Study Guide

• Study Guide
  • Target candidate description
    • Recommended AWS knowledge
    • What is considered out of scope for the target candidate?
  • Exam content
    • Response types
    • Unscored content
  • Exam results
  • Domain 1: Cloud Concepts
    • Define the AWS Cloud and its value proposition
    • Identify aspects of AWS Cloud economics
    • Explain the different cloud architecture design principles
  • Domain 2: Security and Compliance
    • Define the AWS shared responsibility model
    • Define AWS Cloud security and compliance concepts
    • Identify AWS access management capabilities
    • Identify resources for security support
  • Domain 3: Technology
    • Define methods of deploying and operating in the AWS Cloud
    • Define the AWS global infrastructure
    • Identify the core AWS services
    • Identify resources for technology support
  • Domain 4: Billing and Pricing
    • Compare and contrast the various pricing models for AWS (for example, On-Demand Instances, Reserved Instances, and Spot Instance pricing)
    • Recognize the various account structures in relation to AWS billing and pricing
    • Identify resources available for billing support

The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C01) exam is intended for individuals who can effectively demonstrate an overall knowledge of the AWS Cloud independent of a specific job role. The exam validates a candidate’s ability to complete the following tasks:

• Explain the value of the AWS Cloud
• Understand and explain the AWS shared responsibility model
• Understand security best practices
• Understand AWS Cloud costs, economics, and billing practices
• Describe and position the core AWS services, including compute, network, databases, and storage
• Identify AWS services for common use cases

Target candidate description

The target candidate should have 6 months, or the equivalent, of active engagement with the AWS Cloud, with exposure to AWS Cloud design, implementation, and/or operations. Candidates will demonstrate an understanding of well-designed AWS Cloud solutions.

Recommended AWS knowledge

The target candidate should have the following knowledge:

• AWS Cloud concepts
• Security and compliance within the AWS Cloud
• Understanding of the core AWS services
• Understanding of the economics of the AWS Cloud

What is considered out of scope for the target candidate?

The following is a non-exhaustive list of related job tasks that the target candidate is not expected to be able to perform.These items are considered out of scope for the exam:

• Coding
• Designing cloud architecture
• Troubleshooting
• Implementation
• Migration
• Load and performance testing
• Business applications (for example, Amazon Alexa, Amazon Chime, Amazon WorkMail)

Exam content

Response types

There are two types of questions on the exam:

• Multiple choice: Has one correct response and three incorrect responses.
• Multiple response: Has two or more correct responses out of five or more response options.

Unanswered questions are scored as incorrect; there is no penalty for guessing. The exam includes 50 questions that will affect your score.

Unscored content

The exam includes 15 unscored questions that do not affect your score. AWS collects information about candidate performance on these unscored questions to evaluate these questions for future use as scored questions. These unscored questions are not identified on the exam.

Exam results

The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam is a pass or fail exam. The exam is scored against a minimum standard established by AWS professionals who follow certification industry best practices and guidelines.

Your results for the exam are reported as a scaled score of 100–1,000. The minimum passing score is 700. Your score shows how you performed on the exam as a whole and whether or not you passed. Scaled scoring models help equate scores across multiple exam forms that might have slightly different difficulty levels.

Your score report may contain a table of classifications of your performance at each section level. This information is intended to provide general feedback about your exam performance. The exam uses a compensatory scoring model, which means that you do not need to achieve a passing score in each section. You need to pass only the overall exam.

Each section of the exam has a specific weighting, so some sections have more questions than others. The table contains general information that highlights your strengths and weaknesses. Use caution when interpreting section-level feedback. Passing candidates will not receive this additional information.

Domain 1: Cloud Concepts

Define the AWS Cloud and its value proposition

• Define the benefits of the AWS cloud including:
  • Security Reliability
  • High Availability
  • Elasticity
  • Agility
  • Pay-as-you go pricing
  • Scalability
  • Global Reach
  • Economy of scale
• Explain how the AWS cloud allows users to focus on business value:
  • Shifting technical resources to revenue-generating activities as opposed to managing infrastructure

Identify aspects of AWS Cloud economics

• Define items that would be part of a Total Cost of Ownership proposal:
  • Understand the role of operational expenses (OpEx)
  • Understand the role of capital expenses (CapEx)
  • Understand labor costs associated with on-premises operations
  • Understand the impact of software licensing costs when moving to the cloud
• Identify which operations will reduce costs by moving to the cloud:
• Right-sized infrastructure
• Benefits of automation
• Reduce compliance scope (for example, reporting)
• Managed services (for example, RDS, ECS, EKS, DynamoDB)

Explain the different cloud architecture design principles

• Explain the design principles:
  • Design for failure
  • Decouple components versus monolithic architecture
  • Implement elasticity in the cloud versus on-premises
  • Think parallel

Domain 2: Security and Compliance

Define the AWS shared responsibility model

• Recognize the elements of the Shared Responsibility Model
• Describe the customer’s responsibly on AWS:
  • Describe how the customer’s responsibilities may shift depending on the service used (for example with RDS, Lambda, or EC2)
• Describe AWS responsibilities

