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ACA CCP practice questions

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Question 1Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which characteristic of cloud computing allows customers to add or remove resources automatically as demand changes, without manual intervention?

  1. Resource pooling
  2. Measured service
  3. Rapid elasticity Correct answer.
  4. Broad network access

Explanation

Rapid elasticity means capacity can be provisioned and released automatically to scale with demand, giving the appearance of unlimited resources. Measured service, pooling, and broad access describe other aspects of the service model.

Question 2Cloud Computing Fundamentals

A company wants to move from large upfront hardware purchases to paying only for the compute it consumes each month. Which cloud benefit does this describe?

  1. Elimination of all security responsibility
  2. Capital expense replaced by variable operational expense Correct answer.
  3. Increased latency
  4. Permanent over-provisioning

Explanation

Cloud economics shift spending from fixed capital expenditure to variable operational expenditure tied to consumption. This reduces the need to buy for peak capacity in advance.

Question 3Cloud Computing Fundamentals

In the cloud shared responsibility model for infrastructure as a service, which task remains the customer's responsibility?

  1. Maintaining the hypervisor
  2. Patching the guest operating system Correct answer.
  3. Replacing failed server hardware
  4. Physical security of the data center

Explanation

With IaaS the provider manages the physical facility and virtualization layer, while the customer manages the guest operating system and above. Patching that OS is therefore a customer duty.

Question 4Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which deployment model places cloud infrastructure on the customer's own premises while still using cloud technologies and management practices?

  1. Hybrid cloud
  2. Public cloud
  3. Private cloud Correct answer.
  4. Community cloud

Explanation

A private cloud is provisioned for exclusive use by a single organization and may be hosted on-premises. Public, community, and hybrid models differ in ownership or composition.

Question 5Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which service model provides a complete runtime environment where developers deploy code without managing servers or operating systems?

  1. Platform as a service Correct answer.
  2. Software as a service
  3. Infrastructure as a service
  4. Network as a service

Explanation

PaaS supplies the runtime, middleware, and OS so developers focus only on their application code. IaaS leaves OS management to the customer, and SaaS delivers finished applications.

Question 6Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which term describes the ability of a system to continue operating correctly despite the failure of one of its components?

  1. Elasticity
  2. Fault tolerance Correct answer.
  3. Portability
  4. Durability

Explanation

Fault tolerance is the property of continuing to function when a component fails, typically through redundancy. Durability concerns data persistence, and elasticity concerns scaling.

Question 7Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which cloud concept refers to a geographic area containing multiple isolated data center groups?

  1. Availability zone
  2. Subnet
  3. Edge location
  4. Region Correct answer.

Explanation

A region is a geographic area that contains multiple isolated availability zones. Availability zones are the individual data center groups within a region.

Question 8Cloud Computing Fundamentals

What is the primary purpose of a content delivery network in cloud architecture?

  1. Provisioning virtual machines
  2. Caching content closer to end users Correct answer.
  3. Encrypting data at rest
  4. Managing identity credentials

Explanation

A CDN caches content at edge locations near users to reduce latency and origin load. It does not provision compute or manage identities.

Question 9Cloud Computing Fundamentals

A team needs to run a batch job that can tolerate interruption and should cost as little as possible. Which purchasing approach fits best?

  1. On-demand instances
  2. Reserved capacity
  3. Dedicated hosts
  4. Spot or preemptible capacity Correct answer.

Explanation

Spot or preemptible capacity is offered at a large discount in exchange for the possibility of interruption, which suits fault-tolerant batch work. Reserved and dedicated options cost more and are meant for steady or compliance-bound workloads.

Question 10Cloud Computing Fundamentals

An application must survive the loss of an entire data center group. Which design choice best supports this?

  1. Deploy instances across multiple availability zones in a region Correct answer.
  2. Deploy all instances in one availability zone
  3. Deploy instances only at edge locations
  4. Deploy all instances on a single large server

Explanation

Spreading instances across availability zones ensures that the failure of one zone does not take down the whole application. Single-zone or single-server designs create a single point of failure.

Question 11Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which statement best distinguishes horizontal scaling from vertical scaling?

  1. Horizontal scaling increases instance size; vertical scaling adds more instances
  2. Horizontal scaling adds more instances; vertical scaling increases the size of one instance Correct answer.
  3. Horizontal scaling only applies to storage; vertical scaling only applies to compute
  4. Horizontal scaling requires downtime; vertical scaling never does

Explanation

Horizontal scaling, or scaling out, adds more nodes to share load, while vertical scaling, or scaling up, enlarges a single node. Horizontal scaling generally supports higher availability.

