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Free CLF-C02 practice test: 30 questions with answers
30 original questions for AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, drawn from every topic area. Answer each one to see whether you got it right and why. No sign-up.
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All 30 CLF-C02 questions with answers
The same questions as the test above, grouped by exam topic. Open any question to see the answer and explanation.
Security and Compliance (8 questions)
Question 1
Under the AWS shared responsibility model, which task belongs to the customer?
- AMaintaining the physical security of the data center perimeter fencing
- BSecuring the configuration of their own guest operating system and applications
- CPatching the Nitro hypervisor on which customer EC2 instances run
- DMaintaining the physical network hardware in the Region, including routers
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Correct answer: BCustomers are responsible for configuring and securing their guest operating systems, applications, and data. AWS is responsible for the physical facilities, hardware, and the hypervisor infrastructure.
Question 2
Which two actions help protect an AWS account's root user? (Choose two.)
- ACreate access keys for the root user for daily scripts
- BUse the root user for everyday administrative tasks
- CStore the root password in a shared document
- DLimit root use to the few tasks that require it
- EEnable multi-factor authentication for the root user
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Correct answer: D, EMFA and limiting root use to the few tasks that require it reduce the risk of takeover and misuse. Root access keys, daily root use, and shared passwords each increase exposure.
Question 3
A company must control which users can create or delete EC2 instances in its AWS account. Which service should it use?
- AAmazon CloudFront content delivery network
- BAWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
- CAWS Global Accelerator for network routing
- DAmazon Route 53 DNS query service
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Correct answer: BIAM policies control which identities can perform which actions on AWS resources. Route 53, Global Accelerator, and CloudFront handle DNS, network routing, and content delivery.
Question 4
A compliance team needs AWS audit reports, such as SOC reports, to share with its auditors. Where can it obtain them?
- AAWS Shield
- BAmazon Macie
- CAWS Artifact
- DAmazon Athena
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Correct answer: CAWS Artifact provides on-demand access to compliance reports such as SOC reports and certifications. Macie discovers sensitive data, Shield protects against DDoS, and Athena queries data.
Question 5
An application needs to read data from an S3 bucket. The security team wants the application to use temporary credentials instead of long-term access keys. Which approach fits?
- AShare the root account's access keys with the developers so they can run deployment scripts locally
- BStore an access key in the application's source code repository, hardcoded in the config file
- CMake the S3 bucket publicly readable through a bucket policy that grants access to everyone on the internet
- DAttach an IAM role to the compute resource so the application receives temporary credentials
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Correct answer: DAn IAM role supplies temporary credentials to the compute resource automatically. Keys in source code, shared root keys, and public buckets are all unsafe.
Question 6
A company wants AWS to continuously check its accounts against security best practices and flag issues with priorities. Which service provides these recommendations?
- AAmazon Polly service
- BAWS Trusted Advisor
- CAWS Snowball Edge device
- DAmazon Lightsail server
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Correct answer: BTrusted Advisor checks accounts against best practices across cost, performance, security, and fault tolerance, with prioritized recommendations. Polly, Snowball, and Lightsail are not assessment services.
Question 7
A company wants managed detection of threats such as unusual API calls across its accounts. Which service fits?
- AAWS Snowball
- BAmazon Polly
- CAmazon Lightsail
- DAmazon GuardDuty
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Correct answer: DGuardDuty analyzes account and network activity for threats using managed analysis. Lightsail, Snowball, and Polly do not detect threats.
Question 8
A company wants to be sure that data stored in S3 is encrypted at rest. Which feature should it enable on the bucket?
- AA public bucket policy
- BStoring a password in the bucket name
- CDefault server-side encryption
- DTurning off versioning
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Correct answer: CDefault server-side encryption ensures newly stored objects are encrypted at rest. A public policy exposes data, a password in a name is not encryption, and versioning does not encrypt objects.
Cloud Technology and Services (8 questions)
Question 9
A company needs to run a web application across several Availability Zones in one AWS Region so that it survives the failure of one data center. Which concept should it use?
- AMultiple Regions with manual data copies only
- BA single on-premises server
- CMultiple Availability Zones within the Region
- DA single Availability Zone with a larger instance
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Correct answer: CAvailability Zones are isolated locations within a Region, and spreading resources across them improves resilience. A single zone, manual cross-region copies, and one on-premises server do not provide the same automatic resilience.
Question 10
A team wants to run code in response to events, without provisioning or managing servers. Which service fits?
- AAWS Snow Family devices
- BAmazon RDS for a local database
- CAWS Lambda
- DAmazon EC2 with a fixed instance type
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Correct answer: CAWS Lambda runs code in response to events without server management. EC2 requires managing instances, RDS is a managed database service, and Snow devices are for data transfer in the field.
