AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam Objectives
The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification exam, exam code CLF-C02, validates broad knowledge of the AWS Cloud for people at the start of their cloud journey. It confirms that you can explain the value of AWS, understand the shared responsibility model, follow security best practices, navigate billing and pricing, and recognize appropriate AWS services for common use cases. The target audience for this AWS Certification exam typically has up to six months of exposure to AWS concepts, design, implementation, or operations.
Exam basics
The exam includes multiple choice and multiple response questions. Your result appears as a scaled score between 100 and 1000 and the minimum passing score is 700, which is lower than the 720 on the AWS Professional exams and the 750 needed on the AWS Specialty exams. The scoring model is compensatory, which means you pass based on your overall performance rather than on each section individually. In addition to scored questions the exam may include unscored items that AWS uses to evaluate future content.
Content domains and weights
The CLF-C02 exam is organized into four domains. If you want to pass the exam, you need to get comfortable with all of the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam topics, especially cloud concepts. Cloud Concepts accounts for 24 percent. AWS Security and Compliance accounts for 30 percent. Cloud Technology and Services accounts for 34 percent. Billing, Pricing, and Support accounts for 12 percent. You may even see a few references to AWS AI and ML technologies, although not nearly as much as you would see on the AWS AI Practitioner exam.
Domain 1: Cloud Concepts
Benefits of the AWS Cloud
You should understand the value proposition of AWS and how the global infrastructure supports speed of deployment, global reach, high availability, elasticity, agility, and sustainability outcomes.
Well-Architected Design Principles
You should recognize the pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. These pillars are operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability. You should be able to tell how the pillars differ and why each matters.
Migration Strategies and Adoption
You should know cloud adoption strategies and resources that guide migration. You should understand the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework and how it supports reduced business risk, better ESG performance, increased revenue, and higher operational efficiency. You should be able to identify basic migration patterns such as database replication and transfer options like AWS Snowball.
Cloud Economics
You should understand fixed costs compared with variable costs, costs present in on premises environments, rightsizing practices, automation benefits, licensing approaches such as bring your own license compared with included licenses, and economies of scale that drive savings.
Domain 2 Security and Compliance
Shared Responsibility Model
You should recognize what AWS secures and what the customer secures. You should know where responsibilities can shift based on the service model, such as Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, or AWS Lambda.
Security, Governance, and Compliance Concepts
You should know the benefits of cloud security and the basics of encryption in transit and at rest. You should know where to find compliance information such as AWS Artifact and how to address geographic or industry requirements. You should be familiar with services that support governance and auditing such as Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, AWS Audit Manager, and AWS Config, as well as reporting tools like access reports.
Access Management
You should understand IAM users, groups, roles, and policies following least privilege. You should know root user protections and tasks reserved for the root user. You should understand authentication methods such as multi factor authentication, IAM Identity Center, cross account roles, and safe credential storage using services like AWS Secrets Manager and AWS Systems Manager.
Security Tooling and Resources
You should be able to describe services that protect workloads such as AWS WAF, AWS Shield, AWS Firewall Manager, Amazon GuardDuty, and Amazon Inspector. You should know that third party options are available through AWS Marketplace and where to find security information such as the AWS Security Blog, the AWS Knowledge Center, and the AWS Security Center. You should recognize how AWS Trusted Advisor helps identify issues and opportunities.
Domain 3 Cloud Technology and Services
Deploying and Operating on AWS
You should know the common ways to access and manage AWS such as the Management Console, APIs, SDKs, the CLI, and infrastructure as code. You should evaluate when to run one time operations and when to create repeatable processes. You should recognize deployment models such as cloud, hybrid, and on premises.
AWS Global Infrastructure
You should understand Regions, Availability Zones, and edge locations and how they relate. You should know how multiple Availability Zones support high availability and that they do not share single points of failure. You should know when to use multiple Regions for disaster recovery, business continuity, data residency, or lower latency.
Compute Services
You should recognize when to use different EC2 instance families, how auto scaling supports elasticity, and the basic purposes of load balancers. You should know container options such as Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS and serverless options such as AWS Fargate and AWS Lambda.