Question 12Cloud Computing Fundamentals

A company must keep certain regulated data within its own country. Which cloud design decision most directly addresses this?

  1. Choosing a region in that country Correct answer.
  2. Enabling auto-scaling
  3. Selecting a larger instance type
  4. Using a content delivery network

Explanation

Data residency requirements are met by selecting regions and services that store and process data within the required jurisdiction. Instance size, scaling, and caching do not control where data resides.

Question 13Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which practice best supports the principle of least privilege in a cloud environment?

  1. Assigning permissions based on job roles and specific needs Correct answer.
  2. Disabling audit logging to reduce noise
  3. Sharing a single root account among the team
  4. Granting every user administrator rights for convenience

Explanation

Least privilege means granting only the permissions required for a user's role and tasks. Role-based, narrowly scoped permissions limit the blast radius of mistakes or compromise.

Question 14Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which cloud storage category is best suited for storing millions of infrequently accessed archives at the lowest cost?

  1. Object storage with an archival tier Correct answer.
  2. In-memory cache
  3. Block storage attached to a running instance
  4. Local instance store

Explanation

Object storage with an archival tier is designed for durable, low-cost retention of rarely accessed data. Block storage and instance store are priced for active use, and caches are volatile.

Question 15Cloud Computing Fundamentals

What is the main role of a virtual private cloud in a public cloud provider's network?

  1. To replace the need for encryption
  2. To physically separate the customer's servers from other tenants
  3. To provide an isolated virtual network with customer-defined subnets and routing Correct answer.
  4. To host the provider's billing systems

Explanation

A virtual private cloud gives a customer a logically isolated network segment where they define subnets, routes, and gateways. Isolation is logical rather than physical.

Question 16Cloud Computing Fundamentals

A team wants to automate the creation of identical environments for development, testing, and production. Which approach best fits?

  1. Running all environments on one shared server
  2. Defining infrastructure as code and reusing the templates Correct answer.
  3. Purchasing physical servers for each environment
  4. Manually rebuilding each environment from documentation

Explanation

Infrastructure as code lets teams define environments in versioned templates and recreate them consistently. This reduces configuration drift compared with manual builds.

Question 17Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which metric best indicates whether a service is meeting its availability commitment to customers?

  1. Service level objective attainment over the measurement period Correct answer.
  2. Number of deployed instances
  3. Count of IAM users
  4. Total storage consumed

Explanation

Service level objectives express measurable targets such as uptime percentage, and attainment against them shows whether commitments are met. Instance counts and storage totals do not measure availability.

Question 18Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which workload is the weakest fit for a serverless function platform?

  1. An event-driven image thumbnail generator
  2. A scheduled nightly report job
  3. A short-lived API request handler
  4. A long-running stateful database engine Correct answer.

Explanation

Serverless functions are short-lived and stateless, so a long-running stateful database engine is a poor fit and is normally run on managed database or compute services. Event-driven and scheduled tasks suit serverless well.

Question 19Cloud Computing Fundamentals

What does the term multi-tenancy mean in public cloud computing?

  1. Multiple customers share underlying physical resources that are logically isolated Correct answer.
  2. Each customer receives a dedicated physical server
  3. Only one application can run per region
  4. Tenants manage the provider's hardware

Explanation

Multi-tenancy means many customers share physical infrastructure while logical isolation keeps their workloads separate. This sharing is what enables provider economies of scale.

Question 20Cloud Computing Fundamentals

A company runs steady baseline traffic but sees sharp unpredictable spikes. Which combination is most cost-effective?

  1. On-demand capacity sized permanently for the largest spike
  2. A single large instance with no scaling
  3. Dedicated hosts for all traffic
  4. Reserved capacity for the baseline plus on-demand or spot capacity for spikes Correct answer.

Explanation

Covering predictable baseline load with discounted reserved capacity and handling spikes with flexible capacity avoids paying for peak capacity all the time. This blends cost savings with elasticity.

Question 21Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which control most directly protects data confidentiality in transit between a client and a cloud service?

  1. Using a larger instance type
  2. Enabling TLS for all connections Correct answer.
  3. Enabling auto-scaling
  4. Tagging resources consistently

Explanation

TLS encrypts traffic between endpoints, protecting confidentiality in transit. Instance sizing, tagging, and scaling do not encrypt network traffic.

Question 22Cloud Computing Fundamentals

An architect is told the recovery point objective for a system is 15 minutes. What does this requirement specify?

  1. The minimum number of replicas required
  2. The maximum acceptable time to restore service after an outage
  3. The maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time Correct answer.
  4. The maximum number of users supported

Explanation

The recovery point objective defines how much data loss is tolerable, expressed as a time window, which drives backup and replication frequency. Recovery time objective, by contrast, concerns how quickly service must be restored.

