CLF-C02 Practice Exam 53 — 20 Questions

Question 1

A company migrates its on-premises applications to AWS. The finance team wants to allocate costs to different departments based on the exact amount of compute, storage, and network resources each department consumes. They also want to set automatic alerts when a department's usage exceeds a predefined budget. Which essential characteristic of cloud computing enables this level of visibility and control over resource consumption?

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

Accepted Answer

Measured service. Measured service is the correct answer because it refers to the cloud provider's ability to meter and report resource usage (compute hours, storage GB, data transfer) at a granular level. This metering data enables the finance team to allocate exact costs per department and set automated budget alerts via services like AWS Budgets or Cost Explorer, directly supporting the requirement for visibility and control over consumption.

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Rapid elasticity

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On-demand self-service

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Resource pooling

Question 2

A company has multiple AWS accounts used by different departments (Finance, Marketing, Engineering). The finance team wants to see a single monthly bill that aggregates charges from all accounts. Additionally, they want to track costs by department using custom cost allocation tags that each department applies to its resources. Which AWS feature should the company use to meet both requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS Organizations with consolidated billing. AWS Organizations with consolidated billing allows the company to aggregate charges from all member accounts into a single monthly bill for the finance team. Additionally, it enables the use of cost allocation tags, including custom tags applied by each department, to track and filter costs by department in AWS Cost Explorer and cost reports.

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

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AWS Budgets

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AWS Cost Explorer

Question 3

A security team needs to continuously assess their AWS resources for security vulnerabilities and deviations from security best practices. Which service provides automated security assessments?

Accepted Answer

AWS Security Hub. AWS Security Hub is the correct answer because it provides a comprehensive view of your security posture across AWS accounts by aggregating, organizing, and prioritizing security findings from multiple AWS services (like Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Inspector, and AWS Macie) and third-party tools. It continuously assesses your environment against security standards and best practices (e.g., CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark, AWS Foundational Security Best Practices) and generates automated security assessments and compliance checks. This directly matches the requirement for continuous, automated security assessments.

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

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Amazon Detective

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AWS Config

Question 4

A company has a web application that processes user-uploaded images. When a user uploads an image, the application needs to resize the image into multiple formats (thumbnail, medium, large). The company wants to avoid managing servers and wants the image processing to execute only when a new image is uploaded. The solution must automatically scale to handle thousands of concurrent uploads. Which AWS service should the company use to perform the image processing?

Accepted Answer

AWS Lambda. AWS Lambda is the correct choice because it is a serverless compute service that runs code in response to events, such as an image upload to Amazon S3. It automatically scales from zero to thousands of concurrent executions, perfectly matching the requirement to avoid managing servers and to process images only when a new upload occurs.

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Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling group

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Amazon ECS with Fargate launch type

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AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Question 5

A startup is evaluating a migration from its on-premises infrastructure to AWS. The CTO notes that AWS can offer significantly lower per-unit costs for compute and storage compared to the startup's own data center. The CTO explains that AWS achieves this by pooling the demand of millions of customers, which allows AWS to negotiate better hardware prices and spread the fixed costs of data centers, power, cooling, and operational staff across a massive customer base. This specific cost advantage of cloud computing is best described by which fundamental concept?

Accepted Answer

Economies of scale. Economies of scale (Option B) is the correct concept because it directly describes how AWS achieves lower per-unit costs by aggregating demand from millions of customers. This massive scale allows AWS to negotiate bulk discounts on hardware, spread fixed costs (data centers, power, cooling, staff) over a huge customer base, and operate at a cost structure that individual startups cannot match. The CTO's description of pooling demand and spreading fixed costs is the textbook definition of economies of scale in cloud computing.

Answer

Elasticity

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High availability

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Fault tolerance

Question 6

A company is migrating a large enterprise workload to AWS. They want to understand all the migration strategies available. Which framework categorizes cloud migration strategies as the '7 Rs'?

Accepted Answer

AWS Migration Strategy 7 Rs. The '7 Rs' (Retire, Retain, Rehost, Replatform, Repurchase, Refactor, Relocate) is a specific set of migration strategies defined by AWS to categorize how workloads can be moved to the cloud. This framework is directly referenced in AWS documentation and training as the 'AWS Migration Strategy 7 Rs' and is the standard taxonomy for discussing migration approaches.

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AWS Well-Architected Framework pillars

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AWS Cloud Adoption Framework perspectives

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AWS Service Control Policy levels

Question 7

A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log all API calls in their AWS account for compliance and security auditing. Their compliance officer needs to prove to an external auditor that the CloudTrail log files have not been altered or deleted after they were created. The company must use the most cost-effective and built-in AWS feature to detect any tampering with the log files. What should the company enable?

