CLF-C02 Cloud Technology and Services Practice Question
A development team builds Docker container images as part of their CI/CD pipeline and needs a managed, private registry to store and version these images, integrated with Amazon ECS and EKS for deployment. Which AWS service provides this container image registry?
⚠ Common exam trap
AWS often tests the distinction between a container registry (ECR) and a container orchestrator (ECS/EKS), so candidates mistakenly select ECS thinking it includes image storage, but ECS only schedules and runs containers.
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 ECR
Amazon ECR (Elastic Container Registry) is the correct choice because it is a fully managed Docker container registry that stores, manages, and deploys container images. It integrates natively with Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS, allowing seamless image pulls during deployment without needing to manage underlying infrastructure.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Amazon ECS
Why it's wrong here
Amazon ECS is a container orchestration service that schedules and runs containers on a cluster or AWS Fargate. It is not a storage service for container images; at task launch, ECS pulls the specified image from a registry such as Amazon ECR. While ECS can reference images from Docker Hub or other registries, it has no internal image repository, so it is not the registry.
- ✗
Amazon S3
Why it's wrong here
Amazon S3 is a general-purpose object storage service that can technically hold a container image as a single tarball after you run `docker save`. However, S3 lacks the Docker Registry HTTP API v2, layer-based storage, tag indexing, and the native authentication model that ECS/EKS require to pull images directly. ECR provides exactly those registry semantics for storage and distribution, making S3 unsuitable as a container image registry even though it can store the raw bytes of an artifact.
- ✓
Amazon ECR
Why this is correct
Amazon ECR is a fully managed private container image registry that natively implements the Docker/OCI registry API. It supports multiple repositories, image tags and digests for versioning, IAM-based authentication, lifecycle policies to prune unused images, and automated vulnerability scanning. Because ECS and EKS authenticate directly with ECR, it serves as the default storage and distribution layer for container images running on AWS, and it is the correct service for this scenario.
- ✗
AWS CodeBuild
Why it's wrong here
AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed continuous integration service that compiles source code and can run the Docker commands needed to assemble an image. It does not persist or serve container images over time; after a successful build, the image is typically pushed to a registry such as ECR for later deployment. CodeBuild's local Docker cache is ephemeral and tied to the build job, so it is not a repository or registry for storing and sharing images.
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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.