Cloud Technology and Services

Worth 34% of the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) exam. CertClue has 456 questions on this objective.

What this objective covers

Networking and content delivery

A VPC is your own network in AWS. Everything else in this area is either a way in, a way out, a way to connect two networks, or a way to get closer to users.

Exam tip. Cacheable HTTP content means CloudFront. Non-HTTP traffic, static entry addresses or fast regional failover means Global Accelerator.

Choosing a compute option

The compute spectrum runs from virtual machines you administer to functions where only code is yours. Less to operate usually means less control and a narrower fit, so the question is which the workload actually needs.

Exam tip. Commit to the baseline and flex the peak. Committing at peak pays for idle capacity all year; committing before right-sizing locks in the waste.

Choosing a database

AWS offers a purpose-built database per data shape. Matching the access pattern to the engine is the whole exercise; the cost is more systems to operate, which is why a general-purpose relational database is still often right.

Exam tip. Replication is not backup. A global table or read replica copies a bad write everywhere, which is why point-in-time recovery exists.

Decoupling and serverless patterns

Loose coupling lets components fail and scale independently. The exam rewards designs where a producer does not wait on, or even know about, its consumers.

Exam tip. Ask what the user is actually waiting for. Anything not needed for their response belongs on the asynchronous side of a queue or event.

Choosing a storage service

Three shapes of storage answer three different access patterns. Object storage for whole items over HTTP, block storage for a disk, file storage for a shared mount. The access pattern decides, not the size of the data.

Exam tip. Cheaper per gigabyte comes with strings: minimum storage duration, minimum object size and retrieval charges. Short-lived data belongs in Standard.

Analytics, machine learning and AI services

Analytics splits into preparing data, querying it and showing it. AI services split by what you feed them. Matching the input type or the pipeline stage to the service answers most questions in this area.

Exam tip. Analytics on operational data should not run against the operational store. Export it, then query the copy.

Practice questions

Free, with the answer and the reasoning. No account needed.

1. What does enabling detailed monitoring on an EC2 instance provide?

  • A. Memory and disk usage metrics
  • B. Log collection from inside the instance
  • C. Longer retention of existing metrics
  • D. Metrics at one-minute intervals instead of five, for an additional chargecorrect

Detailed monitoring changes the publication interval to one minute, which matters when scaling decisions must react quickly. Memory and disk space still require the CloudWatch agent because they are visible only inside the guest.

2. Which DynamoDB capability allows restoring a table to any second within the retention window?

  • A. Point-in-time recoverycorrect
  • B. On-demand backup
  • C. Global tables
  • D. DynamoDB Accelerator

Point-in-time recovery maintains continuous backups so a table can be restored to any second in the retention period, which suits recovery from a bad write. On-demand backups capture discrete moments, and global tables replicate the corruption everywhere.

3. Which service copies large datasets between on-premises storage and AWS over the network on a schedule?

  • A. AWS Storage Gateway
  • B. AWS Transfer Family
  • C. AWS DataSynccorrect
  • D. AWS Snowball Edge

DataSync is built for repeated, automated, high-speed transfers over the network and handles validation and scheduling. Snowball is a physical device for one-off bulk moves, Storage Gateway keeps a hybrid presence rather than migrating, and Transfer Family exposes SFTP endpoints for external partners.

4. Which TWO AWS services provide object storage or a managed file system rather than block storage? (Choose two.)

  • A. EC2 instance store
  • B. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling
  • C. Amazon S3correct
  • D. Amazon EBS
  • E. Amazon EFS

S3 is object storage and EFS is a managed elastic file system, both reachable by many clients at once. EBS and the instance store are block storage attached to a single instance, and the instance store is additionally ephemeral, so its data is lost when the instance stops. Auto Scaling is not storage at all.

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