Cloud Concepts Fundamentals — CLF-C02 practice questions

Practice questions for this topic, with explained answers.

Domain: Cloud Concepts ·100 questions · 30 easy · 40 intermediate · 30 hard · page 5 of 7

Question 61 clf-cloud-concepts-fundamentals-061

Intermediate · Choose one

A company plans to modernize a monolithic application into microservices that use serverless components, accepting the highest effort and cost in exchange for the greatest long-term agility. Which migration strategy is this?

  1. a Relocate
  2. b Retain
  3. c Refactor
  4. d Rehost
Show answer & explanation

Answer: C

Why C is correct

Refactor, also called re-architect, means moving the application to the cloud and modifying its architecture to take full advantage of cloud-native features in order to improve agility, performance, and scalability. AWS notes it is the most complex strategy and generally recommends rehosting, relocating, or replatforming first in a large migration, then modernizing afterwards.

Why the others are wrong

  • A — Relocate transfers servers or applications to a cloud version of the existing platform, or moves instances between VPCs, Regions, or accounts, without changing the architecture.
  • B — Retain leaves the application in the source environment, so no modernization occurs at all.
  • D — Rehost moves the application unchanged, which is the opposite of the significant redesign described here.

Last verified: 2026-08-26

Question 62 clf-cloud-concepts-fundamentals-062

Intermediate · Choose one

An application is subject to a contract that prevents any change to its hosting arrangements for another 18 months. Which migration strategy should be recorded for it during portfolio planning?

  1. a Retain
  2. b Relocate
  3. c Retire
  4. d Rehost
Show answer & explanation

Answer: A

Why A is correct

Retain means keeping the application in its source environment or postponing its migration because the organization is not ready to move it. Recording it explicitly matters: it documents the reason, sets a review date, and keeps the application visible in the portfolio rather than forgotten.

Why the others are wrong

  • B — Relocate would also move it, and it applies to transferring servers to a cloud version of the existing platform, which is still a change to the hosting arrangement.
  • C — Retire is for applications that are no longer needed and can be decommissioned or archived. This application is still in use and under contract.
  • D — Rehost would move it now, which the contract forbids.

Last verified: 2026-08-26

Question 63 clf-cloud-concepts-fundamentals-063

Intermediate · Choose one

Which AWS CAF perspective is concerned with culture evolution, cloud fluency, workforce transformation, and change acceleration?

  1. a Governance
  2. b People
  3. c Operations
  4. d Business
Show answer & explanation

Answer: B

Why B is correct

The people perspective serves as the bridge between technology and business, addressing culture, organizational structure, leadership, and workforce. Its capabilities include culture evolution, transformational leadership, cloud fluency, workforce transformation, change acceleration, organization design, and organizational alignment.

Why the others are wrong

  • A — The governance perspective orchestrates cloud initiatives while maximizing benefits and minimizing transformation risk, covering capabilities such as program and project management, risk management, and cloud financial management.
  • C — The operations perspective ensures that cloud services are delivered at a level that meets business needs, covering observability, incident and problem management, and availability and continuity management.
  • D — The business perspective ensures that cloud investments accelerate digital transformation ambitions and business outcomes, covering strategy, portfolio, innovation, and product management.

Last verified: 2026-08-26

Question 64 clf-cloud-concepts-fundamentals-064

Intermediate · Choose one

Under the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework, which perspective owns the cloud financial management capability?

  1. a Platform
  2. b Governance
  3. c Operations
  4. d Business
Show answer & explanation

Answer: B

Why B is correct

Cloud financial management, described as planning, measuring, and optimizing cloud spend, sits in the governance perspective. Governance is where the organization orchestrates cloud initiatives and controls risk and value, alongside capabilities such as program and project management, benefits management, risk management, application portfolio management, and data governance.

Why the others are wrong

  • A — The platform perspective builds the enterprise-grade cloud platform, covering platform and data architecture, platform and data engineering, provisioning and orchestration, modern application development, and continuous integration and delivery.
  • C — The operations perspective runs the services day to day, covering observability, event management, incident and problem management, change and release management, and patch management.
  • D — The business perspective is about aligning cloud investment with business outcomes through capabilities such as strategy management, portfolio management, innovation management, and product management. It sets direction rather than managing the spend itself.

