DOP-C02 · domain
Configuration Management and IaC
Practise AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional DOP-C02 Configuration Management and IaC practice questions — original exam-style scenarios with answer choices, explanations, and analysis of common mistakes.
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What to know about Configuration Management and IaC
Configuration Management and IaC questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.
How the topic appears in realistic exam-style scenarios.
Which detail in the question changes the correct answer.
How to eliminate plausible but wrong options.
How to connect the question back to the wider exam objective.
Watch out for
Common Configuration Management and IaC exam traps
- ▸Answering from memory before reading the full scenario.
- ▸Missing a constraint such as cost, availability, security, scope or command context.
- ▸Choosing a broad answer when the question asks for the most specific fix.
- ▸Ignoring why the wrong options are tempting.
Question index
All Configuration Management and IaC questions (37)
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A company uses AWS Elastic Beanstalk to deploy a web application. The application requires environment-specific configuration values (database URL, API keys) that must be stored securely and rotated automatically. The team uses AWS Secrets Manager. Which configuration management strategy should the team implement to securely inject secrets into the Elastic Beanstalk environment?
Hard2A company uses AWS CodeBuild to build and test code. They need to securely store sensitive parameters, such as database passwords, and inject them into the build process. Which AWS service should they use?
Easy3A DevOps engineer is troubleshooting a CloudFormation stack that failed to update. The error message indicates a circular dependency among resources. The template includes an Auto Scaling group, a launch template, and an IAM instance profile. The launch template references the IAM instance profile, and the Auto Scaling group references the launch template. The IAM instance profile's role references the Auto Scaling group name in its trust policy. How can the engineer resolve the circular dependency?
Hard4A company uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy a multi-tier application. The network team manages the VPC and subnets using a separate CloudFormation stack. The application team needs to reference the VPC ID and subnet IDs from the network stack. Which approach should the application team use to obtain these values?
Medium5A company uses AWS CodeDeploy for application deployments to EC2 instances. The team recently noticed that deployments are failing because some instances do not have the CodeDeploy agent installed. Which configuration management approach should the team implement to ensure the CodeDeploy agent is installed and running on all instances before deployment?
Medium6A company uses AWS OpsWorks for configuration management. The DevOps team wants to deploy a new application version to a stack of EC2 instances. What should the team use to perform the deployment?
Easy7A company uses AWS CodeDeploy to deploy applications to an Auto Scaling group. During a deployment, the new instances fail the health check and are terminated. The deployment fails. The team wants to automatically roll back to the previous working version. What should they do?
Hard8A company runs a critical web application on AWS using an Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application is deployed using AWS CodeDeploy with a blue/green deployment configuration. The DevOps team is responsible for configuration management using AWS Systems Manager State Manager. They have set up a State Manager association to ensure that the instances have a specific security configuration (e.g., firewall rules). Recently, after a new deployment, the team noticed that the security configuration is missing on some new instances. The old instances still have the correct configuration. The association is configured to apply the configuration only at instance launch (using the AWS-RunShellScript document). The team suspects that the new instances are not being targeted by the association. Upon investigation, they find that the association is set to target instances based on tags, and the new instances do have the required tags. However, the association status shows 'Success' for the old instances but no status for the new instances. Which of the following is the MOST likely cause of this issue?
Hard9A company uses AWS CloudFormation to manage its infrastructure. The stack creation recently failed because an IAM role resource was created before the AWS Lambda function that depends on it. The template has no DependsOn clauses. What is the most likely reason for this failure and how can it be fixed?
Hard10A DevOps engineer is responsible for managing infrastructure as code for multiple microservices. The team uses AWS CloudFormation and wants to reuse common resource definitions across multiple stacks. Which approach should the engineer use to promote reusability and reduce code duplication?
Medium11A company uses AWS CloudFormation StackSets to deploy a common network infrastructure across multiple AWS accounts. They need to ensure that all StackSet operations are audited and any failed stack instances are automatically retried. Which THREE configurations should be implemented? (Select THREE.)
Medium12A DevOps engineer is troubleshooting a CloudFormation stack that fails to create. The error message indicates a 'circular dependency' between two resources: a security group and an EC2 instance. The security group contains an ingress rule that references the instance's private IP address, which is not known until the instance is created. The instance's network interface uses the security group. What change should the engineer make to resolve the circular dependency?
Hard13A company uses AWS CloudFormation to manage infrastructure. They have a nested stack that creates an ECS cluster. The parent stack fails with the error: 'The following resource(s) failed to create: [ECSCluster]'. Which TWO are possible causes? (Choose TWO.)
Medium14A company uses AWS Systems Manager to manage hybrid servers. They want to automate the patching of Windows servers using Patch Manager. However, some servers are not showing up in the compliance reporting. What should the DevOps engineer check first?
Hard15A team manages a large fleet of EC2 instances using AWS Systems Manager. They want to enforce a consistent configuration across all instances, including installed software packages, firewall rules, and user accounts. The team also needs to audit configuration changes and remediate drift automatically. Which AWS service should the team use?
Hard16A company uses AWS CodeDeploy to deploy applications to an Auto Scaling group. The deployment fails because the new version of the application crashes the instances. The DevOps engineer needs the Auto Scaling group to automatically replace the unhealthy instances with the previous working version. Which deployment configuration should the engineer use?
Easy17A DevOps engineer creates the CloudFormation template shown in the exhibit. When the stack is created, the EC2 instance is launched but the security group is not applied to the instance. What is the likely cause?
Hard18A developer wants to provision AWS resources using AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) and ensure that the infrastructure can be version-controlled and reviewed. Which practice should they follow?