Define AWS Cloud security and compliance concepts

• Identify where to find AWS compliance information:
  • Locations of lists of recognized available compliance controls (for example, HIPPA, SOCs)
  • Recognize that compliance requirements vary among AWS services
• At a high level, describe how customers achieve compliance on AWS:
  • Identify different encryption options on AWS (for example, In transit, At rest)
• Describe who enables encryption on AWS for a given service
• Recognize there are services that will aid in auditing and reporting:
  • Recognize that logs exist for auditing and monitoring (do not have to understand the logs)
  • Define Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Config, and AWS CloudTrail
• Explain the concept of least privileged access

Identify AWS access management capabilities

• Understand the purpose of User and Identity Management
  • Access keys and password policies (rotation, complexity)
  • Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
  • AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
    • Groups/users
    • Roles
    • Policies, managed policies compared to custom policies
  • Tasks that require use of root accounts
  • Protection of root accounts

Identify resources for security support

• Recognize there are different network security capabilities
  • Native AWS services (for example, security groups, Network ACLs, AWS WAF)
  • 3rd party security products from the AWS Marketplace
• Recognize there is documentation and where to find it (for example, best practices, whitepapers, official documents)
  • AWS Knowledge Center, Security Center, security forum, and security blogs
• Partner Systems Integrators
• Know that security checks are a component of AWS Trusted Advisor

Domain 3: Technology

Define methods of deploying and operating in the AWS Cloud

• Identify at a high level different ways of provisioning and operating in the AWS cloud:
  • Programmatic access, APIs, SDKs, AWS Management Console, CLI, Infrastructure as Code
• Identify different types of cloud deployment models:
  • All in with cloud/cloud native
  • Hybrid
  • On-premises
• Identify connectivity options
  • VPN
  • AWS Direct Connect
  • Public internet

Define the AWS global infrastructure

• Describe the relationships among Regions, Availability Zones, and Edge Locations
• Describe how to achieve high availability through the use of multiple Availability Zones:
  • Recall that high availability is achieved by using multiple Availability Zones
  • Recognize that Availability Zones do not share single points of failure
• Describe when to consider the use of multiple AWS Regions:
  • Disaster recovery/business continuity
  • Low latency for end-users
  • Data sovereignty
• Describe at a high level the benefits of Edge Locations
  • Amazon CloudFront
  • AWS Global Accelerator

Identify the core AWS services

• Describe the categories of services on AWS (compute, storage, network, database)
• Identify AWS compute services:
  • Recognize there are different compute families
  • Recognize the different services that provide compute (for example, AWS Lambda compared to Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), or Amazon EC2, etc.)
  • Recognize that elasticity is achieved through Auto Scaling
  • Identify the purpose of load balancers
• Identify different AWS storage services:
  • Describe Amazon S3
  • Describe Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)
  • Describe Amazon S3 Glacier
  • Describe AWS Snowball
  • Describe Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)
  • Describe AWS Storage Gateway
  • Identify AWS networking services
  • Identify VPC
  • Identify security groups
  • Identify the purpose of Amazon Route 53
  • Identify VPN, AWS Direct Connect
• Identify different AWS database services:
  • Install databases on Amazon EC2 compared to AWS managed databases
  • Identify Amazon RDS
  • Identify Amazon DynamoDB
  • Identify Amazon Redshift

Identify resources for technology support

• Recognize there is documentation (best practices, whitepapers, AWS Knowledge Center, forums, blogs)
• Identify the various levels and scope of AWS support:
  • AWS Abuse
  • AWS support cases
  • Premium support
  • Technical Account Managers
• Recognize there is a partner network (marketplace, third-party) including Independent Software Vendors and System Integrators
• Identify sources of AWS technical assistance and knowledge including professional services, solution architects, training and certification, and the Amazon Partner Network
• Identify the benefits of using AWS Trusted Advisor

Domain 4: Billing and Pricing

Compare and contrast the various pricing models for AWS (for example, On-Demand Instances, Reserved Instances, and Spot Instance pricing)

• Identify scenarios/best fit for On-Demand Instance pricing
• Identify scenarios/best fit for Reserved-Instance pricing:
  • Describe Reserved-Instances flexibility
  • Describe Reserved-Instances behavior in AWS Organizations
• Identify scenarios/best fit for Spot Instance pricing

Recognize the various account structures in relation to AWS billing and pricing

• Recognize that consolidated billing is a feature of AWS Organizations
• Identify how multiple accounts aid in allocating costs across departments

Identify resources available for billing support

• Identify ways to get billing support and information:
  • Cost Explorer, AWS Cost and Usage Report, Amazon QuickSight, third-party partners, and AWS Marketplace tools
  • Open a billing support case
  • The role of the Concierge for AWS Enterprise Support Plan customers
• Identify where to find pricing information on AWS services:
  • AWS Simple Monthly Calculator
  • AWS Services product pages
  • AWS Pricing API
• Recognize that alarms/alerts exist
• Identify how tags are used in cost allocation

AWS Official Guide Reference Link:

• AWS Official Website
• AWS Reference PDF