CLF-C02 Cloud Technology and Services Practice Test 8 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is developing a mobile application that requires a database to store user session data and preferences. The data is accessed very frequently with low-latency requirements, and the access patterns are unpredictable – the application experiences sudden spikes in read and write traffic. The company wants a fully managed database service that automatically scales to handle the workload, requires no patching or server administration, and charges based on the throughput consumed rather than on provisioned capacity. Which AWS service meets these requirements?

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

Accepted Answer

Amazon DynamoDB. Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL key-value and document database that delivers single-digit millisecond latency at any scale. It supports on-demand capacity mode, which automatically scales to handle unpredictable traffic spikes and charges based on the actual reads and writes consumed, not on pre-provisioned throughput. This eliminates the need for patching, server administration, or capacity planning, matching all the stated requirements exactly.

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Amazon RDS for MySQL

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Amazon Redshift

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Amazon EBS

Question 2

A company is migrating its on-premises infrastructure to AWS. The operations team needs a managed service that allows them to define their entire cloud environment—including VPCs, subnets, EC2 instances, and RDS databases—as a reusable template stored in version control. The service must automatically handle resource dependencies, such as creating the database before launching the application servers, and ensure that the infrastructure is provisioned consistently across multiple environments (e.g., development, staging, production). Which AWS service should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudFormation. AWS CloudFormation is the correct choice because it provides Infrastructure as Code (IaC) capabilities, allowing you to define your entire cloud environment—including VPCs, subnets, EC2 instances, and RDS databases—in a reusable JSON or YAML template stored in version control. It automatically manages resource dependencies using the DependsOn attribute and intrinsic functions like Ref and Fn::GetAtt, ensuring resources are created in the correct order (e.g., database before application servers). CloudFormation also supports consistent provisioning across multiple environments by using parameters, mappings, and stacksets, making it ideal for the operations team's requirements.

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AWS Elastic Beanstalk

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AWS OpsWorks

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AWS CodeDeploy

Question 3

A company is developing a REST API that processes customer orders. The API receives JSON payloads via HTTPS and performs short-lived operations, such as data validation, transformation, and writing to a database. The workload is very unpredictable: sometimes there are long periods of inactivity, but during flash sales the API may receive thousands of requests per second for a few minutes. The company wants a fully managed compute service that automatically scales to handle any request volume, charges only for the compute time used during execution, and requires no server provisioning or ongoing infrastructure management. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Lambda. AWS Lambda is the correct choice because it is a fully managed, event-driven compute service that automatically scales from zero to thousands of concurrent executions in response to incoming HTTPS requests. It charges only for the compute time consumed during execution (in 1ms increments), requires no server provisioning, and is ideal for short-lived operations like data validation, transformation, and database writes. The unpredictable, bursty workload pattern—long idle periods followed by flash sales—maps perfectly to Lambda's pay-per-use model and automatic scaling.

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Amazon EC2 with Auto Scaling

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Amazon ECS with Fargate launch type

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Amazon Lightsail

Question 4

A company is designing a cloud architecture for a critical customer-facing application. The CTO requires that the architecture automatically recover from infrastructure failures without manual intervention. The solution must be able to withstand the failure of individual components, such as an Amazon EC2 instance or an entire Availability Zone. Which design principle from the AWS Well-Architected Framework's Reliability pillar should the company implement to meet this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Scale horizontally to increase aggregate system availability.. Scaling horizontally (adding more EC2 instances behind a load balancer) increases aggregate system availability because if one instance fails, traffic is redistributed to the remaining healthy instances. This design also supports multi-AZ deployments, allowing the application to survive an entire Availability Zone failure without manual intervention, which directly meets the CTO's requirement for automatic recovery.

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Implement a monolithic architecture to reduce complexity and minimize points of failure.

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Use a single large EC2 instance to minimize the number of components that could fail.

Answer

Test recovery procedures by simulating infrastructure failures in a staging environment.

