Q. How do you securely connect your on-premises network to a VPC?
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We can securely connect your on-premises network to your Amazon VPC using one of
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the following options:

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- AWS Direct Connect: Establishes a dedicated private connection from a remote

network to your VPC. Direct Connect is often used to reduce network costs, increase
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bandwidth throughput, and provide a more consistent network experience than

internet-based connections.

- VPN Connection: Utilizes the public internet to make a secure and encrypted
connection between your premises and your VPC. This is accomplished by creating a
VPN gateway in your AWS environment, which provides a highly available and secure
connection.

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Q. What is a NAT Gateway, and why would you use it? A Network Address Translation
(NAT) Gateway enables instances in a private subnet to connect to the internet or other
AWS services, but prevent the internet from initiating a connection with those instances.

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This is particularly useful for updating software in private subnets, or enabling secure

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outbound internet access for processing tasks.

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Q. Describe how routing works in a VPC.
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Each VPC has a routing table that contains a set of rules, called routes, that are used to
determine where network traffic from your VPC is directed. Each subnet in your VPC
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must be associated with a route table; the table controls the routing for the subnet. The
default route table includes a local route for communication within the VPC, and
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additional routes can be added that direct traffic to specific destinations, such as an
internet gateway, NAT gateway, VPN connection, or AWS Direct Connect.
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Q. What are VPC Endpoints? VPC endpoints enable you to privately connect your VPC
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to supported AWS services and VPC endpoint services powered by PrivateLink without
requiring an internet gateway, NAT device, VPN connection, or AWS Direct Connect
connection. Instances in your VPC do not require public IP addresses to communicate
with resources in the service. Traffic between your VPC and the other service does not
leave the Amazon network.

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Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)

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Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is a central part of Amazon's cloud computing
platform, AWS. It allows users to rent virtual computers on which they run their own

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computer applications.

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Q. What is Amazon EC2? Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a web service that
provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale
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cloud computing easier for developers. EC2’s simple web service interface allows you to
obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete
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control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon’s proven computing
environment.
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Q. Can you explain the different types of instances available in EC2? EC2 provides a
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variety of instance types optimized to fit different use cases. Instance types comprise
varying combinations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity and give you
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the flexibility to choose the appropriate mix of resources for your applications. The main
categories include:
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- General Purpose: Balanced CPU, memory, and networking, suitable for a variety of
applications.

- Compute Optimized: Ideal for compute-bound applications that benefit from

high-performance processors.

- Memory Optimized: Designed to deliver fast performance for workloads that process
large data sets in memory.

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- Storage Optimized: Optimized for workloads that require high, sequential read and
write access to very large data sets on local storage.

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- Accelerated Computing: Use hardware accelerators, or co-processors, to perform

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functions such as floating-point number calculations, graphics processing, or data
pattern matching more efficiently than is possible in software running on CPUs.

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Q. What are Amazon Machine Images (AMIs)? An Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
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provides the information required to launch an instance, which is a virtual server in the
cloud. You can think of an AMI as a template of the operating system (OS), the
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application server, and applications that configure the EC2 instance. AMIs are
region-specific and can include one or more EBS snapshots, instance store-backed
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volumes, permissions to specify which AWS accounts can use the AMI, and a block
device mapping.
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Q. How do you secure an EC2 instance?

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Securing an EC2 instance involves several steps:

- Security Groups: Control inbound and outbound traffic to instances. You should
configure security groups to allow the minimum necessary traffic for your instances.

- Key Pairs: Used for secure SSH access to your instances. Always keep your private
keys secure.

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- IAM Roles: Use IAM roles to securely give applications that run on your EC2 instances
permission to AWS API requests.

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- Network ACLs: Acts as a firewall for associated subnets, controlling both inbound and

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outbound traffic at the subnet level.

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- Patch Management: Regularly apply security patches to your instance’s operating
system.
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- Encryption: Use AWS services like EBS encryption to protect data at rest.
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Q. Explain Elastic Load Balancing. Elastic Load Balancing automatically distributes

incoming application traffic across multiple targets, such as EC2 instances, containers,
and IP addresses. It can handle the varying load of your application traffic in a single
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Availability Zone or across multiple Availability Zones. Elastic Load Balancing offers
three types of load balancers that all feature high availability, automatic scaling, and
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robust security necessary to fault-tolerantly distribute application loads.

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Q. What are Spot Instances?

Spot Instances allow you to request spare Amazon EC2 computing capacity for up to
90% off the On-Demand price. Spot Instances are recommended for applications that
have flexible start and end times, applications that are only feasible at very low compute
prices, and users with urgent computing needs for large amounts of additional capacity.

Q. Describe how you can vertically scale an EC2 instance. Vertical scaling refers to
increasing the size of an EC2 instance. For example, if you start with a smaller instance

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type and realize that your application needs more CPU, memory, or IO, you can stop your
instance and change its instance type to a more powerful one, then start it again. This is

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a simple way to scale for applications that are not designed to scale out across multiple
instances.

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Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce)

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Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce) is a cloud-native big data platform, allowing
businesses to process vast amounts of data quickly and cost-effectively across
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resizable clusters of Amazon EC2 instances. Here are some common interview
questions related to Amazon EMR, along with detailed answers, that might be asked in a
technical interview:
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Q. What is Amazon EMR? Amazon EMR is a managed cluster platform that simplifies
running big data frameworks, such as Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark, on AWS to
process and analyze large datasets. The service manages the provisioning,
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configuration, and tuning of the cloud infrastructure so that users can focus on
processing their data. EMR is designed to be cost-efficient and to reduce the complexity
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of the hardware provisioning, cluster setup, configuration, and tuning of big data
frameworks.
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Q. How does EMR handle data processing? EMR helps in processing large amounts of
data quickly by distributing the data across a resizable cluster of Amazon EC2
instances. It uses popular data processing frameworks like Hadoop, Spark, HBase,
Presto, and Hive. Users can write their data processing jobs in various languages like
Python, Scala, or Java. EMR takes care of distributing the code and data to the
instances, running the jobs, and storing the results in an Amazon S3 bucket or passing
them on to other AWS services for further processing.

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Q. What are the main components of an EMR cluster?

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An EMR cluster typically consists of the following components:

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- Master node: Manages the distribution of data and tasks to the other nodes in the
cluster. There is only one master node.

