Unit 1: Introduction to Cloud Computing and AWS; Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS - Practice Quiz

1 What is virtualization in the context of cloud computing?

2 Which software component is responsible for creating and managing virtual machines?

3 Which cloud service model provides virtual machines, storage, and networking as fundamental building blocks?

4 In cloud computing, what does the term elasticity refer to?

5 Which practice helps optimize cloud costs by matching instance size to actual workload needs?

6 What is an AWS Region?

7 What is an AWS Availability Zone (AZ)?

8 Under the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, which party is responsible for security of the cloud (the underlying infrastructure)?

9 What does CLI stand for in AWS CLI?

10 Which command is used to configure your AWS CLI credentials and default settings?

11 What does EC2 stand for?

12 What is user data used for when launching an EC2 instance?

13 Which EC2 placement group strategy packs instances close together on the same hardware to achieve low network latency?

14 Which EC2 pricing option offers the largest discounts in exchange for a one or three year usage commitment?

15 Which EC2 purchasing option uses spare AWS capacity at steep discounts but can be interrupted?

16 What happens to data on an EC2 instance store volume when the instance is stopped?

17 What is the main purpose of resource tags in AWS?

18 What are AWS service limits (quotas)?

19 What does EBS stand for in Amazon EBS?

20 Which protocol is commonly used to securely connect to a Linux EC2 instance?

21 A company runs 10 physical servers, each at about 15% CPU utilization. They adopt a hypervisor to consolidate these workloads onto fewer machines. Which benefit of virtualization is most directly responsible for the cost savings here?

22 An application is designed so that compute, storage, and database tiers can each scale independently without affecting the others. Which cloud architectural principle does this best demonstrate?

23 A workload runs 24/7 for the next 3 years with steady, predictable usage. To optimize cost, which EC2 purchasing approach is generally the best fit?

24 A solution must remain available even if an entire data center loses power. Within a single AWS Region, what is the recommended way to achieve this?

25 Under the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, who is responsible for patching the guest operating system on an EC2 instance?

26 You run an AWS CLI command and receive an UnauthorizedOperation error, yet the credentials are valid. Which is the most likely cause?

27 A startup needs a mix of 4 vCPUs and high memory for an in-memory cache. Which EC2 instance family is best suited for this requirement?

28 You want an EC2 instance to automatically install software and run a script the first time it boots. Which feature should you use?

29 An HPC workload requires the lowest possible network latency and highest packet-per-second performance between instances. Which placement group strategy should you choose?

30 A batch job can tolerate interruption and restart at any time. To minimize cost, which pricing model offers the largest discount compared to On-Demand?

31 When an EBS-backed EC2 instance is stopped (not terminated), what happens to data on its root EBS volume?

32 A finance team wants to break down the monthly AWS bill by department. What is the recommended way to enable this in Cost Explorer?

33 Your team's deployment fails because you cannot launch more On-Demand instances in a Region. What is the first action to resolve this?

34 An application needs block storage that persists independently of the instance lifecycle and can be detached and reattached to another instance. Which option fits?

35 An instance uses an instance store volume for a scratch cache. The instance is stopped and later started on different hardware. What happens to the cached data?

36 You launched a Linux EC2 instance and try to SSH in using ssh -i key.pem ec2-user@<ip> but get a Permission denied (publickey) error. The key file has mode 0644. What is the most likely fix?

37 A web server instance should accept HTTPS from the internet but allow SSH only from the company office IP. How should the security group be configured?

38 An Auto Scaling group has min=2, max=6, desired=4. A target tracking policy aims to keep average CPU at 50%. If CPU drops to 20% for a sustained period, what will Auto Scaling most likely do?

39 You need to run a shell command across 50 EC2 instances without opening SSH or managing keys. Which AWS Systems Manager capability enables this?

40 Which AWS CLI command correctly lists all EC2 instances in the configured region?

41 A company runs a Type 1 hypervisor on bare-metal hosts. During a performance audit, they observe that CPU-bound workloads achieve near-native performance, but I/O-heavy workloads suffer. Which virtualization characteristic BEST explains this disparity?

42 In a well-designed cloud architecture following the shared responsibility model for IaaS, which combination of concerns remains the CUSTOMER's responsibility?

43 An application has a steady baseline of 40 instances plus unpredictable spikes up to 100 instances for a few hours daily. To minimize cost while meeting demand, which purchasing strategy is MOST optimal?

44 A multi-region application must survive the complete failure of an entire AWS Availability Zone without downtime. Which design principle is NON-negotiable to achieve this within a single region?

45 An organization under HIPAA must prove that all API activity in its AWS account is logged immutably and retained. Which service combination directly satisfies the audit-logging requirement?

46 A script running on an EC2 instance uses the AWS CLI but you want it to never store long-lived credentials on disk. Which configuration achieves least-privilege, credential-free operation?

47 You launch an EC2 instance from an AMI in us-east-1. You then need an identical instance in eu-west-1. Why can't you simply reference the same AMI ID directly?

48 An EC2 instance must run a bootstrap script exactly once at first boot to install software, but the same script must NOT re-run on reboot. Which mechanism best enforces this?

49 A tightly-coupled HPC workload needs the lowest possible inter-node network latency and highest packet-per-second performance. However, the team also fears correlated hardware failure. Which trade-off correctly describes a Cluster placement group?

50 A fault-tolerant batch job can checkpoint and resume at any point. It runs intermittently and can tolerate interruptions. The job runs ~6 hours per day with no fixed schedule. Which pricing model minimizes cost?

51 You stop (not terminate) an EBS-backed instance and start it again later. Which statement about the instance's state is CORRECT?

52 A finance team needs per-project cost allocation in Cost Explorer. Developers already tag resources with Project=X, but the costs still appear ungrouped. What is the MOST likely missing step?

53 A deployment pipeline suddenly fails with a VcpuLimitExceeded error when launching On-Demand instances, even though you deleted old instances yesterday. What is the correct interpretation and remedy?

54 A database needs sustained 20,000 IOPS at consistent low latency regardless of volume size. Among EBS volume types, which choice meets this requirement MOST directly?

55 An instance with an instance store volume is used as a high-speed scratch cache. The team is surprised data vanished. Which scenario does NOT cause instance store data loss?

56 You can no longer SSH to a Linux instance after losing the private key. Which approach recovers access WITHOUT losing the EBS data?

57 A web server's security group allows inbound TCP 443 from 0.0.0.0/0. Outbound rules are left at default. A request from a client on 443 arrives; the response leaves the instance. Why does the response succeed even though no explicit outbound rule for the ephemeral return port exists?

58 An Auto Scaling group has a target tracking policy on 50% average CPU. During a brief spike, it scales out, then CPU drops and it immediately scales in, only to spike again moments later causing thrashing. Which single adjustment MOST directly reduces this flapping?

59 A fleet of EC2 instances in a private subnet with no internet access must receive patches and run remote commands centrally, without opening inbound ports or using SSH keys. Which Systems Manager setup satisfies this?

60 Which AWS CLI command correctly returns ONLY the instance IDs of running instances tagged Env=prod, using server-side filtering?