AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) Exam Guide

Introduction

The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) exam is intended for individuals who can effectively demonstrate 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, database, and storage services.
Identify AWS services for common use cases.

Target Candidate Description

The target candidate has up to 6 months of exposure to AWS Cloud design, implementation, and/or operations. This certification is ideal for candidates who are from non-IT backgrounds. These candidates might be in the early stages of pursuing an AWS Cloud career or might work with people in AWS Cloud roles.

Recommended AWS Knowledge

The target candidate should have AWS knowledge in the following areas:

AWS Cloud concepts
Security and compliance in the AWS Cloud
Core AWS services
Economics of the AWS Cloud

Job Tasks That Are Out of Scope for the Target Candidate

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

Coding
Cloud architecture design
Troubleshooting
Implementation
Load and performance testing

Refer to Appendix A for a list of technologies and concepts that might appear on the exam, a list of in-scope AWS services and features, and a list of out-of-scope AWS services and features.

Exam Content

Response Types

There are two types of questions on the exam:

Multiple choice: Has one correct response and three incorrect responses (distractors)
Multiple response: Has two or more correct responses out of five or more response options

Select one or more responses that best complete the statement or answer the question. Distractors, or incorrect answers, are response options that a candidate with incomplete knowledge or skill might choose. Distractors are generally plausible responses that match the content area.

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

Unscored Content

The exam includes 15 unscored questions that do not affect your score. AWS collects information about 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 (CLF-C02) exam has a pass or fail designation. 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 you passed. Scaled scoring models help equate scores across multiple exam forms that might have slightly different difficulty levels.

Your score report could contain a table of classifications of your performance at each section level. 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 other sections have. The table of classifications contains general information that highlights your strengths and weaknesses. Use caution when you interpret section-level feedback.

Content Outline

This CLF-C02 exam guide includes weightings, content domains, and task statements for the exam. Refer to Appendix B for a comparison of the previous version (CLF-C01) and current version (CLF-C02) of the exam.

This guide does not provide a comprehensive list of the content on the exam. However, additional context for each task statement is available to help you prepare for the exam.

The exam has the following content domains and weightings:

Domain 1: Cloud Concepts (24% of scored content)
Domain 2: Security and Compliance (30% of scored content)
Domain 3: Cloud Technology and Services (34% of scored content)
Domain 4: Billing, Pricing, and Support (12% of scored content)

Domain 1: Cloud Concepts

Task Statement 1.1: Define the benefits of the AWS Cloud.

Knowledge of:

Value proposition of the AWS Cloud

Skills in:

Understanding the economies of scale (for example, cost savings)
Understanding the benefits of global infrastructure (for example, speed of deployment, global reach)
Understanding the advantages of high availability, elasticity, and agility

Task Statement 1.2: Identify design principles of the AWS Cloud.

Knowledge of:

AWS Well-Architected Framework

Skills in:

Understanding the pillars of the Well-Architected Framework (for example, operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, sustainability)
Identifying differences between the pillars of the Well-Architected Framework

Task Statement 1.3: Understand the benefits of and strategies for migration to the AWS Cloud.

Knowledge of:

Cloud adoption strategies
Resources to support the cloud migration journey

Skills in:

Understanding the benefits of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) (for example, reduced business risk; improved environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance; increased revenue; increased operational efficiency)
Identifying appropriate migration strategies (for example, database replication, use of AWS Snowball)

Task Statement 1.4: Understand concepts of cloud economics.

Knowledge of:

Aspects of cloud economics
Cost savings of moving to the cloud

Skills in:

Understanding the role of fixed costs compared with variable costs
Understanding costs that are associated with on-premises environments
Understanding the differences between licensing strategies (for example, Bring Your Own License [BYOL] model compared with included licenses)
Understanding the concept of rightsizing
Identifying benefits of automation (for example, provisioning and configuration management with AWS CloudFormation)
Identifying managed AWS services (for example, Amazon RDS, Amazon Elastic Container Service [Amazon ECS], Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service [Amazon EKS], Amazon DynamoDB)

📝 Practice These Concepts

📝 Practice These Concepts:

Domain 1: Cloud Concepts - Test 1 (25 questions)
Domain 1: Cloud Concepts - Test 2 (25 questions)

Domain 2: Security and Compliance

Task Statement 2.1: Understand the AWS shared responsibility model.

Knowledge of:

AWS shared responsibility model

Skills in:

Recognizing the components of the AWS shared responsibility model
Describing the customer's responsibilities on AWS
Describing AWS responsibilities
Describing responsibilities that the customer and AWS share
Describing how AWS responsibilities and customer responsibilities can shift, depending on the service used (for example, Amazon RDS, AWS Lambda, Amazon EC2)

Task Statement 2.2: Understand AWS Cloud security, governance, and compliance concepts.