Question 11
An application stores user-uploaded images that must be durable and retrieved by a unique URL. Which storage service fits best?
- AAmazon Glacier-only archive tiers for active access
- BAn instance's temporary local disk
- CAmazon S3
- DAmazon EBS attached to one instance
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Correct answer: CAmazon S3 stores objects durably and provides URLs for retrieval, which suits uploaded images. EBS is block storage attached to an instance, archive tiers are slow to retrieve for active use, and instance temporary disks are lost when the instance stops.
Question 12
A website has users worldwide, and the company wants to cache static content close to them to reduce latency. Which service fits?
- AAmazon CloudFront
- BAWS Snowball
- CAWS Direct Connect
- DAmazon EC2 in a single Region only
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Correct answer: ACloudFront is a content delivery network that caches content at edge locations near users. A single-Region EC2 deployment, Direct Connect, and Snowball do not provide global edge caching.
Question 13
A developer needs a relational database that AWS manages, including backups and patching, with support for MySQL-compatible engines. Which service fits?
- AAmazon EC2 with MySQL installed manually
- BAmazon S3 with CSV files
- CAmazon RDS
- DAmazon DynamoDB
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Correct answer: CAmazon RDS manages relational engines, including MySQL-compatible ones, with backups and patching handled by the service. DynamoDB is a NoSQL service, self-managed EC2 MySQL requires more work, and S3 files are not a relational database.
Question 14
A company wants to run a web application without managing servers, databases, or load balancers directly. Which AWS option is most suitable?
- AManually installed servers on physical hardware
- BA desktop computer under a desk in the office
- CBare-metal servers in a leased colocation facility
- DAWS Elastic Beanstalk or a comparable managed platform
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Correct answer: DManaged platforms such as Elastic Beanstalk handle much of the underlying infrastructure, letting the team focus on application code. Bare-metal, manual hardware, and desktops require the team to manage the infrastructure itself.
Question 15
A team needs a private network connection between its on-premises data center and its AWS VPC with consistent throughput, not using the public internet. Which service fits?
- AAmazon Route 53 DNS
- BLambda functions
- CAmazon CloudFront CDN
- DAWS Direct Connect
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Correct answer: DDirect Connect provides a dedicated private network connection to AWS with more consistent performance than internet-based connections. CloudFront is a content delivery service, Route 53 is DNS, and Lambda runs code.
Question 16
A team needs a managed service to run containers without managing the underlying servers. Which AWS option fits?
- AAWS Fargate
- BA desktop with Docker installed
- CTape archives
- DManually built container hosts on EC2 with no orchestration
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Correct answer: AFargate runs containers without the team managing servers or hosts. Self-managed hosts, desktops, and tape archives do not meet the requirement.
Cloud Concepts (7 questions)
Question 17
A startup wants to avoid buying servers up front and pay only for the computing it uses each month. Which cloud benefit does this describe?
- ATrading capital expense for variable expense
- BFixed monthly hardware purchase cost
- COwning the on-site data center building
- DLong-term contracts with fixed capacity reservations
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Correct answer: ACloud services let customers pay for consumption instead of purchasing hardware in advance, which converts capital spending into variable operating spending. Fixed hardware costs, owned buildings, and fixed capacity contracts describe the traditional model.
Question 18
A company wants to move from owning and maintaining its own servers to running everything in the cloud, with the cloud provider handling the underlying hardware. Which term describes this approach?
- AMainframe outsourcing to a third-party facility with dedicated hardware
- BCloud migration with infrastructure managed by the provider
- COn-premises hosting of servers in the company's own data center
- DColocation with owned racks and servers in a third-party data center
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Correct answer: BMigrating to the cloud moves workloads so that the provider manages the underlying hardware. On-premises and colocation keep ownership of equipment, and mainframe outsourcing is a different model.
Question 19
Which two benefits does a cloud environment provide that help a company respond to changes in demand? (Choose two.)
- AManual provisioning that takes months for each change
- BElasticity to add or remove resources as demand changes
- CFixed capacity that never changes regardless of load
- DPay-as-you-go pricing that tracks usage
- ERequiring new hardware purchases for every peak
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Correct answer: B, DElasticity and pay-as-you-go pricing let capacity and cost follow demand. Fixed capacity, purchase-based peaks, and months-long manual provisioning are the opposite of the cloud benefit.
Question 20
Which AWS design principle recommends that workloads be built from loosely coupled components so that a failure in one component does not stop the whole system?
