CSLB General Building (B) Trade Practice Test
Frequently asked questions
How many AWS Cloud Practitioner practice questions are here?+
A full bank of original AWS Cloud Practitioner practice questions across the official content areas, weighted like the real exam, with explanations. Free, no signup.
What is the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam like?+
About 100 questions. Practice by topic here, then take the full timed mock exam to gauge readiness.
Are these the real exam questions?+
No. Every question is 100% original, written from public primary sources with explanations. We never copy real exam questions or paid prep material.
Can I study in Chinese or Spanish?+
PrepPass practice is in English, 中文 and Español. The official exam is in English — switch the question language to English any time to rehearse the exact terminology you'll see on test day.
Sample practice questions
A few real questions from this free bank, with full explanations. Use the practice tool above for the whole set.
- 1. Cloud Concepts
Which statement best describes the primary financial benefit of moving from an on-premises data center to the AWS Cloud?
- a.It eliminates all costs associated with running applications
- b.It trades large upfront capital expenses for variable operating expenses that scale with usage
- c.It guarantees that monthly bills will never change month to month
- d.It removes the need to monitor how many resources you consume
Answer: b
Explanation: Cloud computing lets organizations avoid large upfront investments in hardware (CapEx) and instead pay only for the resources they actually use (OpEx). This variable cost model scales up or down with demand. Costs are not eliminated, and usage should still be monitored.
- 2. Cloud Concepts
Which statement correctly contrasts vertical scaling with horizontal scaling?
- a.Vertical scaling adds more instances; horizontal scaling makes an instance smaller
- b.Both terms mean the same thing
- c.Vertical scaling increases the size of a single resource; horizontal scaling adds more resources
- d.Horizontal scaling only applies to databases
Answer: c
Explanation: Vertical scaling (scaling up) increases the capacity of an individual resource, such as moving to a larger instance type. Horizontal scaling (scaling out) adds more resources, such as more instances behind a load balancer.
- 3. Cloud Concepts
How does elasticity help a retailer that experiences large traffic spikes during holiday sales?
- a.Capacity automatically scales out during spikes and scales in afterward, matching cost to demand
- b.Capacity is fixed at the peak level all year, wasting money off-season
- c.The retailer must manually order servers weeks ahead of each sale
- d.Traffic spikes cause the application to be permanently oversized
Answer: a
Explanation: Elasticity lets the retailer add capacity during peak periods and remove it when demand falls, so they pay only for what they need. This avoids both over-provisioning year-round and under-provisioning during spikes.
- 4. Security & Compliance
Which principle recommends granting users only the permissions they need to perform their tasks and nothing more?
- a.Defense in depth
- b.Least privilege
- c.Separation of billing
- d.Elastic provisioning
Answer: b
Explanation: The principle of least privilege means giving identities only the minimum permissions required for their job. This limits the potential impact if credentials are compromised or misused.
- 5. Security & Compliance
Which service scans EC2 instances and container images for software vulnerabilities and unintended network exposure?
- a.Amazon Inspector
- b.AWS Shield
- c.Amazon Cognito
- d.AWS Artifact
Answer: a
Explanation: Amazon Inspector is an automated vulnerability management service that continuously scans workloads such as EC2 instances and container images for software vulnerabilities and network exposure. It prioritizes findings to help teams remediate risks.
- 6. Security & Compliance
Which statement best distinguishes an IAM user from an IAM role?
- a.A role always has a permanent password, while a user never does
- b.A user represents a specific identity with long-term credentials, while a role is assumed temporarily by trusted entities
- c.Roles can only be used by AWS employees
- d.Users cannot be assigned any permissions
Answer: b
Explanation: An IAM user is a persistent identity with its own long-term credentials, whereas an IAM role is assumed temporarily and provides short-term credentials to whoever or whatever assumes it. Roles are ideal for granting access to applications, services, or federated users.
- 7. Cloud Technology & Services
What is an Availability Zone (AZ)?
- a.A global DNS service
- b.A type of EC2 instance
- c.A billing report
- d.One or more discrete data centers with redundant power and networking within a Region
Answer: d
Explanation: An Availability Zone consists of one or more discrete data centers with independent power, cooling, and networking, isolated from failures in other AZs. Deploying across multiple AZs increases availability and fault tolerance.
- 8. Cloud Technology & Services
Which service lets you model and provision AWS infrastructure as code using templates?
- a.Amazon CloudWatch
- b.AWS CloudFormation
- c.Amazon Inspector
- d.AWS Shield
Answer: b
Explanation: AWS CloudFormation lets you define infrastructure in templates and provision it automatically and repeatably as 'stacks.' This infrastructure-as-code approach makes environments consistent and easy to replicate.
- 9. Cloud Technology & Services
Which S3 storage class is designed for long-term archival where retrieval times of minutes to hours are acceptable at very low cost?
- a.S3 Standard
- b.S3 Standard-Infrequent Access
- c.S3 Intelligent-Tiering
- d.S3 Glacier
Answer: d
Explanation: The S3 Glacier storage classes are designed for low-cost, long-term archival where data is accessed rarely and some retrieval delay is acceptable. S3 Standard, by contrast, is for frequently accessed data with immediate retrieval.
- 10. Billing & Pricing
Which purchasing option offers significant discounts in exchange for a one- or three-year commitment to a consistent amount of compute usage?
- a.On-Demand Instances
- b.Savings Plans
- c.Spot Instances
- d.Dedicated Hosts billed hourly
Answer: b
Explanation: Savings Plans offer lower prices in return for committing to a consistent amount of compute usage (measured in dollars per hour) over a one- or three-year term. Reserved Instances offer a similar trade-off tied to specific instance attributes.