CLF-C02: AWS Cloud Practitioner — Study Guide

Exam Overview#

Domain Weightings#

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Domain 1: Cloud Concepts (24%)#

Cloud advantages#

AWS lists 6 advantages of cloud computing:

1. Trade capital expense (CapEx) for variable expense (OpEx)
2. Benefit from massive economies of scale
3. Stop guessing capacity — scale up/down on demand
4. Increase speed and agility
5. Stop spending money running and maintaining data centres
6. Go global in minutes

Cloud deployment models#

• Public — AWS, shared infrastructure, pay-as-you-go
• Private (on-premises) — your own data centre
• Hybrid — mix of both, connected via VPN or Direct Connect

AWS Well-Architected Framework (6 Pillars)#

AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF)#

6 perspectives: Business, People, Governance, Platform, Security, Operations.

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Domain 2: Security and Compliance (30%)#

Shared Responsibility Model#

"Security OF the cloud" = AWS responsibility. "Security IN the cloud" = customer responsibility.

AWS IAM#

• Root account — created when you sign up; has full access; protect with MFA, never use for daily tasks.
• IAM User — an identity for a person or application; has long-term credentials.
• IAM Group — collection of users; attach policies to the group.
• IAM Role — assumed by services (EC2, Lambda) or federated identities; temporary credentials.
• IAM Policy — JSON document defining Allow/Deny actions on resources.

Least privilege — grant only what's needed. Deny by default.

Key security services#

Compliance#

• AWS holds hundreds of certifications (SOC 1/2/3, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, ISO 27001, FedRAMP).
• AWS Artifact — self-service portal to download compliance reports.
• AWS Trusted Advisor — checks for security best practice violations.

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Domain 3: Cloud Technology and Services (34%)#

AWS Global Infrastructure#

• Regions — independent geographical areas (30+ regions).
• Availability Zones (AZs) — 2–6 AZs per region; physically separate, low-latency connected.
• Edge Locations — CloudFront CDN endpoints for caching content (400+).
• Local Zones — AWS infrastructure close to large metro areas (low latency for specific cities).

Compute#

Storage#

Databases#

Networking#

Management & Monitoring#

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

AWS pricing models#

Free tier#

• Always free — Lambda (1M requests), DynamoDB (25 GB), CloudFront (1 TB)
• 12-month free — EC2 (750 hours t2.micro), S3 (5 GB), RDS (750 hours db.t2.micro)
• Trials — Inspector, GuardDuty, Secrets Manager (30-day trials)

Billing tools#

AWS Support Plans#

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Study Plan (2–3 Weeks)#

Week 1: Concepts + Security#

• AWS Skill Builder: CLF-C02 digital training (free)
• Focus: shared responsibility model, IAM, security services
• Flashcards: service → use case

Week 2: Services + Billing#

• Go through compute, storage, database, networking
• Create a free AWS account and explore the console
• Use the pricing calculator to estimate a simple architecture

Week 3: Practice exams#

• Take 3+ full practice exams (AWS official, Tutorials Dojo, Whizlabs)
• Every wrong answer: read the explanation, understand the why
• Re-take weak sections

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Key Resources#

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Common Exam Traps#

• Shared Responsibility — "who is responsible for patching the OS on EC2?" → Customer. On Lambda? → AWS.
• Spot vs Reserved — Spot = cheapest but interruptible. Reserved = commitment discount for steady workloads.
• CloudWatch vs CloudTrail — CloudWatch = performance monitoring. CloudTrail = API audit log (who did what).
• S3 durability — 11 nines (99.999999999%). Know this number.
• Support plan with TAM — only Enterprise plan includes a dedicated Technical Account Manager.