CLF-C02 Cloud Technology and Services — 20 Questions

Question 1

A company stores product images in an Amazon S3 bucket. New images are accessed frequently for the first 30 days, but access drops sharply after that. The company wants to automatically optimize storage costs by moving data between access tiers without any manual intervention or upfront lifecycle policy setup. Which Amazon S3 storage class should the company use to meet these requirements?

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

Accepted Answer

Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering. Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering is the correct choice because it automatically moves objects between access tiers based on changing access patterns, with no lifecycle rules required. It is designed for data with unknown or changing access patterns, automatically optimizing storage costs. This meets the requirement of optimizing storage costs for images that are frequently accessed for the first 30 days and then rarely accessed afterward, without any manual intervention or upfront setup.

Answer

Amazon S3 Standard

Answer

Amazon S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access

Answer

Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive

Question 2

A company runs a read-heavy web application that retrieves the same product catalog data from an Amazon RDS database hundreds of times per second. The database is experiencing high CPU utilization due to repeated reads of the same information. The company wants to reduce the load on the database and improve application response time without modifying the application code or adding more database capacity. The solution must be fully managed and provide a low-latency, in-memory cache for frequently accessed data. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon ElastiCache. Amazon ElastiCache is a fully managed in-memory caching service (Redis or Memcached) that can reduce read load on RDS. However, integrating ElastiCache typically requires modifying the application to check the cache before querying RDS. The 'without code changes' requirement in the stem is not satisfied by ElastiCache, but it is still the most appropriate option; DAX is for DynamoDB, CloudFront is a CDN, and SQS is a queue.

Answer

Amazon CloudFront

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Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)

Answer

Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)

Question 3

A company collects sensor data from IoT devices and stores the data in Amazon S3. For the first 90 days, the data is accessed frequently for real-time analysis. After 90 days, the data is rarely accessed but must be retrievable within 24 hours for compliance audits. After 365 days, the data must be retained for legal purposes but can be deleted after 7 years. Which S3 storage class should the company use for the data from day 91 to day 365 to minimize storage costs while meeting the retrieval time requirement?

Accepted Answer

Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval. From day 91 to day 365, data is rarely accessed but must be retrievable within 24 hours. S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval offers lower storage costs than Standard-IA and provides retrieval times of 3-5 hours (standard) or 5-12 hours (bulk), both within the 24-hour requirement. Standard-IA provides millisecond retrieval but at higher storage cost, so it doesn't minimize cost.

Answer

Amazon S3 Standard

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Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA)

Answer

Amazon S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA)

Question 4

A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application normally handles 1,000 requests per second, but occasionally experiences unpredictable spikes of up to 10,000 requests per second for a few minutes. The Auto Scaling group is configured with a maximum capacity of 2,000 instances, which is insufficient to handle the spikes. The company must ensure that no requests are lost during these spikes without requiring manual scaling. Which solution should the company implement?

Accepted Answer

Configure an Amazon CloudFront distribution in front of the ALB to cache responses and absorb the spike.. Configure Amazon CloudFront in front of the ALB. CloudFront can cache responses at edge locations and absorb traffic spikes, reducing the request load on the ALB and EC2 origin without manual scaling. SQS cannot be used as an ALB target for synchronous HTTP traffic. Predictive scaling cannot reliably handle unpredictable spikes. Manual failover to on-premises instances requires manual intervention and does not meet the requirement.

Answer

Use an Amazon SQS queue between the ALB and the EC2 instances to decouple the request flow and buffer excess requests.

Answer

Enable Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling with predictive scaling to forecast and pre-provision capacity for the spikes.

Answer

Register additional EC2 instances in an on-premises data center as targets for the ALB and use manual failover.

Question 5

A company needs to migrate 80 TB of on-premises data to Amazon S3. Their internet connection is 100 Mbps and transferring this much data over the internet would take months. Which AWS service allows them to migrate this data physically without relying on internet bandwidth?

Accepted Answer

AWS Snowball Edge. AWS Snowball Edge is a physical data transport solution designed for large-scale data migrations when network transfer is impractical. With 80 TB of data and a 100 Mbps connection, internet transfer would take approximately 74 days (over two months), making Snowball Edge the correct choice as it allows you to ship the data on a ruggedized device directly to AWS, bypassing internet bandwidth entirely.

Answer

AWS DataSync

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AWS Direct Connect

Answer

Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration

Question 6

A company needs a managed message queue service that guarantees each message is delivered at least once and supports unlimited message retention. Which AWS service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon SQS. Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service) is a fully managed message queue that guarantees at-least-once delivery by default. While standard SQS queues have a maximum message retention period of 14 days, the Amazon SQS Extended Client Library integrates with Amazon S3 to store messages, enabling unlimited retention. This makes SQS the correct choice for ensuring each message is delivered at least once and can be retained indefinitely. Other options do not provide both features: SNS is a pub/sub service with no storage, Kinesis Data Streams has limited retention (up to 365 days) and is for real-time streaming, and Step Functions is a workflow orchestration service, not a message queue.

