CLF-C02 Practice Exam 59 — 20 Questions

Question 1

A company runs a batch processing workload on Amazon EC2 instances. The finance team has set a monthly budget of $10,000 for this workload. They want to automatically stop the batch processing instances if the accumulated costs for the month exceed $8,000, to prevent overspending. The company needs a native AWS solution that can monitor the costs and take corrective action automatically. Which AWS feature should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS Budgets with budget actions configured to stop EC2 instances. AWS Budgets allows you to set a cost budget of $8,000 and attach a budget action that triggers an AWS Systems Manager (SSM) automation document to stop EC2 instances when actual or forecasted costs exceed the threshold. This provides a native, automated, and serverless solution to enforce cost controls without manual intervention.

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AWS Cost Explorer with a custom cost threshold report

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AWS Trusted Advisor with a cost optimization check

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AWS Organizations with a service control policy (SCP)

Question 2

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

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AWS Cost Explorer

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AWS Budgets

Question 3

A company runs a critical e-commerce application on a single Amazon EC2 instance in one Availability Zone. The company wants to ensure that if the entire Availability Zone becomes unavailable, the application continues to run without manual intervention. Which AWS cloud concept best describes this requirement?

Accepted Answer

High availability. High availability (B) is the correct concept because it ensures that an application remains operational even when an entire Availability Zone fails. By deploying the EC2 instance across multiple Availability Zones (e.g., using an Auto Scaling group with a minimum of two instances and an Application Load Balancer), the application can automatically fail over to a healthy instance in another zone without manual intervention. This directly addresses the requirement for continuous operation during a zone outage.

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Scalability

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Elasticity

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Disaster recovery

Question 4

A company plans to run a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances continuously for 3 years to support a steady-state application. The company wants the lowest possible cost for this predictable workload while maintaining the flexibility to change instance families if needed. Which AWS purchasing option should the company choose?

Accepted Answer

Compute Savings Plans. Compute Savings Plans offer the lowest cost for a predictable, steady-state workload over 3 years while allowing flexibility to change instance families. Unlike Reserved Instances, which lock you to a specific instance family, Compute Savings Plans apply to any EC2 instance (including those in different families) within a chosen region, automatically providing the highest discount (up to 66% vs On-Demand) for consistent compute usage.

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On-Demand Instances

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Standard Reserved Instances

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Spot Instances

Question 5

A company runs a web application on multiple Amazon EC2 instances across two Availability Zones. The application processes user-uploaded documents and must store them in a shared file system that all instances can access simultaneously. The file system must be scalable to petabytes, durable, and fully managed. Which AWS service should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EFS. Amazon EFS is a fully managed, scalable, and durable NFS file system that can be mounted concurrently by multiple EC2 instances across different Availability Zones. It automatically scales storage capacity up to petabytes as files are added or removed, and it provides high durability by replicating data across multiple AZs within a region. This makes it the ideal choice for a shared file system that must be accessed simultaneously by all instances.

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Amazon EBS with Multi-Attach enabled

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Amazon S3

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Amazon EC2 Instance Store

Question 6

A company runs a web application on a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances. The application experiences unpredictable traffic patterns with sudden spikes. The company configures an Auto Scaling group with dynamic scaling policies to automatically add instances when CPU utilization exceeds 70% and remove instances when it drops below 30%. This design is an example of which key characteristic of cloud computing?

Accepted Answer

Elasticity. Option C is correct because the Auto Scaling group's dynamic scaling policy, which adds instances when CPU utilization exceeds 70% and removes them when it drops below 30%, directly demonstrates elasticity. Elasticity is the ability to automatically provision and de-provision resources in response to real-time demand, matching capacity to workload without manual intervention. This contrasts with static provisioning, where resources are fixed regardless of load.

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High availability

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Fault tolerance

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Durability

Question 7

A company runs a critical web application on Amazon EC2 instances in the us-east-1 Region, with a secondary standby deployment in us-west-2 for disaster recovery. The application requires that user traffic be directed to the nearest healthy endpoint, automatically failover to the secondary region if the primary region becomes unavailable, and the company needs two static IP addresses that remain fixed regardless of infrastructure changes. The application uses TCP and UDP protocols. Which AWS service should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS Global Accelerator. AWS Global Accelerator is the correct choice because it provides two static anycast IP addresses that remain fixed regardless of infrastructure changes, directs traffic to the nearest healthy endpoint using the AWS global network, and supports automatic failover between regions for both TCP and UDP traffic. It also integrates with Network Load Balancers, Application Load Balancers, or EC2 instances to route traffic to the closest healthy endpoint, meeting all stated requirements.