Question 23Cloud Computing Fundamentals

A team observes that a stateless web tier behind a load balancer scales well, but the session state stored on each instance causes users to be logged out when instances are replaced. Which change best resolves this?

  1. Disable the load balancer
  2. Move session state to a shared external store Correct answer.
  3. Reduce the number of instances to one
  4. Store sessions in local instance memory with longer timeouts

Explanation

Externalizing session state to a shared store decouples it from individual instances, so any instance can serve any request and replacements do not lose sessions. This preserves statelessness in the web tier.

Question 24Cloud Computing Fundamentals

A regulated workload requires that encryption keys never leave the customer's control while still being usable by cloud services. Which approach best satisfies this?

  1. Using a customer-managed key held in a dedicated key management service or hardware security module Correct answer.
  2. Disabling encryption for performance
  3. Storing keys in application source code
  4. Emailing keys to administrators when needed

Explanation

Customer-managed keys held in a key management service or hardware security module keep control with the customer while allowing authorized services to use them. Hard-coding or distributing keys insecurely undermines that control.

Question 25Cloud Computing Fundamentals

An application must remain available even if an entire region becomes unavailable. Which architecture satisfies this requirement?

  1. Active-active deployment across two or more regions with data replication Correct answer.
  2. A single region with multiple availability zones
  3. One region with a standby database in the same zone
  4. A single availability zone with daily backups

Explanation

Surviving a regional outage requires resources in at least one other region, with replication keeping data current and traffic able to fail over. Multi-zone designs protect against zone failures but not regional ones.

Question 26Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which model describes a cloud service where the provider manages the operating system, runtime, and middleware while the customer deploys only application code and data?

  1. Software as a Service
  2. Platform as a Service Correct answer.
  3. Infrastructure as a Service
  4. On-premises hosting

Explanation

In a PaaS model the provider supplies and maintains the runtime stack, operating system, and middleware, leaving the customer responsible for the application and its data. IaaS leaves more of the stack to the customer, and SaaS delivers a finished application.

Question 27Cloud Computing Fundamentals

What distinguishes a public cloud from a private cloud?

  1. Resources are shared across customers over provider-owned infrastructure Correct answer.
  2. Resources are always free of charge to the consumer
  3. Resources are limited to a single physical server
  4. Resources can only be accessed from inside one office

Explanation

A public cloud is owned and operated by a provider and its pooled resources serve many independent customers. A private cloud is dedicated to a single organization, whether on-premises or hosted.

Question 28Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which characteristic of cloud computing lets a consumer add capacity during a traffic surge and release it afterward?

  1. Vendor lock-in
  2. Rapid elasticity Correct answer.
  3. Fixed capacity planning
  4. Data residency

Explanation

Rapid elasticity is the ability to provision and deprovision resources automatically as demand changes, so capacity tracks usage. Fixed capacity planning is the traditional alternative that elasticity replaces.

Question 29Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which cloud service category provides virtual machines, block storage volumes, and virtual networks as building blocks?

  1. Software as a Service
  2. Desktop as a Service
  3. Infrastructure as a Service Correct answer.
  4. Function as a Service

Explanation

IaaS exposes fundamental compute, storage, and networking primitives that customers assemble and manage themselves. Higher-level models abstract those primitives away.

Question 30Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which benefit is most directly associated with the pay-as-you-go pricing model of cloud computing?

  1. Capacity must be purchased in multi-year blocks
  2. Hardware refresh cycles are eliminated for the customer
  3. Total costs are guaranteed to fall for every workload
  4. Costs shift from large upfront capital expenditure to variable operating expenditure Correct answer.

Explanation

Metered billing converts fixed capital investment in hardware into usage-based operating cost. Savings depend on the workload, so lower cost is not guaranteed.

Question 31Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which statement describes a hybrid cloud deployment?

  1. It uses only serverless functions for every workload
  2. It combines cloud resources with infrastructure kept in the organization's own data center Correct answer.
  3. It requires all data to be stored in a single region
  4. It runs entirely on hardware owned by a single provider

Explanation

Hybrid cloud integrates at least one public or private cloud environment with on-premises systems, often to keep sensitive workloads local while using cloud for scale. It is defined by the combination of environments, not by a specific service type.

Question 32Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which element of a cloud provider's global footprint is best described as an isolated grouping of one or more data centers within a geographic area?

  1. Service quota
  2. Availability zone Correct answer.
  3. Edge location
  4. Account boundary

Explanation

An availability zone is an isolated set of data centers with independent power and networking inside a region. Regions contain multiple availability zones, and edge locations sit closer to end users.

