CLF-C02 Practice Exam 65 — 20 Questions

Question 1

A company uses Amazon WorkMail for corporate email. Employees access email through a web browser or mobile app. The company does not manage any servers, email software, or storage infrastructure. Which cloud service model does this represent?

Accepted Answer

Software as a Service (SaaS). Amazon WorkMail is a fully managed email service where users access their email via a web browser or mobile app without managing any underlying servers, email software, or storage infrastructure. This aligns with the Software as a Service (SaaS) model, where the provider delivers the entire application and the consumer only uses the software over the internet.

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Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

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Platform as a Service (PaaS)

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Hybrid cloud

Question 2

A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team wants to prevent accounts in the 'Development' OU from launching any resources in regions outside of us-east-1 and eu-west-1. Which AWS Organizations feature allows this restriction?

Accepted Answer

Service Control Policies (SCPs). Service Control Policies (SCPs) are the correct AWS Organizations feature because they allow you to centrally control the maximum available permissions for all accounts within an OU. By attaching an SCP that denies all actions in regions other than us-east-1 and eu-west-1, the security team can enforce this restriction across all 'Development' accounts, even if IAM policies within those accounts allow broader access.

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IAM permission boundaries

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Resource-based policies attached to each S3 bucket

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AWS Config rules across all accounts

Question 3

A company has predictable workloads running 24/7. Which EC2 pricing option would provide the most significant cost savings compared to On-Demand pricing?

Accepted Answer

Reserved Instances. Reserved Instances (RIs) provide a significant discount (up to 72%) over On-Demand pricing in exchange for a one- or three-year commitment. Since the company has predictable, 24/7 workloads, RIs are the ideal choice because they match the steady-state usage pattern and offer the highest cost savings for always-on instances.

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Spot Instances

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On-Demand Instances

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Dedicated Hosts

Question 4

A company wants to set up a new multi-account AWS environment with pre-configured security guardrails, a logging account, an audit account, and a predefined structure for creating new accounts — all based on AWS best practices — with minimal manual configuration. Which AWS service provides this automated account setup?

Accepted Answer

AWS Control Tower. AWS Control Tower is the correct answer because it provides a fully automated, best-practices-based setup for a multi-account AWS environment, including pre-configured security guardrails (using Service Control Policies), a logging account, an audit account, and a predefined account structure via Account Factory. This eliminates the need for manual configuration of these foundational components.

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AWS CloudFormation StackSets

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AWS Organizations

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AWS Security Hub

Question 5

A company is moving its workloads to AWS. The compliance team requires that all data must reside within the European Union (EU) and must not be stored on any physical server located outside the EU. The team also understands that AWS does not provide information about the specific physical server or data center where their data is stored. Which essential characteristic of cloud computing does this situation best describe?

Accepted Answer

Resource pooling. Option C is correct because resource pooling allows AWS to serve multiple customers from shared physical resources, with the provider abstracting the exact physical server location. The compliance requirement that data must reside only in the EU is satisfied by selecting an EU Region (e.g., eu-west-1), but AWS does not disclose the specific physical server or data center within that Region, which is a direct consequence of resource pooling—the provider's multi-tenant model hides the underlying hardware details from the customer.

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On-demand self-service

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Broad network access

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Rapid elasticity

Question 6

A company wants to minimise the environmental impact of their AWS workloads by choosing the right instance sizes, maximising utilisation, using graviton processors for better performance per watt, and designing architectures that reduce total compute needed. Which AWS Well-Architected Framework pillar guides these decisions?

Accepted Answer

Sustainability. The Sustainability pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework focuses on minimizing the environmental impact of cloud workloads. Choosing right-sized instances, maximizing utilization, using Graviton processors for better performance per watt, and designing architectures to reduce total compute directly align with sustainability goals by reducing energy consumption and carbon footprint.

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Cost Optimisation

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Performance Efficiency

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Reliability

Question 7

A company is adopting the cloud and wants to improve operational efficiency by treating their infrastructure as code. Which AWS service allows them to define and provision AWS infrastructure using JSON or YAML templates?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudFormation. AWS CloudFormation is the correct service because it allows you to define and provision AWS infrastructure as code using JSON or YAML templates. This enables repeatable, version-controlled deployments, directly supporting the goal of improving operational efficiency through infrastructure as code.

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AWS Systems Manager

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AWS OpsWorks

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AWS Config

Question 8

A company is planning to migrate its on-premises data center to AWS. The finance team needs to compare the current on-premises infrastructure costs (including servers, storage, networking, and personnel) against the projected costs of running identical workloads on AWS over a three-year period. The team wants to input detailed specifications of their existing hardware and get a comprehensive report that highlights potential savings and provides a total cost of ownership (TCO) comparison. Which AWS tool should the finance team use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator. The AWS Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator is specifically designed to compare the costs of on-premises infrastructure with AWS, allowing users to input detailed hardware specifications (servers, storage, networking) and generate a comprehensive report that highlights potential savings over a chosen period (e.g., three years). This tool directly addresses the finance team's need for a TCO comparison, including personnel costs, which is not a feature of other AWS calculators.

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AWS Pricing Calculator

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AWS Cost Explorer

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AWS Simple Monthly Calculator

Question 9

A company is migrating a legacy monolithic e-commerce application to AWS. The application has three tightly integrated modules: user authentication, payment processing, and inventory management. In the current design, a failure in the payment processing module often causes the entire application to crash. The company wants to redesign the application so that each module runs independently, and a failure in one module does not cascade to other modules. Which cloud computing concept should the company apply to achieve this goal?

