CLF-C02 Practice Exam 63 — 20 Questions

Question 1

A retail company runs a legacy application on a single on-premises server. The application experiences unpredictable traffic surges that degrade performance. The company is considering migrating to the AWS Cloud. Which cloud computing characteristic MOST directly addresses the ability to automatically adjust resources to meet changing demand without manual intervention?

Accepted Answer

Elasticity. Elasticity is the cloud computing characteristic that enables automatic resource provisioning and de-provisioning to match demand in real time, without manual intervention. For the retail company's legacy application with unpredictable traffic surges, elasticity directly addresses the need to dynamically scale resources up during spikes and down during lulls, which is distinct from the planned, manual scaling of scalability.

Answer

Scalability

Answer

High availability

Answer

Durability

Question 2

A financial analytics company runs a mission-critical application in its on-premises data center. The application must replicate large volumes of market data to Amazon S3 in real time. The company requires a dedicated, private network connection with consistent low latency and high throughput. The connection must not traverse the public internet. Which AWS service should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS Direct Connect. AWS Direct Connect provides a dedicated, private network connection from an on-premises data center to AWS, bypassing the public internet. This ensures consistent low latency and high throughput, which is essential for replicating large volumes of market data in real time. The connection uses industry-standard 802.1Q VLANs and can be provisioned at speeds up to 100 Gbps, meeting the requirement for a private, high-performance link.

Answer

AWS Site-to-Site VPN

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Amazon VPC peering

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AWS Transit Gateway

Question 3

A global e-commerce company stores product images and videos in an Amazon S3 bucket located in the us-west-2 Region. Customers worldwide report slow page load times. The company also wants to protect its website against common distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks without incurring additional costs for a dedicated DDoS protection service. Which AWS service should the company use to meet both requirements?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudFront. Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that caches content at edge locations worldwide, reducing latency for global users. It also includes AWS Shield Standard at no additional cost, which provides always-on protection against common DDoS attacks (e.g., SYN floods, UDP reflection). This combination directly addresses both the slow page load times and the need for cost-effective DDoS protection.

Answer

Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration

Answer

AWS Global Accelerator

Answer

AWS Shield Advanced

Question 4

A media processing company runs multiple Amazon EC2 instances in different Availability Zones. All instances need to read and write to a shared file system simultaneously. The file system must be fully managed, automatically replicated across multiple Availability Zones for durability, and accessible by all instances using standard file access protocols. The company does not want to provision or manage any file servers. Which AWS service should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EFS. Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is a fully managed, scalable NFS file system that can be mounted concurrently by multiple EC2 instances across different Availability Zones. It automatically replicates data across multiple AZs for durability and uses standard NFSv4.1 and NFSv4.0 protocols, meeting all requirements without any server provisioning or management.

Answer

Amazon S3

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Amazon EBS Multi-Attach

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Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

Question 5

A startup is designing a new application on AWS. They have selected specific Amazon EC2 instance types, Amazon EBS volumes, and estimated data transfer. The team wants to compare the monthly cost of running the application using On-Demand instances versus 1-year All Upfront Reserved Instances before they commit to any resources. Which AWS tool should they use to generate this cost estimate?

Accepted Answer

AWS Pricing Calculator. AWS Pricing Calculator (option C) is the correct tool because it allows users to estimate the monthly cost of AWS services, including EC2 instances, EBS volumes, and data transfer, before deployment. It supports comparing pricing models such as On-Demand and 1-year All Upfront Reserved Instances by letting you input specific instance types, storage, and transfer details to generate a detailed cost breakdown. This matches the startup's need to compare costs without committing to resources.

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer

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AWS Budgets

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AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 6

A startup is planning to migrate its web application to AWS. The CTO wants to estimate the monthly cost of running the application on Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS, including data transfer costs. The team has not yet created any AWS accounts or resources. They need a tool that allows them to input assumptions about instance types, storage, and data transfer to generate a detailed cost estimate. Which AWS tool should they use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Pricing Calculator. AWS Pricing Calculator (option C) is the correct tool because it allows users to input assumptions about EC2 instance types, RDS configurations, storage, and data transfer to generate a detailed monthly cost estimate before any AWS resources are created. Unlike Cost Explorer, which requires existing usage data, the Pricing Calculator is designed for upfront cost modeling and planning.