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- Core nodes: These nodes run tasks and store data in the Hadoop Distributed File
System (HDFS) across your cluster.
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- Task nodes: Optional nodes that only process data and do not store data in HDFS.
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They are used to enhance processing power.

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ee
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Q. What file systems are supported by Amazon EMR?

EMR supports several file systems:

- HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System): The default, distributed file system used by
Hadoop components.

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- EMR File System (EMRFS): An extension of Amazon S3, allowing Hadoop to directly
interact with data stored in S3. EMRFS is used for scenarios where you want the data to
be stored in S3 for durability, cost-effectiveness, or easy scalability.

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- Local File System: The disk file system of the EC2 instances in the cluster.

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Q. How does Amazon EMR integrate with other AWS services?

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Amazon EMR integrates with several AWS services to enhance its capabilities:
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- Amazon S3: For durable, cost-effective storage of big data processing results or as a
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data lake.
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- Amazon RDS and Amazon DynamoDB: For direct database queries within EMR jobs.
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- AWS Data Pipeline: For workflow management of data between various AWS compute
and storage services.
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- Amazon CloudWatch: For monitoring cluster performance and running automated

actions based on specific conditions.

- AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM): For securing access to EMR resources.

Q. What are the cost optimization strategies for EMR?

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To optimize costs in EMR, consider the following strategies:

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- Use Spot Instances: Utilize Spot Instances for task nodes where applicable, as they can
reduce the cost significantly.

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- Right-size the cluster: Choose the right number and type of nodes based on the

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workload to avoid overprovisioning.

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- Shut down idle clusters: Terminate clusters when not in use, or use auto-scaling to
scale down resources automatically.
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- Use Reserved Instances: For long-running clusters, Reserved Instances provide a

significant discount over On-Demand pricing.
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Q. Explain how security is managed in EMR. Security in Amazon EMR is managed

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through:
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- IAM Roles: To control access to AWS resources.

- Security Groups: Acts as virtual firewalls to control inbound and outbound traffic to the
EC2 instances.

- Encryption: At rest using Amazon S3 with EMRFS, or in transit using TLS across nodes.

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- Kerberos Authentication: Provides a mechanism for authentication of users accessing
the cluster.

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AWS Glue

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AWS Glue is a fully managed extract, transform, and load (ETL) service that makes it
easy for customers to prepare and load their data for analytics. AWS Glue is a
serverless data integration service that makes it easy to discover, prepare, and combine
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data for analytics, machine learning, and application development. AWS Glue provides
both visual and code-based interfaces to make data integration simple. It automatically
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discovers and catalogs metadata about your data stores into a central catalog that
makes the data readily searchable and queryable by services like Amazon Athena and
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Amazon Redshift Spectrum.

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Q. Can you explain the components of AWS Glue?

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AWS Glue consists of several key components:

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- Data Catalog: A central repository to store structural and operational metadata for all
your data assets.

- Crawler: A tool that connects to your data source, progresses through a prioritized list
of classifiers to determine the schema for your data, and then creates metadata tables
in your data catalog.

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- ETL Jobs: Scripts generated automatically by AWS Glue or written by you to transform,
flatten, and enrich data in various formats across data stores.

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- Triggers: Conditions that you specify for starting ETL jobs and crawlers. Triggers can

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be time-based or event-based.

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- Development Endpoint: An environment to develop and test your ETL scripts
interactively.
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Q. How does AWS Glue handle schema evolution? AWS Glue can handle schema
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evolution. When schema changes are detected, AWS Glue updates the schema in its
Data Catalog and automatically revises ETL jobs accordingly. This means that when
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your data structures change, Glue can adapt to accommodate these changes without
manual intervention, ensuring that downstream processes are not disrupted.
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Q. What are AWS Glue Crawlers and what do they do? AWS Glue Crawlers are used to
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populate the AWS Glue Data Catalog with metadata tables. These are generated based
on the data source's schema it assesses. Crawlers can connect to a source or target
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data store, classify the data format, infer schemas, and create metadata tables in the
Data Catalog. They can be scheduled to run periodically, ensuring that the Data Catalog
is kept up-to-date with changes in the data store.

Q. What is the AWS Glue Data Catalog? The AWS Glue Data Catalog is a central
repository to store structural and operational metadata for all your data assets. It is fully
managed and serves as a persistent metadata store for all your ETL and data discovery

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activities across all your data silos. It integrates with services like Amazon Athena,
Amazon Redshift Spectrum, and Amazon EMR, providing a unified view of all your data

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assets.

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Q. Explain the types of triggers in AWS Glue.

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Triggers in AWS Glue can be classified into three types:

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- Schedule-based Triggers: These triggers start jobs at specific times using a cron-like
syntax. an
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- Event-based Triggers: These are activated by specific events, such as the successful
completion of another job.
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- On-demand Triggers: These are manual triggers that start jobs whenever they are
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activated by the user.

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Q. What is a Job Bookmark in AWS Glue? Job bookmarks in AWS Glue help manage
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state information and prevent the reprocessing of old data during subsequent runs of
an ETL job. When enabled, Glue keeps track of data that has already been processed,
which means that only new and changed data is processed in subsequent runs. This
feature is particularly useful when dealing with incremental loads.

Q. How does AWS Glue integrate with other AWS services?

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AWS Glue integrates with various AWS services to enhance its data integration
capabilities:

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- Amazon S3: Used as a data source and target for ETL jobs.

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- AWS Lambda: Can trigger ETL jobs in response to events.

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- Amazon Redshift: Can directly run transformation jobs and output the results into
Redshift.
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- Amazon Athena: Uses the Data Catalog as a central schema repository.
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- Amazon RDS and Amazon DynamoDB: Can be sources or targets for ETL jobs.
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Glue & EMR Comparison

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AWS Glue is a managed ETL service focused on simplifying data preparation and
integration tasks, while Amazon EMR is a fully managed big data platform designed for
running distributed data processing frameworks at scale. AWS Glue is a fully managed
extract, transform, and load (ETL) service designed to automate data preparation tasks.
Amazon EMR is a fully managed big data platform that provides frameworks like
Apache Hadoop, Apache Spark, and Presto for processing large datasets.

AWS Glue is primarily used for data integration, cataloging, and ETL tasks. It helps
automate the process of discovering, preparing, and combining data for analytics.
Amazon EMR is used for processing and analyzing large datasets using distributed

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computing frameworks. It's ideal for running big data processing tasks like batch
processing, data transformation, and machine learning.

