AWS Exam: Practice Questions and Tips

What are the main "distractors" seen on the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam (show up in answer choices, but are never correct answers):

- Amazon Connect - AWS Batch - Amazon AppStream 2.0 - AWS X-Ray - AWS Lumberyard

What advantages does the AWS cloud provide in relation to cost? (Select TWO.) Fine-grained billing Enterprise licensing discounts One-off payments for on-demand resources Ability to turn off resources and not pay for them Itemized power costs

1) Fine-grained billing 2) Ability to turn off resources and not pay for them

Operational excellence pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework.

1) Perform operations as code 2) Make frequent, small, reversible changes 3) Refine operations procedures frequently 4) Anticipate failure 5) Learn from all operational failures

Under the AWS shared responsibility model, which of the following are customer responsibilities? (Select TWO.) Amazon RDS instance patching Setting up server-side encryption on an Amazon S3 bucket Physical security of data center facilities Compute capacity availability Network and firewall configurations

1) Setting up server-side encryption on an Amazon S3 bucket 2) Network and firewall configurations As a customer on AWS you take responsibility for encrypting data. This includes encrypting data at rest and data in transit. A

What methods are available for scaling an Amazon RDS database? (Select TWO.) You can scale up by moving to a larger instance size You can scale out automatically with EC2 Auto Scaling You can scale up by increasing storage capacity You can scale out by implementing Elastic Load Balancing You can scale up automatically using AWS Auto Scaling

1) You can scale up by moving to a larger instance size 2) You can scale up by increasing storage capacity

Which of the authentication options below can be used to authenticate using AWS APIs? (Select TWO.) Key pairs Access keys Server certificates Server passwords Security groups

1)Access keys 2) Server certificates Access keys are long-term credentials for an IAM user or the AWS account root user. You can use access keys to sign programmatic requests to the AWS CLI or AWS API (directly or using the AWS SDK). Server certificates are SSL/TLS certificates that you can use to authenticate with some AWS services.

A company is deploying a new web application in a single AWS Region that will be used by users globally. Which AWS services will assist with lowering latency and improving transfer speeds for the global users? (Select TWO.) AWS Transit Gateway Amazon CloudFront AWS Global Accelerator AWS Direct Connect AWS Snowcone

Amazon CloudFront & AWS Global Accelerator Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that caches content around the world for lower latency access. AWS Global Accelerator enables access to your application by leveraging the same Edge Locations as CloudFront and routing connections across the AWS global network.

Which AWS database service is schema-less and can be scaled dynamically without incurring downtime? Amazon RDS Amazon Aurora Amazon RedShift Amazon DynamoDB

Amazon DynamoDB

Which AWS technology can be referred to as a "virtual hard disk in the cloud"? Amazon ENI Amazon EFS Filesystem Amazon EBS volume Amazon S3 Bucket

Amazon EBS volume EBS volumes are block-level storage volumes that are attached to EC2 instances much as you would attach a virtual hard disk to a virtual machine in a virtual infrastructure.

Which AWS service does AWS Snowball Edge natively support? AWS Trusted Advisor AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) Amazon EC2 AWS Server Migration Service (AWS SMS)

Amazon EC2

Which AWS service is designed to be used for operational analytics? Amazon EMR Amazon Athena Amazon Elasticsearch Service Amazon QuickSight

Amazon Elasticsearch Service

Which AWS feature can be used to launch a pre-configured Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance? Amazon AppStream 2.0 Amazon Machine Image (AMI) Amazon EC2 Systems Manager Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)

Amazon Machine Image (AMI)

Which AWS service provides the ability to detect inadvertent data leaks of personally identifiable information (PII) and user credential data? Amazon GuardDuty Amazon Inspector Amazon Macie AWS Shield

Amazon Macie

Which AWS service can serve a static website? AWS X-Ray Amazon S3 Amazon QuickSight Amazon Route 53

Amazon S3

A company needs to publish messages to a thousands of subscribers simultaneously using a push mechanism. Which AWS service should the company use? AWS Step Functions Amazon Simple Workflow Service (SWF) Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)

Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)

An Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) can include multiple: AWS Regions. Edge locations. Internet gateways. Availability Zones.