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer

Answer

AWS Budgets

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AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 7

A multinational company hosts its customer relationship management (CRM) application on AWS. Sales team members access the CRM from various locations using desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. They connect over the internet through standard web browsers. Which essential characteristic of cloud computing does this scenario best illustrate?

Accepted Answer

Broad network access. This scenario best illustrates broad network access because the CRM application is accessed over the internet by sales team members using a variety of devices (desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones) through standard web browsers. Broad network access is the cloud computing characteristic that defines the ability to access resources via standard protocols (e.g., HTTPS, TLS) from heterogeneous client platforms, which is exactly what is described here.

Answer

Resource pooling

Answer

Measured service

Answer

Rapid elasticity

Question 8

A manufacturing company collects sensor data from thousands of IoT devices every second. The data includes temperature, pressure, and vibration readings. The company needs to store this time-series data and perform real-time queries to detect anomalies, as well as run historical analysis. The data volume is extremely high and will grow continuously. The company wants a fully managed, serverless solution that can automatically scale to handle the data volume and provide built-in analytics functions for time-series. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Timestream. Amazon Timestream is a fully managed, serverless time-series database service designed specifically for IoT and operational applications. It automatically scales to handle trillions of events per day, provides built-in time-series analytics functions (e.g., smoothing, approximation, interpolation), and supports both real-time queries and historical analysis with separate storage tiers (in-memory for recent data and magnetic for historical data). This makes it the ideal choice for the company's high-volume sensor data requirements.

Answer

Amazon DynamoDB

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Amazon ElastiCache for Redis

Answer

Amazon RDS for MySQL

Question 9

A retail company is migrating its e-commerce platform to AWS. The company's financial controller notes that AWS can offer lower pay-as-you-go prices than what it would cost the company to build and operate its own data center at the same scale. Which cloud computing concept best explains this pricing advantage?

Accepted Answer

Economies of scale. The correct answer is B, economies of scale. AWS operates at a massive global scale, allowing it to negotiate lower prices for hardware, data center power, and network bandwidth. These savings are passed on to customers as lower pay-as-you-go prices, which a single company building its own data center cannot match due to its smaller procurement volume.

Answer

Agility

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Elasticity

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High availability

Question 10

A startup is running a pilot application on AWS and wants to control costs strictly. The finance team sets a monthly budget of $1,000. They need to receive an email notification when actual or forecasted spending reaches 80% of the budget. Additionally, if the budget is exceeded, they want to automatically stop a non-critical Amazon EC2 instance to prevent further cost overruns. Which combination of AWS services should they use to meet all these requirements with minimal operational overhead?

Accepted Answer

AWS Budgets with a budget action configured to stop the EC2 instance when the budget limit is exceeded. Option C is correct because AWS Budgets natively supports budget actions that can automatically stop an EC2 instance when the actual or forecasted spending exceeds a defined threshold. This eliminates the need for custom scripting or additional services, meeting the requirements with minimal operational overhead. The budget alert at 80% can be configured via AWS Budgets' notification feature to send an email through Amazon SNS.

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer with Amazon SNS notifications to send alerts at 80% spending, and an AWS Lambda function to stop the EC2 instance

Answer

AWS Budgets with a budget alert set at 80% of the $1,000 limit, and an AWS Trusted Advisor check to stop the instance when costs exceed the budget

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch cost metric alarms combined with AWS Auto Scaling to reduce instance capacity when spending exceeds the budget

Question 11

A software development team uses AWS CloudFormation to define their test environments as infrastructure as code. Each developer can launch a complete environment containing multiple Amazon EC2 instances, an Application Load Balancer, and an Amazon RDS database in under five minutes. They run their test suite for a few hours and then delete the entire CloudFormation stack, releasing all resources. Which essential characteristic of cloud computing does this workflow best illustrate?

