AWS Cloud Practitioner Practice Test (CLF-C02)

Amazon S3 Glacier is designed for long-term storage of data that is infrequently accessed and provides a cost-effective solution for data archiving and backup. However, it is not suitable for scenarios requiring immediate access, which is a requirement here. Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) is a storage class designed to provide high availability and low latency for infrequently accessed data with a lower storage cost compared to Amazon S3 Standard. Amazon S3 Standard is designed for frequently accessed data and does not offer the same cost benefits for infrequently accessed data as S3 Standard-IA. Amazon EBS is block storage that is used with EC2 instances for volumes that require frequent and rapid read/write operations and is not the cost-effective choice for infrequently accessed data.

The Performance Efficiency pillar is concerned with using computing resources efficiently so that a workload meets performance requirements and can maintain that efficiency as demand changes and technologies evolve. While low latency and high throughput are examples of desirable outcomes, the pillar's scope also includes selecting and configuring the right resource types, monitoring performance, and making trade-offs as technology advances. The other options describe concerns that fall under different pillars or over-emphasize a single performance metric.

The Bring Your Own License (BYOL) model is the correct answer because it allows customers to apply their existing software licenses to the cloud infrastructure, which can potentially lead to significant cost savings, especially for enterprise agreements that are already in place. Licensing strategies are a notable part of cloud economics, and understanding the implications of these strategies for cost and compliance is critical for businesses moving to the cloud. The incorrect answers do not address the specific concern of leveraging an existing perpetual license in the cloud to optimize costs.

The Prescriptive Guidance resource offers thorough instructions, suggested practices, and architectural insights for setting up robust and performant applications in the cloud. This level of detail surpasses the general support found in the Knowledge Center, the Q&A format of the community discussions, or the service health details provided by the Health Dashboard.

Within the shared responsibility model, while the cloud provider is in charge of securing the infrastructure that runs the services, the user retains the responsibility of securing the operating system including the application of patches and updates. Specifically, this means regular patch management and security configurations must be performed by the user, not the provider. The provider typically does not manage individual guest operating systems or applications. Physical security and infrastructure are handled by the provider, and while the user configures services such as identity and access management, the actual infrastructure and security of the service itself remains the provider’s responsibility.

Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) is designed for data that is accessed less frequently, but requires rapid access when needed. It offers a lower storage price compared to Amazon S3 Standard, making it cost-effective for infrequently accessed data. On the other hand, S3 One Zone-IA is for infrequently accessed data that doesn't require the multiple Availability Zone data resilience, S3 Glacier is for long-term archival storage, and S3 Intelligent-Tiering automatically moves objects between different tiers based on changing access patterns.

Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) is the correct choice, as it provides persistent block storage that automatically replicates within a single Availability Zone, offering high availability and durability. This suits the company's requirement because, unlike instance store volumes, Amazon EBS volumes persist independently of the life of the instance and can thus provide more durable block storage. Moreover, Amazon EBS provides a variety of volume types to cater to different performance needs. S3 is not a block storage solution, and EFS is a file storage service, which does not meet the requirement of block-level storage. While instance store provides temporary block-level storage, the data is lost if the instance is stopped, terminated, or if the underlying hardware fails, which does not meet the requirement for persistent storage.

Zonal Reserved Instances are the correct choice because they provide both a significant discount compared to On-Demand pricing and a capacity reservation within a specific Availability Zone. Regional Reserved Instances provide a discount and flexibility across Availability Zones but do not reserve capacity. On-Demand Capacity Reservations guarantee capacity in a specific Availability Zone but do not provide a pricing discount. Spot Instances offer the largest discounts but do not guarantee capacity and can be interrupted.

The Prescriptive Guidance resource provides detailed and use case specific advice to design solutions using the cloud platform services effectively, including best practices and architectural guidance. This makes it the ideal resource for designing cloud architectures. The technical documentation is better for understanding specific services, not for overarching design guidance. The Knowledge Center is useful for common troubleshooting and FAQ, not for comprehensive architecture solutions. The Support Center is mainly used for resolving issues via support tickets. Community-driven platforms provide peer-based advice but are not the official prescriptive solutions resource. Whitepapers are in-depth analyses that may not offer immediate practical application guidance.

Because Amazon RDS is a managed (Platform-as-a-Service) offering, AWS handles the underlying infrastructure, operating system, and database engine. That includes applying operating-system and database-engine patches to keep the service secure. Customers remain responsible for higher-level controls such as setting IAM policies, choosing and managing encryption keys, and rotating application or database-user passwords.

Activating user-defined cost allocation tags that include each team's name lets the company label resources and have those tag keys appear as columns in Cost Explorer and the Cost and Usage Report. Once activated, charges are automatically grouped by these tags, giving finance the per-team visibility they need.

Using a consistent naming convention helps humans recognize resources in the console but does not carry through to billing data. AWS Budgets can track total spend and send alerts but will not categorize historical charges by team. Creating separate AWS accounts for every team does isolate costs, yet it adds operational overhead and is unnecessary if granular tagging meets the requirement.

The best service for meeting the requirements of automated, consistent deployment across multiple environments using codified templates is the Infrastructure as Code service provided by the cloud vendor. This service enables the definition of infrastructure in code format, which can then be used to create and manage cloud resources automatically. It ensures consistency and reduces the chance of human error associated with manual setups. The console, while user-friendly for manual operations, is not designed for automated, templated provisioning. The Command Line Interface facilitates scripting for automation but does not inherently provide templating or state management like the Infrastructure as Code service. Auto Scaling service is primarily used for adjusting resource capacity in response to traffic demands and does not cater to the requirement of environment setup through codification.

Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances offer flexibility that includes the ability to modify instances, but modifications are subject to certain limitations. You can change the Availability Zone, the scope (regional or a specific Availability Zone), and the instance size within the same instance family, but you cannot switch between different instance families. This constraint is designed to maintain the reserved capacity for a particular family due to demand and capacity planning by AWS.

The Billing and Cost Management Dashboard is the centralized tool for customers to access detailed billing statements, visualize past usage and costs, manage payment methods, and explore cost management features like budgets and alerts. While other resources such as general documentation or support services, as well as pricing estimations for future use, may offer assistance, the Dashboard is specifically tailored to give comprehensive billing insights and is the most direct resource for current billing information and queries.

AWS classifies traffic that leaves one Region and enters another as data transfer between Regions (DTIR). Outbound data from the source Region is charged at that Region's inter-Region rate, whereas inbound data to the destination Region is free. Therefore, every gigabyte replicated from us-east-1 to eu-west-1 is billed at the published inter-Region rate for data leaving us-east-1. There is no additional charge on the receiving side, and the Free Tier does not waive these fees except for the first 100 GB per month of total outbound traffic across all services.