Intermediate practice exam 1

Explanation

Answer: D. Sustainability follows the same split as the rest of the shared responsibility model. AWS optimizes the infrastructure itself, including efficient shared hardware, high server utilization, water stewardship, renewable power sourcing, and energy-efficient cooling. The customer optimizes what they deploy on it: rightsizing compute, choosing efficient algorithms and storage patterns, and minimizing the resources their workload requires.

• A. AWS cannot make a customer's oversized, idle, or inefficient workload efficient. Resource selection and utilization sit with the customer.
• B. Migrating does not transfer workload efficiency to AWS. An oversized, always-on architecture consumes more energy on AWS just as it did on premises.
• C. Energy sourcing for AWS data centers is an AWS responsibility. Customers can influence their footprint by Region choice, but they do not procure the power.

Explanation

Answer: B. Replatform, also described as "lift, tinker, and shift," means moving the workload to the cloud while introducing some optimization to operate more efficiently, reduce cost, or take advantage of cloud capabilities. Swapping a self-managed database for a managed one is the classic example: the application is untouched, but the operating model changes.

• A. Rehost would mean running the same MySQL server software on a virtual machine in AWS with no change to how it is operated.
• C. Refactor means changing the application's architecture, for example decomposing it into microservices or moving to a different data model. The application here is unchanged.
• D. Repurchase means replacing the product with a different one, which is not what happens when the same database engine continues to run as a managed service.

Explanation

Answer: C. 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.

• 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.

Explanation

Answer: A. 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.

• 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.

Explanation

Answer: B. 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.

• 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.

Explanation

Answer: B. 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.

• 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.

Explanation

Answer: D. 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.

• 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.

Explanation

Answer: D. 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.

• 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.

Explanation

Answer: C. 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.

• 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.

Explanation

Answer: A and B. 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.

• 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.