Accepted Answer

Rapid elasticity. Option B is correct because the ability to provision and de-provision a complete environment—including EC2 instances, an ALB, and an RDS database—in minutes and then release all resources after a few hours directly demonstrates rapid elasticity. This characteristic allows cloud resources to scale out and in quickly, matching demand without manual intervention, which is exactly what the CloudFormation stack lifecycle achieves.

Answer

On-demand self-service

Answer

Resource pooling

Answer

Measured service

Question 12

A startup recently signed up for AWS and is using the AWS Free Tier to run a small web application. The startup's finance lead wants to monitor the team's usage of AWS services to ensure they do not exceed the Free Tier limits and incur unexpected charges. The finance lead needs a tool that can proactively send an alert when the team approaches 80% of the Free Tier limit for a specific service, such as Amazon EC2. Which AWS service or feature should the finance lead use to set up this alert?

Accepted Answer

AWS Budgets. AWS Budgets allows you to set custom cost and usage budgets, including alerts for Free Tier usage. You can configure a budget to track your actual Free Tier consumption for a specific service like Amazon EC2 and trigger an alert when usage reaches 80% of the Free Tier limit. This meets the finance lead's requirement for proactive notification before exceeding limits and incurring charges.

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Answer

AWS Personal Health Dashboard

Question 13

A startup uses AWS Lambda for its backend processing. The company is billed only for the number of function invocations and the compute time consumed, rounded up to the nearest millisecond. There are no minimum fees or upfront commitments. This billing model is a direct example of which essential characteristic of cloud computing?

Accepted Answer

Measured service. The AWS Lambda billing model—charging only for function invocations and compute time rounded to the nearest millisecond, with no minimum fees or upfront commitments—directly exemplifies measured service. This essential characteristic of cloud computing means that resource usage is metered, monitored, and reported transparently, allowing customers to pay only for what they consume. In Lambda, the metering is granular: each invocation is counted, and duration is measured in 1-millisecond increments, enabling precise cost allocation.

Answer

On-demand self-service

Answer

Resource pooling

Answer

Broad network access

Question 14

A healthcare company is subject to HIPAA regulations and must record all AWS API calls made in its account for auditing. The logs must be retained for 7 years and must be protected from any modification or deletion, including by the account root user. Which combination of AWS services should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudTrail with log file validation enabled, and store the log files in an Amazon S3 bucket with S3 Object Lock enabled in compliance mode. Option A is correct because AWS CloudTrail with log file validation enabled ensures the integrity of the API call logs by using a digital signature (SHA-256 hash) to detect any tampering. Storing these logs in an Amazon S3 bucket with S3 Object Lock in compliance mode prevents any user, including the root user, from overwriting or deleting the objects for the specified retention period (7 years), meeting HIPAA's immutable audit log requirements.

Answer

AWS Config with a HIPAA conformance pack, and store the configuration history in an Amazon S3 bucket with versioning enabled

Answer

Amazon GuardDuty with findings exported to an Amazon S3 bucket, and enable MFA Delete on the bucket

Answer

AWS CloudTrail with log file validation enabled, and store the log files in an Amazon S3 bucket with MFA Delete enabled

Question 15

A startup is using the AWS Free Tier for the first time. They have launched an Amazon EC2 t2.micro instance and are storing 10 GB of data in Amazon S3 Standard. The startup wants to ensure they do not incur any charges beyond the Free Tier limits. They need a managed AWS service that can automatically monitor their usage against the Free Tier allowances and send them a notification if they are approaching or exceeding those limits. Which AWS service should the startup use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Budgets. AWS Budgets is the correct service because it allows you to create a cost budget that monitors your actual and forecasted AWS spend against a specified threshold (e.g., the Free Tier limits). You can configure an alert action to send an SNS notification when usage approaches or exceeds the budgeted amount, ensuring proactive notification without manual oversight.