Answer

Amazon SNS

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Amazon Kinesis Data Streams

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AWS Step Functions

Question 7

Which AWS service provides a low-code platform for building mobile and web applications with built-in backend features including authentication, storage, and APIs?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Honeycode. Amazon Honeycode is the correct answer. It is a no-code/low-code service that allows users to build powerful mobile and web applications without writing code. It provides built-in authentication, data storage, and REST APIs, making it the best fit for the question's description. AWS Amplify, while capable of providing auth, storage, and APIs, is primarily a code-based development platform, not a dedicated low-code service.

Answer

AWS AppRunner

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AWS Amplify

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AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Question 8

Which AWS service provides a managed customer relationship management (CRM) platform for sales and customer service teams?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Connect. None of the listed AWS services is a managed CRM platform. Amazon Connect is a contact center service, Amazon Pinpoint is for marketing campaigns, Amazon QuickSight is a business analytics service, and AWS AppFlow is for data integration. AWS does not offer a native CRM service.

Answer

Amazon Pinpoint

Answer

Amazon QuickSight

Answer

AWS AppFlow

Question 9

Drag and drop the steps to recover an EC2 instance from a snapshot in the correct order.

Accepted Answer

Step 1: Stop instance, Step 2: Create volume from snapshot, Step 3: Detach old volume, Step 4: Attach new volume, Step 5: Start instance. To recover an EC2 instance from a snapshot, first stop the instance (if it is not already stopped). Then create a new volume from the snapshot, detach the old root volume, attach the new volume as the root device, and start the instance. Option A lists these steps in the correct order, including the required stop step.

Answer

Step 1: Create volume from snapshot, Step 2: Stop instance, Step 3: Detach old volume, Step 4: Attach new volume, Step 5: Start instance

Answer

Step 1: Detach old volume, Step 2: Stop instance, Step 3: Create volume from snapshot, Step 4: Attach new volume, Step 5: Start instance

Answer

Step 1: Create volume from snapshot, Step 2: Attach new volume, Step 3: Detach old volume, Step 4: Stop instance, Step 5: Start instance

Question 10

A healthcare company needs to store patient medical records that must be retained for 10 years to comply with regulatory requirements. These records are accessed very rarely, only in the event of an audit or legal request. Which Amazon S3 storage class is the MOST cost-effective choice for this data?

Accepted Answer

S3 Glacier Deep Archive. S3 Glacier Deep Archive is the most cost-effective choice because it is designed for long-term retention of rarely accessed data with a retrieval time of 12–48 hours. The 10-year retention requirement and infrequent access pattern (only during audits or legal requests) align perfectly with this storage class, offering the lowest storage cost among S3 classes while still meeting compliance needs.

Answer

S3 Standard

Answer

S3 Intelligent-Tiering

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S3 One Zone-IA

Question 11

A company hosts a static website on Amazon S3. The website serves product images and documents to customers around the world. Users in distant regions report slow load times. The company wants to reduce latency for all users without changing the existing S3 bucket configuration. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon CloudFront. Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that caches static content (e.g., images, documents) at edge locations worldwide. By distributing content from the nearest edge location to the user, CloudFront significantly reduces latency without requiring any changes to the existing S3 bucket configuration. The origin remains the S3 bucket, and CloudFront handles the global distribution automatically.

Answer

AWS Direct Connect

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Amazon Route 53

Answer

AWS Global Accelerator

Question 12

A company is developing a microservices application on AWS. The application includes a front-end web tier and a backend order processing service. The front-end sends order requests to the backend, which may take several seconds to process. The company wants to ensure that the front-end does not wait for the backend to complete, and that no orders are lost if the backend service is temporarily unavailable. Which AWS service should the company use to decouple the front-end and backend?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS). Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is the correct choice because it provides a fully managed message queue that decouples the front-end and backend services. The front-end can send order requests to an SQS queue and immediately return a response, while the backend processes messages asynchronously. SQS also stores messages durably across multiple Availability Zones, ensuring no orders are lost even if the backend is temporarily unavailable.

Answer

Amazon ElastiCache

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Amazon Route 53

Answer

Amazon CloudWatch

Question 13

A development team is building a serverless application that processes image uploads to Amazon S3. The application needs to automatically generate a thumbnail version of each uploaded image and store it in a separate S3 bucket. The team wants to minimize operational overhead and only pay for the compute time used during thumbnail generation. Which AWS service should the team use to execute the thumbnail generation code in response to S3 upload events?

Accepted Answer

AWS Lambda. AWS Lambda is the correct choice because it is a serverless compute service that can be triggered directly by S3 events (e.g., s3:ObjectCreated:*). This allows the thumbnail generation code to run automatically in response to each image upload, with no servers to manage and billing based only on the compute time consumed during execution.