Availability Zones.

According to the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, which of the following is a shared control? Protection of infrastructure Operating system patching Client-side data encryption Awareness and training

Awareness and training ***trick question!!! Though patch management is a shared control, operating system patching specifically is a customer responsibility.

Which tool can be used to create alerts when the actual or forecasted cost of AWS services exceeds a certain threshold? A) AWS Cost Explorer B) AWS Budgets C) AWS Cost and useage report D) AWS CloudTrail

B) AWS Budgets

Which AWS service can assist with providing recommended actions on cost optimization? A) AWS inspector (vulnerability assessment) B) AWS Trusted Advisor C) AWS Artifact (resource for obtaining compliance-related info) D) Amazon cloud watch events (can react to state changes in resources)

B) AWS Trusted Advisor

How can consolidated billing within AWS Organizations help lower overall monthly expenses? A) By providing a consolidated view of monthly billing across multiple accounts B) By pooling usage across multiple accounts to achieve a pricing tier discount C) By automating the creation of new accounts through APIs D) by leveraging service control policies (SCP) for centralized service management

B) By pooling usage across multiple accounts to achieve a pricing tier discount

Which of the below are good use cases for a specific Amazon EC2 pricing model (choose 2): A) Spot instances for consistent load over a long term B) On-demand instances for ad-hoc requirements that cannot be interrupted C) Reserved instances for steady-state predictable usage D) On-demand instances for regulatory requirements that do not allow multi-tenant virtualization E) Reserved instances for applications with flexible start and end times

B) On-demand and ad-hoc requirements that cannot be interrupted C) Reserved instances for steady-state predictable usage

Which AWS service should be used to create a billing alarm? A) AWS Trusted advisor B) AWS Cloud Trail C) Amazon Cloudwatch D) Amazon quicksights

C) Amazon Cloudwatch * Cloud trail is about auditing

Which of the following Amazon EC2 pricing models allows customers to use existing server-bound software licenses? A) Spot instances B) Reserved Instances C) Dedicated Hosts D) On-demand instances

C) Dedicated Hosts

Which of the following are NOT features of AWS IAM? (Select TWO.) Shared access to your AWS account Charged for what you use PCI DSS compliance Logon using local user accounts Identity federation

Charged for what you use - AIM is free to use! Logon using local user accounts

Which service allows you to monitor and troubleshoot systems using system and application log files generated by those systems? CloudWatch Logs CloudTrail Metrics CloudWatch Metrics CloudTrail Logs

CloudWatch Logs

A Cloud Practitioner anticipates an increase in application traffic at a future date and time when a sales event will take place. How can the Cloud Practitioner configure Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling to ensure the right number of Amazon EC2 instances are available ahead of the event? Configure predictive scaling. Configure a step scaling policy. Configure a target tracking scaling policy. Configure a scheduled scaling policy.

Configure a scheduled scaling policy. Scheduled scaling helps you to set up your own scaling schedule according to predictable load changes.

How can a company facilitate the sharing of data over private connections between two accounts they own within a region? Create a subnet peering connection Create a VPC peering connection Configure matching CIDR address ranges Create an internal ELB

Create a VPC peering connection

Which Amazon EC2 pricing model is the most cost effective for an always-up, right-sized database server running a project that will last 1 year? A) on-demand instances B) convertible reserved instances C) spot instances D) standard reserved instances

D) standard reserved instances * the answer is not convertible reserved instances because the question says "right-sized" meaning we know exactly how much CPU we need.

Amazon Route 53 is an intelligent ________ service.

DNS (Domain Name System)

Which support plan is the lowest cost option that allows unlimited cases to be open? Enterprise Basic Developer Business

Developer

AWS Firewalls: WAF vs Security Group vs Network access control list (ACL)

WAF is a Web Application Firewall - something that is placed in front of your web applications outside of your VPC - whereas security groups live within your VPC, controlled instance specific inbound and outbound traffic. Network ACLs are virtual firewalls that control access within a VPC, but Network ACLs exist on the subnet level, not on the instance level.

