AWS Cloud Practitioner Practice Test (CLF-C02)

The correct answer is 'Decreased fixed costs due to not having to invest in physical hardware infrastructure.' Cloud computing reduces the need for heavy investments in data centers and physical servers. Instead of spending capital on hardware, this cost becomes a variable cost that depends on the actual usage of services. The PAYG (pay-as-you-go) model allows businesses to pay only for the compute resources they consume, converting many fixed costs to variable costs. 'Decreased operational complexity' is a benefit of cloud migration, but it is not directly a cost advantage. 'Reduced need for in-house IT staff' might lead to cost savings but is not directly related to fixed versus variable costs. 'Zero software licensing costs' is incorrect because while some services could include licenses, there might still be software licensing costs in the cloud depending on the software and licensing model.

Lambda is the optimal solution for executing code in response to incoming web requests without the need for server management, and it is well-suited to handle unpredictable demand due to its ability to scale automatically with each trigger. This makes it ideal for situations where there are unexpected spikes in traffic. The pricing model based on the number of requests and the duration of execution also aligns with the variable workload, offering cost efficiency during periods of varying traffic intensity.

Other options like EC2 and ECS with Fargate involve server management at some level, and although Fargate abstracts the server management, it still requires configuration for container execution. SNS is primarily a messaging and notification service and does not directly handle execution of code in response to HTTP requests.

Consolidated billing in AWS Organizations provides the benefit of combining the usage across all accounts to potentially qualify for volume pricing discounts, simplifying the billing process and often resulting in cost savings. Each member account can operate independently, but the master account receives a single bill for all member accounts. This allows for pricing benefits such as tiered rates for services like Amazon S3 and EC2, which can lead to cost savings.

The statement is incorrect because system integrators are organizations that specialize in helping clients design, manage, and optimize their cloud infrastructure, not in providing ready-made applications. Ready-made applications for immediate deployment are typically provided by independent software vendors.

AWS Migration Hub is the best resource for helping a company develop a comprehensive strategy for migrating applications, workloads, and databases to the cloud because it offers a single location to track the progress of application migrations across multiple AWS and partner solutions. While the Well-Architected Tool, Cost Explorer, and Managed Services offer valuable benefits, they do not focus specifically on migration strategy and progress tracking. The Well-Architected Tool helps evaluate and improve workloads but does not track migration progress. Cost Explorer helps with cost management, and Managed Services can manage AWS infrastructure, but neither is designed to develop migration strategies.

The correct service to implement is CloudTrail, as it provides the ability to log, continuously monitor, and retain account activity related to actions across the firm's cloud infrastructure. This fulfills the need for compliance auditing by tracking user activities, API calls, and other actions taken within the environment. CloudWatch monitors performance metrics, which does not fulfill the company's requirement for action auditing. Security Hub is used for security checks and aggregate security findings, but not for tracking detailed user actions and API usage. Amazon Inspector is an automated security assessment service to help improve the security and compliance of applications deployed on the environment, not for auditing interactions with the infrastructure.

To achieve high availability, a company should deploy their application across multiple Availability Zones. Each Availability Zone operates independently of the others and is engineered to be insulated from failures in other Availability Zones, thus providing redundancy and failover capabilities for the application. Deploying an application in a single data center or solely relying on autoscaling without distributing across multiple Availability Zones does not necessarily equate to high availability, as these strategies do not protect against issues that might affect a single physical location.

The most cost-effective option for workloads that can be interrupted is using Spot Instances. Spot Instances allow customers to purchase unused EC2 capacity at a discounted price, which can offer significant savings compared to On-Demand pricing. However, these instances can be terminated by AWS with very little notice if the capacity is needed elsewhere, which is why they are suitable for jobs that can tolerate interruptions. Reserved Instances are typically used for long-term, steady-state usage, and On-Demand Instances are used for short-term, irregular workloads that cannot be interrupted. Savings Plans offer cost savings but require a commitment to a specific usage amount over a 1 or 3-year period, which may not be suitable for the irregular nature of batch processing jobs.

Elasticity refers to the AWS Cloud's ability to automatically scale resources up or down based on demand. This means that companies only pay for what they use, and they can easily handle changes in workload without manual intervention a benefit not typically found in traditional, physical data center environments.

According to the AWS shared responsibility model, the customer is responsible for managing the security inside the cloud, which includes data encryption. While AWS is responsible for protecting the infrastructure that runs all of the services offered in the AWS Cloud, the customer is responsible for encrypting their data, managing encryption keys, and securing their EC2 instances.

The correct choice is AWS CloudTrail, which logs and retains a history of API calls and related events made in an organization's cloud environment. This enables detailed auditing and analysis, making CloudTrail essential for compliance with a wide array of governance frameworks and regulatory requirements. Amazon CloudWatch focuses on the real-time monitoring of applications and resources, not historical logging of API interactions. AWS Config is designed to evaluate the configurations of resources for compliance with desired settings, and AWS Security Hub aggregates and prioritizes security findings from various AWS services but neither provide the same comprehensive auditing capabilities as CloudTrail.

The correct tool is Cost Explorer, as it provides detailed graphical reports for analyzing cloud spending and usage patterns over time, helping users to understand their cloud costs and optimize their budget. Budgets allows users to set custom budget thresholds to monitor costs and usage patterns but does not provide the same in-depth graphical analysis. The Pricing Calculator is used primarily to estimate the costs for specific services before deployment and does not track actual expenditure or usage. Billing Conductor is not a real service offered for cost management or analysis.

When using Amazon EC2, AWS is responsible for the infrastructure that runs all of the services offered in the AWS Cloud. This includes the hardware, the software that runs the virtualization environment, and the physical security of the data centers. However, the customer is responsible for the security in the cloud, which includes the operating system, applications, and data on the EC2 instances. Therefore, it falls to the customer to ensure that the operating system patches are kept up to date.

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) provides scalable file storage that can grow and shrink as needed. It is designed for use with Amazon EC2 instances, providing a simple, scalable, and fully managed file system.

The correct choice is a cloud service provider's pricing calculator, which is designed to assist users in estimating the potential monthly costs for using virtual servers, databases, and storage based on their intended use configurations. It provides detailed cost projections, enabling companies to evaluate financial implications and plan their budget before committing to services. The incorrect choices either do not serve the purpose of cost estimation or are specific services unrelated to preemptive financial planning for cloud migration.