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AWS Glue provides Serverless architecture where you define ETL jobs using a visual

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interface or code. Glue manages the underlying infrastructure, including provisioning

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resources and scaling based on demand. Amazon EMR has a Managed cluster platform
where you provision and configure clusters of EC2 instances to run big data
frameworks. You have more control over the cluster configuration and can customize

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the environment to meet specific requirements.

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AWS Glue Provides a simpler and more streamlined approach to ETL tasks, suitable for
users who prefer a managed service and don't require fine-grained control over the
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underlying infrastructure. Amazon EMR offers more flexibility and customization
options, allowing users to choose from a wide range of big data frameworks, adjust
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cluster configurations, and install custom software packages.

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Glue Data Catalog

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The AWS Glue Data Catalog is a centralized metadata repository that stores structural
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and operational metadata for all your data assets. It provides a unified view of your data,
making it easy to discover, catalog, and query data across different data stores and
AWS services.

Q. What are the key features of AWS Glue Data Catalog?

Key features of AWS Glue Data Catalog include:

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- Metadata Storage: Stores metadata such as table definitions, partitions, schemas, and
statistics.

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- Data Discovery: Allows users to search and explore data assets using a simple

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interface.

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- Schema Evolution: Supports schema evolution to handle changes in data structures
over time.
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- Integration: Integrates seamlessly with other AWS services like Amazon Athena,
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Amazon Redshift Spectrum, and Amazon EMR.
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- Custom Metadata: Allows users to define custom metadata attributes and tags for
their data assets.
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Q. How does AWS Glue Data Catalog compare to traditional metadata management
solutions?
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Compared to traditional metadata management solutions, AWS Glue Data Catalog

offers several advantages:

- Fully Managed: AWS Glue Data Catalog is a fully managed service, eliminating the need
for infrastructure management.

- Scalability: It scales automatically to handle large volumes of metadata.

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- Integration with AWS Services: It seamlessly integrates with other AWS services,
simplifying data integration and analysis workflows.

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- Serverless Architecture: It follows a serverless architecture, enabling users to focus on

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data management tasks rather than infrastructure maintenance.

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Q. What are the benefits of using AWS Glue Data Catalog for data governance?

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AWS Glue Data Catalog provides several benefits for data governance:
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- Centralized Metadata Repository: It serves as a centralized repository for storing
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metadata, making it easier to manage and govern data assets.

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- Data Lineage: It tracks the lineage of data assets, providing insights into data
movement and transformation processes.
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- Access Control: It supports fine-grained access control, allowing administrators to

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control who can access and modify metadata.

- Data Quality Monitoring: It enables data quality monitoring by capturing statistics and
metrics about data assets.

Q. How can you integrate AWS Glue Data Catalog with other AWS services?

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AWS Glue Data Catalog integrates seamlessly with other AWS services through its APIs
and native integrations. For example:

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- It can be used as a metadata repository for Amazon Athena, enabling users to run SQL

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queries directly against data stored in Amazon S3.

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- It can be integrated with Amazon Redshift Spectrum to query data in Amazon S3 using
Redshift.
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- It can be used with AWS Glue ETL jobs to transform and load data into various data
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stores.
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Q. What is the significance of custom metadata in AWS Glue Data Catalog? Custom
metadata in AWS Glue Data Catalog allows users to define additional attributes and
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tags for their data assets. This can include business metadata, such as data ownership,
data lineage, and data classification, as well as technical metadata, such as data
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format, compression type, and encryption settings. Custom metadata enhances data
governance, data lineage tracking, and data discovery capabilities.
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Glue Streaming ETL

AWS Glue Streaming ETL is a feature of AWS Glue that enables real-time data
processing and analytics by continuously ingesting and transforming streaming data. It

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allows you to build scalable, serverless streaming data pipelines for processing data in
motion.

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Q. How does AWS Glue Streaming ETL differ from batch ETL?

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AWS Glue Streaming ETL processes data in real-time as it arrives, while batch ETL
processes data in discrete batches. With streaming ETL, data is processed as soon as it

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becomes available, enabling low-latency processing and real-time analytics. Batch ETL,
on the other hand, processes data in fixed-size batches, which may introduce additional
latency. an
as
Q. What are some use cases for AWS Glue Streaming ETL?
V

Some use cases for AWS Glue Streaming ETL include:

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- Real-time analytics and monitoring

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- Fraud detection and anomaly detection

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- Real-time recommendation engines

- Clickstream analysis and user behavior tracking

- IoT data processing and analysis

Q. How does AWS Glue Streaming ETL handle fault tolerance and scalability?

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AWS Glue Streaming ETL automatically handles fault tolerance and scalability by
distributing data processing across multiple worker nodes. It monitors the health and
performance of worker nodes and automatically scales the resources up or down based

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on the workload. In case of failures, it retries failed tasks and ensures that data

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processing continues without interruption.

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Q. Can you explain the architecture of AWS Glue Streaming ETL?

an
The architecture of AWS Glue Streaming ETL consists of the following components:
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- Streaming Sources: Data streams from sources such as Amazon Kinesis Data
Streams, Apache Kafka, or Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon
V

MSK).
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- AWS Glue Streaming ETL Job: A Glue job that ingests streaming data, applies
transformations, and outputs the results to a destination.
ee
D

- Worker Nodes: EC2 instances provisioned by AWS Glue to process data in parallel.

- Data Destination: The target data store where transformed data is stored, such as
Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, or Amazon DynamoDB.

Q. How does AWS Glue Streaming ETL integrate with other AWS services?

AWS Glue Streaming ETL integrates seamlessly with other AWS services to build
end-to-end streaming data pipelines. For example:

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- It can ingest data from Amazon Kinesis Data Streams or Apache Kafka.

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- It can output transformed data to Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, or Amazon
DynamoDB.

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- It can trigger AWS Lambda functions or AWS Step Functions based on specific events

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or conditions.

an
as
Q. What are some best practices for using AWS Glue Streaming ETL?
V

Some best practices for using AWS Glue Streaming ETL include:
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- Designing fault-tolerant and scalable data pipelines.

ee
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- Optimizing data partitioning and compression for efficient processing.

- Monitoring job performance and resource utilization.

- Using schema validation and data validation to ensure data quality.

- Leveraging encryption and access controls to secure sensitive data.

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ar
Q. How does AWS Glue Streaming ETL handle late-arriving data?