Question 33Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which responsibility always remains with the customer under the cloud shared responsibility model, regardless of service type?

  1. Physical security of the provider's data centers
  2. Availability of the provider's global network backbone
  3. Classifying and protecting the data they place in the cloud Correct answer.
  4. Maintenance of the provider's hypervisor

Explanation

The provider secures the cloud infrastructure, while the customer remains accountable for what they put into it, including data classification, access control, and configuration. Physical facilities and the hypervisor stay with the provider.

Question 34Cloud Computing Fundamentals

A startup expects highly variable demand for a stateless image-resizing workload and wants to avoid managing servers. Which approach best fits?

  1. Host the handler on a database server already in use
  2. Deploy the resize handler as a managed function triggered by storage events Correct answer.
  3. Run the handler on a single large virtual machine
  4. Reserve a large pool of dedicated hosts for the workload

Explanation

Event-driven function platforms scale automatically with the number of events and require no server administration, which matches spiky stateless workloads. Fixed hosts and single VMs require manual capacity management.

Question 35Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which statement best explains why object storage is preferred over block storage for a media archive?

  1. Object storage can be mounted as a boot volume for virtual machines
  2. Object storage requires a relational schema for every object
  3. Object storage is always faster for random writes than block storage
  4. Object storage addresses each item by key over HTTP and scales to very large item counts Correct answer.

Explanation

Object storage exposes a flat key-based namespace reachable over HTTP and is designed for massive scale and durability, which suits large media archives. Block storage presents volumes to a single host and is suited to file systems and databases.

Question 36Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which mechanism allows a private network in the cloud to reach the internet without exposing internal instances to inbound connections?

  1. A DNS zone with wildcard records
  2. A public IP address attached to each instance
  3. An internet gateway attached directly to the private subnet
  4. A NAT gateway placed in a public subnet Correct answer.

Explanation

A NAT gateway performs outbound translation for instances in private subnets, so return traffic is allowed while unsolicited inbound connections are blocked. Attaching public addresses or routing the subnet directly to an internet gateway exposes instances.

Question 37Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which practice most improves the resilience of an application that stores session data on individual web servers?

  1. Enable sticky sessions on the load balancer
  2. Increase the size of each web server
  3. Move session state to a shared external store such as a managed cache Correct answer.
  4. Add more web servers behind the load balancer

Explanation

Externalizing session state removes dependence on any single instance, so requests can be served by any healthy server and lost instances no longer lose sessions. Sticky sessions and larger servers reduce symptoms without removing the coupling.

Question 38Cloud Computing Fundamentals

What is the main purpose of infrastructure as code in a cloud environment?

  1. To guarantee that costs will decrease after every deployment
  2. To define and recreate environments from versioned, reviewable templates Correct answer.
  3. To replace the cloud provider's APIs with manual console work
  4. To eliminate the need for any testing of infrastructure changes

Explanation

Infrastructure as code expresses desired state in files stored in version control, enabling repeatable, reviewable, and auditable provisioning. It improves consistency but does not remove the need for testing or guarantee cost outcomes.

Question 39Cloud Computing Fundamentals

A team wants to reduce the blast radius of a failure in a single data center. Which action best accomplishes this?

  1. Distribute instances across multiple availability zones behind a load balancer Correct answer.
  2. Increase the instance size in the single zone currently used
  3. Add more load balancers in front of the same zone
  4. Consolidate all instances into one availability zone for lower latency

Explanation

Spreading capacity across independent availability zones means the loss of one zone leaves capacity in the others. Consolidation and vertical scaling keep a single point of failure.

Question 40Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which statement correctly describes the relationship between regions and availability zones?

  1. A region is a single data center in one city
  2. A region contains multiple availability zones connected by low-latency links Correct answer.
  3. Availability zones span continents independently of regions
  4. An availability zone contains multiple regions

Explanation

Regions are geographic areas composed of multiple isolated availability zones with high-bandwidth links between them. This structure enables intra-region fault tolerance while keeping latency low.

Question 41Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which identity practice best limits the damage from a compromised application credential?

  1. Grant the application a narrowly scoped role that is assumed at runtime Correct answer.
  2. Embed a long-lived administrative key in the application source code
  3. Share one credential across all applications in the account
  4. Disable logging of credential use to reduce noise

Explanation

Scoped roles assumed at runtime limit permissions and let credentials be short-lived and rotated automatically. Embedded administrative keys and shared credentials widen the impact of any leak.

Question 42Cloud Computing Fundamentals

An architect needs to compare the durability of two managed storage services. What does durability describe?

