CLF-C02 Billing, Pricing, and Support Practice Question
A company running large-scale scientific simulations needs EC2 instances with exclusive access to a physical host for software licensing reasons (per-socket licensing). Which EC2 option provides this?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse Dedicated Instances with Dedicated Hosts: candidates often think 'dedicated' means full hardware control, but Dedicated Instances only provide single-tenant isolation without exposing socket/core information, which is insufficient for per-socket licensing compliance.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Dedicated Hosts
Dedicated Hosts (Option B) provide EC2 instances with exclusive access to a physical host, allowing you to control instance placement on a specific server. This is required for per-socket software licensing because you can see and manage the physical sockets and cores of the host, ensuring compliance with licensing terms that are tied to physical hardware.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Dedicated Instances
Why it's wrong here
Dedicated Instances run on hardware that is physically dedicated to a single customer, but AWS manages the exact host placement and does not expose socket/core topology details. Without this visibility, you cannot verify per-socket or per-core license compliance, so while the hardware is isolated, the lack of host-level control and discovery makes it unsuitable for license-driven requirements.
- ✓
Dedicated Hosts
Why this is correct
Dedicated Hosts give you an entire physical server with full control over host-level placement, instance placement, and visibility into the number of sockets, physical cores, and instance slots. This allows you to map running workloads to specific hardware resources, enabling you to bring your own server-bound software licenses and stay compliant with per-socket, per-core, or per-VM licensing models. The host is also configured consistently to match your licensing needs, such as setting core count or enabling host recovery.
- ✗
Reserved Instances
Why it's wrong here
Reserved Instances are a billing discount applied to any matching EC2 instance usage; they do not reserve a specific physical host or provide any socket/core-level hardware information. This option is a pricing commitment that lowers hourly costs, but it cannot satisfy a requirement to control or inspect the underlying physical server for license compliance, making it irrelevant to the need for socket/core visibility.
- ✗
EC2 Bare Metal instances
Why it's wrong here
EC2 Bare Metal instances give you direct, unvirtualized access to the underlying Intel/AMD hardware, but they are designed primarily for workloads that require non-virtualized environments (e.g., hypervisors, specialized kernels) rather than for license compliance management. You still do not get the host-level management and inventory capabilities of a Dedicated Host, such as consistent instance placement across launches or visibility into host-level sockets/cores prior to purchase; therefore, they do not meet the specific per-socket licensing control requirement.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
This CLF-C02 question is part of Courseiva's 988-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CLF-C02 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CLF-C02 exam.