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AWS Glue Streaming ETL provides built-in support for handling late-arriving data. It
maintains a watermark to track the progress of data ingestion and processing. If data

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arrives late, it is processed with a timestamp that falls within the watermark window.
This ensures that late-arriving data is correctly processed and integrated into the output.

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AWS Lambda an
as
AWS Lambda is a serverless computing service provided by Amazon Web Services
(AWS) that allows you to run code without provisioning or managing servers. You can
V

upload your code to Lambda and AWS takes care of automatically scaling and
managing the underlying infrastructure required to run your code in response to events.
pa

Q. How does AWS Lambda work? AWS Lambda works by executing code in response to
events triggered by other AWS services or custom events. You upload your code to
ee

Lambda and define the event sources (e.g., Amazon S3, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon
Kinesis) that trigger the execution of your code. When an event occurs, Lambda
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automatically provisions the necessary compute resources, runs your code, and then
scales down to zero when the code has finished executing.

Q. What are the benefits of using AWS Lambda?

Some benefits of using AWS Lambda include:

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- No server management: Lambda automatically scales and manages the underlying
infrastructure for you.

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- Cost-effective: You only pay for the compute time used by your code.

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- Scalable: Lambda can scale automatically to handle high volumes of requests.

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- Fully managed: AWS takes care of patching, monitoring, and maintaining the
infrastructure.
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- Integrated with AWS services: Lambda integrates seamlessly with other AWS services,
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enabling you to build serverless architectures easily.

pa

Q. What languages are supported by AWS Lambda?

ee

AWS Lambda supports several programming languages, including:

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- Node.js

- Python

- Java

- Go

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- .NET Core (C)

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Q. What is a Lambda function?

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A Lambda function is the code that you upload to AWS Lambda to be executed in
response to events. It contains the code logic that defines what happens when the

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function is invoked.

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Q. How do you trigger a Lambda function?
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Lambda functions can be triggered by various event sources, including:
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- Changes in data stored in Amazon S3

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- Updates to records in Amazon DynamoDB

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- Messages published to Amazon SNS topics

- Events generated by AWS services such as AWS CloudWatch Events or AWS IoT

Q. Can you explain the concept of cold starts in AWS Lambda?

Cold start is the term used to describe the latency that occurs the first time a Lambda
function is invoked or when it hasn't been invoked for a while. During a cold start, AWS
Lambda needs to provision the required compute resources to run the function, which

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can result in increased latency. Subsequent invocations of the function reuse the
existing resources, resulting in lower latency (known as warm starts).

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Q. How can you optimize the performance of AWS Lambda functions?

m
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Some ways to optimize the performance of Lambda functions include:

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- Reducing the size of the deployment package

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- Minimizing initialization code and dependencies
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- Using provisioned concurrency to keep functions warm
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- Implementing efficient error handling and retries

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- Tuning memory allocation and function timeouts

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D

Q. What are the limitations of AWS Lambda?

Limitations of AWS Lambda include:

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- Maximum execution duration (default is 15 minutes)

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- Maximum memory allocation (up to 10 GB)

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- Maximum deployment package size (up to 250 MB)

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- Concurrency limits (default is 1000 concurrent executions per region)
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- Statelessness (Lambda functions are stateless and have no persistent storage)
as
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Q. How can you monitor and debug AWS Lambda functions?

pa

We can monitor and debug Lambda functions using AWS CloudWatch logs, which
capture log output from your function. We can also use CloudWatch metrics to monitor
function performance and errors.
ee
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Amazon Kinesis

Amazon Kinesis is a platform on AWS for real-time streaming data ingestion,

processing, and analysis. It enables you to collect, process, and analyze large streams

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of data in real-time from various sources such as website clickstreams, IoT devices,
logs, and social media feeds.

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Q. What are the main components of Amazon Kinesis? Amazon Kinesis consists of the

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following main components:

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- Kinesis Data Streams: Allows you to build custom applications that process or analyze

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streaming data.

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- Kinesis Data Firehose: Automatically loads streaming data into AWS data stores and
analytics services for near real-time analysis.
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- Kinesis Data Analytics: Allows you to process and analyze streaming data using SQL or
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Apache Flink.
pa
ee

Q. What is a Kinesis Data Stream?

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A Kinesis Data Stream is a scalable and durable real-time data streaming service that
enables you to continuously collect and process large streams of data records in
real-time. Data records in a stream are distributed across multiple shards, allowing for
parallel processing and high throughput.

Q. What is a Kinesis Data Firehose?

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Kinesis Data Firehose is a fully managed service that automatically loads streaming
data into AWS data stores and analytics services. It can capture, transform, and load
streaming data into destinations such as Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, Amazon

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Elasticsearch Service, and Splunk.

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Q. What is a Kinesis Data Analytics application? Kinesis Data Analytics application is a

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real-time analytics application that allows you to process and analyze streaming data
using SQL or Apache Flink. You can use Kinesis Data Analytics to run SQL queries,

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aggregate data, detect anomalies, and perform real-time analytics on streaming data.
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Q. How does Amazon Kinesis ensure scalability and fault tolerance? Amazon Kinesis
ensures scalability and fault tolerance by automatically distributing data records across
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multiple shards in a data stream. Each shard can handle a specific throughput of data
records, and Kinesis dynamically scales the number of shards based on the incoming
data rate. Additionally, Kinesis replicates data records across multiple availability zones
pa

to ensure durability and fault tolerance.

ee

Q. What are the use cases for Amazon Kinesis?

D

Some common use cases for Amazon Kinesis include:

- Real-time analytics and dashboarding

- Clickstream analysis and user behavior tracking

- Log and event data ingestion and analysis

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- Internet of Things (IoT) data processing and analytics

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- Fraud detection and anomaly detection

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Q. How does Kinesis Data Firehose differ from Kinesis Data Streams? Kinesis Data
Streams is a low-level service that allows you to build custom applications for

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processing and analyzing streaming data. It provides full control over data processing
and allows for custom data transformations. On the other hand, Kinesis Data Firehose is
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a fully managed service that simplifies the process of loading streaming data into AWS
data stores and analytics services. It automates the data ingestion process and
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supports out-of-the-box integrations with various AWS services.
V

Q. How can you monitor Amazon Kinesis? We can monitor Amazon Kinesis using
Amazon CloudWatch, which provides metrics, logs, and alarms for Kinesis Data
pa

Streams, Kinesis Data Firehose, and Kinesis Data Analytics. CloudWatch allows to
monitor data ingestion rates, throughput, latency, and error rates for your Kinesis
ee

applications.
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Q. What are the best practices for designing Amazon Kinesis applications? Some best
practices for designing Amazon Kinesis applications include:

- Properly sizing shards to handle the expected data throughput.

