AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) Exam Learning Path

• AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) is a foundational-level certification that validates overall knowledge of the AWS Cloud, independent of a specific job role.
• AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam is ideal for starting your AWS certification journey and provides non-technical professionals foundational cloud literacy.
• AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam has 65 questions to be answered in 90 minutes.
• A scaled score of 700 out of 1000 is required to pass. Approximately 50 questions are scored, while 15 are unscored pretest questions.
• The exam can be taken at a Pearson VUE testing center or via online proctoring from any private space (home or office).
• The exam costs $100 USD and is available in multiple languages including English, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese.

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam validates the following:

• Define what the AWS Cloud is and the basic global infrastructure
• Describe the AWS Cloud value proposition and benefits of cloud migration
• Describe key services on the AWS platform and their common use cases (compute, storage, networking, databases, AI/ML)
• Describe basic security and compliance aspects of the AWS platform and the shared responsibility model
• Define the billing, account management, and pricing models
• Identify sources of documentation or technical assistance (e.g., white papers, support plans)
• Describe basic/core characteristics of deploying and operating in the AWS Cloud
• Identify cloud migration strategies and AWS migration services

Refer to the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) Exam Guide

CLF-C02 Exam Domain Breakdown

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam Resources

• AWS Official Cloud Practitioner Digital Training (Free)
• Online Courses
  • Stephane Maarek – Ultimate AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02
  • Whizlabs – AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02 Course
  • Coursera – AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials
  • Coursera – Exam Prep: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Foundations
  • KodeKloud – AWS Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02 Course
• Practice Tests
  • Stephane Maarek – AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02 Practice Exams
  • Whizlabs – AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Practice Tests
• Key topics include AWS services, Shared Responsibility Model, Well-Architected Framework, Security & Compliance, Billing & Cost Management, and Support Plans.
• Make sure you go through the whitepapers, which cover all the topics required for the exam.

AWS Cloud Computing Whitepapers

• Overview of Amazon Web Services
• Architecting for the Cloud: AWS Best Practices
• How AWS Pricing Works
• AWS Well-Architected Framework
• Compare AWS Support Plans

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) Exam Contents

Domain 1: Cloud Concepts (24%)

• 1.1 Define the benefits of the AWS Cloud
  • Agility – Speed, Experimentation, Innovation
  • Elasticity – Scale on demand, Eliminate wasted capacity
  • High Availability – Spread across multiple Availability Zones
  • Flexibility – Broad set of products, Low to no cost to entry
  • Security – Compliance certifications, Shared responsibility model
  • Global Reach – Deploy globally in minutes using Regions and Edge Locations
• 1.2 Identify design principles of the AWS Cloud
  • Advantages of Cloud Computing
    • Trade upfront expense for variable expense
    • Benefit from massive economies of scale
    • Stop guessing about capacity
    • Increase speed and agility
    • Stop spending money running and maintaining data centers
    • Go global in minutes
  • AWS Well-Architected Framework (6 Pillars)
    • Operational Excellence – Run and monitor systems to deliver business value
    • Security – Protect information, systems, and assets
    • Reliability – Recover from failures and meet demand
    • Performance Efficiency – Use resources efficiently
    • Cost Optimization – Avoid unnecessary costs
    • Sustainability – Minimize environmental impact of cloud workloads (added 2021)
• 1.3 Understand the benefits of and strategies for migration to the AWS Cloud
  • Cloud adoption strategies (AWS Cloud Adoption Framework – CAF)
  • Migration strategies: the 7 Rs (Rehost, Replatform, Repurchase, Refactor, Retire, Retain, Relocate)
  • AWS Cloud Architecting – Best Practices
• 1.4 Understand concepts of cloud economics
  • Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) – Compare on-premises vs. cloud costs
  • Fixed costs vs. variable costs
  • Right-sizing and resource optimization
  • Managed services reduce operational overhead

Domain 2: Security and Compliance (30%)

• 2.1 Define the AWS Shared Responsibility Model
  • AWS responsibility: Security OF the cloud (hardware, software, networking, facilities)
  • Customer responsibility: Security IN the cloud (data, identity, applications, OS, network config)
  • Shared controls: Patch management, configuration management, awareness & training
• 2.2 Define AWS Cloud security and compliance concepts
  • AWS compliance programs (SOC, PCI DSS, HIPAA, FedRAMP)
  • Data protection and encryption (at rest and in transit)
  • AWS Artifact – on-demand access to AWS compliance reports
• 2.3 Identify AWS access management capabilities
  • IAM – Users, Groups, Roles, Policies
  • Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
  • IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO) – centralized access management
  • Root user vs. IAM user best practices
• 2.4 Identify components and resources for security
  • CloudTrail – API call auditing and logging
  • AWS GuardDuty – intelligent threat detection
  • AWS Inspector – automated vulnerability assessment
  • AWS Security Hub – centralized security findings
  • AWS Shield – DDoS protection
  • WAF – Web Application Firewall
  • AWS KMS – Key Management Service for encryption
  • AWS Macie – sensitive data discovery using ML

Domain 3: Cloud Technology and Services (34%)