Answer

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling group

Answer

Amazon ECS with Fargate

Answer

Amazon Elastic Beanstalk

Question 14

A company runs a web application on multiple Amazon EC2 instances that are behind an Application Load Balancer. The operations team wants to ensure that if any EC2 instance fails, a new instance is automatically launched to replace it and maintain a minimum number of running instances. Which AWS service should the company use to meet this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is the correct service because it automatically launches new EC2 instances to replace failed ones and maintains a specified minimum number of running instances. It integrates with the Application Load Balancer to register new instances and deregister failed ones, ensuring the web application remains available. This directly meets the requirement for automatic instance replacement and capacity maintenance.

Answer

AWS Elastic Load Balancing

Answer

AWS Lambda

Answer

AWS Auto Scaling

Question 15

A company runs a multiplayer gaming application on Amazon EC2 instances in the us-east-1 Region. The application uses the UDP protocol for real-time communication between players and game servers. Players in Asia and Europe report high latency and packet loss. The company wants to improve performance by directing player traffic from the nearest edge location to the application over the AWS global network, without modifying the application code. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Global Accelerator. AWS Global Accelerator uses the AWS global network to route UDP traffic from the nearest edge location to the application, reducing latency and packet loss without requiring code changes. It leverages Anycast IP addresses to direct player traffic to the closest edge location, then transports it over the optimized AWS backbone to the EC2 instances in us-east-1.

Answer

Amazon CloudFront

Answer

Amazon Route 53 latency routing

Answer

AWS Site-to-Site VPN

Question 16

A company runs a critical e-commerce application that uses an Amazon RDS for MySQL database deployed in a single Availability Zone. The company needs to ensure that the database remains available if the underlying hardware or the entire Availability Zone fails. The solution must provide automatic failover with minimal downtime and must not require any changes to the application's database connection string. Which Amazon RDS feature should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Configure a Multi-AZ deployment for the Amazon RDS database instance. A Multi-AZ deployment for Amazon RDS automatically provisions and maintains a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone. In the event of a failure, Amazon RDS automatically fails over to the standby, and the DNS record for the database endpoint is updated to point to the standby, so the application's connection string remains unchanged. This provides automatic failover with minimal downtime without requiring any manual intervention or application changes.

Answer

Deploy a Read Replica in another Availability Zone and configure the application to use it as a failover target

Answer

Enable automated backups with point-in-time recovery

Answer

Manually provision a standby database instance in another Availability Zone and configure a custom failover script

Question 17

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

Answer

Amazon Route 53

Answer

AWS Direct Connect

Question 18

A company is refactoring its legacy application into a microservices architecture using Docker containers. The operations team wants to deploy and manage these containers on AWS without the need to provision, patch, or manage the underlying servers. The solution must automatically scale containers based on demand and integrate with services like Application Load Balancer and Amazon RDS. Which AWS compute service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon ECS with AWS Fargate launch type. Amazon ECS with AWS Fargate launch type is the correct choice because it is a serverless compute engine for containers that eliminates the need to provision, patch, or manage underlying servers. Fargate automatically scales containers based on demand and integrates natively with services like Application Load Balancer and Amazon RDS, meeting all the stated requirements.

Answer

Amazon ECS with Amazon EC2 launch type

Answer

AWS Lambda

Answer

Amazon EC2 instances with Docker installed

Question 19

A company's data analytics team needs to process log files immediately after they are uploaded to an Amazon S3 bucket. The processing logic is implemented as a custom Python script that runs for about 10 seconds per file. The team wants a fully managed solution that does not require provisioning or managing servers, automatically scales with the number of incoming log files, and executes the script only when new files are uploaded. Which AWS service should the team use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS Lambda with an S3 bucket notification trigger. AWS Lambda is the correct choice because it is a fully managed, serverless compute service that can be triggered directly by S3 bucket notifications (e.g., s3:ObjectCreated:* events). The custom Python script runs within the Lambda function, which automatically scales to handle concurrent invocations for each new log file, and the 10-second execution time is well within the 15-minute maximum duration for Lambda functions. This meets all requirements without provisioning or managing servers.

Answer

Amazon EC2 with an Auto Scaling group configured to launch instances based on S3 events

Answer

AWS Elastic Beanstalk configured with a worker environment

Answer

Amazon EMR with a scheduled step to process new files

Question 20

A company has a serverless architecture on AWS for its order processing system. The system uses AWS Lambda functions to validate payment, check inventory, update the database, and send email notifications. The company needs a managed service to coordinate these functions into a workflow, implement retry logic in case of failures, and manage the execution of each step sequentially. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Step Functions. AWS Step Functions is a fully managed service designed to coordinate multiple AWS services into a serverless workflow. It allows you to define state machines that execute Lambda functions sequentially, implement built-in retry logic with exponential backoff, and handle error conditions, making it the ideal choice for orchestrating the order processing steps (payment validation, inventory check, database update, and email notification).

Answer

Amazon Simple Workflow Service (Amazon SWF)

Answer

Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)

Answer

AWS AppSync