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CLF-008
By using the AWS Cloud, which of the following is the easiest to reduce compared with an on-premises environment?
Choices
Explanation and answer
Read the explanation and correct answer (spoiler — try answering first)
Correct answer: D. Purchase, installation, and maintenance of physical servers
Explanation
By using AWS, you can offload the purchase, installation, and maintenance of physical servers and data center equipment to AWS.
Per-choice explanations
A. Responsibility for application design
Incorrect. Application design is the user's responsibility.
B. Responsibility for user account management
Incorrect. Managing users and permissions is the user's responsibility.
C. Responsibility for data classification
Incorrect. The classification and handling of data are decided by the user.
D. Purchase, installation, and maintenance of physical servers
Correct. You can reduce the management burden of physical infrastructure.
Practical Use
What can be significantly reduced by using the AWS Cloud compared with on-premises environments is the work that does not directly contribute to application differentiation, such as the purchase of physical servers, capital investment in data centers, hardware maintenance, and procurement of network equipment. AWS calls this area undifferentiated heavy lifting, and users can leave this to AWS and redirect their time to application design, data modeling, and user experience design, where they should really focus. Operations such as launching an EC2 instance, storing in S3, or building an RDS instance all complete within minutes without going through the procurement process for physical equipment. On the other hand, the scope that you can leave to AWS extends only to the cloud itself, while responsibilities for what is in the cloud remain with the user. Specifically, even though AWS provides the infrastructure, you still need to make decisions and operate the application's design and implementation, data classification and selection of encryption methods, management of IAM users and permissions, OS patching (in the case of EC2), and network settings (security groups, VPC). These are organized as the Shared Responsibility Model and serve as the criteria for distinguishing between what can be reduced and what cannot. On CLF-C02, the question of what can be reduced by moving to the cloud is asked in connection with the Shared Responsibility Model. The correct answer is infrastructure-side work, such as the purchase, installation, and maintenance of physical servers. Typical distractors include items that remain as the user's responsibility, such as responsibility for application design, user account management, or data classification. Keywords such as the shift from CapEx (capital expenditure) to OpEx (operating expenditure), reduction of upfront investment, and shorter time to market are also tested repeatedly in the same context.