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Answer

AWS Billing Conductor

Question 16

A startup is planning to build and launch a new mobile application on AWS. The team expects very low initial traffic but hopes to scale rapidly. They have a limited budget and want to avoid any upfront costs. They are unsure which AWS services they will need and want to estimate their monthly AWS charges before committing to an architecture. Additionally, they need access to technical support to help troubleshoot issues that arise during development and production, with a guaranteed response time of less than 12 hours for production-impacting issues. Which combination of AWS tool and support plan should the startup choose to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS Pricing Calculator + Developer Support. The AWS Pricing Calculator allows the startup to estimate monthly costs without any upfront commitment, which aligns with their need to avoid upfront costs and predict charges before architecting. The Developer Support plan provides a response time of less than 12 hours for production-impacting issues (specifically, a response time of 12 hours for impaired production systems under the Developer plan), meeting their support requirement while keeping costs low for a startup with limited budget.

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer + Basic Support

Answer

AWS Budgets + Business Support

Answer

AWS Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator + Enterprise Support

Question 17

A social media startup plans to launch its application to users across North America, Europe, and Asia. The CTO wants a single deployment approach that minimizes latency for end users in all geographic regions, provides high availability, and allows the company to add new regions within minutes as the user base expands. The startup has no existing data centers outside its home country. Which fundamental benefit of cloud computing does this requirement best illustrate?

Accepted Answer

Global reach. The requirement to deploy a single application across North America, Europe, and Asia with low latency, high availability, and the ability to add new regions within minutes directly illustrates the global reach benefit of cloud computing. AWS provides a global infrastructure with Regions and Edge Locations that allow the startup to serve users from geographically distributed points without building physical data centers. This enables the company to achieve low-latency access and rapid regional expansion, which is a core advantage of cloud over on-premises architectures.

Answer

Pay-as-you-go pricing

Answer

Economies of scale

Answer

Agility

Question 18

A multinational corporation has a policy that all cloud resources must be provisioned through a centralized IT team. This has caused delays, as developers sometimes wait days for a test environment to be created. The company wants to migrate to AWS to allow individual project teams to provision their own resources (such as Amazon EC2 instances and Amazon S3 buckets) directly through the AWS Management Console or API, without any manual approval process from IT. Which characteristic of cloud computing does this desired capability best represent?

Accepted Answer

On-demand self-service. Option C is correct because the scenario describes developers provisioning AWS resources (EC2 instances, S3 buckets) directly via the AWS Management Console or API without requiring IT approval. This is the core definition of on-demand self-service, one of the five essential characteristics of cloud computing as defined by NIST SP 800-145: a consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider.

Answer

High availability

Answer

Elasticity

Answer

Resource pooling

Question 19

A retail company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. During a promotional event, traffic spikes to 10 times the normal level. The company configured an Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling group with a scaling policy that adds instances when CPU utilization exceeds 70% and removes instances when it drops below 30%. The application handles the spike without any manual intervention, and after the event ends, the number of instances automatically decreases to the original count, saving costs. This scenario best demonstrates which cloud computing concept?

Accepted Answer

Elasticity. The scenario describes the system automatically scaling out to 10 times the normal capacity during a traffic spike and then scaling back down when the spike ends, which is the definition of elasticity—the ability to dynamically provision and de-provision resources to match demand. The use of an EC2 Auto Scaling group with a CPU-based scaling policy (70% threshold to add, 30% to remove) directly demonstrates this cloud computing concept, as it handles variable workloads without manual intervention and optimizes cost by reducing resources when they are no longer needed.

Answer

Scalability

Answer

High availability

Answer

Fault tolerance

Question 20

A media company hosts its website on Amazon EC2 instances in the us-east-1 Region. Static assets such as images, CSS, and JavaScript files are stored in an Amazon S3 bucket. Users across the globe report slow page load times due to high latency when fetching these assets. The company wants to deliver the static content with low latency and high transfer speeds to users worldwide, reduce the load on the EC2 instances, and add protection against common DDoS attacks. 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 global users. It offloads requests from the EC2 origin by serving cached content directly from the edge, and it integrates with AWS Shield Standard to provide automatic protection against common DDoS attacks. This directly addresses the company's requirements for low latency, reduced EC2 load, and DDoS protection.

Answer

AWS Global Accelerator

Answer

Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing

Answer

AWS WAF