Knowledge of:

AWS compliance and governance concepts
Benefits of cloud security (for example, encryption)
Where to capture and locate logs that are associated with cloud security

Skills in:

Identifying where to find AWS compliance information (for example, AWS Artifact)
Understanding compliance needs among geographic locations or industries (for example, AWS Compliance)
Describing how customers secure resources on AWS (for example, Amazon Inspector, AWS Security Hub, Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Shield)
Identifying different encryption options (for example, encryption in transit, encryption at rest)
Recognizing services that aid in governance and compliance (for example, monitoring with Amazon CloudWatch; auditing with AWS CloudTrail, AWS Audit Manager, and AWS Config; reporting with access reports)
Recognizing compliance requirements that vary among AWS services

Task Statement 2.3: Identify AWS access management capabilities.

Knowledge of:

Identity and access management (for example, AWS Identity and Access Management [IAM])
Importance of protecting the AWS root user account
Principle of least privilege
AWS IAM Identity Center (AWS Single Sign-On)

Skills in:

Understanding access keys, password policies, and credential storage (for example, AWS Secrets Manager, AWS Systems Manager)
Identifying authentication methods in AWS (for example, multi-factor authentication [MFA], IAM Identity Center, cross-account IAM roles)
Defining groups, users, custom policies, and managed policies in compliance with the principle of least privilege
Identifying tasks that only the account root user can perform
Understanding which methods can achieve root user protection
Understanding the types of identity management (for example, federated)

Task Statement 2.4: Identify components and resources for security.

Knowledge of:

Security capabilities that AWS provides
Security-related documentation that AWS provides

Skills in:

Describing AWS security features and services (for example, security groups, network ACLs, AWS WAF)
Understanding that third-party security products are available from AWS Marketplace
Identifying where AWS security information is available (for example, AWS Knowledge Center, AWS Security Center, AWS Security Blog)
Understanding the use of AWS services for identifying security issues (for example, AWS Trusted Advisor)

📝 Practice These Concepts

📝 Practice These Concepts:

Domain 2: Security & Compliance - Test 1 (25 questions)
Domain 2: Security & Compliance - Test 2 (25 questions)

Domain 3: Cloud Technology and Services

Task Statement 3.1: Define methods of deploying and operating in the AWS Cloud.

Knowledge of:

Different ways of provisioning and operating in the AWS Cloud
Different ways to access AWS services
Types of cloud deployment models
Connectivity options

Skills in:

Deciding between options such as programmatic access (for example, APIs, SDKs, CLI), the AWS Management Console, and infrastructure as code (IaC)
Evaluating requirements to determine whether to use one-time operations or repeatable processes
Identifying different deployment models (for example, cloud, hybrid, on-premises)
Identifying connectivity options (for example, AWS VPN, AWS Direct Connect, public internet)

Task Statement 3.2: Define the AWS global infrastructure.

Knowledge of:

AWS Regions, Availability Zones, and edge locations
High availability
Use of multiple Regions
Benefits of edge locations
AWS Wavelength Zones and AWS Local Zones

Skills in:

Describing relationships among Regions, Availability Zones, and edge locations
Describing how to achieve high availability by using multiple Availability Zones
Recognizing that Availability Zones do not share single points of failure
Describing when to use multiple Regions (for example, disaster recovery, business continuity, low latency for end users, data sovereignty)
Describing at a high level the benefits of edge locations (for example, Amazon CloudFront, AWS Global Accelerator)

Task Statement 3.3: Identify AWS compute services.

Knowledge of:

AWS compute services

Skills in:

Recognizing the appropriate use of different EC2 instance types (for example, compute optimized, storage optimized)
Recognizing the appropriate use of different container options (for example, Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS)
Recognizing the appropriate use of different serverless compute options (for example, AWS Fargate, Lambda)
Recognizing that auto scaling provides elasticity
Identifying the purposes of load balancers

Task Statement 3.4: Identify AWS database services.

Knowledge of:

AWS database services
Database migration

Skills in:

Deciding when to use EC2 hosted databases or AWS managed databases
Identifying relational databases (for example, Amazon RDS, Amazon Aurora)
Identifying NoSQL databases (for example, DynamoDB)
Identifying memory-based databases
Identifying database migration tools (for example AWS Database Migration Service [AWS DMS], AWS Schema Conversion Tool [AWS SCT])

Task Statement 3.5: Identify AWS network services.

