CLF-C02 Cloud Technology and Services Practice Question
Which AWS service provides a managed Kubernetes service that removes the overhead of installing, operating, and maintaining a Kubernetes control plane?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse Amazon ECS (a proprietary AWS container service) with Amazon EKS (a managed Kubernetes service), or mistakenly think AWS Fargate is a standalone Kubernetes service rather than a compute engine that can be used with EKS.
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
✓
Amazon EKS
Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) is the correct answer because it is a managed Kubernetes service that handles the provisioning, scaling, and maintenance of the Kubernetes control plane (including the API server, etcd, and controller manager). This removes the operational overhead of installing and operating the control plane yourself, allowing you to focus on deploying and managing containerized applications.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
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Amazon ECS
Why it's wrong here
Amazon ECS is AWS's proprietary container orchestration service, but it is not Kubernetes-based. ECS uses its own API, task definitions, and scheduling mechanisms, and does not support Kubernetes tooling like kubectl or the Kubernetes API server. While ECS is a capable orchestrator for many containerized workloads, it does not provide managed Kubernetes clusters, so it is the wrong choice for customers specifically requiring Kubernetes.
- ✓
Amazon EKS
Why this is correct
Amazon EKS is AWS's managed Kubernetes service, meaning AWS operates the Kubernetes control plane across multiple Availability Zones and handles its availability, scaling, and patching. EKS is fully compatible with standard Kubernetes APIs and tooling, so you can run Kubernetes workloads without the operational overhead of running your own control plane. This directly satisfies the requirement of providing managed Kubernetes clusters.
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AWS Fargate
Why it's wrong here
AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine that runs containers without requiring you to provision or manage servers. It works as a compute backend for both Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS, but it is not an orchestration service and does not expose Kubernetes APIs, cluster management features, or a control plane. Therefore, Fargate cannot provide managed Kubernetes clusters on its own; it simply executes the containers that an orchestrator schedules.
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AWS App Mesh
Why it's wrong here
AWS App Mesh is a service mesh that provides application-level networking, such as service-to-service communication, traffic visibility, and policy enforcement. It complements container orchestrators by adding observability and control at the network layer, but it does not manage clusters, schedule pods, or operate a Kubernetes control plane. App Mesh is therefore a networking add-on, not a Kubernetes management service, which is why it cannot fulfill the requirement.
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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.