Top 10 AWS SNS Interview Questions: A Guide for Cloud Developers

As a Professional Cloud Developer with experience working with AWS cloud, I can provide you with the top 10 AWS SNS (Simple Notification Service) interview questions along with their answers:

1. What is AWS SNS?
   Answer: AWS SNS (Simple Notification Service) is a fully managed messaging service that enables the distribution of messages to subscribers or other endpoints via email, SMS, push notifications, and more.

2. How does SNS work?
   Answer: SNS follows a publish-subscribe model, where publishers send messages to topics, and subscribers receive messages from these topics. Publishers don't need to know the identity of the subscribers, and each message is delivered to all subscribed endpoints.

3. What are the benefits of using SNS?
   Answer: Some benefits of using AWS SNS include:

   • Instantaneous message delivery.

   • Scalability and flexibility.

   • Simple integration with other AWS services.

   • Support for multiple messaging protocols.

   • Message filtering and customization.

4. What are SNS topics?
   Answer: SNS topics act as communication channels that hold and distribute messages. Publishers send messages to these topics, and subscribers receive messages from them. Topics can have multiple subscribers, and each subscriber receives a copy of every message sent to the topic.

5. What is the maximum message size in SNS?
   Answer: The maximum message size in SNS is 256 KB.

6. How can you secure access to SNS topics?
   Answer: Access to SNS topics can be secured by using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies. IAM policies control the permissions for different AWS resources, including SNS topics, and allow you to define who can publish or subscribe to a topic.

7. How can you handle failed delivery attempts in SNS?
   Answer: SNS provides a feature called "Delivery Policies" that allows you to define policies for handling failed delivery attempts. You can specify rules to retry failed deliveries, move messages to a dead-letter queue, or discard messages after a certain number of delivery attempts.

8. Can SNS be used to trigger AWS Lambda functions?
   Answer: Yes, SNS can be used to trigger AWS Lambda functions. By configuring a Lambda function as a subscriber to an SNS topic, you can execute the Lambda function whenever a new message is published to the topic.

9. How can you monitor SNS?
   Answer: You can monitor SNS using Amazon CloudWatch, which provides metrics and logs related to SNS. CloudWatch can help you track message delivery rates, monitor message throughput, and set up alarms for specific SNS events.

10. Is SNS a regional or global service?
    Answer: SNS is a regional service, which means it operates within a specific AWS region. However, SNS supports cross-region communication by enabling message fan-out across multiple regions.

These are some common AWS SNS interview questions along with their answers. Remember to provide additional details and real-life examples during an interview to demonstrate your practical experience and knowledge with SNS.