Accepted Answer

Enable CloudTrail log file integrity validation. CloudTrail log file integrity validation uses a hash chain (SHA-256) to create a digest file that is signed with a private key, allowing you to verify that log files have not been modified, deleted, or tampered with after delivery. This is a built-in, no-cost feature that directly meets the compliance officer's requirement to prove log integrity to an external auditor without additional services or costs.

Answer

Enable server-side encryption for the CloudTrail log file S3 bucket using SSE-KMS

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Configure CloudTrail to send logs to CloudWatch Logs and set a metric filter for changes

Answer

Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) delete on the S3 bucket

Question 8

Which AWS service allows you to monitor API calls made in your AWS account, including who made the call, from which IP address, and when?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudTrail. AWS CloudTrail is the service that records API activity in your AWS account, capturing details such as the identity of the caller, the source IP address, and the timestamp of each API call. This makes it the correct choice for monitoring who made a call, from where, and when.

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Amazon CloudWatch

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VPC Flow Logs

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AWS Config

Question 9

A company is planning to migrate its on-premises database and web application to AWS. The solutions architect needs to provide a detailed monthly cost estimate for the AWS resources that will be used, including Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon RDS database instances, and Amazon S3 storage. The architect wants to specify instance types, storage sizes, data transfer amounts, and other parameters to get a precise estimate before building the environment. Which AWS tool should the architect use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Pricing Calculator. The AWS Pricing Calculator (formerly Simple Monthly Calculator) allows users to specify exact instance types, storage sizes, data transfer amounts, and other parameters for services like EC2, RDS, and S3 to generate a detailed monthly cost estimate before provisioning resources. This makes it the correct tool for the architect's requirement of a precise, pre-build cost estimate.

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer

Answer

AWS Budgets

Answer

AWS Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator

Question 10

A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team wants to enforce a policy that prevents any user, including account administrators, from creating Amazon S3 buckets that are publicly accessible across the entire organization. The policy must be centrally managed and cannot be overridden by individual account administrators. Which AWS feature should the security team use?

Accepted Answer

Service Control Policies (SCPs) in AWS Organizations. Service Control Policies (SCPs) in AWS Organizations are the correct choice because they allow the security team to centrally define a policy that denies the creation of publicly accessible S3 buckets across all accounts in the organization. SCPs apply to all users, including account administrators, and cannot be overridden by any IAM policy or local account permissions, ensuring organization-wide enforcement.

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AWS Config rules with auto-remediation

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AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies with a Deny effect

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Amazon Macie with automated response

Question 11

A company uses AWS CloudFormation to define and manage its production infrastructure as code. The operations team wants to ensure that any proposed changes to the stack are reviewed and explicitly approved before being applied. Which AWS CloudFormation feature should the company use?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudFormation Change Sets. AWS CloudFormation Change Sets allow you to preview how proposed changes to a stack will impact your running resources before you apply them. This enables the operations team to review and explicitly approve changes, ensuring that modifications are not applied automatically without oversight.

Answer

AWS CloudFormation StackSets

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AWS CloudFormation Drift Detection

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AWS CloudFormation Stack Policies

Question 12

Which cloud computing benefit allows a company's development team to spin up a testing environment in 5 minutes instead of waiting 6 weeks for hardware procurement and data center provisioning?

Accepted Answer

Increase speed and agility. One of the core benefits of cloud computing is the ability to rapidly provision and release resources with minimal management effort. Instead of waiting weeks for hardware procurement and data center provisioning, a development team can spin up a testing environment in minutes using Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings like Amazon EC2 or AWS Elastic Beanstalk. This agility directly reduces time-to-market and enables faster iteration cycles.

Answer

Economies of scale

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High availability

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Pay-as-you-go pricing

Question 13

Which AWS compute service allows developers to run code in response to HTTP requests without managing servers, using a simple programming model based on functions?

Accepted Answer

AWS Lambda. AWS Lambda is the correct answer because it is a serverless compute service that executes code in response to events such as HTTP requests via Amazon API Gateway. Developers upload functions and Lambda automatically scales and manages the underlying infrastructure, aligning with the question's requirement of running code without managing servers using a function-based model.

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Amazon EC2

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Amazon ECS

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AWS Fargate

Question 14

A company is evaluating cloud adoption. Which of the following is a benefit of moving to the cloud over traditional on-premises infrastructure? (Select all that apply in context: which single answer best captures the operational model shift?)

Accepted Answer

Shift from capital expenditure (CapEx) to operational expenditure (OpEx). Moving to the cloud shifts infrastructure costs from upfront capital expenditure (CapEx) for hardware to operational expenditure (OpEx) for pay-as-you-go services. This operational model change allows companies to avoid large initial investments and instead pay for compute and storage resources based on actual usage, aligning costs with business growth.

