AWS Certified Cloud PractitionerStudy guide
The foundational certification for AWS cloud fundamentals (CLF-C02).
About AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02)
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) is a Fundamentals-level certification from AWS. This page organizes the exam scope into a 6-chapter, 14-section study guide and lets you check your understanding with exam-style practice questions. A good flow is to read the chapters below in order, then test yourself via "Practice questions."
Exam domains (approximate weighting)
- Cloud concepts~24%
- Security and compliance~30%
- Cloud technology and services~34%
- Billing, pricing, and support~12%
Weights are approximate guidance for the live exam. Each domain is covered in detail in the chapters and sections below.
Official exam information: https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-cloud-practitioner/
1Cloud Concepts and the Value of AWS
- 1.1Cloud Computing and the Value of AWS
Understand what cloud computing is, the value AWS provides, and AWS’s six advantages of cloud computing. The starting point for CLF-C02.
- 1.2Cloud Economics (CapEx and OpEx)
Understand the economics of the cloud: shifting from CapEx to OpEx, economies of scale, no capacity guessing, and lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
- 1.3The AWS Well-Architected Framework
Understand the AWS Well-Architected Framework—guidance for building well on the cloud—and its six pillars.
2AWS Global Infrastructure
- 2.1Regions, Availability Zones, and Edge Locations
Understand AWS’s geography—Regions, Availability Zones (AZs), and edge locations—and how to choose a Region for your resources.
- 2.2Designing for High Availability and Fault Tolerance
Understand the basics of avoiding single points of failure and achieving high availability and fault tolerance via multi-AZ deployment, load balancing, and Auto Scaling.
3Core Services: Compute and Storage
- 3.1Compute Services
Understand AWS compute—Amazon EC2, containers (ECS/EKS/Fargate), and AWS Lambda—the control-vs-convenience trade-off, plus Auto Scaling and load balancing.
- 3.2Storage Services
Understand AWS storage—object (Amazon S3), block (Amazon EBS), and file (Amazon EFS)—and S3 storage classes.
4Core Services: Networking, Databases, and More
- 4.1Networking Services
Understand AWS networking basics: the VPC and subnets, security groups, Route 53 (DNS), and CloudFront (content delivery).
- 4.2Database Services
Understand AWS managed databases—relational Amazon RDS (including Aurora) and NoSQL key-value Amazon DynamoDB—and when to use each.
- 4.3AI/ML and Analytics Services (Overview)
CLF-C02 Domain 3 "Cloud Technology and Services" also expects you to recognize AWS AI/machine-learning and analytics services by "name and purpose," alongside compute/storage/networking/DB. Learn the main ones at an awareness level.
5Security and the Shared Responsibility Model
- 5.1The Shared Responsibility Model and IAM
Understand the AWS shared responsibility model (AWS secures "of the cloud," you secure "in the cloud") and IAM users, groups, roles, policies, least privilege, and protecting the root user.
- 5.2Security and Compliance Services
Organize key AWS security services by purpose (detect/audit, protect, protect data, identity) and understand AWS Artifact for compliance information.
6Billing, Pricing, and Support
- 6.1Pricing Models, Billing, and Cost Management
Understand AWS pricing models (On-Demand, Savings Plans/Reserved, Spot), the Free Tier, and cost-management tools (Pricing Calculator, Cost Explorer, Budgets, Organizations consolidated billing).
- 6.2Support and Resources
Understand AWS Support plans (Basic / Developer / Business / Enterprise) and helpful tools/resources like Trusted Advisor, the AWS Health Dashboard, documentation, and AWS Marketplace.