AWS ECR Expertise: Comprehensive Interview Questions and Answers Guide

here are 10 potential questions and answers for an interview that is focused on Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Container Registry (ECR):

1. What is AWS ECR?
   • AWS ECR (Elastic Container Registry) is a fully-managed Docker container registry that makes it easy for developers to store, manage, and deploy Docker container images. It is integrated with Amazon ECS (Elastic Container Service) allowing you to simplify your development to production workflow.
2. What are the main features of AWS ECR?
   • AWS ECR is secure, scalable, and reliable. It provides resource-based permissions using AWS IAM so that users can control who can access their container images. It hosts your images in a highly available and scalable architecture, allowing you to reliably deploy images for your applications.
3. What is the difference between a Docker registry and a Docker repository?
   • A Docker registry is a storage and distribution system for named Docker images. AWS ECR is an example of a Docker registry. A Docker repository, on the other hand, is a collection of related Docker images, often different versions of the same application, stored in a Docker registry.
4. How does AWS ECR work with other AWS services?
   • AWS ECR integrates with AWS services like ECS (Elastic Container Service) and EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) for container orchestration, CodeBuild for building, testing, and deploying your code, and IAM (Identity and Access Management) for resource-based permissions.
5. How can you secure your Docker images in AWS ECR?
   • AWS ECR uses AWS IAM to manage resource-based permissions. You can define policies that allow or deny access to the repositories. Also, the communication between ECR and other services is encrypted to protect your images.
6. What is lifecycle policy in AWS ECR?
   • A lifecycle policy in AWS ECR is a rule that you set to automate the cleaning up of your image versions. You can set rules based on image tags, the count of images, or the age of images. This helps manage storage costs by eliminating unused or unnecessary images.
7. How can you push a Docker image to AWS ECR?
   • First, you need to authenticate your Docker client to the Amazon ECR registry to which you intend to push your image. You can use the aws ecr get-login-password command for this. Then, you build your Docker image using docker build and finally push the image to your ECR repository using docker push.
8. How can you pull a Docker image from AWS ECR?
   • Similar to the push operation, you first need to authenticate your Docker client to the Amazon ECR registry that you want to pull your image from. Then, you can simply use the docker pull command to pull the image from your ECR repository.
9. How does AWS ECR handle image vulnerabilities?
   • AWS ECR has a feature called Image Scanning that can automatically scan your images for vulnerabilities upon being pushed to the repository. This uses the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) database from the open-source Clair project.
10. What are the cost components of AWS ECR?
    • AWS ECR pricing is based on the amount of data you store in your repositories and data transferred to the Internet. There’s no upfront fee and you only pay for the storage you use and data you transfer.

Remember, these are potential questions and answers, and the specifics of an interview can vary depending on the job role and the company’s specific use of AWS ECR.