Knowledge of:

AWS network services

Skills in:

Identifying the components of a VPC (for example, subnets, gateways)
Understanding security in a VPC (for example, network ACLs, security groups)
Understanding the purpose of Amazon Route 53
Identifying edge services (for example, CloudFront, Global Accelerator)
Identifying network connectivity options to AWS (for example AWS VPN, Direct Connect)

Task Statement 3.6: Identify AWS storage services.

Knowledge of:

AWS storage services

Skills in:

Identifying the uses for object storage
Recognizing the differences in Amazon S3 storage classes
Identifying block storage solutions (for example, Amazon Elastic Block Store [Amazon EBS], instance store)
Identifying file services (for example, Amazon Elastic File System [Amazon EFS], Amazon FSx)
Identifying cached file systems (for example, AWS Storage Gateway)
Understanding use cases for lifecycle policies
Understanding use cases for AWS Backup

Task Statement 3.7: Identify AWS artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) services and analytics services.

Knowledge of:

AWS AI/ML services
AWS analytics services

Skills in:

Understanding the different AI/ML services and the tasks that they accomplish (for example, Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Lex, Amazon Kendra)
Identifying the services for data analytics (for example, Amazon Athena, Amazon Kinesis, AWS Glue, Amazon QuickSight)

Task Statement 3.8: Identify services from other in-scope AWS service categories.

Knowledge of:

Application integration services of Amazon EventBridge, Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)
Business application services of Amazon Connect and Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES)
Customer engagement services of AWS Activate for Startups, AWS IQ, AWS Managed Services (AMS), and AWS Support
Developer tool services and capabilities of AWS AppConfig, AWS Cloud9, AWS CloudShell, AWS CodeArtifact, AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodeDeploy, AWS CodePipeline, AWS CodeStar, and AWS X-Ray
End-user computing services of Amazon AppStream 2.0, Amazon WorkSpaces, and Amazon WorkSpaces Web
Frontend web and mobile services of AWS Amplify and AWS AppSync
IoT services of AWS IoT Core and AWS IoT Greengrass

Skills in:

Choosing the appropriate service to deliver messages and to send alerts and notifications
Choosing the appropriate service to meet business application needs
Choosing the appropriate service for AWS customer support
Choosing the appropriate option for business support assistance
Identifying the tools to develop, deploy, and troubleshoot applications
Identifying the services that can present the output of virtual machines (VMs) on end-user machines
Identifying the services that can create and deploy frontend and mobile services
Identifying the services that manage IoT devices

📝 Practice These Concepts

📝 Practice These Concepts:

Domain 3: Technology & Services - Test 1 (25 questions)
Domain 3: Technology & Services - Test 2 (25 questions)

Domain 4: Billing, Pricing, and Support

Task Statement 4.1: Compare AWS pricing models.

Knowledge of:

Compute purchasing options (for example, On-Demand Instances, Reserved Instances, Spot Instances, Savings Plans, Dedicated Hosts, Dedicated Instances, Capacity Reservations)
Data transfer charges
Storage options and tiers

Skills in:

Identifying and comparing when to use various compute purchasing options
Describing Reserved Instance flexibility
Describing Reserved Instance behavior in AWS Organizations
Understanding incoming data transfer costs and outgoing data transfer costs (for example, from one Region to another Region, within the same Region)
Understanding different pricing options for various storage options and tiers

Task Statement 4.2: Understand resources for billing, budget, and cost management.

Knowledge of:

Billing support and information
Pricing information for AWS services
AWS Organizations
AWS cost allocation tags

Skills in:

Understanding the appropriate uses and capabilities of AWS Budgets, AWS Cost Explorer, and AWS Billing Conductor
Understanding the appropriate uses and capabilities of AWS Pricing Calculator
Understanding AWS Organizations consolidated billing and allocation of costs
Understanding various types of cost allocation tags and their relation to billing reports (for example, AWS Cost and Usage Report)

Task Statement 4.3: Identify AWS technical resources and AWS Support options.