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Amazon Route 53

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Amazon CloudFront

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Elastic Load Balancing

Question 8

A company runs a mix of Amazon EC2 instances (different instance families) and AWS Fargate tasks across multiple AWS Regions. The cloud operations team wants to reduce costs while retaining maximum flexibility to change instance families, operating systems, and compute platforms (EC2 or Fargate) without losing the discount. They are willing to commit to a consistent amount of compute usage (measured in $/hour) for a 1-year term. Which AWS pricing model should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Compute Savings Plans. Compute Savings Plans provide the most flexibility, applying to any EC2 instance family, any operating system, and any compute platform (including Fargate) across any region, as long as the hourly spend commitment is met. This matches the team's requirement to retain maximum flexibility to change instance families, OS, and compute platforms without losing the discount, for a 1-year term.

Answer

EC2 Instance Savings Plans

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Reserved Instances (Standard)

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Dedicated Hosts

Question 9

A company runs a critical production application on AWS. The internal team is unable to resolve intermittent errors that are impacting the application. The company currently has the AWS Basic Support plan and requires access to AWS technical support with a faster response time for production issues. Due to budget constraints, the company wants the most cost-effective support plan that provides a response time of 1 hour for production system impaired cases. Which AWS Support plan should the company choose?

Accepted Answer

Business Support. The AWS Business Support plan is the most cost-effective option that provides a 1-hour response time for production system impaired cases. The Basic Support plan offers no technical support, while the Developer Support plan only provides a 12-hour response time for impaired systems, which does not meet the requirement. Business Support is the lowest-tier plan that includes 1-hour response for production issues, making it the correct choice.

Answer

Developer Support

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Enterprise Support

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Enterprise On-Ramp

Question 10

A company runs a web application on a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application serves dynamic content that changes frequently, but also serves static assets (CSS, JavaScript, images) that change rarely. The company wants to improve the overall performance and reduce the load on the EC2 instances by caching the static assets at edge locations while still routing dynamic requests to the ALB. Which combination of AWS services should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Use Amazon CloudFront with the ALB as the origin, and configure CloudFront to cache the static assets while forwarding dynamic requests to the ALB.. Amazon CloudFront can be configured with the ALB as the origin, allowing it to cache static assets (CSS, JavaScript, images) at edge locations while forwarding dynamic requests to the ALB. This reduces latency for users by serving cached content from the nearest edge location and offloads the EC2 instances from handling repeated requests for static files. CloudFront supports path-based caching behaviors, so you can define specific URL patterns (e.g., /static/*) to cache and others to forward directly to the ALB.

Answer

Use Amazon Route 53 with latency-based routing to direct users to the closest ALB endpoint.

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Use Amazon S3 to host the entire application, and use the ALB to route traffic to the S3 bucket.

Answer

Use AWS Global Accelerator to distribute traffic across multiple ALBs in different AWS Regions.

Question 11

A company runs a critical e-commerce platform on AWS. The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) wants a dedicated Technical Account Manager (TAM) who will provide proactive architectural guidance, conduct regular operational reviews, and maintain a deep understanding of the company's AWS environment. The company also requires a response time of 15 minutes for business-critical system issues, 24/7 access to senior AWS engineers, and access to the AWS Infrastructure Event Management service for planned launches. Which AWS Support plan should the company choose?

Accepted Answer

Enterprise Support. The Enterprise Support plan is the only AWS Support plan that provides a dedicated Technical Account Manager (TAM) who offers proactive architectural guidance and operational reviews. It also includes a 15-minute response time for business-critical issues, 24/7 access to senior AWS engineers, and access to AWS Infrastructure Event Management (IEM) for planned launches, all of which are explicitly required by the CTO.

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Basic Support

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Developer Support

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Business Support

Question 12

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.

Answer

AWS Regions

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Edge Locations

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Local Zones

Question 13

A company runs a public-facing e-commerce website on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The security team has discovered that attackers are attempting SQL injection attacks through the website's search feature. The company wants to use a managed AWS service to inspect incoming HTTP requests and block these malicious payloads before they reach the application. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

AWS WAF. AWS WAF is a managed web application firewall that allows you to create rules to inspect HTTP/HTTPS requests and block common attack patterns, such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting. By associating a WAF web ACL with the Application Load Balancer, the company can filter incoming traffic and block malicious payloads before they reach the EC2 instances.