AWS Outposts

a fully managed service that offers the same AWS infrastructure, AWS services, APIs, and tools to virtually any datacenter, co-location space, or on-premises facility for a truly consistent hybrid experience. With AWS Outposts you can extend your VPC into the on-premises data center.

Amazon Open 3D Engine

a game engine service

Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)

a message queue service used for decoupling applications.

What are the benefits of using the AWS Managed Services? (Select TWO.) a) Alignment with ITIL processes b) Support for all AWS services c) Managed applications so you can focus on infrastructure d) Baseline integration with ITSM tools e) Designed for small businesses

a) Alignment with ITIL processes d) Baseline integration with ITSM tools

Amazon SWF (Simple Workflow Service)

helps developers build, run, and scale background jobs that have parallel or sequential steps. This is not a not a visual workflow tool.

Which Amazon EC2 pricing model should be used to comply with per-core software licensce requirements? A) Dedicated Hosts B) On-Demand Instances C) Spot Instances D) Reserved Instances

A) Dedicated Hosts

What are the fundamental charges for an Amazon EC2 instance? (choose 2) A) Server uptime B) Data storage C) Basic Monitoring D) AMI E) Private IP address

A) Server uptime B) Data storage (EBS Volumes)

RedShift is a SQL based data warehouse used for ____________

ANALYTICS

Which AWS program can help an organization to design, build, and manage their workloads on AWS? AWS Technical Account Manager APN Consulting Partners APN Technology Consultants AWS Business Development Manager

APN Consulting Partners

The ___________ policy will cause the ASG to attempt to keep resource utilization at the target value.

target tracking scaling policy

A newly founded tech startup is looking for a program that offers AWS credits, training, technical support, and other resources to help them build their business. Which AWS program would be the best fit for them? AWS Partner Network AWS Marketplace AWS Activate for Startups AWS Educate

AWS Activate for Startups

How can an organization gain access to compliance reports natively through the AWS console? AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) AWS Artifact AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) AWS Security Hub

AWS Artifact

Application Load Balancer (ALB) process traffic at the application level (layer 7) based on information in the ________________ headers.

HTTP/HTTPS

AWS X-Ray is used for _______ and ________applications.

tracing and debugging

Which of the following statements are security principles within the AWS Well-Architected Framework? (Select TWO.) Analyze and attribute expenditures. Protect data in transit and at rest. Monitor, alert, and audit actions and changes to AWS resources. Perform operations as code. Deploy globally in minutes.

Protect data in transit and at rest. Monitor, alert, and audit actions and changes to AWS resources.

What is the most efficient way to establish network connectivity from on-premises to multiple VPCs in different AWS Regions? Use an AWS Transit Gateway Use AWS Client VPN Use AWS VPN Use AWS Direct Connect

Use an AWS Transit Gateway

How can a systems administrator specify a script to be run on an EC2 instance during launch? Metadata User Data Run Command AWS Config

User Data

A company is using the AWS CLI and programmatic access of AWS resources from its on-premises network. What is a mandatory requirement in this scenario? Using an Amazon EC2 key pair Using Amazon API Gateway Using an AWS Direct Connect connection Using an AWS access key and a secret key

Using an AWS access key and a secret key

What does this describe? A VPN concentrator on the Amazon side of the VPN connection. You create and attach it to the VPC from which you want to create the VPN connection.