- Implementing retries and error handling mechanisms to handle transient failures.

- Using fine-grained partition keys to evenly distribute data across shards.

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- Monitoring application performance and scaling resources based on workload
patterns.

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- Encrypting data in transit and at rest to ensure data security and compliance.

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Amazon Athena

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an
Amazon Athena is an interactive query service provided by AWS that allows you to
analyze data in Amazon S3 using standard SQL queries. It enables you to query data
as
stored in S3 without the need for infrastructure provisioning or data movement.
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Q. How does Amazon Athena work?

pa

Amazon Athena works by executing SQL queries against data stored in Amazon S3. It
uses a serverless architecture, which means that you don't need to provision or manage
ee

any infrastructure. Athena uses Presto, an open-source distributed SQL query engine,
under the hood to execute SQL queries in parallel across multiple data files stored in S3.
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Q. What types of data formats does Amazon Athena support? Amazon Athena
supports various data formats, including:

- Apache Parquet

- Apache ORC

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- Apache Avro

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- JSON

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- CSV

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- TSV
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Q. What are the main use cases for Amazon Athena? Some common use cases for
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Amazon Athena include:
V

- Ad-hoc querying and analysis of data stored in Amazon S3

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- Log analysis and troubleshooting

ee

- Data exploration and visualization

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- Business intelligence (BI) and reporting

- ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) data processing

Q. How does Amazon Athena handle data partitioning?

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Amazon Athena supports data partitioning, which can significantly improve query
performance and reduce costs. Data partitioning involves organizing data in Amazon S3
into directories based on one or more partition keys. Athena automatically prunes

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partitions based on query predicates, allowing it to scan only the relevant partitions

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when executing queries.

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Q. What are the benefits of using Amazon Athena? benefits of using Amazon Athena
include:

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- Serverless architecture: No need to provision or manage any infrastructure.
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- Pay-per-query pricing: You only pay for the queries you run, with no upfront costs or
V

commitments.
pa

- Scalability: Athena can automatically scale to handle large volumes of data and
concurrent queries.
ee
D

- Integration: It integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, such as Amazon S3,
AWS Glue, and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).

Q. Can you explain the difference between Amazon Athena and Amazon Redshift?

Amazon Athena and Amazon Redshift are both data query services provided by AWS,
but they have different use cases and characteristics. Amazon Athena is ideal for
ad-hoc querying and analysis of data stored in Amazon S3 using SQL queries, while
Amazon Redshift is a fully managed data warehousing service optimized for analytics
workloads, with support for large-scale data storage, data loading, and complex queries.

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Q. How can you optimize query performance in Amazon Athena?

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Ways to optimize query performance in Amazon Athena include:

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- Partitioning data based on query patterns

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- Using columnar data formats like Parquet or ORC
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- Reducing the number of columns scanned by projecting only the necessary columns
as
V

- Filtering data early in the query using WHERE clauses

pa

- Using the appropriate data types and data compression techniques

ee

Q. How does Amazon Athena handle security and access control? Amazon Athena
integrates with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to control access to data
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and resources. You can use IAM policies to grant or deny access to specific Athena
actions and resources based on users, groups, or roles. Athena also supports
encryption of data at rest and in transit for enhanced security.

Q. What are some limitations of Amazon Athena?

Some limitations of Amazon Athena include:

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- No support for updates or deletes: Athena is read-only and does not support modifying
data.

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- Limited data types: Athena supports a subset of SQL data types and functions.

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- Performance variability: Query performance can be impacted by factors such as data

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volume, complexity of queries, and data partitioning strategies.

Amazon Redshift
an
as
Amazon Redshift is a fully managed data warehousing service provided by AWS. It
V

allows you to analyze large datasets using standard SQL queries and provides
high-performance, scalable data warehousing capabilities.
pa

Q. How does Amazon Redshift differ from traditional relational databases? Amazon
ee

Redshift differs from traditional relational databases in several ways, including:

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- Columnar storage: Redshift stores data in a columnar format, which improves query
performance and reduces storage requirements.

- Massively parallel processing (MPP): Redshift distributes data and query processing
across multiple nodes, enabling high concurrency and scalability.

- Optimized for analytics: Redshift is optimized for running complex analytics queries on
large datasets, whereas traditional relational databases are more suited for
transactional workloads.

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Q. What are the main components of Amazon Redshift?

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The main components of Amazon Redshift include:

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- Cluster: A Redshift cluster consists of one or more compute nodes, each containing
CPU, memory, and storage.

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an
- Leader node: Manages client connections and query execution plans.
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- Compute nodes: Store and process data in parallel.
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- Node slices: Each compute node is divided into slices, which represent a portion of the
node's CPU and storage.
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Q. What types of data sources can you load into Amazon Redshift? We can load data
ee

into Amazon Redshift from various sources, including:

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- Amazon S3: Load data from files stored in Amazon S3 using the COPY command.

- Amazon DynamoDB: Use the COPY command to load data from DynamoDB tables.

- Amazon EMR: Use the COPY command with the EMRFS protocol to load data from
Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) or other EMR-compatible storage.

Q. How does Amazon Redshift handle data compression and distribution?

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Amazon Redshift uses data compression and distribution techniques to improve query
performance and reduce storage requirements. It supports multiple compression
encodings and automatically selects the most appropriate encoding based on the data

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type and distribution. Redshift also distributes data across slices based on a

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distribution style (e.g., key distribution, even distribution) to optimize query execution.

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Q. What are some best practices for optimizing query performance in Amazon
Redshift?

an
Some best practices for optimizing query performance in Amazon Redshift include:
as
- Choosing the appropriate distribution style for tables based on query patterns.
V

- Analyzing query execution plans and using sort and distribution keys to minimize data
pa

movement.
ee

- Using column compression and encoding to reduce storage requirements.

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- Regularly vacuuming and analyzing tables to reclaim disk space and update statistics.

- Monitoring system performance using Amazon CloudWatch metrics and query

monitoring features.

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ar
Q. How does Amazon Redshift handle concurrency and scalability?

m
Amazon Redshift uses a shared-nothing architecture and massively parallel processing
(MPP) to handle concurrency and scalability. It can scale horizontally by adding

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additional compute nodes to a cluster and supports high levels of concurrency by
parallelizing query execution across nodes and slices.