Question 5

A company runs a microservices-based e-commerce application on AWS. During peak hours, the order processing service often gets overwhelmed because the web frontend sends requests directly to it. This causes delays and occasional failures. The architecture team needs to decouple the frontend from the order processing service by introducing a fully managed, highly available, and durable message queue. The queue must automatically replicate messages across multiple Availability Zones and allow the order processing service to pull messages at its own pace. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS). Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is the correct choice because it is a fully managed, highly available, and durable message queue service that automatically replicates messages across multiple Availability Zones (AZs) to ensure fault tolerance. It decouples the web frontend from the order processing service, allowing the latter to poll and process messages at its own pace, which prevents overload during peak hours. SQS provides at-least-once delivery and supports standard queues with high throughput, making it ideal for this use case.

Answer

Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)

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Amazon Kinesis Data Streams

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Amazon MQ

Question 6

A company is migrating its legacy Java web application to AWS. The application consists of a stateless web tier that receives HTTP traffic. The company wants to minimize operational overhead. The development team wants to simply upload a WAR file and have AWS automatically handle the deployment, capacity provisioning, load balancing, and auto-scaling based on traffic. The team does not want to manage the underlying EC2 instances or configure the load balancer manually. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Elastic Beanstalk. AWS Elastic Beanstalk is the correct choice because it provides a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering that automatically handles deployment, capacity provisioning, load balancing, and auto-scaling for Java web applications. The team can simply upload a WAR file, and Elastic Beanstalk manages the underlying EC2 instances and Application Load Balancer (ALB) without requiring manual configuration. This directly meets the requirement to minimize operational overhead while supporting stateless web tiers.

Answer

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

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AWS OpsWorks

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Amazon Lightsail

Question 7

A company runs a globally distributed multiplayer game on AWS. The game uses UDP for real-time communication and requires static IP addresses that do not change for whitelisting by internet service providers. The company needs to route traffic to the nearest healthy application endpoint to minimize latency and improve performance. The solution must work with both TCP and UDP traffic and provide static IP addresses. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Global Accelerator. AWS Global Accelerator provides static IP addresses that serve as fixed entry points to your application, and it uses the AWS global network to route traffic to the nearest healthy endpoint via Anycast. It supports both TCP and UDP traffic, making it ideal for real-time UDP-based gaming workloads that require low latency and static IPs for ISP whitelisting.

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Amazon CloudFront

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Amazon Route 53

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AWS Direct Connect

Question 8

A company runs a data analytics workload on a cluster of Amazon EC2 instances. The application requires a shared file system that can be mounted by multiple EC2 instances simultaneously. The workload is bursty: during data processing jobs, the instances write and read large datasets, but between jobs the file system is mostly idle. The company wants a fully managed, highly available, and durable file storage solution that automatically scales capacity up and down and charges only for the storage used. The solution must be accessible from EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones in the same AWS Region. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS). Amazon EFS is a fully managed, highly available, and durable NFS file system that automatically scales storage capacity up and down as files are added or removed, charging only for the storage used. It can be mounted by multiple EC2 instances across different Availability Zones simultaneously, making it ideal for bursty, shared-file workloads that require concurrent access and automatic scaling.

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Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) with Multi-Attach enabled

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Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

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Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

Question 9

A company ingests sensor data from IoT devices into an Amazon S3 bucket. The data is accessed frequently for the first 30 days, but after that, it is rarely queried. The company’s compliance policy requires all data to be retained for 7 years. The company wants to minimize storage costs by automatically moving data to more cost-effective storage classes as it ages, without any manual intervention. Which Amazon S3 feature should the company configure to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

S3 Lifecycle policy. An S3 Lifecycle policy automates the transition of objects between storage classes based on age. By configuring a lifecycle rule to move objects to S3 Standard-IA or S3 One Zone-IA after 30 days, and then to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after a longer period, the company can meet the 7-year retention requirement while minimizing costs without manual intervention.

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S3 Object Lock

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S3 Replication

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S3 Transfer Acceleration

Question 10

A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances that connect to a relational database. The application requires high database availability so that if the primary database instance fails, a standby instance automatically takes over without manual intervention. The company wants to minimize administrative overhead for database patching, backups, and replication. Which AWS service should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Amazon RDS Multi-AZ. Amazon RDS Multi-AZ provides high availability by automatically provisioning and maintaining a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone. If the primary database instance fails, Amazon RDS automatically fails over to the standby, ensuring minimal downtime without manual intervention. Additionally, RDS handles patching, backups, and replication automatically, reducing administrative overhead.