A virtual private gateway

You are evaluating AWS services that can assist with creating scalable application environments. Which of the statements below best describes the Elastic Load Balancer service? 1) A highly available and scalable Domain Name System 2) Automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets, such as Amazon EC2 instances, containers, and IPs 3) Helps you ensure that you have the correct number of Amazon EC2 instances available to handle the load

2) Automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets, such as Amazon EC2 instances, containers, and IPs

The AWS Cost Management tools give users the ability to do which of the following? (Select TWO.) 1) Terminate all AWS resources automatically if budget thresholds are exceeded 2) Break down AWS costs by day, service, and linked AWS account 3) Create budgets and receive notifications if current or forecasted usage exceeds budgets 4) Switch automatically to Reserved instances or spot instances, whichever is most cost-effective 5) move data stored in amazon S3 to a more cost-effective storage class

2) Break down AWS costs by day, service, and linked AWS account 3) Create budgets and receive notifications if current or forecasted usage exceeds budgets

How can a company separate costs for storage, Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, and other AWS services by department? A) Add department-specific tags to each resources B) Create a separate VPS for each department C) Create separate AWS accounts for each dept D) Use AWS Organizations

A) Add department-specific tags to each resources

A corporation with multiple departments each having their own AWS accounts wants to implement a solution to customize billing data to match their specific showback or chargeback business logic. They wish to group accounts with similar financial owners and generate a distinct Cost and Usage Report (CUR) for each group. Which AWS service should they use to meet these requirements? AWS Budgets AWS Cost Explorer AWS Billing and Cost Management AWS Billing Conductor

AWS Billing Conductor AWS Billing Conductor is the correct answer because it is a customizable billing service that allows the organization to define billing groups, set pricing rules, create custom line items, and generate a unique Cost and Usage Report (CUR) for each billing group. This service would help the corporation to streamline and customize their billing data efficiently according to different business logics.

Which AWS service can a team use to deploy infrastructure on AWS using familiar programming languages? Amazon CodeGuru AWS CodeCommit AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) AWS Config

AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK)

Which of the following can an AWS customer use to launch a new ElastiCache cluster? (Select TWO.) AWS Concierge AWS CloudFormation AWS Management Console AWS Systems Manager AWS Data Pipeline

AWS CloudFormation & AWS Management Console

Which AWS services can a company use to gather information about activity in their AWS account? (Select TWO.) Amazon CloudFront AWS CloudTrail AWS Trusted Advisor Amazon Connect Amazon CloudWatch

AWS CloudTrail Amazon CloudWatch

Which AWS service provides a managed software version control system? Amazon CodeDeploy AWS CodePipeline AWS DataSync AWS CodeCommit

AWS CodeCommit AWS CodeCommit is a fully-managed source control service that hosts secure Git-based repositories. It makes it easy for teams to collaborate on code in a secure and highly scalable ecosystem.

A media company wants to find and subscribe to third-party data sources to enrich their existing datasets with new insights. Which AWS service would be the best fit for this requirement? AWS Redshift AWS Glue AWS Data Pipeline AWS Data Exchange

AWS Data Exchange this service allows customers to find, subscribe to, and use third-party data in the cloud.

A company needs a consistent and dedicated connection between AWS resources and an on-premise system. Which AWS service can fulfil this requirement? AWS DataSync Amazon Connect AWS Managed VPN AWS Direct Connect

AWS Direct Connect An AWS Direct Connect connection is a private, dedicated link to AWS. As it does not use the internet, performance is consistent.

Which AWS service can be used to run Docker containers? AWS Fargate Amazon AMI Amazon ECR Amazon RedShift

AWS Fargate

A small business owner who is not tech-savvy is looking to find AWS certified experts for a short-term project. They need a service that can help them connect with professionals who can offer advice and help implement AWS solutions quickly. Which AWS service should they use? AWS Training and Certification AWS Marketplace AWS IQ AWS Support

AWS IQ

Which AWS service is suitable for an event-driven workload? Amazon Open 3D Engine AWS Elastic Beanstalk Amazon EC2 AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda AWS Lambda is an event-driven service

Which AWS services offer compute capabilities? (Select TWO.) AWS Lambda Amazon CloudHSM Amazon EFS Amazon ECS Amazon DynamoDB

AWS Lambda & Amazon ECS

A company is deploying an application on Amazon EC2 that requires low-latency access to application components in an on-premises data center. Which AWS service or resource can the company use to extend their existing VPC to the on-premises data center? Amazon Connect AWS Outposts AWS Direct Connect Amazon Workspaces

AWS Outposts With AWS Outposts you can extend your VPC into the on-premises data center.