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Q. What is the difference between dense compute and dense storage node types in
Amazon Redshift? an
as
Dense compute and dense storage are two types of node configurations available in
Amazon Redshift:
V

- Dense compute: Optimized for compute-intensive workloads and provide

pa

high-performance query processing capabilities.

ee

- Dense storage: Optimized for storage-intensive workloads and provide high storage
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capacity at a lower cost per terabyte.

Q. How does Amazon Redshift handle backups and data durability? Amazon Redshift
automatically takes incremental backups of your cluster and stores them in Amazon S3.
You can also manually trigger snapshots to create point-in-time backups. Redshift uses
replication and checksums to ensure data durability and automatically replaces failed
drives or nodes to maintain high availability.

Q. How does Amazon Redshift integrate with other AWS services?

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Amazon Redshift integrates with other AWS services to enhance its capabilities,
including:

m
- Amazon S3: Load data into Redshift from S3 and export query results to S3.

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- AWS Glue: Catalog metadata and orchestrate ETL workflows for Redshift.

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an
- Amazon EMR: Analyze data stored in Redshift using EMR clusters running Apache
Spark or other big data frameworks.
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- AWS Lambda: Trigger Lambda functions in response to events in Redshift, such as
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data loading or query completion.

pa
ee
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Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL is a managed relational database service provided by

AWS. It allows you to deploy, operate, and scale PostgreSQL databases in the cloud.

Q. How does Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL differ from Amazon Redshift?

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- Unlike Amazon Redshift, which is optimized for analytics workloads, Amazon RDS
for PostgreSQL is a general-purpose relational database service. It is suitable for OLTP
(Online Transaction Processing) and OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) workloads.

m
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Q. What are the key features of Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL?

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- Key features of Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL include automated backups and
snapshots, high availability with multi-AZ deployments, read replicas for read scaling,
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and support for various PostgreSQL extensions.
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Q. How does data replication work in Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL?
V

- Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL supports synchronous and asynchronous replication.

Multi-AZ deployments use synchronous replication to replicate data to standby
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instances in different availability zones for high availability.

ee
D

Q. What are some best practices for optimizing performance in Amazon RDS for
PostgreSQL?

- Best practices for optimizing performance in Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL include
choosing the appropriate instance type and storage configuration, tuning PostgreSQL
parameters, and monitoring database performance using CloudWatch metrics.

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Amazon DynamoDB

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Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database service provided by AWS. It
offers seamless scalability, high availability, and low-latency performance for

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applications requiring single-digit millisecond response times.

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Q. What are the key features of Amazon DynamoDB?

an
Key features of Amazon DynamoDB include:
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- Fully managed: AWS handles administrative tasks such as hardware provisioning,
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setup, configuration, monitoring, and scaling.

pa

- Scalable: DynamoDB automatically scales to accommodate growing workloads by

partitioning data across multiple servers.
ee
D

- Performance: Delivers consistent single-digit millisecond latency for read and write
operations.

- Flexible data model: Supports both document and key-value data models with
JSON-like syntax.

- Built-in security: Offers encryption at rest and in transit, fine-grained access control,
and integration with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).

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Q. What are the different types of primary keys supported by DynamoDB?

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DynamoDB supports two types of primary keys:

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- Partition key (or hash key): A simple primary key composed of a single attribute.
DynamoDB uses the partition key's value to determine the partition in which the item is

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stored.

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- Composite primary key (or hash-and-range key): A primary key composed of two
attributes: a partition key and a sort key. DynamoDB uses both the partition key and sort
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key values to determine the partition and sort order of the item.
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Q. How does DynamoDB ensure scalability and high availability?

pa

DynamoDB ensures scalability and high availability through partitioning and replication:
ee

- Partitioning: DynamoDB automatically partitions data across multiple servers based on

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the partition key. This allows DynamoDB to handle large volumes of traffic by
distributing the workload evenly across servers.

- Replication: DynamoDB replicates data across multiple availability zones within a

region to ensure high availability and fault tolerance. Each write is synchronously
replicated to at least three availability zones.

Q. What is the difference between provisioned throughput and on-demand capacity

modes in DynamoDB?

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- Provisioned throughput: In this mode, you specify the read and write capacity units
(RCUs and WCUs) required for your DynamoDB table upfront. You are billed based on
the provisioned capacity, regardless of the actual usage.

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- On-demand capacity mode: In this mode, DynamoDB automatically scales read and
write capacity based on your actual usage. You pay per request for the capacity

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consumed.

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Q. How does DynamoDB handle consistency?
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DynamoDB offers two types of consistency models:
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- Eventual consistency: In this model, DynamoDB prioritizes availability over consistency.

It ensures that all copies of data are eventually consistent within seconds.
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ee

- Strong consistency: In this model, DynamoDB provides immediate consistency for read
operations. It guarantees that a read will return the most up-to-date data.
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Q. What are DynamoDB streams? DynamoDB streams capture a time-ordered

sequence of item-level modifications in a DynamoDB table. Each stream record
represents a data modification event, such as an insert, update, or delete operation.
DynamoDB streams can be used to trigger AWS Lambda functions, replicate data
across tables or regions, and implement cross-region replication.

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Q. How can you monitor and manage DynamoDB? DynamoDB provides several tools for
monitoring and managing tables, including:

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- AWS CloudWatch: Monitors and logs metrics such as read/write capacity utilization,

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error rates, and throttling events.

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- AWS DynamoDB Console: Provides a graphical user interface for managing tables,
monitoring performance, and configuring settings.
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- AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) and SDKs: Allow programmatic access to
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DynamoDB for automation, scripting, and integration with other AWS services.
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Q. What are some best practices for designing DynamoDB tables?

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Some best practices for designing DynamoDB tables include:

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- Choose the right partition key to evenly distribute data and avoid hot partitions.
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- Use sparse indexes to reduce storage costs and improve query performance.

- Use the right data types to minimize storage space and optimize query performance.

- Implement DynamoDB streams for data change capture and real-time processing.

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- Leverage secondary indexes and materialized views to support different access
patterns.

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Q. How does DynamoDB encryption work? DynamoDB offers encryption at rest to

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protect your data stored in tables. It uses AWS Key Management Service (KMS) to
manage encryption keys. When you enable encryption for a DynamoDB table, all data

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stored in the table, including backups and replicas, is encrypted using an AWS-managed
encryption key or a customer-managed encryption key.