Knowledge of:

Resources and documentation available on official AWS websites
AWS Support plans
Role of the AWS Partner Network, including independent software vendors and system integrators
AWS Support Center

Skills in:

Locating AWS whitepapers, blogs, and documentation on official AWS websites
Identifying and locating AWS technical resources (for example AWS Prescriptive Guidance, AWS Knowledge Center, AWS re:Post)
Identifying AWS Support options for AWS customers (for example, customer service and communities, AWS Developer Support, AWS Business Support, AWS Enterprise On-Ramp Support, AWS Enterprise Support)
Identifying the role of Trusted Advisor, AWS Health Dashboard, and the AWS Health API to help manage and monitor environments for cost optimization
Identifying the role of the AWS Trust and Safety team to report abuse of AWS resources
Understanding the role of AWS Partners (for example AWS Marketplace, independent software vendors, system integrators)
Identifying the benefits of being an AWS Partner (for example, partner training and certification, partner events, partner volume discounts)
Identifying the key services that AWS Marketplace offers (for example, cost management, governance and entitlement)
Identifying technical assistance options available at AWS (for example, AWS Professional Services, AWS Solutions Architects)

📝 Practice These Concepts

📝 Practice These Concepts:

Domain 4: Billing & Support - Test 1 (25 questions)
Domain 4: Billing & Support - Test 2 (25 questions)

Appendix A: Technologies and Concepts

Technologies and Concepts That Might Appear on the Exam

The following list contains technologies and concepts that might appear on the exam. This list is non-exhaustive and is subject to change. The order and placement of the items in this list is no indication of their relative weight or importance on the exam:

APIs
Benefits of migrating to the AWS Cloud
AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF)
AWS Compliance
Compute
Cost management
Databases
Amazon EC2 instance types (for example, Reserved, On-Demand, Spot)
AWS global infrastructure (for example, AWS Regions, Availability Zones)
Infrastructure as code (IaC)
AWS Knowledge Center
Machine learning
Management and governance
Migration and data transfer
Network services
AWS Partner Network
AWS Prescriptive Guidance
AWS Pricing Calculator
AWS Professional Services
AWS re:Post
AWS SDKs
Security
AWS Security Blog
AWS Security Center
AWS shared responsibility model
AWS Solutions Architects
Storage
AWS Support Center
AWS Support plans
AWS Well-Architected Framework

In-scope AWS Services and Features

The following list contains AWS services and features that are in scope for the exam. This list is non-exhaustive and is subject to change. AWS offerings appear in categories that align with the offerings' primary functions:

Analytics:

Amazon Athena
AWS Data Exchange
Amazon EMR
AWS Glue
Amazon Kinesis
Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)
Amazon OpenSearch Service
Amazon QuickSight
Amazon Redshift

Application Integration:

Amazon EventBridge
Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)
Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)
AWS Step Functions

Business Applications:

Amazon Connect
Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES)

Cloud Financial Management:

AWS Billing Conductor
AWS Budgets
AWS Cost and Usage Report
AWS Cost Explorer
AWS Marketplace

Compute:

AWS Batch
Amazon EC2
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Amazon Lightsail
AWS Local Zones
AWS Outposts
AWS Wavelength

Containers:

Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR)
Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS)

Customer Engagement:

AWS Activate for Startups
AWS IQ
AWS Managed Services (AMS)
AWS Support

Database:

Amazon Aurora
Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon MemoryDB for Redis
Amazon Neptune
Amazon RDS

Developer Tools:

AWS AppConfig
AWS CLI
AWS Cloud9
AWS CloudShell
AWS CodeArtifact
AWS CodeBuild
AWS CodeCommit
AWS CodeDeploy
AWS CodePipeline
AWS CodeStar
AWS X-Ray

End User Computing:

Amazon AppStream 2.0
Amazon WorkSpaces
Amazon WorkSpaces Web

Frontend Web and Mobile:

AWS Amplify
AWS AppSync
AWS Device Farm

Internet of Things (IoT):

AWS IoT Core
AWS IoT Greengrass

Machine Learning:

Amazon Comprehend
Amazon Kendra
Amazon Lex
Amazon Polly
Amazon Rekognition
Amazon SageMaker
Amazon Textract
Amazon Transcribe
Amazon Translate

Management and Governance:

AWS Auto Scaling
AWS CloudFormation
AWS CloudTrail
Amazon CloudWatch
AWS Compute Optimizer
AWS Config
AWS Control Tower
AWS Health Dashboard
AWS Launch Wizard
AWS License Manager
AWS Management Console
AWS Organizations
AWS Resource Groups and Tag Editor
AWS Service Catalog
AWS Systems Manager
AWS Trusted Advisor
AWS Well-Architected Tool

Migration and Transfer:

AWS Application Discovery Service
AWS Application Migration Service
AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS)
AWS Migration Hub
AWS Schema Conversion Tool (AWS SCT)
AWS Snow Family
AWS Transfer Family

Networking and Content Delivery:

Amazon API Gateway
Amazon CloudFront
AWS Direct Connect
AWS Global Accelerator
Amazon Route 53
Amazon VPC
AWS VPN