Last verified: 2026-08-26

Question 65 clf-cloud-concepts-fundamentals-065

Intermediate · Choose one

Which set correctly lists the four AWS CAF transformation domains?

  1. a Rehost, replatform, repurchase, and refactor
  2. b Business, people, governance, and platform
  3. c Envision, align, launch, and scale
  4. d Technology, process, organization, and product
Show answer & explanation

Answer: D

Why D is correct

AWS CAF names four transformation domains. Technology covers migrating and modernizing infrastructure, applications, and data platforms. Process covers digitizing, automating, and optimizing business operations. Organization covers reimagining the operating model so business and technology teams create customer value together. Product covers reimagining the business model with new value propositions and revenue models.

Why the others are wrong

  • A — These are four of the seven migration strategies. They describe how an individual application moves, not enterprise transformation domains.
  • B — These are four of the six AWS CAF perspectives, which group the foundational capabilities that support transformation, rather than the domains being transformed.
  • C — Envision, align, launch, and scale are the four phases of the cloud transformation journey, which describe when work happens rather than what is transformed.

Last verified: 2026-08-26

Question 66 clf-cloud-concepts-fundamentals-066

Intermediate · Choose one

In the AWS CAF cloud transformation journey, which phase focuses on identifying and prioritizing transformation opportunities across the transformation domains in line with strategic business objectives?

  1. a Align
  2. b Launch
  3. c Scale
  4. d Envision
Show answer & explanation

Answer: D

Why D is correct

The envision phase focuses on demonstrating how the cloud will accelerate business outcomes by identifying and prioritizing transformation opportunities across each of the four transformation domains, in line with strategic business objectives. It is where the business case for change is framed before any capability gap analysis or delivery begins.

Why the others are wrong

  • A — The align phase focuses on identifying capability gaps across the six AWS CAF perspectives, surfacing cross-organizational dependencies, and bringing stakeholder concerns and challenges into the open.
  • B — The launch phase focuses on delivering pilot initiatives in production and demonstrating incremental business value.
  • C — The scale phase focuses on expanding those production pilots to the desired scale and ensuring the expected business benefits are realized and sustained.

Last verified: 2026-08-26

Question 67 clf-cloud-concepts-fundamentals-067

Intermediate · Choose one

Which AWS service collects configuration, usage, and behavior data, including server dependencies, from an on-premises environment to help plan a migration?

  1. a AWS Application Migration Service
  2. b AWS Transit Gateway
  3. c AWS Application Discovery Service
  4. d AWS Schema Conversion Tool (AWS SCT)
Show answer & explanation

Answer: C

Why C is correct

AWS Application Discovery Service gathers configuration, performance, and network dependency information from on-premises servers. Understanding which servers talk to which is what allows applications to be grouped correctly into migration waves, so that tightly coupled components move together rather than being split across a cutover.

Why the others are wrong

  • A — AWS Application Migration Service performs the migration itself, replicating source servers into AWS and cutting them over. It executes rather than plans.
  • B — AWS Transit Gateway is a network hub for connecting VPCs and on-premises networks. It has no discovery function.
  • D — AWS SCT converts database schemas and code objects from one engine to another. Its scope is the database, not the server estate.

Last verified: 2026-08-26

Question 68 clf-cloud-concepts-fundamentals-068

Intermediate · Select 2 answers

Which TWO business outcomes does AWS name when describing the value of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework? (Choose TWO.)

  1. a Reduced business risk
  2. b Improved environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance
  3. c Automatic compliance with every regional data protection regulation
  4. d Elimination of all third-party software licensing
  5. e Guaranteed reduction in total headcount
Show answer & explanation

Answer: A and B

Why A and B are correct

AWS states that key business outcomes of cloud transformation include reduced business risk, improved environmental, social, and governance performance, and increased revenue and operational efficiency. Reduced risk and improved ESG performance are two of that set, and the framework is explicitly organized to help an organization pursue them.

Why the others are wrong

  • C — Compliance is never automatic. AWS provides compliant infrastructure and evidence, but meeting a regulation depends on how the customer configures and operates the workload.
  • D — Third-party licensing continues to apply. Customers either bring their own licenses or consume license-included offerings.
  • E — AWS makes no headcount claim. The people perspective is about workforce transformation and building new skills, not about reducing staff numbers.