AWS Step functions

an
as
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AWS Step Functions is a fully managed serverless orchestration service provided by

AWS. It allows you to coordinate and orchestrate multiple AWS services and Lambda
functions into serverless workflows using visual workflows.
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Q. How does AWS Step Functions work? AWS Step Functions works by defining state
ee

machines that represent the workflow logic using JSON-based Amazon States
Language. Each state in the state machine represents a specific task or action to be
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executed. Step Functions manages the execution and coordination of tasks, handles
retries and error handling, and provides visibility into the state of the workflow.

Q. What are the main components of AWS Step Functions? The main components of
AWS Step Functions include:

- State machine: Represents the workflow logic defined using Amazon States Language.

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- States: Individual tasks or actions within the state machine.

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- Execution: An instance of a state machine execution.

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- Input and output: Data passed between states during execution.

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- Execution history: A log of state transitions and events during the execution of a state
machine. an
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Q. What are the benefits of using AWS Step Functions?
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Some benefits of using AWS Step Functions include:

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- Simplicity: Allows you to build and visualize complex workflows using a graphical
interface.
ee
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- Scalability: Automatically scales to handle high volumes of workflow executions.

- Reliability: Handles retries, error handling, and state management automatically.

- Integration: Integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, including Lambda, ECS,
SNS, SQS, and more.

- Visibility: Provides detailed execution logs and monitoring metrics for workflows.

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Q. How can you trigger an AWS Step Functions workflow?

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AWS Step Functions workflows can be triggered in several ways, including:

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- Direct invocation: You can invoke a state machine directly using the Step Functions
API.

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- Event-based invocation: You can trigger a state machine execution in response to
events from other AWS services, such as S3 events, SNS notifications, or CloudWatch
Events.
as
V

- Scheduled invocation: You can schedule state machine executions to run at specified
intervals using CloudWatch Events.
pa

Q. What are the different types of states supported by AWS Step Functions? AWS Step
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Functions supports several types of states, including:

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- Task states: Represent a single unit of work to be performed, such as invoking a

Lambda function or calling an AWS service API.

- Choice states: Define conditional branching logic based on the result of a previous
state.

- Parallel states: Enable concurrent execution of multiple branches of execution.

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- Wait states: Pause the execution of the state machine for a specified duration or until a
specific event occurs.

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- Pass states: Simply pass input to output without performing any work.

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Q. How does error handling work in AWS Step Functions?

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AWS Step Functions provides built-in error handling capabilities, including retries and
catch clauses. You can specify retry policies for individual states or the entire state
machine to handle transient errors. Catch clauses allow you to define error handling
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logic and transitions to handle specific error conditions.
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Q. Can you integrate AWS Step Functions with other AWS services? Yes, AWS Step
Functions integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, including:
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- AWS Lambda: Invoke Lambda functions as tasks within Step Functions workflows.
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- Amazon ECS: Coordinate container-based workflows using ECS tasks.

- Amazon SNS and Amazon SQS: Send notifications and messages between states in a
state machine.

- AWS Glue: Orchestrate ETL workflows using Glue jobs within Step Functions.

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Q. How does AWS Step Functions handle state transitions and retries? AWS Step
Functions manages state transitions and retries automatically based on the defined
workflow logic. If a state fails or encounters an error, Step Functions retries the state

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based on the configured retry policy. If the maximum number of retries is exceeded,

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Step Functions transitions to an error state or a catch clause based on the error
handling logic defined in the state machine.

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Q. What are some use cases for AWS Step Functions? Some common use cases for
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AWS Step Functions include:
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- Workflow automation: Orchestrating multi-step business processes and workflows.

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- Microservices orchestration: Coordinating interactions between microservices in

distributed systems.
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- Data processing pipelines: Managing complex ETL (Extract, Transform, Load)

workflows for data processing and analysis.

- Application workflows: Implementing stateful workflows for application logic and

business processes.

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AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

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AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a web service provided by AWS that
enables you to securely control access to AWS services and resources. IAM allows you

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to manage users, groups, roles, and permissions to securely delegate access to AWS
resources.

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Q. What are the main components of AWS IAM
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The main components of AWS IAM include:
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- Users: Represent individuals or entities that interact with AWS services and resources.
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- Groups: Collections of users with similar permissions, making it easier to manage

access.
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- Roles: Define a set of permissions that can be assumed by users or AWS services.

- Policies: Documents that define permissions and are attached to users, groups, or
roles.

- Access keys: Used for programmatic access to AWS services through APIs.

Q. What is an IAM policy?

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An IAM policy is a document that defines permissions for actions and resources in
AWS. Policies are written in JSON format and can be attached to IAM identities (users,
groups, roles) or resources to specify who has access to what. Policies can grant or

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deny permissions, and they are evaluated when an IAM identity attempts to access a

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resource.

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Q. What is the principle of least privilege?

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The principle of least privilege is a security best practice that states that users, groups,
and roles should only be granted the minimum level of access necessary to perform
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their tasks. By following this principle, you reduce the risk of unauthorized access and
potential security vulnerabilities.
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Q. How do you grant access to an AWS resource using IAM? To grant access to an
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AWS resource using IAM, you create an IAM policy that specifies the desired
permissions and attach the policy to the IAM identity (user, group, or role) that needs
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access to the resource. The policy defines which actions are allowed or denied and
which resources the actions can be performed on.
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Q. What is IAM role chaining? IAM role chaining is the process of assuming multiple
IAM roles in a sequence to escalate privileges or access resources across multiple AWS
accounts. It involves granting a role permission to assume another role, allowing the
initial role to temporarily assume the permissions of the second role.

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Q. How do you secure access to IAM resources? To secure access to IAM resources,
you can implement the following best practices:

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- Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for IAM users with elevated privileges.

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- Regularly review and audit IAM policies and permissions to ensure they align with

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security requirements.

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- Use IAM roles and temporary security credentials instead of long-term access keys
whenever possible.
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- Enable AWS CloudTrail to monitor and log API activity for IAM actions.
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- Apply IAM password policies to enforce strong password requirements for IAM users.
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Q. What is IAM Federation? IAM Federation is the process of linking your existing
identity management system with AWS IAM to allow users to access AWS resources
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using their existing corporate credentials. This can be achieved through integration with
identity providers (IdPs) such as Active Directory, LDAP, or SAML-based identity
providers.