A Cloud Practitioner is developing a new application and wishes to integrate features of AWS services directly into the application. Which of the following is the BEST tool for this purpose? AWS Software Development Kit AWS CodeDeploy AWS CodePipeline AWS Command Line Interface (CLI)

AWS Software Development Kit

A Cloud Practitioner requires a simple method to identify if unrestricted access to resources has been allowed by security groups. Which service can the Cloud Practitioner use? AWS CloudTrail VPC Flow Logs Amazon CloudWatch AWS Trusted Advisor

AWS Trusted Advisor

A user needs to identify underutilized Amazon EC2 instances to reduce costs. Which AWS service or feature will meet this requirement? AWS Health Dashboard AWS Cost Explorer AWS Trusted Advisor AWS CodeBuild

AWS Trusted Advisor

A web application running on AWS has been received malicious requests from the same set of IP addresses. Which AWS service can help secure the application and block the malicious traffic? AWS IAM AWS WAF Amazon GuardDuty Amazon SNS

AWS WAF

Which AWS service or feature can assist with protecting a website that is hosted outside of AWS? AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) Amazon VPC route tables Amazon VPC network ACLs Amazon EC2 security groups

AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF)

In the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework, which perspective focuses on identifying capability gaps and helping your organization align its readiness for cloud adoption? Launch Scale Envision Align

Align

Which AWS support plans provide 24×7 access to customer service? All plans Developer Business Basic

All plans

Which AWS service should a Cloud Practitioner use to establish a secure network connection between an on-premises network and AWS? AWS Mobile Hub AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Virtual Private Network

Virtual Private Network AWS Virtual Private Network solutions establish secure connections between your on-premises networks, remote offices, client devices, and the AWS global network

In the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework, which phase involves organizations mainly focusing on defining their vision and objectives for cloud adoption, rather than identifying and addressing the capability gaps that exist in their current setup Launch Scale Envision Align

Envision

Which AWS Glacier data access option retrieves data from an archive in 1-5 minutes? Standard Express Expedited Accelerated

Expedited

Amazon S3 is typically used for which of the following use cases? (Select TWO.) Message queue Host a static website In-memory data cache Install an operating system Media hosting

Host a static website & Media hosting Amazon S3 is an object storage system. Typical use cases include: Backup and storage, application hosting, media hosting, software delivery and hosting a static website.

When an organization leverages the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework for migrating to the cloud, which two of the following would most likely be the primary stakeholders involved in the process? (Select TWO.) Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) Engineers IT Architects Chief Information Officers (CIOs) Project Managers

IT Architects and Chief Information Officers (CIOs)

A company is migrating virtual machines (VMs) from their data center to the AWS Cloud. The company plans to deploy these migrated machines on Amazon EC2. Which cloud computing model will the company use for this operation? Function as a Service (FaaS) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Software as a Service (SaaS) Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a type of cloud computing service that offers essential compute, storage, and networking resources on demand, on a pay-as-you-go basis. IaaS is one of the four types of cloud services, along with software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and Function as a Service (FaaS).

Your manager has asked you to explain some of the security features available in the AWS cloud. How can you describe the function of Amazon CloudHSM? It can be used to generate, use and manage encryption keys in the cloud It is a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) it is a firewall for use with web applications It provides server-side encryption for S3 objects

It can be used to generate, use and manage encryption keys in the cloud

In the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework, which phase involves initiating and launching new services or processes based on the strategies and plans devised in the earlier phases. Launch Scale Envision Align

Launch

Which feature of Amazon S3 enables you to create rules to control the transfer of objects between different storage classes? Object sharing Versioning Lifecycle management Bucket policies

Lifecycle management

Which type of Elastic Load Balancer operates at the TCP connection level? Network Load Balancer (NLB) Amazon Route 53 Load Balancer Application Load Balancer (ALB) Classic Load Balancer (CLB)

Network Load Balancer (NLB) A Network Load Balancer functions at the fourth layer of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. NLBs direct connections based on information at the TCP connection level.

