Content Delivery and DNS

Question 1

Q: What is a Content Delivery Network (CDN)?

Answer 1

A: A globally distributed network of servers that caches and delivers content to users with low latency and high transfer speeds.

Question 2

Q: What is Amazon CloudFront?

Answer 2

A: A fast, secure content delivery network (CDN) service that accelerates delivery of static and dynamic content, APIs, and video streams.

Question 3

Q: What are Edge Locations in CloudFront?

Answer 3

A: Data centers globally distributed to cache content closer to users, improving latency and delivery speed.

Question 4

Q: What is an origin in CloudFront?

Answer 4

A: The source of the content delivered by CloudFront, such as an S3 bucket, HTTP server, or an Elastic Load Balancer.

Question 5

Q: What is cache behavior in CloudFront?

Answer 5

A: Rules that define how CloudFront handles requests, including caching, query strings, and HTTP methods.

Question 6

Q: How can you invalidate cache in CloudFront?

Answer 6

A: By creating an invalidation request to remove cached objects before their TTL expires.

Question 7

Q: What is TTL in CloudFront?

Answer 7

A: The amount of time an object is cached at an edge location before CloudFront checks for updates from the origin.

Question 8

Q: How does CloudFront enhance security?

Answer 8

A: Through features like AWS Shield, AWS WAF, signed URLs, signed cookies, and HTTPS.

Question 9

Q: What are signed URLs and cookies in CloudFront?

Answer 9

A: Mechanisms to restrict access to content by requiring authentication via pre-signed credentials.

Question 10

Q: What is Amazon Route 53?

Answer 10

A: A scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service for domain registration, routing, and health checks.

Question 11

Q: Can Route 53 register domain names?

Answer 11

A: Yes, Route 53 provides domain registration services for popular top-level domains (TLDs).

Question 12

Q: What types of DNS records does Route 53 support?

Answer 12

A: A (IPv4), AAAA (IPv6), CNAME, MX, TXT, NS, SOA, and SRV records.

Question 13

Q: What is a hosted zone in Route 53?

Answer 13

A: A container for DNS records for a specific domain or subdomain.

Question 14

Q: What are the routing policies supported by Route 53?

Answer 14

• Simple
• Weighted
• Latency
• Failover
• Geolocation
• Geoproximity
• Multivalue Answer

Question 15

Q: What are health checks in Route 53?

Answer 15

A: A feature to monitor the health of endpoints and route traffic only to healthy endpoints.

Question 16

Q: What is latency-based routing in Route 53?

Answer 16

A: A routing policy that directs traffic to the region with the lowest latency for the user.

Question 17

Q: What is weighted routing in Route 53?

Answer 17

A: A policy that distributes traffic across multiple resources based on assigned weights.

Question 18

Q: What is geolocation routing in Route 53?

Answer 18

A: A routing policy that directs traffic based on the user’s geographic location.

Question 19

Q: What is multivalue answer routing in Route 53?

Answer 19

A: A policy that returns multiple IP addresses and helps Route 53 perform basic load balancing.

Question 20

Q: What is failover routing in Route 53?

Answer 20

A: A policy that routes traffic to a primary resource, with a backup resource activated in case of failure.

Question 21

Q: How is CloudFront pricing structured?

Answer 21

A: Based on data transfer out, requests, and the number of invalidation paths submitted.

Question 22

Q: How does AWS Global Accelerator differ from CloudFront?

Answer 22

A: Global Accelerator provides low-latency access to static and dynamic content by using static IPs, while CloudFront is focused on content delivery via Edge Locations.

Question 23

Q: What is Route 53 Resolver?

Answer 23

A: A service for hybrid DNS resolution between on-premises and AWS VPC networks.

Question 24

Q: What are alias records in Route 53?

Answer 24

A: DNS records that map domains to AWS resources like S3 buckets, CloudFront distributions, or ELBs without additional cost.

Question 25

Q: What is edge caching in CloudFront?

Answer 25

A: The process of caching content at edge locations to reduce latency and improve performance for end users.

Question 26

Q: How does CloudFront integrate with S3?

Answer 26

A: S3 acts as an origin for CloudFront, allowing cached and accelerated delivery of S3 content.

Question 27

Q: How do CloudFront and Route 53 protect against DDoS attacks?

Answer 27

A: Using AWS Shield and AWS WAF for protection and scalability under attack.

Question 28

Q: What are CloudFront Functions?

Answer 28

A: Lightweight JavaScript functions that run at CloudFront edge locations to manipulate HTTP requests and responses.

Question 29

Q: What is the purpose of a regional edge cache in CloudFront?

Answer 29

A: To improve cache hit rates by storing content closer to the user’s region and reducing the load on the origin.

Question 30

Q: How does Route 53 integrate with Elastic Load Balancers (ELBs)?

Answer 30

A: By using alias records to route traffic directly to ELBs without additional DNS query charges.

Question 31

Q: What is real-time logging in CloudFront?

Answer 31

A: A feature that streams logs for requests served by CloudFront in near real-time to destinations like S3 or Kinesis Data Firehose.

Question 32

Q: What is query logging in Route 53?

Answer 32

A: A feature that logs DNS queries for analysis and troubleshooting.

Question 33

Q: How does CloudFront support HTTPS?

Answer 33

A: By integrating with AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) to provide SSL/TLS certificates for secure connections.

Question 34

Q: How do you migrate a domain to Route 53?

Answer 34

A: Update the domain’s registrar to Route 53 and migrate DNS records to a Route 53 hosted zone.

Question 35

Q: What caching strategies are available in CloudFront?

Answer 35

A: Cache key customization, TTL settings, and cache invalidation.