Last verified: 2026-08-26

Question 69 clf-cloud-concepts-fundamentals-069

Hard · Choose one

A company transfers a large VMware-based estate to a managed VMware environment in AWS, keeping the same hypervisor platform and requiring no changes to the virtual machines. Which migration strategy best describes this?

  1. a Rehost
  2. b Refactor
  3. c Relocate
  4. d Replatform
Show answer & explanation

Answer: C

Why C is correct

Relocate covers transferring a large number of servers or applications from an on-premises platform to a cloud version of that same platform, or moving instances to a different VPC, Region, or account. Because the hypervisor platform is preserved, the virtual machines move without conversion, which is what distinguishes relocate from rehost.

Why the others are wrong

  • A — Rehost also moves the application unchanged, but it typically converts the workload onto native cloud compute rather than preserving the source platform. The preservation of the platform is the deciding detail.
  • B — Refactor changes the application architecture significantly, which is explicitly not happening.
  • D — Replatform introduces some optimization during the move, such as adopting a managed service. Nothing is optimized here.

Last verified: 2026-08-26

Question 70 clf-cloud-concepts-fundamentals-070

Hard · Choose one

Which statement most accurately distinguishes the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework from the AWS Well-Architected Framework?

  1. a AWS CAF is a technical checklist and the Well-Architected Framework is a business planning tool
  2. b The two are alternative names for the same framework, published for different audiences
  3. c AWS CAF applies only to migrations, while the Well-Architected Framework applies only to workloads built new in the cloud
  4. d AWS CAF helps an organization identify and build the capabilities needed for cloud transformation, while the Well-Architected Framework helps evaluate and improve the architecture of a workload
Show answer & explanation

Answer: D

Why D is correct

The two frameworks operate at different levels. AWS CAF is organizational: it identifies capability gaps across six perspectives so the business, its people, and its governance are ready to transform. The Well-Architected Framework is architectural: it evaluates a specific workload against six pillars and produces an improvement plan for that workload. A company typically uses both, for different questions.

Why the others are wrong

  • A — This inverts them. AWS CAF is the broader business and organizational framework, and the Well-Architected Framework is the one that examines technical architecture in detail.
  • B — They are distinct frameworks with different structures: six perspectives and 47 foundational capabilities for AWS CAF, six pillars and their design principles for Well-Architected.
  • C — AWS CAF covers cloud transformation broadly, including new build and modernization, and the Well-Architected Framework applies to migrated workloads just as much as to new ones.

Last verified: 2026-08-26

Question 71 clf-cloud-concepts-fundamentals-071

Hard · Choose one

During an AWS CAF assessment, a company finds it has no defined process for restoring service quickly after an outage and no way to track recurring underlying causes. Which perspective and capability does this gap belong to?

  1. a Platform, platform engineering
  2. b Operations, incident and problem management
  3. c Security, incident response
  4. d Governance, risk management
Show answer & explanation

Answer: B

Why B is correct

Incident and problem management is an operations perspective capability, described as quickly restoring service operations and minimizing adverse business impact. The two halves matter: incident management restores service now, and problem management identifies and removes the underlying causes so the same incident stops recurring.

Why the others are wrong

  • A — Platform engineering is about building and operating the enterprise cloud platform and its reusable components, not about running the incident process.
  • C — Incident response is a security perspective capability, and it applies to security events such as a suspected compromise. The gap described is a general availability outage.
  • D — Risk management is a governance capability concerned with using the cloud to lower the organization's overall risk profile, not with the operational mechanics of restoring a failed service.

Last verified: 2026-08-26

Question 72 clf-cloud-concepts-fundamentals-072

Hard · Choose one

A company is migrating an on-premises Microsoft SQL Server database to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL. Which statement correctly describes the role of the AWS Schema Conversion Tool in this heterogeneous migration?

  1. a It performs the continuous replication of data changes from the source to the target
  2. b It discovers on-premises server dependencies so applications can be grouped into waves
  3. c It builds the financial business case that justifies the migration
  4. d It converts the source schema and code objects to the target engine's format and reports what requires manual work
Show answer & explanation

Answer: D

Why D is correct

In a heterogeneous migration the source and target engines differ, so the schema cannot simply be copied. AWS SCT converts tables, views, stored procedures, and functions into the target engine's dialect and produces an assessment report identifying the objects it cannot convert automatically, which is what lets the team estimate the manual effort involved.

