Free AWS practice test

12 original questions written by our editors against the official Amazon Web Services (AWS) exam domains. They are not real exam questions. Pick an answer to see the explanation.

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1. Cloud Concepts

   An online retailer buys enough servers to handle its holiday peak, but the servers sit mostly idle for the other ten months of the year. Which benefit of the AWS Cloud addresses this problem most directly?

   AStop guessing capacity, because resources can scale up and down with demandBStop spending money running and maintaining data centersCGo global in minutesDBenefit from massive economies of scale
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   Answer: A. The problem is buying for peak capacity that goes unused, which is exactly what elastic scaling solves. Global reach helps with latency for distant users, not idle capacity. Economies of scale and not running data centers are real benefits but do not address over-provisioning for a seasonal peak.

2. Cloud Concepts

   A team wants its workload to recover automatically when a component fails and plans to test its recovery procedures regularly. Which pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework do these practices belong to?

   AReliabilityBCost OptimizationCSustainabilityDPerformance Efficiency
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   Answer: A. Automatically recovering from failure and testing recovery procedures are design principles of the Reliability pillar. Cost Optimization focuses on spending, Performance Efficiency on using resources efficiently as demand changes, and Sustainability on reducing environmental impact.

3. Security and Compliance

   A company runs its application on Amazon EC2 instances. Under the AWS shared responsibility model, who is responsible for applying security patches to the guest operating system on those instances?

   AThe AWS Marketplace vendor that published the AMIBAWS and the customer share it equallyCAWSDThe customer
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   Answer: D. With EC2, which is infrastructure as a service, the customer manages the guest operating system, including patches. AWS is responsible for the physical hosts, network and virtualization layer. Using a Marketplace AMI does not transfer patching duties to the vendor.

4. Security and Compliance

   A startup has just created its AWS account and the founders are using the root user for everything. What is the recommended practice?

   AShare the root user credentials with every administrator so access is never blockedBDelete the root user once an IAM administrator existsCEnable MFA on the root user, create separate identities for daily administration, and use the root user only for the few tasks that require itDKeep using the root user, but change its password every month
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   Answer: C. AWS recommends protecting the root user with MFA and using separate identities, such as IAM Identity Center users or IAM roles, for everyday work. Rotating a password does not fix the risk of daily root use, and sharing root credentials removes accountability. The root user cannot be deleted from the account.

5. Cloud Technology and Services

   A marketing team needs highly durable storage for millions of product images that a website will load over HTTPS. Which AWS service fits best?

   AAmazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS)BAmazon EC2 instance storeCAmazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)DAmazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)
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   Answer: C. Amazon S3 is object storage built for durable storage of files such as images and can serve them over HTTPS. EBS is block storage attached to EC2 instances, and instance store is temporary storage lost when the instance stops. RDS is a relational database, not a place to store image files.

6. Cloud Technology and Services

   A company wants to create a thumbnail every time a user uploads a photo. Each job takes a few seconds, and the team does not want to manage servers. Which service should they use?

   AAmazon LightsailBAmazon EC2CAWS OutpostsDAWS Lambda
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   Answer: D. AWS Lambda runs code in response to events, such as an upload to S3, without servers to manage, and short jobs suit it well. EC2 and Lightsail both require you to manage server instances. Outposts brings AWS infrastructure into your own data center, which is unrelated to this need.

7. Cloud Technology and Services

   A video-learning company hosts its website in one AWS Region, and users on other continents complain that images and videos load slowly. Which service reduces this latency most directly?

   AAWS Direct ConnectBAmazon CloudFrontCAWS SnowballDAmazon Inspector
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   Answer: B. Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network that caches content at edge locations close to users, reducing latency worldwide. Direct Connect is a private link between your own network and AWS, not a way to serve public users. Snowball moves large data sets physically, and Inspector scans for vulnerabilities.

8. Billing, Pricing, and Support

   A company runs a set of Amazon EC2 instances 24 hours a day with steady usage and expects to keep them for the next three years. Which pricing option will usually cost the least?

   AOn-Demand Dedicated HostsBOn-Demand InstancesCSpot InstancesDSavings Plans or Reserved Instances with a three-year commitment
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   Answer: D. Steady, predictable usage over years is what Savings Plans and Reserved Instances are designed for, and longer commitments give larger discounts. On-Demand has no commitment but costs more for constant use. Spot is cheap but can be interrupted, which does not suit an always-on workload, and Dedicated Hosts on demand are the most expensive option here.

9. Design Secure Architectures

   An application on Amazon EC2 needs to read objects from a private S3 bucket. What is the most secure way to give the application access?

   APass IAM user access keys to the instance through user dataBStore an IAM user's access keys in the application's configuration fileCMake the bucket public and restrict access by object nameDAttach an IAM role with read access to the bucket to the EC2 instance through an instance profile
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   Answer: D. An IAM role attached to the instance provides temporary credentials that rotate automatically, and the policy can grant only the read access needed. Long-term access keys in config files or user data can leak and must be rotated by hand. Making the bucket public exposes the data to anyone.

10. Design Resilient Architectures

    A web application runs on a single large EC2 instance in one Availability Zone. The business requires it to keep serving users if an entire Availability Zone fails. What should a solutions architect recommend?

    AMove to an even larger instance type in the same Availability ZoneBTake daily EBS snapshots of the instanceCPlace several instances in a cluster placement groupDRun the instances in an Auto Scaling group across at least two Availability Zones behind an Application Load Balancer
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    Answer: D. Spreading instances across multiple Availability Zones behind a load balancer, with Auto Scaling replacing unhealthy instances, keeps the application available if one zone fails. A larger instance is still a single point of failure. Snapshots help restore data but do not keep the app running, and a cluster placement group packs instances close together in one zone.

11. Design High-Performing Architectures

    An Amazon RDS for MySQL database handles writes well, but reporting queries that only read data are slowing it down during business hours. Which change improves read performance with the least effort?

    AExport the data to Amazon S3 each night and query the files directlyBConvert the database to a Multi-AZ DB instance deploymentCIncrease the allocated storage of the DB instanceDCreate read replicas and send the reporting queries to them
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    Answer: D. Read replicas take read-only traffic off the primary database, which is exactly what reporting queries need. A Multi-AZ DB instance deployment adds a standby for failover, and that standby does not serve reads. More storage does not fix read contention, and a nightly export to S3 changes the reporting setup and loses fresh data.

12. Design Cost-Optimized Architectures

    A company stores application logs in Amazon S3. Logs are read often for the first 30 days, almost never afterward, and must be kept for 7 years. Retrieval within 12 to 48 hours is acceptable for old logs. What is the most cost-effective approach?

    AUse an S3 Lifecycle rule to move logs to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 30 days and delete them after 7 yearsBKeep all logs in S3 Standard for 7 yearsCStore the logs on an EC2 instance's local storageDCopy the logs to Amazon EBS volumes and keep the volumes attached
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    Answer: A. A lifecycle rule automates moving rarely accessed data to S3 Glacier Deep Archive, the lowest-cost storage class, whose retrieval times fit the stated 12 to 48 hours, and it can expire the data after 7 years. Keeping everything in S3 Standard costs far more for data that is never read. EBS and instance storage cost more per GB and are not built for long-term archives.