Easy19A company uses AWS CloudFormation to manage its infrastructure. The operations team needs to update a stack that includes an RDS database. The update requires changing the DB instance class, which will cause a replacement of the database. The team wants to minimize downtime and ensure that data is not lost. Which CloudFormation stack update policy should they use?
Easy20A DevOps team uses AWS CodePipeline to automate deployments. The pipeline has a Deploy stage that uses AWS CloudFormation to create or update a stack. Recently, a stack update failed because the template referenced an AMI that was deprecated. The team wants to automatically roll back the stack to the last known good state if a deployment fails. What should they do?
Medium21A DevOps engineer is writing an AWS CloudFormation template that creates an Amazon S3 bucket with versioning enabled. The engineer wants to ensure that the bucket cannot be deleted accidentally. What should the engineer add to the template?
Easy22A DevOps team wants to enforce that all EC2 instances launched in an AWS account have a specific tag 'Environment' with value 'Production' or 'Development'. The team uses AWS CloudFormation to provision resources. Which approach should the team use to enforce tagging compliance at launch?
Medium23A company uses AWS CloudFormation to deploy a web application across multiple AWS accounts using StackSets. The DevOps team notices that stack instance updates are failing in some accounts with the error: 'Insufficient IAM permissions to perform the action'. The team has already verified that the StackSet IAM role has the necessary permissions. What is the most likely cause of this issue?
Medium24A company uses AWS CodeBuild to compile and test code. The buildspec.yml file includes commands that require access to a private S3 bucket. The DevOps engineer wants to securely provide AWS credentials to the build project. What is the recommended approach?
Easy25A DevOps engineer is designing a configuration management strategy for a fleet of EC2 instances running Amazon Linux 2. The instances must be bootstrapped with custom software and continuously managed to ensure desired state compliance. Which combination of services should the engineer use?
Medium26A DevOps team is using AWS CloudFormation to manage a multi-tier application. They want to ensure that when an update to the stack causes a resource replacement, the replacement occurs only after the new resource is fully created and tested. Which CloudFormation feature should they use?
Easy27A developer wants to use AWS CloudFormation to create an Amazon RDS DB instance. The template includes a DB instance resource. Which property is required for the DB instance to be created successfully?
Easy28A DevOps team is using AWS CodePipeline to automate deployments. The pipeline has a source stage (CodeCommit), a build stage (CodeBuild), and a deploy stage (CodeDeploy). The team wants to add a manual approval step before the deploy stage to ensure that only authorized personnel can approve production deployments. Which action should be taken to implement this requirement?
Medium29A DevOps engineer is troubleshooting an AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate deployment. The Chef server is configured with a custom run list that includes a recipe to install and configure an application. The test environment works correctly, but in the production environment, the application fails to start. The Chef client logs show that the recipe executed successfully, but the application process is not running. What is the most likely cause of this issue?
Hard30A DevOps engineer wants to ensure that all EC2 instances launched in an AWS account automatically have a specific set of tags applied for cost allocation. Which AWS service should they use to enforce this?
Easy31A company uses AWS CloudFormation StackSets to deploy a VPC across multiple AWS accounts in AWS Organizations. The StackSet is created with self-managed permissions. The deployment fails in some accounts with the error: 'Insufficient IAM permissions to create resources'. What is the most likely cause of this failure?
Hard32A company uses AWS Config to evaluate resource compliance. They have a custom AWS Config rule that checks whether EC2 instances have a specific tag. The rule is triggered by configuration changes. The DevOps engineer notices that the rule evaluation results show 'NON_COMPLIANT' for some instances that actually have the tag. Which TWO could be causes? (Choose TWO.)
Medium33A DevOps engineer is designing an infrastructure as code solution for a microservices application that runs on Amazon ECS with Fargate. The application requires a shared Application Load Balancer (ALB) and multiple ECS services. Which CloudFormation resources are required to expose each service behind the ALB? (Choose THREE.)
Hard34A DevOps team wants to manage EC2 instance configurations using AWS Systems Manager. Which THREE capabilities of Systems Manager can be used to ensure instances are in a desired state? (Choose THREE.)
Easy35Refer to the exhibit. A DevOps engineer is troubleshooting an issue where an IAM user is unable to stop an EC2 instance with the tag 'Environment: Development'. The attached IAM policy is shown. Which statement explains the failure?
Hard36A company uses AWS CodePipeline to deploy a Node.js application to AWS Elastic Beanstalk. The pipeline includes a build stage using AWS CodeBuild. Developers notice that the deployed application occasionally crashes due to missing environment variables that were configured in the Elastic Beanstalk environment but not passed from CodeBuild. What is the MOST efficient way to ensure the environment variables are consistently applied?
Medium37A company uses AWS CloudFormation to manage its infrastructure. The DevOps team wants to ensure that critical resources, such as an RDS database, are not accidentally deleted when a stack is updated or deleted. Which CloudFormation feature should be used to prevent this?
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Frequently asked questions
- What does the Configuration Management and IaC domain cover on the DOP-C02 exam?
- Configuration Management and IaC questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.
- How many questions are in this domain?
- This page lists all 37 Configuration Management and IaC questions in the DOP-C02 question bank. The actual exam draws from this domain proportionally to its weighting in the official exam blueprint.
- What is the best way to practise this domain?
- Start with a short focused session (10 questions) to identify gaps, then work through explanations. Repeat with a longer session once the weak areas feel solid.
- Can I practise only Configuration Management and IaC questions?
- Yes — the session launcher on this page filters questions to this domain only. Choose any session length for inline explanations and scoring.