Why the others are wrong

  • A — Ongoing change replication is performed by AWS DMS. The two tools are used together: SCT for the schema, DMS for the data.
  • B — Discovering server dependencies is the role of AWS Application Discovery Service.
  • C — Building a data-driven business case with projected AWS costs is what Migration Evaluator does.

Last verified: 2026-08-26

Question 73 clf-cloud-concepts-fundamentals-073

Hard · Select 2 answers

Which TWO statements about the seven migration strategies are TRUE? (Choose TWO.)

  1. a Repurchasing always costs less than rehosting because software as a service has no licensing cost
  2. b Retire and retain both result in no application being migrated to AWS in the current wave
  3. c Every application in a portfolio must use the same strategy so that the migration remains consistent
  4. d Refactoring is the fastest and lowest-risk strategy, so AWS recommends it first for large migrations
  5. e Replatforming keeps the application essentially unchanged while introducing some optimization, such as adopting a managed database
Show answer & explanation

Answer: B and E

Why B and E are correct

Retire decommissions or archives an application, and retain deliberately leaves it in the source environment; in both cases no application is migrated to AWS in that wave, though for opposite reasons. Replatform, described as "lift, tinker, and shift," moves the workload while introducing some optimization to operate more efficiently, reduce cost, or exploit cloud capabilities, with the application itself broadly untouched.

Why the others are wrong

  • A — Software as a service carries subscription costs, and repurchasing also brings data migration, integration rework, and retraining. It is not automatically cheaper.
  • C — A portfolio is assessed application by application, and a realistic migration mixes several strategies across the estate.
  • D — Refactoring is the most complex and effort-intensive strategy. For large migrations AWS suggests rehosting, relocating, or replatforming first, then modernizing after the migration is complete.

Last verified: 2026-08-26

Question 74 clf-cloud-concepts-fundamentals-074

Hard · Choose one

A CIO asks which AWS offering will produce a directional business case comparing the current on-premises footprint with projected AWS costs, including a comparison of bring your own license and AWS license-included options. Which service should be used?

  1. a AWS Migration Hub
  2. b AWS Application Migration Service
  3. c AWS Control Tower
  4. d Migration Evaluator
Show answer & explanation

Answer: D

Why D is correct

Migration Evaluator builds a data-driven business case for migrating to AWS. It takes a snapshot of the existing on-premises footprint using an agentless collector, identifies over-provisioned servers, and presents projected AWS costs, including cost comparisons of bringing existing licenses versus buying licenses from AWS. That licensing comparison is the detail that distinguishes it here.

Why the others are wrong

  • A — AWS Migration Hub tracks migration progress across tools. It reports on execution once a migration is underway.
  • B — AWS Application Migration Service replicates and cuts over source servers to AWS. It performs the migration rather than justifying it.
  • C — AWS Control Tower automates the setup and governance of a multi-account landing zone. It has no costing or business case function.

Last verified: 2026-08-26

Question 75 clf-cloud-concepts-fundamentals-075

Hard · Select 2 answers

Which TWO statements correctly describe the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework? (Choose TWO.)

  1. a It applies only to organizations that have already completed their migration to AWS
  2. b Its foundational capabilities are grouped into six perspectives spanning both business and technical concerns
  3. c It replaces the need for a migration strategy assessment of the application portfolio
  4. d It prescribes a fixed sequence of AWS services that every organization must adopt in order
  5. e It is used to identify capability gaps and organizational dependencies before and during a cloud transformation
Show answer & explanation

Answer: B and E

Why B and E are correct

AWS CAF organizes its foundational capabilities into six perspectives: business, people, and governance address strategy, culture, and control, while platform, security, and operations address building, protecting, and running the environment. The framework is used to find where capability is missing and where organizational dependencies lie, most explicitly in the align phase, so those gaps can be closed before they stall delivery.

Why the others are wrong

  • A — The framework is designed to be used from the earliest envision phase onward, well before any workload moves.
  • C — Portfolio assessment against the migration strategies remains necessary. AWS CAF addresses organizational readiness; the strategy assessment addresses what happens to each application.
  • D — AWS CAF describes capabilities and outcomes, not a mandated service adoption sequence. Which services an organization uses depends on its own workloads and goals.

Last verified: 2026-08-26