  1. The probability that stored data remains intact and retrievable over time Correct answer.
  2. The percentage of a month during which the service is reachable
  3. The maximum number of requests a service can process per second
  4. The time required to restore data from a backup

Explanation

Durability concerns whether data survives without loss or corruption, often expressed as expected annual loss rates. Availability, throughput, and recovery time are separate measures.

Question 43Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which approach best reduces the cost of a workload whose usage is predictable and runs continuously for a year?

  1. Commit to a reserved capacity or savings plan for the baseline Correct answer.
  2. Overprovision capacity to absorb future growth
  3. Rely entirely on on-demand pricing for all capacity
  4. Move the workload to spot capacity without interruption tolerance

Explanation

Steady, predictable usage matches commitment-based discounts that trade a term commitment for a lower rate. On-demand pricing is flexible but more expensive for constant load, and spot capacity can be reclaimed.

Question 44Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Which control most directly limits the impact of a leaked database password?

  1. Enabling verbose query logging on the database
  2. Increasing the size of the database instance
  3. Encrypting the database backups with a provider-managed key
  4. Rotating credentials automatically and storing them in a managed secrets service Correct answer.

Explanation

Automatic rotation shortens the useful life of a leaked credential, and a managed secrets store keeps it out of code and configuration files. Encryption, logging, and sizing address different concerns.

Question 45Cloud Computing Fundamentals

A workload must satisfy a recovery time objective of two hours. What does this requirement constrain?

  1. The maximum acceptable elapsed time to restore service after a disruption Correct answer.
  2. The minimum number of replicas required in each region
  3. The maximum number of requests allowed during a failover
  4. The maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time

Explanation

Recovery time objective sets the target duration for returning a service to operation after failure. The tolerable data loss window is the recovery point objective, a separate metric.

Question 46Cloud Computing Fundamentals

A company wants a single sign-on experience for its workforce across many SaaS applications while keeping user lifecycle management central. Which capability addresses this?

  1. Federated identity with a central directory using a standard protocol Correct answer.
  2. A shared administrative password distributed to all staff
  3. Network-level IP allowlisting for each application
  4. Per-application local accounts managed by each team

Explanation

Federated identity lets a central identity provider authenticate users and assert their identity to applications via standards such as SAML or OpenID Connect, centralizing lifecycle management. Local accounts and shared passwords fragment control.

Question 47Cloud Computing Fundamentals

A team must prove to an auditor that changes to production infrastructure were approved before deployment. Which practice provides the strongest evidence?

  1. Allowing engineers to edit resources directly in the console
  2. Relying on provider-side change notifications alone
  3. Merging infrastructure changes through a version-controlled pipeline with required reviews Correct answer.
  4. Documenting changes in a shared spreadsheet after deployment

Explanation

Version-controlled pipelines with enforced review create an immutable record linking each change to its approval and deployment. Direct console edits and after-the-fact documentation lack that traceability.

Question 48Cloud Computing Fundamentals

An application writes to a queue and a pool of workers consumes messages. Which design change best prevents message loss when a worker crashes mid-processing?

  1. Use a visibility timeout so unacknowledged messages become available again Correct answer.
  2. Increase the message size limit for the queue
  3. Reduce the number of workers to lower contention
  4. Delete the message as soon as it is delivered to a worker

Explanation

With a visibility timeout, a message is hidden only while a worker processes it and reappears for redelivery if no acknowledgement arrives, so crashes do not lose work. Deleting on delivery removes that safety net.

Question 49Cloud Computing Fundamentals

A company needs to run containerized workloads with fine-grained control over the cluster's networking and scheduling while accepting operational overhead. Which service model fits?

  1. A managed relational database service
  2. A fully managed function platform
  3. A single-tenant virtual machine with a manual container runtime
  4. A managed Kubernetes service with customer-managed node pools Correct answer.

Explanation

A managed Kubernetes service provides cluster orchestration while leaving node pools, networking, and scheduling policies under customer control. Function platforms abstract orchestration entirely, and databases do not run arbitrary containers.

Question 50Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Two services must exchange events with at-least-once delivery, and consumers must tolerate duplicates. Which consumer design satisfies this requirement?

  1. Make processing idempotent by keying writes on a unique event identifier Correct answer.
  2. Order events by arrival time and drop any that repeat
  3. Buffer events in memory until the process restarts
  4. Assume each event is delivered exactly once

Explanation

At-least-once delivery permits duplicates, so consumers must make repeated processing harmless, typically by deduplicating on a stable event identifier. Assuming exactly-once delivery or dropping repeats by arrival time can lose or corrupt data.