Accepted Answer

Loose coupling. The correct answer is C, loose coupling. Loose coupling is a cloud computing concept where components are designed to have minimal dependencies on each other, communicating through well-defined interfaces or APIs. By decoupling the user authentication, payment processing, and inventory management modules, a failure in one module (e.g., payment processing) will not cascade and crash the entire application, as each module can operate independently and handle its own failures gracefully.

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Elasticity

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High availability

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Disaster recovery

Question 10

A startup can now test a new application idea by provisioning cloud resources in minutes, run the experiment for a week, and tear down the resources if the idea fails — spending only a few dollars. Previously, the same experiment would have required months of procurement and significant capital expenditure. Which cloud benefit does this illustrate?

Accepted Answer

Increased agility. Option D is correct because the scenario describes the ability to rapidly provision, experiment with, and decommission cloud resources in minutes, which directly illustrates increased agility. Agility in cloud computing refers to the speed at which resources can be deployed, scaled, and released, enabling fast experimentation without long procurement cycles.

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Economies of scale

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Elimination of capital expense

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Global reach

Question 11

A financial services company is preparing for an annual compliance audit. The compliance team needs to continuously assess whether their AWS environment adheres to industry standards such as PCI DSS. They want to automate the collection of evidence, such as IAM policy changes and S3 bucket configurations, and generate audit-ready reports. They also need to identify gaps in their controls and receive remediation recommendations. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Audit Manager. AWS Audit Manager is the correct choice because it is specifically designed to continuously assess compliance with industry standards like PCI DSS. It automates the collection of evidence (e.g., IAM policy changes, S3 bucket configurations) and generates audit-ready reports, while also identifying control gaps and providing remediation recommendations. This directly matches the company's need for automated evidence collection and gap analysis.

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AWS Config

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AWS Artifact

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AWS Security Hub

Question 12

A company needs to store database passwords and API keys used by their applications, with automatic rotation and audit logging of access. Which AWS service is purpose-built for this?

Accepted Answer

AWS Secrets Manager. AWS Secrets Manager is purpose-built for securely storing, automatically rotating, and auditing access to database passwords, API keys, and other secrets. It natively supports automatic rotation with built-in integrations for Amazon RDS, Redshift, and DocumentDB, and it logs every secret access call in AWS CloudTrail for audit compliance.

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AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store

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AWS Key Management Service (KMS)

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Amazon S3 with bucket policies

Question 13

A gaming company operates a mobile game with millions of active users. The game stores player profiles and session state in a key-value database. The database must provide single-digit millisecond latency for read and write operations at any scale. The company expects traffic to grow unpredictably, and the database must scale horizontally without downtime. The company wants a fully managed, highly available solution with built-in replication across multiple Availability Zones. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon DynamoDB. Amazon DynamoDB is the correct choice because it is a fully managed, serverless, NoSQL key-value database that delivers single-digit millisecond latency at any scale. It supports horizontal scaling via automatic partitioning and replication across multiple Availability Zones (AZs) for high availability, with no downtime required for scaling. This directly matches the gaming company's requirements for low-latency reads/writes, unpredictable traffic growth, and built-in multi-AZ replication.

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Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

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Amazon Redshift

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Amazon ElastiCache for Redis

Question 14

A solutions architect is designing a new architecture on AWS that includes EC2, RDS, S3, and data transfer. Before deploying anything, they want to estimate the monthly cost of running this architecture. Which AWS tool should they use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Pricing Calculator. AWS Pricing Calculator is the correct tool because it allows you to estimate the monthly cost of AWS services before deployment by specifying resource configurations (e.g., EC2 instance type, RDS storage, S3 data transfer). Unlike Cost Explorer, which analyzes historical costs, the Pricing Calculator provides upfront cost projections for new architectures.

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AWS Cost Explorer

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AWS Budgets

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AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 15

A company runs a microservices-based application on Amazon ECS. The application stores database credentials and API keys in plaintext configuration files that are baked into container images. A security audit reveals that this practice violates the company's compliance policy, which mandates that secrets must be stored separately from code, centrally managed, and automatically rotated every 90 days. 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 designed specifically for storing, managing, and automatically rotating database credentials, API keys, and other secrets throughout their lifecycle. It meets the compliance requirements by storing secrets separately from code, providing a central management console and API, and supporting automatic rotation every 90 days via built-in integration with AWS RDS, Redshift, and DocumentDB, or custom Lambda functions.

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AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS)

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AWS CloudHSM

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AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store

Question 16

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. The correct answer is D, 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 17

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 18

A startup company is using the AWS Free Tier to run a small web application. They want to ensure they receive a notification if their usage is about to exceed the Free Tier limits for any service, to avoid unexpected charges. Which AWS service or feature should they use to set up this alert?

Accepted Answer

AWS Budgets. AWS Budgets allows you to set custom cost and usage budgets, and you can configure alerts to notify you when your actual or forecasted usage exceeds a defined threshold. For a startup on the Free Tier, you can create a budget with a zero-spend limit or a specific usage amount, and receive email notifications when you are about to exceed the Free Tier limits, helping you avoid unexpected charges.

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AWS Cost Explorer

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AWS Trusted Advisor

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AWS Billing Conductor

Question 19

A company currently owns and operates its own data center. They are considering moving to AWS. Which economic benefit describes the elimination of the costs associated with purchasing, maintaining, and cooling physical servers?

Accepted Answer

Stop spending money running and maintaining data centers. Option B is correct because moving to AWS eliminates the capital and operational expenses associated with owning and operating physical servers, including procurement, maintenance, cooling, and facility management. This aligns with the AWS value proposition of shifting from a capital expenditure (CapEx) model to an operational expenditure (OpEx) model, where customers pay only for the resources they consume.

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Economies of scale

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Go global in minutes

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Increase speed and agility

Question 20

Drag and drop the steps to set up an S3 bucket with versioning and public access blocked in the correct order.