CLF-C02 Cloud Technology and Services — Timed 50 Questions

Question 1

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

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S3 Intelligent-Tiering

Answer

S3 One Zone-IA

Question 2

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 3

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 4

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

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Amazon ECS with Fargate

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Amazon Elastic Beanstalk

Question 5

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

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AWS Lambda

Answer

AWS Auto Scaling

Question 6

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

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AWS Site-to-Site VPN

Question 7

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. Option D is correct because 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 8

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

Question 9

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 10

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 11

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)

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AWS AppSync

Question 12

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?

Accepted Answer

Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering. Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering is the correct choice because it automatically moves objects between three access tiers (frequent, infrequent, and archive instant) based on changing access patterns, with no lifecycle rules required. 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 13

A company hosts a web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in the us-east-1 Region. The application serves users worldwide, and the company wants to optimize both performance and availability for all users. The solution should use the AWS global network to route traffic from users to the nearest edge location and then over the AWS backbone to the ALB, without caching content at edge locations. Which AWS service should the company use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Global Accelerator. AWS Global Accelerator uses the AWS global network to route user traffic to the nearest edge location via Anycast IP addresses, then forwards it over the AWS backbone directly to the Application Load Balancer (ALB) in us-east-1. This optimizes performance by reducing latency and jitter, and improves availability by providing static IP addresses and health-check-based traffic shifting, without caching any content at edge locations.

Answer

Amazon CloudFront

Answer

AWS Shield

Answer

Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing

Question 14

A company runs its primary database on an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance in the us-east-1 Region. The company's disaster recovery policy requires that the database be recoverable in a different AWS Region within 1 hour of a region-wide failure, with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of less than 5 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than 1 hour. Which AWS feature should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Create a cross-region read replica of the DB instance in us-west-2.. A cross-region read replica in us-west-2 meets the RPO of less than 5 minutes because replication is asynchronous with a lag typically under 1 minute, and the RTO of less than 1 hour is achievable by promoting the replica to a standalone primary in the event of a region-wide failure. This approach provides a ready-to-use database copy in another region without the need for manual snapshot restoration.

Answer

Deploy a Multi-AZ RDS DB instance in us-east-1.

Answer

Take manual DB snapshots daily and copy them to us-west-2.

Answer

Enable termination protection on the RDS instance.

Question 15

A company runs a latency-sensitive application on AWS that must communicate with an on-premises data center. The company requires a dedicated, private network connection that provides consistent, low-latency performance and bypasses the public internet. Which AWS service should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS Direct Connect. AWS Direct Connect is the correct choice because it provides a dedicated, private network connection from an on-premises data center to AWS, bypassing the public internet entirely. This ensures consistent, low-latency performance for latency-sensitive applications by using a physical cross-connect or hosted virtual interface, which avoids the variability and potential congestion of internet-based connections.

Answer

AWS Site-to-Site VPN

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AWS Client VPN

Answer

AWS Transit Gateway

Question 16

A development team needs to deploy a web application on AWS quickly. The team wants a fully managed service that automatically handles capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring. The team does not want to manage the underlying Amazon EC2 instances or the application stack manually. Which AWS service should the team use?

Accepted Answer

AWS Elastic Beanstalk. AWS Elastic Beanstalk is the correct choice because it is a fully managed Platform as a Service (PaaS) that automatically handles capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring without requiring the team to manage the underlying EC2 instances or application stack. It abstracts away infrastructure management, allowing developers to simply upload their code and have the service handle deployment, scaling, and monitoring out of the box.

Answer

AWS CloudFormation

Answer

AWS OpsWorks

Answer

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Question 17

A company is building a web application that requires a fully managed NoSQL database with single-digit millisecond latency at any scale. The application will experience unpredictable traffic spikes, and the database must automatically scale throughput capacity up and down without manual intervention. The developers want to focus on application code rather than database management tasks. Which AWS database service should the company choose?

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 automatic scaling of read/write throughput capacity via Auto Scaling policies, eliminating the need for manual intervention. This makes it ideal for web applications with unpredictable traffic spikes, as it offloads all database management tasks to AWS.

Answer

Amazon RDS for MySQL

Answer

Amazon Redshift

Answer

Amazon ElastiCache

Question 18

A company hosts its primary web application on Amazon EC2 instances in the us-east-1 AWS Region. To meet disaster recovery requirements, the company has launched an identical set of EC2 instances in the eu-west-1 Region. The company wants to direct all user traffic to the us-east-1 endpoints under normal conditions. If us-east-1 becomes unhealthy due to a regional outage, traffic must be automatically redirected to the eu-west-1 endpoints. The company uses Amazon Route 53 as its DNS service. Which Route 53 routing policy should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Failover routing. Failover routing is the correct choice because it allows you to configure an active-passive setup where Route 53 health checks monitor the primary endpoint (us-east-1). If the health check fails, Route 53 automatically routes traffic to the secondary (eu-west-1) endpoint, meeting the disaster recovery requirement.

Answer

Geolocation routing

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Latency routing

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Weighted routing

Question 19

A company runs a monolithic web application on Amazon EC2 that processes user-uploaded files synchronously. During peak hours, the application experiences slow response times because the file processing blocks the web server. The company wants to decouple the upload process from the file processing to improve responsiveness and allow each component to scale independently. The file processing backend must poll for new work and handle failures gracefully by retrying failed messages. Which AWS service should the company use to implement this decoupling?

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 upload process from the file processing backend. The web server can immediately return a response after placing a message in the SQS queue, while the backend workers poll the queue for new work. SQS also supports dead-letter queues and configurable redrive policies to handle failures gracefully by retrying failed messages.

Answer

Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)

Answer

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams

Answer

Amazon MQ

Question 20

A DevOps team needs to deploy a multi-tier web application on AWS. The application consists of Amazon EC2 instances, an Application Load Balancer, an Amazon RDS database, and security groups. The team wants to define all these resources in a single declarative template, automatically manage the creation order and dependencies, and version control the template for repeatable deployments. Which AWS service should the team use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudFormation. AWS CloudFormation is the correct service because it allows you to define all AWS resources (EC2, ALB, RDS, security groups) in a single declarative JSON or YAML template. It automatically manages the creation order based on resource dependencies (e.g., EC2 instances depend on security groups), supports version control of templates, and enables repeatable, consistent deployments across environments.

Answer

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Answer

AWS OpsWorks

Answer

AWS CodePipeline