Database Services
You should know when to choose managed databases over self managed EC2 hosted databases. You should identify relational options such as Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora, NoSQL options such as Amazon DynamoDB, in memory options such as Amazon ElastiCache, and migration tools such as AWS Database Migration Service and AWS Schema Conversion Tool.
Network Services
You should understand Amazon VPC components such as subnets and gateways and security controls such as security groups and network ACLs. You should know the purpose of Amazon Route 53 and connectivity choices like AWS VPN and AWS Direct Connect.
Storage Services
You should identify use cases for Amazon S3 and its storage classes. You should recognize block storage options such as Amazon EBS and instance store and file storage options such as Amazon EFS and Amazon FSx. You should understand where cached file systems fit using AWS Storage Gateway and how lifecycle policies and AWS Backup support data management.
AI and ML plus Analytics
You should understand the basic tasks that AI and ML services perform using services like Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Lex, and Amazon Kendra. You should recognize data analytics services such as Amazon Athena, Amazon Kinesis, AWS Glue, and Amazon QuickSight.
Other In Scope Service Categories
You should be able to choose application integration services such as Amazon EventBridge, Amazon SNS, and Amazon SQS. You should know business application services such as Amazon Connect and Amazon SES. You should recognize customer enablement through AWS Support, developer tools such as AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodePipeline, and AWS X Ray, end user computing options like Amazon WorkSpaces, Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser, and Amazon AppStream 2.0, frontend and mobile services such as AWS Amplify and AWS AppSync, and IoT services such as AWS IoT Core.
Domain 4 Billing, Pricing, and Support
Pricing Models
You should identify when to use On Demand Instances, Reserved Instances, Spot Instances, Savings Plans, Dedicated Hosts or Instances, and Capacity Reservations. You should understand how Reserved Instances behave in AWS Organizations and how data transfer charges can vary within or across Regions. You should recognize pricing options for storage services and tiers.
Cost and Budget Resources
You should understand the capabilities of AWS Budgets and AWS Cost Explorer and when to use the AWS Pricing Calculator. You should know how AWS Organizations supports consolidated billing and how to use cost allocation tags and the AWS Cost and Usage Report.
Support and Technical Resources
You should be able to locate AWS whitepapers, documentation, blogs, and guidance resources such as AWS Prescriptive Guidance, the AWS Knowledge Center, and AWS re Post. You should know the AWS Support plan options and the roles of the AWS Support Center, Trusted Advisor, the AWS Health Dashboard and API, and the AWS Trust and Safety team. You should recognize how AWS Partners and AWS Marketplace can help and the benefits of being a partner.
Out of Scope Tasks
The exam does not expect you to code, design full cloud architectures, troubleshoot complex issues, implement full solutions, or perform load and performance testing. You do not need to know how to integrate with other clouds, like the Google Cloud Platform. The assessment focuses on understanding concepts and recognizing appropriate services and practices.
How to Prepare
Begin by studying the official certification exam topics until you have a clear picture of what is covered. Find a reliable set of practice exams so you can better understand how questions are framed and which topics matter most.
Use generative AI and ChatGPT as your personal trainer by asking for tutorials that teach the tasks and ideas listed in the objectives and request walkthroughs that build your skills step by step. Return to the mock exams for another round of review and tighten up any gaps before you sit the real exam.
Cameron McKenzie is an AWS Certified AI Practitioner, Machine Learning Engineer, Solutions Architect and author of many popular books in the software development and Cloud Computing space. His growing YouTube channel training devs in Java, Spring, AI and ML has well over 30,000 subscribers.
Next Steps
The AWS Solutions Architect Book of Exam Questions by Cameron McKenzie
So what’s next?
A great way to secure your employment or even open the door to new opportunities is to get certified. If you’re interested in AWS products, here are a few great resources to help you get Cloud Practitioner, Solution Architect, Machine Learning and DevOps certified from AWS:
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Certification
- AWS Certified Developer Associate Certification
- AWS Certified AI Practitioner Certification & Answers
- AWS Certified Machine Learning Associate Certification
- AWS Certified DevOps Professional Certification
- AWS Certified Data Engineer Associate Certification
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Certification
Put your career on overdrive and get AWS certified today!