Security, Identity, and Compliance:

AWS Artifact
AWS Audit Manager
AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)
AWS CloudHSM
Amazon Cognito
Amazon Detective
AWS Directory Service
AWS Firewall Manager
Amazon GuardDuty
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
AWS IAM Identity Center (AWS Single Sign-On)
Amazon Inspector
AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS)
Amazon Macie
AWS Network Firewall
AWS Resource Access Manager (AWS RAM)
AWS Secrets Manager
AWS Security Hub
AWS Shield
AWS WAF

Serverless:

AWS Fargate
AWS Lambda

Storage:

AWS Backup
Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)
Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)
AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery
Amazon FSx
Amazon S3
Amazon S3 Glacier
AWS Storage Gateway

Out-of-scope AWS Services and Features

The following list contains AWS services and features that are out of scope for the exam. This list is non-exhaustive and is subject to change:

Game Tech:

Amazon GameLift
Amazon Lumberyard

Media Services:

AWS Elemental Appliances and Software
AWS Elemental MediaConnect
AWS Elemental MediaConvert
AWS Elemental MediaLive
AWS Elemental MediaPackage
AWS Elemental MediaStore
AWS Elemental MediaTailor
Amazon Interactive Video Service (Amazon IVS)

Robotics:

AWS RoboMaker

Appendix B: Comparison of CLF-C01 and CLF-C02

Side-by-side Comparison

The following table shows the domains and the percentage of scored questions in each domain for the CLF-C01 exam (in use until September 18, 2023) and the CLF-C02 exam (in use beginning on September 19, 2023).

C01 Domain	Percent of Scored Questions	C02 Domain	Percent of Scored Questions
1: Cloud Concepts	26%	1: Cloud Concepts	24%
2: Security and Compliance	25%	2: Security and Compliance	30%
3: Technology	33%	3: Cloud Technology and Services	34%
4: Billing and Pricing	16%	4: Billing, Pricing, and Support	12%

Additions of Content for CLF-C02

CLF-C02 Task Statement 1.3: Understand the benefits of and strategies for migration to the AWS Cloud.

This new task statement includes the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF).

Deletions of Content for CLF-C02

No content was deleted from the exam.

Recategorizations of Content for CLF-C02

Content from the following seven task statements in CLF-C01 has been retained and recategorized into one or more of the tasks in CLF-C02:

CLF-C01 Task Statement 1.1: Define the AWS Cloud and its value proposition.
CLF-C01 Task Statement 1.2: Identify aspects of AWS Cloud economics.
CLF-C01 Task Statement 1.3: Explain the different cloud architecture design principles.
CLF-C01 Task Statement 2.2: Define AWS Cloud security and compliance concepts.
CLF-C01 Task Statement 3.3: Identify the core AWS services.
CLF-C01 Task Statement 3.4: Identify resources for technology support.
CLF-C01 Task Statement 4.3: Identify resources available for billing support.

CLF-C01 Task Statement 1.1 is mapped to the following tasks in CLF-C02:

1.1: Define the benefits of the AWS Cloud.
1.3: Understand the benefits of and strategies for migration to the AWS Cloud.
1.4: Understand concepts of cloud economics.

CLF-C01 Task Statement 1.2 is mapped to the following task in CLF-C02:

1.4: Understand concepts of cloud economics.

CLF-C01 Task Statement 1.3 is mapped to the following task in CLF-C02:

1.2: Identify design principles of the AWS Cloud.

CLF-C01 Task Statement 2.2 is mapped to the following tasks in CLF-C02:

2.2: Understand AWS Cloud security, governance, and compliance concepts.
2.3: Identify AWS access management capabilities.

CLF-C01 Task Statement 3.3 is mapped to the following tasks in CLF-C02:

3.3: Identify AWS compute services.
3.4: Identify AWS database services.
3.5: Identify AWS network services.
3.6: Identify AWS storage services.
3.7: Identify AWS artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) services and analytics services.
3.8: Identify services from other in-scope AWS service categories.

CLF-C01 Task Statement 3.4 is mapped to the following task in CLF-C02:

4.3: Identify AWS technical resources and AWS Support options.

CLF-C01 Task Statement 4.3 is mapped to the following tasks in CLF-C02:

4.2: Understand resources for billing, budget, and cost management.
4.3: Identify AWS technical resources and AWS Support options.

📝 Practice These Concepts

📝 Practice These Concepts:

Full Practice Exam 1 (50 questions)
Full Practice Exam 2 (50 questions)
Full Practice Exam 3 (50 questions)

Version 1.0 CLF-C02