Answer

AWS Shield Standard

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Network ACLs

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Amazon GuardDuty

Question 14

A company's IT team manually provisions S3 buckets, EC2 instances, security groups, and IAM roles for each new project using the AWS Management Console. This process often results in configuration errors, such as overly permissive security rules or incorrect tagging, which the security team then has to fix manually. The company wants to define its entire infrastructure in a declarative template file, store it in version control, and have AWS automatically create or update the resources based on that template. Which AWS service should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudFormation. AWS CloudFormation is the correct service because it allows you to define your entire infrastructure—including S3 buckets, EC2 instances, security groups, and IAM roles—in a declarative JSON or YAML template. You can store this template in version control, and CloudFormation automatically provisions or updates the resources to match the template, eliminating manual configuration errors like overly permissive security rules or incorrect tagging.

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AWS Elastic Beanstalk

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AWS OpsWorks

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AWS CodeDeploy

Question 15

A company's compliance officer needs to provide an external auditor with copies of AWS SOC 2 reports and a PCI DSS attestation of compliance. The officer needs a self-service portal to download these documents directly, without contacting AWS Support. The solution must provide the most current versions of these reports. Which AWS service should the officer use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Artifact. AWS Artifact is the correct service because it provides a self-service portal for on-demand access to AWS compliance reports, including SOC 2 reports and PCI DSS attestations of compliance. It ensures the most current versions are always available without needing to contact AWS Support, directly meeting the compliance officer's requirement for a self-service download solution.

Answer

AWS Audit Manager

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Amazon Inspector

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AWS Config

Question 16

A company runs an e-commerce application on Amazon EC2 instances in the us-east-1 Region. The application serves static assets (images, CSS files) and dynamic API responses. Users in Europe and Asia report that the website loads slowly, especially for images. The company needs a solution that reduces latency for both static and dynamic content by caching static assets at edge locations and accelerating dynamic API calls using optimized network paths. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudFront. Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that caches static assets (images, CSS files) at edge locations worldwide, reducing latency for users in Europe and Asia. It also supports dynamic API acceleration by using optimized network paths (AWS global network backbone) and features like origin shield and TCP optimizations, making it the correct choice for both static and dynamic content.

Answer

AWS Global Accelerator

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Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration

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Application Load Balancer

Question 17

A company runs a critical e-commerce application on Amazon EC2 instances distributed across multiple Availability Zones in a single AWS Region. The application is designed so that if an entire Availability Zone experiences an outage, the application continues to serve traffic from the remaining Availability Zones without interruption. Which benefit or characteristic of cloud computing does this scenario BEST represent?

Accepted Answer

High availability. The scenario describes an application that continues to serve traffic without interruption when an entire Availability Zone fails. This is the definition of high availability, which is achieved by distributing EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones and using an Elastic Load Balancer to route traffic away from failed instances. High availability ensures fault tolerance and minimal downtime, which is a core benefit of cloud computing.

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Elasticity

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Scalability

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Fault tolerance

Question 18

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 19

A company stores sensitive financial data in Amazon S3. The company's security policy requires that all data be encrypted at rest using a key that the company creates and manages, with the ability to rotate the key annually. The company also needs an audit trail of when the key was used and by which AWS service. Which solution should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Use server-side encryption with AWS KMS customer managed keys (SSE-KMS).. Option B is correct because SSE-KMS with a customer managed key (CMK) allows the company to create and manage its own encryption key, enable automatic annual key rotation via AWS KMS, and provides detailed CloudTrail audit logs of every KMS API call (e.g., Decrypt, GenerateDataKey) showing which AWS service or user used the key. This satisfies all stated requirements: customer-managed key, annual rotation, and audit trail.

Answer

Use server-side encryption with S3 managed keys (SSE-S3).

Answer

Use server-side encryption with customer-provided keys (SSE-C).

Answer

Use client-side encryption with an AWS KMS managed key.

Question 20

A company runs a global e-commerce website hosted on Amazon EC2 instances in the us-west-2 Region. The website includes static assets (product images, CSS, JavaScript) and dynamic content generated by the application. The company wants to improve page load times for users in Europe and Asia by caching static content at edge locations, while also reducing the direct load on the EC2 instances. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudFront. Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that caches static assets (images, CSS, JavaScript) at edge locations worldwide, reducing latency for users in Europe and Asia. By offloading static content delivery from the origin EC2 instances, CloudFront directly reduces the load on those servers, improving overall performance and scalability.

Answer

AWS Global Accelerator

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Amazon Route 53

Answer

AWS Direct Connect