CLF-C02 Cloud Concepts Practice Question

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✗

  Using the AWS Management Console to provision resources manually

  Why it's wrong here

  Manually provisioning resources through the AWS Management Console is the antithesis of infrastructure as code: each action is a point-and-click operation that is not stored as an executable definition, cannot be peer-reviewed, and is not version-controlled. This approach creates configuration drift because there is no single source of truth, and it does not scale or reproduce environments consistently. IaC replaces this manual workflow with declarative templates that are applied through automation.

• ✗

  Writing scripts to install software on EC2 instances

  Why it's wrong here

  Writing scripts that install software or configure applications on EC2 instances is configuration management, not infrastructure as code. IaC focuses on provisioning the underlying cloud resources themselves—such as VPCs, subnets, EC2 instances, and security groups—using code, whereas scripts often run as user-data or via tools like Ansible after the infrastructure exists. While these scripts are code, they do not define or manage the infrastructure's lifecycle.

• ✓

  Defining and provisioning cloud resources using version-controlled configuration files

  Why this is correct

  Infrastructure as code is the practice of defining and provisioning cloud resources through version-controlled configuration files, such as AWS CloudFormation templates, AWS CDK applications, or Terraform configuration. These files describe the desired state of the infrastructure, are stored in Git for peer review and change tracking, and are applied through automated CI/CD pipelines to create, update, or delete resources consistently. This approach makes infrastructure reproducible, auditable, and recoverable, which is the core of IaC.

• ✗

  Backing up AWS resource configurations to Amazon S3

  Why it's wrong here

  Backing up AWS resource configurations to Amazon S3 merely snapshots the current state of resources—it does not provide a mechanism to recreate or manage them through code. Such backups might capture CloudFormation templates or AWS Config snapshots, but they are passive artifacts and cannot be executed to provision infrastructure. IaC, by contrast, is an active, code-driven process that defines desired state and manages the full lifecycle of resources, not just archives their configuration.

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