Answer

Amazon RDS Single-AZ

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Amazon DynamoDB Global Tables

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Amazon S3

Question 11

A company has a global user base that uploads images to an Amazon S3 bucket in the us-east-1 Region. Users report slow upload speeds and frequent timeouts when uploading large files from distant locations. The company wants to use the AWS global network and edge locations to accelerate uploads to the S3 bucket. The solution must require minimal infrastructure changes on the client side and must be configured at the bucket level. Which AWS feature should the company enable?

Accepted Answer

Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration. Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration (A) uses AWS edge locations to route uploads over the AWS global network, reducing latency and timeouts for large files from distant locations. It is enabled at the bucket level and requires only a simple client-side change (using the accelerated endpoint instead of the standard S3 endpoint), meeting the requirement for minimal client-side modifications.

Answer

Amazon CloudFront with an origin access identity

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AWS Global Accelerator using a custom routing accelerator

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Amazon S3 cross-region replication

Question 12

A fast-growing mobile game company uses a NoSQL database to store player profiles, leaderboards, and game state. The database must deliver consistent single-digit millisecond response times regardless of the number of concurrent players. The company wants a fully managed service that automatically scales throughput capacity up and down based on traffic and replicates data across multiple Availability Zones for high availability. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon DynamoDB. Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database service that delivers consistent single-digit millisecond latency at any scale. It supports automatic scaling of throughput capacity based on traffic patterns and replicates data across multiple Availability Zones (AZs) for high availability and durability, making it the ideal choice for a fast-growing mobile game company.

Answer

Amazon RDS for MySQL

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Amazon Redshift

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Amazon ElastiCache for Redis

Question 13

A company runs a web application that processes customer orders. During flash sales, the application's backend servers become overwhelmed because orders are submitted faster than they can be processed. The company needs a fully managed, highly available service that can buffer incoming orders so that the backend can process them at its own pace without losing any data. The service must automatically scale to handle any volume of orders without requiring manual provisioning. Which AWS service meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS). Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a fully managed, highly available message queuing service that decouples application components. It buffers incoming orders by storing them in a queue, allowing the backend to process messages at its own pace without losing data. SQS automatically scales to handle any volume of messages, eliminating the need for manual provisioning.

Answer

Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)

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Amazon Kinesis Data Streams

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Amazon MQ

Question 14

A company runs a web application across multiple Amazon EC2 instances that are distributed across several Availability Zones. The application needs to share a common set of configuration files and static assets that must be accessible concurrently and consistently from all instances. The company wants a fully managed, scalable file storage solution that does not require provisioning or managing underlying storage hardware. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS). Amazon EFS provides a fully managed, scalable, and shared file system that can be mounted concurrently by multiple EC2 instances across different Availability Zones. It uses the NFSv4.1 protocol, ensuring consistent access to configuration files and static assets without any provisioning or management of underlying storage hardware.

Answer

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)

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Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

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Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)

Question 15

A company is developing a microservices application using Docker containers. The development team wants to deploy and run these containers on AWS without having to provision or manage any underlying EC2 instances. Additionally, the team does not want to manage the container orchestration control plane. They need a fully serverless compute engine for containers that automatically scales based on demand. Which AWS compute option should the team use?

Accepted Answer

Amazon ECS with the AWS Fargate launch type. Amazon ECS with the AWS Fargate launch type is the correct choice because it provides a fully serverless compute engine for containers. Fargate eliminates the need to provision or manage EC2 instances and removes the burden of managing the container orchestration control plane, as AWS handles both the underlying infrastructure and the orchestration layer. It automatically scales container instances based on demand, meeting the team's requirement for a serverless, auto-scaling container solution.

Answer

Amazon EC2 instances with Docker installed

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AWS Lambda

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Amazon EKS with managed node groups