DVA-C02 Development with AWS Services Practice Question
Which TWO AWS services can be used to store and retrieve application configuration data? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse AWS Secrets Manager with Systems Manager Parameter Store, but Secrets Manager is specifically for secrets (not general config) and has a per-secret cost, while Parameter Store (a correct answer) is designed for configuration data and offers a free tier.
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
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AWS AppConfig
AWS AppConfig is a feature of AWS Systems Manager that allows you to create, manage, and deploy application configuration data separately from your code. It supports feature flags, tuning parameters, and other dynamic configuration, and can validate configuration changes before deployment to reduce risk. This makes it a correct choice for storing and retrieving application configuration data.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
AWS AppConfig
Why this is correct
AWS AppConfig is a managed service specifically designed for creating, managing, and deploying application configurations. It enables developers to quickly and safely roll out configuration changes to applications hosted on EC2 instances, containers, or Lambda functions. AppConfig provides features like validation, monitoring, and controlled deployment strategies, including phased rollouts and rollbacks, ensuring reliable and safe updates to application settings.
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AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store
Why this is correct
AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store provides a secure, hierarchical storage for configuration data management and secrets. It allows applications to store and retrieve various types of parameters, including plain text, lists, and encrypted values, making it highly suitable for storing application configuration settings. This service integrates well with other AWS services and offers versioning and change tracking for parameters.
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AWS Secrets Manager
Why it's wrong here
AWS Secrets Manager is primarily designed for securely storing, managing, and rotating sensitive information such as database credentials, API keys, and other secrets. While it can technically store any string, its core purpose focuses on secrets lifecycle management, auditing, and automatic rotation, which is an overkill for general, non-sensitive application configuration parameters. Using it for non-secret configuration adds unnecessary cost and complexity compared to dedicated configuration services.
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Amazon S3
Why it's wrong here
Amazon S3 is an object storage service designed for storing large amounts of unstructured data, such as images, videos, and backups. Although an application could theoretically store configuration files as objects in S3, it lacks the built-in features for configuration management, versioning, validation, and controlled deployment that dedicated configuration services offer. Relying on S3 for dynamic application configuration would require significant custom development to replicate these essential capabilities.
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AWS CloudFormation
Why it's wrong here
AWS CloudFormation is an infrastructure-as-code service used for provisioning and managing AWS resources, not for storing or retrieving runtime application configuration. While it defines the underlying infrastructure where an application runs, it does not provide a mechanism for the application itself to dynamically fetch configuration parameters during execution. Its purpose is to manage the lifecycle of AWS services, not the dynamic configuration values consumed by application code.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DVA-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 DVA-C02 exam.