Q. How do you rotate IAM access keys? To rotate IAM access keys, you can follow
these steps:

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Generate a new access key for the IAM user.
Update any applications or scripts that use the old access key with the new

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access key.
Test the updated applications or scripts to ensure they work correctly with the

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new access key.
Delete the old access key from the IAM user once you confirm that the new
access key is working properly.

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Q. What is IAM policy evaluation logic? IAM policy evaluation logic follows a
deny-by-default model, where all requests are denied by default unless explicitly allowed
by an attached policy. When a request is made to AWS, IAM evaluates all policies
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attached to the identity and resource involved in the request. If any policy explicitly
denies the requested action, the request is denied. Otherwise, if all policies either
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explicitly allow or do not mention the action, the request is allowed.

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Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)

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Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) is a fully managed messaging service

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provided by AWS. It enables you to send messages or notifications to distributed

systems, mobile devices, or other AWS services in a highly reliable and scalable manner.

Q. How does Amazon SNS work? Amazon SNS works by allowing you to create topics,
to which subscribers can subscribe. When a message is published to a topic, Amazon
SNS delivers copies of the message to each subscribed endpoint, such as HTTP/S,
email, SMS, Lambda, SQS, or mobile push notification.

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Q. What are the main components of Amazon SNS? The main components of Amazon
SNS include:

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- Topics: Logical channels for publishing messages.

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- Subscriptions: Endpoints that receive messages published to a topic.

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- Messages: The content sent from publishers to subscribers via topics.
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- Publishers: Entities that send messages to SNS topics.
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- Subscribers: Entities that receive messages published to SNS topics.

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Q. What are the different delivery protocols supported by Amazon SNS?

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Amazon SNS supports various delivery protocols, including:

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- HTTP/S

- Email

- SMS

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- Mobile push notifications (Apple Push Notification Service, Google Cloud Messaging,
etc.)

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- Amazon SQS

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- AWS Lambda

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Q. How does message filtering work in Amazon SNS? Message filtering in Amazon
SNS allows subscribers to receive only the messages that are of interest to them. You
can set filter policies on subscriptions to specify which messages are delivered based
as
on message attributes or message structure.
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Q. What are some use cases for Amazon SNS? Some common use cases for Amazon
SNS include:
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- Push notifications to mobile devices or web browsers.

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- Event-driven communication between microservices in distributed systems.

- Sending alerts and notifications for system monitoring and alarms.

- Decoupling communication between application components using publish/subscribe

messaging.

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Q. How does message ordering work in Amazon SNS? By default, Amazon SNS does
not guarantee the order in which messages are delivered. However, you can use
message attributes or sequencing information to implement message ordering and

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ensure that messages are processed in the desired order by subscribers.

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Q. What are message attributes in Amazon SNS? Message attributes are key-value

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pairs associated with messages published to Amazon SNS topics. They allow you to
provide additional metadata or context to messages and enable advanced message

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filtering and processing based on attribute values.
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Q. How does message delivery retry and error handling work in Amazon SNS?
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Amazon SNS automatically retries message delivery for transient failures, such as
network errors or service throttling. If delivery attempts fail repeatedly, Amazon SNS
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sends the message to a dead-letter queue (DLQ) or triggers a delivery failure notification
to the publisher.
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Q. How can you secure access to Amazon SNS? We can secure access to Amazon SNS
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by using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to control user permissions,
encrypting messages in transit using HTTPS, and enabling server-side encryption for
messages stored in SNS topics.

Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)

Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a fully managed message queuing service
provided by AWS. It enables you to decouple and scale microservices, distributed

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systems, and serverless applications by reliably passing messages between

components.

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Q. How does Amazon SQS work? Amazon SQS works by allowing you to create

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message queues, where messages are temporarily stored until they are processed by a

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consumer. Producers send messages to the queue, and consumers retrieve messages
from the queue to process them asynchronously.

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Q. What are the main components of Amazon SQS?

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The main components of Amazon SQS include:
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- Message: The content sent from producers to consumers via queues.
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- Queue: A container that holds messages until they are processed by consumers.
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- Producer: Entities that send messages to SQS queues.

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- Consumer: Entities that retrieve messages from SQS queues for processing.

Q. What are the types of queues supported by Amazon SQS?

Amazon SQS supports two types of queues:

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- Standard queues: Provide best-effort ordering and at-least-once delivery of messages.
They offer nearly unlimited throughput and can scale horizontally to handle high
volumes of messages.

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- FIFO (First-In-First-Out) queues: Guarantee that messages are delivered exactly once
and in the order in which they are sent. They are suitable for applications that require

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strict message ordering and deduplication.

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Q. How does message visibility timeout work in Amazon SQS? Message visibility
timeout in Amazon SQS determines how long a message remains invisible to other
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consumers after being retrieved by a consumer for processing. If the message

processing exceeds the visibility timeout, the message becomes visible again in the
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queue and can be retried by other consumers.

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Q. What is the purpose of dead-letter queues (DLQs) in Amazon SQS?

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Dead-letter queues (DLQs) in Amazon SQS are used to capture and store messages that
cannot be processed successfully after a certain number of retries. DLQs enable you to
isolate and investigate failed messages separately from the main processing flow.

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Q. How does message deduplication work in Amazon SQS FIFO queues?

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Message deduplication in Amazon SQS FIFO queues prevents duplicate messages from
being sent or processed. When a message with a specific message deduplication ID is
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sent to a FIFO queue within a specified deduplication interval, SQS checks if a message
with the same ID has been sent recently. If a matching message is found, the new
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message is discarded.
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Q. What are some use cases for Amazon SQS?

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Some common use cases for Amazon SQS include:

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- Decoupling components in distributed systems to improve scalability and reliability.

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- Implementing message-driven architectures for event-driven processing and

asynchronous communication.

- Offloading time-consuming or background tasks from synchronous applications to

asynchronous queues.

- Handling bursts of traffic and load spikes in web applications and microservices.

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Q. How does Amazon SQS handle message delivery retries and error handling?
Amazon SQS automatically retries message delivery for transient failures, such as
network errors or service throttling. If message processing fails repeatedly, SQS moves

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the message to a dead-letter queue (DLQ) or triggers a visibility timeout to allow for

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retry attempts by other consumers.

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Q. How can you secure access to Amazon SQS? You can secure access to Amazon
SQS by using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to control user permissions,

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encrypting messages in transit using HTTPS, and restricting access to queues using
resource-based policies.
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