Where are Amazon EBS snapshots stored? Within the EBS block store On an Amazon EBS instance store On an Amazon EFS filesystem On Amazon S3

On Amazon S3

When running applications in the AWS Cloud, which common tasks can AWS manage on behalf of their customers? (Select TWO.) Patching database software Application source code auditing Creating a database schema Taking a backup of a database Application security testing

Patching database software, & Taking a backup of a database With AWS managed services you can reduce your time spent performing common IT tasks. With services such as Amazon RDS, AWS will patch the database host operating system and database software and perform patch management activities.

A company is designing a new a service that must align with the operational excellence pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. Which design principles should the company follow? (Select TWO.) Perform operations as code. Make large-scale changes. Anticipate failure. Perform manual operations. Create static operational procedures.

Perform operations as code. Anticipate failure.

Which of the following are pillars from the five pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework? (Select TWO.) Confidentiality Performance efficiency Operational excellence Resilience Economics

Performance efficiency Operational excellence The five pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework are operation excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization

__________ scaling uses daily and weekly trends to determine when to scale.

Predictive Scaling

An individual IAM user must be granted access to an Amazon S3 bucket using a bucket policy. Which element in the S3 bucket policy should be updated to define the user account for which access will be granted? Resource Principal Action Condition

Principal The Principal element specifies the user, account, service, or other entity that is allowed or denied access to a resource.

Elasticache =

Redis

A company is planning to move a number of legacy applications to the AWS Cloud. The solution must be cost-effective. Which approach should the company take? Use an Amazon S3 static website to host the legacy application code. Use AWS Lambda to host the legacy applications in the cloud. Rehost the applications on Amazon EC2 instances that are right-sized. Migrate the applications to dedicated hosts on Amazon EC2.

Rehost the applications on Amazon EC2 instances that are right-sized.

Which of the following is NOT a best practice for protecting the root user of an AWS account? Lock away the AWS root user access keys Don't share the root user credentials Enable MFA Remove administrative permissions

Remove administrative permissions

In the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework, which phase involves scaling the implemented strategies and solutions to maximize the benefits of cloud adoption. It is centered on optimizing the solutions rather than identifying the capability gap Launch Scale Envision Align

Scale

What is the function of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling? Scales the number of EC2 instances in or out automatically, based on demand. Scales the size of EC2 instances up or down automatically, based on demand. Automatically modifies the network throughput of EC2 instances, based on demand. Automatically updates the EC2 pricing model, based on demand.

Scales the number of EC2 instances in or out automatically, based on demand. HORIZONTAL scaling = auto scaling

Which Amazon EC2 tool acts as a virtual firewall to control inbound and outbound traffic to an EC2 instance? Security group Network access control list (ACL) AWS Shield AWS WAF

Security group A security group acts as a virtual firewall, controlling the traffic that is allowed to reach and leave the resources that it is associated with. For example, after you associate a security group with an EC2 instance, it controls the inbound and outbound traffic for the instance.

Which of the following acts as a virtual firewall at the Amazon EC2 instance level to control traffic for one or more instances? Network Access Control Lists (ACL) Route table Virtual private gateways (VPG) Security groups

Security groups * Security groups = instance level, Network Access control lists = subnet level

Which AWS pricing model will interrupt a running Amazon EC2 instance if capacity becomes temporarily unavailable?

Spot Instances

Step Functions = _________ workflows

Step Functions = Visual workflow

___________ _________ will launch resources in response to demand.

Step scaling

A company has multiple AWS accounts and is using AWS Organizations with consolidated billing. Which advantages will they benefit from? (Select TWO.) They will receive one bill for the accounts in the Organization. They may benefit from lower unit pricing for aggregated usage. They will be automatically enrolled in a business support plan. The default service limits in all accounts will be increased. They will receive a fixed discount for all usage across accounts.

They will receive one bill for the accounts in the Organization. They may benefit from lower unit pricing for aggregated usage.