CLF-C02 Practice Test 26 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs an e-commerce web application on Amazon EC2 instances. During flash sales, the backend order processing service becomes overloaded and drops requests, causing customer failures. The company needs a durable, scalable, and fully managed service to buffer incoming order requests and decouple the web tier from the backend processing tier. Orders must be stored reliably and processed in the order they were received. Which AWS service should the company use?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS). Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a fully managed message queuing service that decouples application components. It provides durable, scalable storage for incoming order requests and supports FIFO (First-In-First-Out) queues to guarantee that messages are processed exactly once and in the order they were sent, meeting the requirement for ordered processing.

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Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)

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Amazon Kinesis Data Streams

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Amazon MQ

Question 2

A company stores financial reports in Amazon S3. The security team needs to automatically detect whether any of these reports contain sensitive data, such as personally identifiable information (PII) like credit card numbers or social security numbers. The team wants a fully managed service that continuously scans the S3 buckets and reports findings in a centralized dashboard. Which AWS service should the security team use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Macie. Amazon Macie is a fully managed data security and data privacy service that uses machine learning and pattern matching to automatically discover, classify, and protect sensitive data such as PII (e.g., credit card numbers, social security numbers) stored in Amazon S3. It continuously scans S3 buckets and provides a centralized dashboard for findings, meeting the requirement for automated detection and reporting without manual intervention.

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Amazon Inspector

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AWS Config

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AWS Security Hub

Question 3

A company tags all Amazon EC2 instances with a 'Project' tag to track costs. The finance team reviews cost data in AWS Cost Explorer but cannot filter or group by the 'Project' tag. The tags are visible in the EC2 console. What is the most likely reason the tags are not appearing in Cost Explorer?

Accepted Answer

The tags have not been activated as cost allocation tags in the Billing and Cost Management console.. B is correct because cost allocation tags must be explicitly activated in the Billing and Cost Management console before they appear in AWS Cost Explorer. Even though the 'Project' tag is applied to EC2 instances and visible in the EC2 console, AWS does not automatically treat resource tags as cost allocation tags; activation is a separate, required step. Without activation, Cost Explorer cannot filter or group by that tag.

Answer

The tags are not applied to the root volumes of the EC2 instances.

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Cost Explorer requires at least 30 days of tag usage data before tags become available.

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The finance team does not have the iam:ListAccountAliases permission.

Question 4

A company runs a customer-facing web application on AWS. To ensure the application remains available if a fire or flood destroys one of the company's data centers, the IT team deploys the application across multiple physically separate facilities within the same AWS Region. Each facility has independent power, cooling, and physical security. Which component of the AWS global infrastructure does this deployment strategy primarily use?

Accepted Answer

Availability Zones. Availability Zones are distinct, physically separated locations within an AWS Region, each with independent power, cooling, and physical security. Deploying across multiple Availability Zones protects against data center-level failures like fires or floods, ensuring high availability for the application.

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AWS Regions

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Edge Locations

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Local Zones

Question 5

A company hosts a multi-tier web application on AWS. The web tier runs on Amazon EC2 instances in a public subnet, and the database tier runs on Amazon EC2 instances in a private subnet. The security team needs to configure security groups to allow only the web tier instances to communicate with the database tier on port 3306 (MySQL). The web tier must be accessible from the internet on port 443. Which security group configuration meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Web security group: inbound rule allowing 0.0.0.0/0 on port 443. Database security group: inbound rule allowing the web security group as source on port 3306.. It uses a security group reference as the source for the database security group's inbound rule on port 3306, which allows traffic only from instances associated with the web security group. The web security group allows inbound HTTPS traffic from the internet (0.0.0.0/0) on port 443, meeting the requirement for public access. This configuration ensures least-privilege access by restricting database communication to only the web tier, without exposing the database to the internet or requiring IP-based rules.

Answer

Web security group: inbound rule allowing 0.0.0.0/0 on port 443. Database security group: inbound rule allowing 0.0.0.0/0 on port 3306.