- AStore all data in one component
- BDesign for failure and decouple components
- CUse a single large server for all components
- DAvoid any redundancy to reduce cost
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Correct answer: BDesigning for failure and decoupling components limits the blast radius of a fault. A single large server, no redundancy, and a single data store all create single points of failure.
Question 21
Which statement best describes the AWS global infrastructure?
- ARegions contain multiple Availability Zones, and each zone has one or more data centers
- BServices are uniformly available in every Region at the same time from launch
- CRegions are single data centers without redundancy or failover between sites
- DAvailability Zones contain multiple Regions, each with its own endpoint
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Correct answer: AA Region is a geographic area with multiple isolated Availability Zones, and each zone contains data centers. The other statements reverse or oversimplify that hierarchy.
Question 22
Which two are pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework? (Choose two.)
- AUnlimited capacity
- BReliability
- CManual provisioning
- DSingle-Region design
- EOperational excellence
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Correct answer: B, EOperational excellence and reliability are among the Well-Architected pillars. Unlimited capacity, manual provisioning, and single-Region design are not pillars and run against the framework's guidance.
Question 23
A company wants to replace a fixed monthly license with a service that charges by usage, and it wants to avoid committing to capacity. Which cloud concept describes this change?
- AConsumption-based pricing
- BCapital investment in hardware
- CPerpetual licensing
- DLong-term capacity reservation
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Correct answer: AConsumption-based pricing charges for what is used, which aligns cost with actual demand. Perpetual licenses, hardware investment, and capacity reservations are the opposite model.
Billing, Pricing, and Support (7 questions)
Question 24
A team wants to estimate the monthly cost of a planned architecture before deploying it. Which tool should it use?
- AAWS Trusted Advisor only
- BAmazon CloudWatch dashboards
- CAWS Config rules
- DAWS Pricing Calculator
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Correct answer: DThe AWS Pricing Calculator estimates the cost of planned architectures. Trusted Advisor reviews existing accounts, CloudWatch monitors metrics, and Config evaluates resource configuration.
Question 25
Which AWS pricing model lets a customer reduce the hourly cost of EC2 in exchange for a one- or three-year commitment?
- ASavings Plans or Reserved Instances
- BOn-Demand pricing with no commitment
- CDedicated Hosts billed by the megabyte
- DSpot Instances for critical databases
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Correct answer: ASavings Plans and Reserved Instances offer lower prices for committed usage over one or three years. On-Demand has no commitment discount, Spot is interruptible, and Dedicated Hosts are not billed by megabyte.
Question 26
A company wants a central place to consolidate bills from several AWS accounts and receive a single invoice. Which feature provides this?
- AAWS Organizations with consolidated billing
- BA spreadsheet of invoices shared by email
- CDeleting all but one account
- DSeparate credit cards for each account with no consolidation
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Correct answer: AConsolidated billing through AWS Organizations combines charges from member accounts into one bill. Separate cards, email spreadsheets, and deleting accounts do not consolidate billing.
Question 27
Which two AWS resources or services help customers estimate or control their AWS costs? (Choose two.)
- AAmazon Macie
- BAWS Shield Advanced
- CAWS Artifact
- DAWS Budgets
- EAWS Cost Explorer
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Correct answer: D, EAWS Budgets sends alerts when spending exceeds thresholds, and Cost Explorer visualizes spending patterns. Macie, Shield, and Artifact serve other purposes.
Question 28
A company wants to understand how its spending breaks down by service and by month over the last year. Which tool provides this view?
- AAWS Artifact Portal
- BAmazon Macie Scanner
- CAWS Cost Explorer
- DAWS Config Rules
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Correct answer: CCost Explorer visualizes spending over time by service, account, and other dimensions. Artifact provides compliance reports, Config evaluates resource settings, and Macie finds sensitive data.
Question 29
A company wants the AWS account team to help plan a large migration and provide architecture guidance. Which support plan includes access to a technical account manager?
- ABasic support only
- BEnterprise support
- CNo support, because AWS is self-service
- DDeveloper support with no technical contact
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Correct answer: BEnterprise support includes a technical account manager who helps with planning and guidance. Basic and developer plans do not include that level of named technical engagement, and self-service does not mean no support.
Question 30
A company wants to know whether its AWS resources have been configured in line with AWS best practices, such as unused resources and open security groups. Which tool gives this guidance?
- AAWS Trusted Advisor
- BAmazon Polly Lab
- CAWS Snowcone Edge
- DAmazon Lightsail Quotas
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Correct answer: ATrusted Advisor checks accounts for unused resources, open ports, and other best-practice deviations. Polly, Lightsail, and Snowcone do not provide best-practice checks.
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