Match each AWS automation or configuration management tool to its description.
Drag a concept onto its matching description — or click a concept then click the description.
Operational hub for managing AWS resources at scale
Configuration management service using Chef and Puppet
PaaS for deploying and scaling web applications
Infrastructure as Code using templates
Create and manage approved IT service catalogs
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
AWS CloudFormation: Infrastructure as Code service using templates to provision AWS resources.
AWS CloudFormation is for IaC, OpsWorks for configuration management, Elastic Beanstalk for PaaS, and CodeDeploy for automated deployments. Distractors swap definitions.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
AWS CloudFormation: Infrastructure as Code service using templates to provision AWS resources.
Why this is correct
AWS CloudFormation is a declarative Infrastructure as Code (IaC) service that lets you model and provision AWS resources in JSON or YAML templates. It manages resource lifecycles as a single unit called a stack, handling creation, updates, and deletions in a safe, predictable order. CloudFormation also supports drift detection and change sets, enabling version-controlled, repeatable infrastructure deployment. It does not deploy application code to running instances; it creates and configures the underlying infrastructure itself.
AWS OpsWorks: Configuration management service using Chef and Puppet to automate server configuration.
Why this is correct
AWS OpsWorks is a configuration management service that provides managed instances of Chef and Puppet, allowing you to automate server configuration, patch management, and compliance. It uses a layered architecture where each layer defines recipes or cookbooks to configure EC2 instances consistently and handle lifecycle events like setup, configure, deploy, and shutdown. OpsWorks excels at managing existing servers' state over time, rather than provisioning raw AWS infrastructure from scratch. This distinguishes it from IaC tools and PaaS offerings that abstract away server configuration entirely.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk: Platform as a Service (PaaS) for deploying and scaling web applications.
Why this is correct
AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering that automates the deployment and scaling of web applications with minimal user intervention. You simply upload your code, and Elastic Beanstalk provisions the necessary AWS resources (e.g., EC2, ELB, Auto Scaling, RDS) based on a predefined environment tier. It handles capacity provisioning, load balancing, health monitoring, and automatic scaling for you, while still allowing full control of the underlying resources when needed. It does not focus on server-level configuration management like OpsWorks nor on generic infrastructure templating like CloudFormation.
AWS CodeDeploy: Automated deployment service for deploying code to any instance.
Why this is correct
AWS CodeDeploy is a fully managed deployment service that automates application code releases to any compute instance, including EC2, on-premises servers, and AWS Lambda. It uses an AppSpec file to define how to install and validate the application, and it supports in-place, blue/green, and canary deployment strategies. CodeDeploy integrates with CI/CD pipelines and can roll back automatically when deployment health checks fail. Its primary purpose is deploying code artifacts, not provisioning or configuring infrastructure, which is why it differs from CloudFormation and OpsWorks.
AWS CloudFormation: Automated code deployment service.
Why it's wrong here
This option incorrectly attributes automatic code deployment to AWS CloudFormation; that functionality belongs to AWS CodeDeploy, which ships and updates application code. CloudFormation is fundamentally an infrastructure provisioning service: it creates, updates, and deletes AWS resources like VPCs, EC2 instances, and IAM roles from templates, but it does not deploy code to those resources. While CloudFormation can provision a pipeline or EC2 instances, it does not handle the application-deployment logic such as hooks, health checks, or traffic shifting that CodeDeploy provides. Therefore, this description is a mismatch and incorrect.
AWS OpsWorks: Platform as a Service for web applications.
Why it's wrong here
This option mislabels AWS OpsWorks as a PaaS for web applications; that description accurately fits AWS Elastic Beanstalk, which abstracts away all infrastructure details to run web apps. OpsWorks is instead a configuration management service that uses Chef or Puppet to keep existing servers in a desired state, managing recipes, run lists, and lifecycle events on EC2 instances. It gives you fine-grained control over operating system configuration, whereas a PaaS like Elastic Beanstalk hides those details behind a managed platform. Thus, calling OpsWorks a PaaS incorrectly emphasizes app deployment rather than server configuration management.
Go deeper
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every DOP-C02 question from scratch — 1,298 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DOP-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 DOP-C02 exam.