Answer

Web security group: inbound rule allowing the web security group as source on port 443. Database security group: inbound rule allowing the web security group as source on port 3306.

Answer

Web security group: inbound rule allowing 0.0.0.0/0 on port 443. Database security group: inbound rule allowing the internet-facing Application Load Balancer security group as source on port 3306.

Question 6

A healthcare company is migrating patient records to Amazon S3. The company must comply with HIPAA and needs to automatically identify any S3 buckets that contain protected health information (PHI) and generate alerts. The solution must be fully managed and require no manual effort to scan the data. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Macie. Amazon Macie is a fully managed data security and data privacy service that uses machine learning and pattern matching to discover, classify, and protect sensitive data in Amazon S3. It automatically identifies protected health information (PHI) such as medical record numbers, diagnosis codes, and patient names, and can generate alerts when such data is found in S3 buckets, meeting HIPAA compliance requirements without any manual scanning effort.

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Amazon Inspector

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AWS Config

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AWS Security Hub

Question 7

A company uses a continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline to deploy applications on AWS. The development teams frequently create feature branches in the code repository. The company wants to automatically provision a complete, isolated environment (including compute, storage, and networking) for each new feature branch, with no manual intervention. The environment must be ready within minutes of the branch creation. Which characteristic of cloud computing does this requirement primarily demonstrate?

Accepted Answer

On-demand self-service. The requirement to automatically provision a complete, isolated environment for each new feature branch without manual intervention directly demonstrates the on-demand self-service characteristic of cloud computing. This characteristic allows users to provision computing resources automatically as needed, without requiring human interaction with service providers. In this scenario, the CI/CD pipeline triggers the creation of compute, storage, and networking resources via AWS APIs (e.g., CloudFormation, AWS CDK, or Terraform) the moment a branch is created, fulfilling the 'no manual intervention' and 'ready within minutes' conditions.

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Rapid elasticity

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High availability

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Measured service

Question 8

A company runs a batch processing job on a single Amazon EC2 instance. The job takes 10 hours to complete. The company needs to reduce the processing time to under 1 hour to meet a new business requirement. The data can be split into independent chunks that can be processed in parallel. Which cloud computing concept would most directly enable the company to achieve this goal?

Accepted Answer

Scalability. Scalability is the correct answer because it refers to the ability to increase resources to handle increased load. By scaling horizontally (adding more EC2 instances) and processing the independent data chunks in parallel, the batch job can be completed in under 1 hour instead of 10 hours.

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Elasticity

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High availability

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Fault tolerance

Question 9

A company uses Amazon EC2 instances and Amazon S3 for its workloads. The finance team reviews the monthly AWS bill and notices it includes line items for EC2 instance hours, data transfer out from EC2, and S3 storage usage. The bill shows exactly how many hours each instance ran and how much data was transferred. The company uses this detailed usage data to allocate costs to different departments and to optimize resource utilization. This scenario best demonstrates which essential characteristic of cloud computing?

Accepted Answer

Measured service. (Measured service) because the scenario explicitly describes how the company uses detailed usage data—EC2 instance hours, data transfer out, and S3 storage—to allocate costs and optimize resource utilization. This aligns with the cloud computing characteristic where resource usage is metered, monitored, and reported transparently, enabling pay-per-use billing and cost allocation.

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On-demand self-service

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Broad network access

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Resource pooling

Question 10

A company runs an e-commerce platform on AWS. The platform experiences unpredictable traffic, with occasional large spikes. The company wants to automatically adjust compute capacity to match demand exactly, ensuring consistent performance while only paying for the resources consumed. Which benefit of the AWS Cloud does this scenario primarily describe?

Accepted Answer

Elasticity. Elasticity is the ability of AWS to automatically scale compute resources up or down based on demand. In this scenario, the e-commerce platform experiences unpredictable traffic spikes, and elasticity ensures that EC2 instances or Auto Scaling groups adjust capacity in real time, matching demand exactly while only charging for resources consumed. This directly aligns with the 'pay-as-you-grow' model and the operational benefit of scaling without manual intervention.