• 3.1 Define methods of deploying and operating in the AWS Cloud
  • Deployment models: Cloud, Hybrid, On-premises (private cloud)
  • Connectivity options: VPN, Direct Connect, Public internet
  • AWS Management Console, CLI, SDKs, Infrastructure as Code
• 3.2 Define the AWS global infrastructure
  • Regions, Availability Zones, Edge Locations, Local Zones, Wavelength Zones
  • Factors for choosing a Region (compliance, latency, service availability, cost)
• 3.3 Identify AWS compute services
  • EC2 – Virtual servers, instance types, pricing models
  • Lambda – Serverless compute, event-driven
  • ECS & EKS – Container orchestration
  • AWS Fargate – Serverless containers
  • Elastic Beanstalk – Platform as a Service (PaaS)
  • AWS Lightsail – Simple virtual private servers
  • Auto Scaling – Scale based on demand
• 3.4 Identify AWS storage services
  • S3 – Object storage, storage classes (Standard, IA, Glacier, Glacier Deep Archive)
  • EBS – Block storage for EC2
  • EFS – Shared file storage (NFS)
  • FSx – Managed file systems (Windows, Lustre, NetApp, OpenZFS)
  • AWS Storage Gateway – Hybrid cloud storage
  • S3 Glacier – Archival long-term storage
• 3.5 Identify AWS networking services
  • VPC – Virtual private network, subnets, security groups, NACLs
  • CloudFront – Content delivery network (CDN)
  • Route 53 – DNS and domain registration, routing policies
  • ELB – Distribute traffic (ALB, NLB, GLB)
  • VPN & Direct Connect – On-premises connectivity
  • AWS Global Accelerator – Improve application availability and performance
  • AWS Transit Gateway – Connect VPCs and on-premises networks
• 3.6 Identify AWS database services
  • RDS – Managed relational databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server)
  • Aurora – High-performance MySQL/PostgreSQL compatible
  • DynamoDB – Managed NoSQL (key-value and document)
  • ElastiCache – In-memory caching (Redis, Memcached)
  • Amazon Redshift – Data warehouse
  • Amazon DocumentDB – MongoDB compatible
  • Amazon Neptune – Graph database
• 3.7 Identify AWS AI/ML and analytics services
  • Amazon SageMaker – Build, train, and deploy ML models
  • Amazon Rekognition – Image and video analysis
  • Amazon Comprehend – Natural language processing
  • Amazon Lex – Conversational AI (chatbots)
  • Amazon Polly – Text-to-speech
  • Amazon Transcribe – Speech-to-text
  • Amazon Translate – Language translation
  • Amazon Bedrock – Generative AI with foundation models
  • Amazon Q – AI assistant for business and development
  • Amazon Athena – Serverless query service for S3
  • Amazon QuickSight – Business intelligence and dashboards
• 3.8 Identify AWS management and governance services
  • CloudWatch – Monitoring and observability
  • CloudFormation – Infrastructure as Code
  • CloudTrail – API activity auditing
  • AWS Config – Resource configuration tracking
  • Trusted Advisor – Best practice recommendations
  • AWS Health Dashboard (formerly Personal Health Dashboard) – Service and account health
  • Systems Manager – Operational management at scale
  • AWS Organizations – Multi-account management
• 3.9 Identify AWS migration and transfer services
  • AWS Migration Hub – Track migrations
  • AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) – Database migration
  • AWS Snow Family (Snowcone, Snowball, Snowmobile) – Offline data transfer
  • AWS DataSync – Online data transfer
  • AWS Application Migration Service – Lift-and-shift migrations
• 3.10 Identify messaging and integration services
  • SQS – Message queuing
  • SNS – Pub/sub notifications
  • Amazon EventBridge – Serverless event bus
  • AWS Step Functions – Workflow orchestration

Domain 4: Billing, Pricing, and Support (12%)

• 4.1 Compare and contrast the various pricing models for AWS
  • includes AWS Pricing
    • Know EC2 pricing models: On-Demand, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, Spot, Dedicated
    • Know Lambda pricing: based on number of requests and duration
    • Know S3 pricing: storage class, requests, data transfer
    • Understand Savings Plans (Compute and EC2 Instance) as flexible alternative to Reserved Instances
• 4.2 Understand resources for billing, budget, and cost management
  • includes Billing and Cost Management
  • AWS Pricing Calculator – Estimate costs for AWS services and architectures
  • AWS Cost Explorer – Visualize, understand, and forecast spending
  • AWS Budgets – Set custom cost and usage budgets with alerts
  • AWS Cost and Usage Report – Most detailed billing data
  • AWS Free Tier – Explore services at no cost (Always Free, 12 Months Free, Trials)
• 4.3 Identify AWS support resources
  • includes AWS Support Plans

Current AWS Support Plans (for CLF-C02 exam)

• Basic (Free) – Account and billing support, AWS Health Dashboard, limited Trusted Advisor checks
• Developer – Email support during business hours, 1 primary contact
• Business – 24/7 phone/chat/email, full Trusted Advisor, AWS Support API, unlimited contacts
• Enterprise On-Ramp – Pool of TAMs, concierge support, 30-minute critical response SLA
• Enterprise – Dedicated TAM, Well-Architected Reviews, Concierge, <15 minute critical response SLA

Key exam points:

• Business and above provide: 24/7 access to Cloud Support Engineers via phone/chat/email, Full Trusted Advisor checks
• Enterprise only provides: Dedicated TAM, Well-Architected Reviews, Support Concierge, <15 min SLA