Answer

Shift from operational expenditure (OpEx) to capital expenditure (CapEx)

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Increased requirement for physical infrastructure management

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Reduced ability to scale resources based on demand

Question 15

A company manages 15 AWS accounts through AWS Organizations. The finance team needs to perform custom analysis of monthly costs across all accounts. They want to download a detailed, hourly-level CSV file that breaks down usage and costs by service, by member account, and by user-defined cost allocation tags. The file must be delivered to an Amazon S3 bucket daily, and the team will then query the data using Amazon Athena and create dashboards in Amazon QuickSight. Which AWS feature should they configure to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR). The AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) is the only feature that delivers a detailed, hourly-level CSV file with granular breakdowns by service, member account, and user-defined cost allocation tags. It can be automatically published to an S3 bucket daily, enabling downstream analysis with Athena and QuickSight.

Answer

AWS Budgets

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 16

A company deploys their web application across multiple isolated locations within the same AWS Region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking. This design ensures that a failure in one location does not affect the others. What are these isolated locations called?

Accepted Answer

Availability Zones. Availability Zones (AZs) are isolated locations within an AWS Region that consist of one or more data centers with independent power, cooling, and networking. This design ensures that a failure in one AZ does not affect the others, providing high availability and fault tolerance for applications. The scenario directly describes the defining characteristics of an Availability Zone.

Answer

AWS Regions

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Edge Locations

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VPC Subnets

Question 17

A company runs multiple workloads in separate Amazon VPCs within the same AWS Region. The networking team needs to enable connectivity between all VPCs using private IP addresses. Additionally, the team must connect all VPCs to the company's on-premises data center through a single AWS Site-to-Site VPN connection to minimize costs and simplify management. The solution must support transitive routing so that any VPC can communicate with any other VPC and with the on-premises network. Which AWS service should the networking team use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS Transit Gateway with VPN attachments. AWS Transit Gateway acts as a central hub that connects multiple VPCs and on-premises networks through a single VPN attachment, supporting transitive routing between all connected networks. This meets the requirements for private IP connectivity, cost minimization, and simplified management by avoiding the need for full-mesh VPC peering or multiple VPN connections.

Answer

VPC Peering with a VPN attachment to a Virtual Private Gateway

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AWS Direct Connect gateway with VPC associations

Answer

A Network Load Balancer with VPN endpoints

Question 18

A company runs a read-heavy web application on Amazon EC2 instances that queries an Amazon RDS database. As traffic grows, the database CPU utilization is consistently high, causing slow response times for users. The company wants to reduce the load on the database by caching frequently accessed query results. They need a fully managed, in-memory caching service that can be set up quickly and integrates with common programming languages. Which AWS service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon ElastiCache. Amazon ElastiCache is a fully managed, in-memory caching service that supports Redis and Memcached, both of which integrate with common programming languages via standard client libraries. It can be deployed quickly to cache frequently accessed database query results, offloading read traffic from the Amazon RDS instance and reducing CPU utilization.

Answer

Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)

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Amazon CloudFront

Answer

Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration

Question 19

A company archives historical transaction records in Amazon S3. The records are accessed frequently for the first 30 days after creation. After 30 days, access drops sharply to only a few times per year, but the company must be able to retrieve any record within 5 minutes if needed. The company wants to minimize storage costs while meeting the retrieval time requirement. Which combination of S3 storage classes should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Use S3 Standard for the first 30 days, then transition to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval.. S3 Standard provides low-latency access for the first 30 days when records are frequently accessed, and then lifecycle rules transition the data to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, which offers retrieval times of minutes (typically 1–5 minutes for expedited retrievals) at a much lower storage cost. This combination meets the 5-minute retrieval requirement while minimizing costs for data that is rarely accessed after 30 days.

Answer

Use S3 Standard for all data.

Answer

Use S3 Standard-IA for the first 30 days, then transition to S3 Glacier Deep Archive.

Answer

Use S3 One Zone-IA for the first 30 days, then transition to S3 Glacier Deep Archive.

Question 20

A company runs 200 Amazon EC2 instances for its web application. The finance team wants to identify instances that are over-provisioned or underutilized to reduce costs. The team needs automated recommendations that consider the instance's CPU, memory, and network utilization patterns over the past 14 days. Which AWS service should the team use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Compute Optimizer. AWS Compute Optimizer is the correct service because it uses machine learning to analyze historical utilization metrics (CPU, memory, network) over a specified lookback period (up to 93 days, but 14 days is supported) and generates actionable recommendations to right-size EC2 instances. It specifically identifies over-provisioned and underutilized instances, directly addressing the finance team's cost-reduction goal with automated, metric-driven insights.

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer

Answer

AWS Budgets