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High availability

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Disaster recovery

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Resource pooling

Question 11

A company runs its production web application on a single Amazon EC2 instance located in one Availability Zone. Recently, a power outage in that data center caused the instance to become unavailable, resulting in application downtime. The company wants to redesign the architecture so that the application automatically continues serving users even if a single data center fails, without requiring manual intervention. Which cloud computing concept does this scenario BEST illustrate?

Accepted Answer

High availability. High availability (B) is the correct concept because the scenario describes designing an architecture that automatically continues serving users even if a single data center (Availability Zone) fails, without manual intervention. This is achieved by deploying the application across multiple Availability Zones, using an Elastic Load Balancer to distribute traffic, and configuring Auto Scaling groups to maintain instance health, ensuring the application remains accessible despite a zonal failure.

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Elasticity

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On-demand self-service

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Broad network access

Question 12

A company's finance team receives a detailed monthly report from AWS that shows the exact number of Amazon EC2 instance hours used, the amount of Amazon S3 storage consumed, and the volume of data transferred out to the internet over the month. The team uses this report to analyze usage trends, allocate costs to different departments, and plan future budgets. This capability is an example of which essential characteristic of cloud computing?

Accepted Answer

Measured service. Measured service. This characteristic means cloud providers automatically meter and report resource usage (e.g., EC2 instance hours, S3 storage, data transfer) for billing, optimization, and planning. The finance team's ability to analyze exact usage data and allocate costs directly demonstrates this metering capability.

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On-demand self-service

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Broad network access

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Resource pooling

Question 13

A startup is building a photo-sharing application on AWS. The startup expects to store billions of photos over time. The CEO is surprised that the per-GB price for Amazon S3 storage is the same for the startup as it is for a multinational corporation with petabytes of data. Which characteristic of cloud computing does this pricing model best demonstrate?

Accepted Answer

Economies of scale. The pricing model where the per-GB cost for Amazon S3 is the same for a small startup as for a large enterprise demonstrates economies of scale. AWS aggregates demand from millions of customers, allowing it to negotiate lower prices for hardware, power, and bandwidth, then passes those savings on to all customers equally. This means the startup benefits from the same low unit cost as a multinational corporation, without needing to invest in its own infrastructure.

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Elasticity

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High availability

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Global reach

Question 14

A company runs a production application on a mix of Amazon EC2 instance families (e.g., M5, C5, R5) across two AWS Regions. The application runs 24/7 and is expected to continue for the next three years. The company wants to minimize compute costs while retaining the flexibility to change instance families, sizes, or Regions if needed. The company also prefers to avoid any upfront payment to preserve cash flow. Which AWS pricing option should the company choose?

Accepted Answer

Compute Savings Plans (no upfront, 3-year term). Compute Savings Plans (no upfront, 3-year term) provide the highest discount (up to 66%) while allowing flexibility to change instance families (e.g., M5 to C5), sizes, and AWS Regions. This matches the company’s requirement to minimize costs over three years without upfront payment, and the plan automatically applies to any EC2 instance usage within the chosen commitment, preserving the ability to switch instance types or Regions as needed.

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On-Demand instances

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Standard Reserved Instances (no upfront, 3-year term)

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Spot Instances

Question 15

A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application connects to an Amazon RDS for MySQL database. The database password is currently hardcoded in the application configuration file, and the security team is concerned about the risk of exposure. The company wants to remove the hardcoded credential and instead have the application retrieve the database password securely at runtime. Additionally, the security team requires that the password be automatically rotated every 90 days without any manual intervention or custom scripting. Which AWS service should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS Secrets Manager. AWS Secrets Manager is the correct choice because it is purpose-built for securely storing, retrieving, and automatically rotating database credentials (including RDS for MySQL) without custom code. It supports native, automatic rotation of secrets every 90 days via a built-in Lambda rotation function, meeting the security team's requirement for zero manual intervention. Unlike Parameter Store, Secrets Manager provides automatic rotation out of the box, which is the key differentiator here.

Answer

AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store (SecureString parameters)

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AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS)

Answer

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles for Amazon EC2