Cloud Practitioners Exam guide

Welcome, everyone. I'm Michael Forrester, and in today's lesson we will review the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam guide. This comprehensive guide details scoring, course structure, and the reasoning behind our curriculum—all based on the official exam guide.

We'll now switch screens to display the PDF exam guide.

We begin with the exam guide for CLF-C02, the most recent version released on September 19th. This ensures that the course content you are watching is fully updated with the latest AWS innovations and changes.

The exam guide is our primary source for structuring classes, and we extend it to ensure you are well-prepared for the exam.

The image is an introduction to the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) Exam Guide, outlining exam objectives and target candidate description.

Our goal is to provide you with a comprehensive context so that you can confidently discuss topics like the AWS Shared Responsibility Model and best practices. Although the role of a Cloud Practitioner is not tied to a specific job function, this exam validates your understanding of AWS fundamentals. It is ideal for beginners—even those with less than six months of exposure to cloud design, implementation, and operations. The hands-on playgrounds, demos, and projects further enhance your learning experience.

The image describes the target candidate for AWS certification, recommending up to six months of AWS Cloud exposure and knowledge in specific AWS areas.

It is recommended that candidates have a basic understanding of security and compliance, cloud concepts, core AWS services, and general economics. These key areas will be addressed throughout the lesson.

Note

You do not need to know how to code or program to pass this exam. It consists of multiple-choice and multiple-response questions, where you might need to pick one correct answer from four options or select two correct answers from five choices.

The image lists job tasks out of scope for an AWS exam, including coding and troubleshooting, and describes exam content with multiple-choice questions.

Remember, you are not expected to have experience in coding, architecture design, troubleshooting, or performance testing for this exam. It is structured specifically for beginners and practitioners rather than advanced architects or developers.

The exam includes 65 questions over 90 minutes, with approximately 15 of these questions being unscored. These unscored items, used by Amazon to test potential future content, may appear very similar to scored questions. Treat every question with equal importance. If you come across a question about an unfamiliar service, it is likely unscored—stay confident and move forward.

The exam uses a scaled score from 100 to 1000, with 700 as the minimum passing mark. Although the official pass mark may occasionally vary (such as 710, 720, or 730), we recommend aiming for a score in the 900s to ensure a deep understanding of the material.

Exam Domains

The exam guide is organized into four key domains:

Cloud Concepts (24% of the exam)
This domain covers the foundational cloud concepts including differences between hybrid, private, and public clouds, along with benefits such as agility, faster market speed, and economic advantages. While some descriptions may sound promotional, the concepts are both accurate and practical.
Security and Compliance (30% of the exam)
In this section, you will explore the AWS shared responsibility model, essential security measures, and compliance standards. Focus areas include access management, cloud security, and governance, which distinguish responsibilities between customers and AWS.
Technology (34% of the exam)
This is the largest domain in the exam. It tests your familiarity with AWS core services such as EC2, VPC, and SageMaker, as well as your understanding of deployment and operational methods. It covers fundamentals across databases, networking, storage, containers, virtual machines, and serverless computing. Even a basic grasp of these services and their use cases is sufficient.
Billing, Pricing, and Support (12% of the exam)
This final domain examines pricing models (on-demand, spot, reservations, and compute savings plans) along with AWS support resources, billing processes, budgeting, and cost management. AWS does not expect you to memorize specific prices, which may change over time.

Additional details in the guide include service-specific design principles (covering cloud benefits, migration strategies, and the Cloud Adoption Framework) and comprehensive content on AWS economics, cost-saving strategies, and managed services.

The image is a document detailing AWS Cloud concepts, including design principles, the Well-Architected Framework, and cloud migration strategies.

While studying, if you encounter unfamiliar terms—such as CloudFormation, ECS, EKS, or DynamoDB—take the time to research and understand them. Our course addresses these services in detail, even if the exam guide provides only brief mentions.

The image is a page from an AWS training document detailing cloud security, governance, and compliance concepts, including knowledge and skills related to AWS compliance and security tools.

Other topics include guidance on security components and resources like access management capabilities, as well as strategies for identifying and deploying AWS resources effectively.

The image is a document detailing AWS security components, resources, and skills, including security features, third-party products, and AWS services for identifying security issues.

The exam digs deeper into technology topics such as deployment methods, the global AWS infrastructure, compute services (covering containers, virtual machines, and serverless technology), databases, networking, storage, and emerging fields like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).

The image is a page from an AWS certification guide, detailing cloud technology and services, including deployment methods, access, cloud models, and connectivity options.

The image is a page from an AWS certification guide, focusing on identifying AWS compute services and high availability concepts.

The image lists AWS skills, including database and network services, with tasks like identifying AWS network services and understanding VPC components and security.

The image lists AWS AI/ML and analytics services, highlighting skills and knowledge required for understanding and identifying these services, with examples like Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Athena.

The exam also introduces topics related to Application Integration and expands the scope by an estimated 5–10% in service coverage.

The image lists AWS services for application integration, business applications, customer engagement, developer tools, end-user computing, frontend web, mobile, and IoT services.

Before concluding this section, the exam guide revisits billing and support topics, underlining the importance of mastering AWS pricing models and cost management strategies.

The image outlines AWS training content on billing, pricing, and support, focusing on comparing pricing models, compute purchasing options, data transfer charges, and storage options.

It also covers skills in budgeting and managing costs, as well as the various technical support options available.

The image lists AWS billing, budgeting, and cost management skills, including understanding pricing, AWS Organizations, cost allocation tags, and tools like AWS Budgets and Cost Explorer.

Appendix and Additional Topics

Appendix A of the exam guide lists potential exam topics. While this list may seem extensive, our course covers every service featured on the exam—and offers additional insights for a broader understanding. You can review the full list later, but there is no need to study it in detail right now.

The image lists AWS services categorized under Developer Tools, End User Computing, and Frontend Web and Mobile, including AWS AppConfig, Amazon WorkSpaces, and AWS Amplify.

Towards the end of the guide, an "out of scope" section clearly outlines which services will not be included on the exam (for example, Game Tech, media transformation services, robotics, satellites, or blockchain).

The image lists AWS services, highlighting those out of scope for an exam, including Game Tech and Media Services like Amazon GameLift and AWS Elemental.

Finally, a side-by-side comparison between CLF-C01 and CLF-C02 is presented. Key changes include an approximate 5% increase in the weighting for Security and Compliance, with other domains showing only slight adjustments. Additional task statements and updated content reflecting recent AWS innovations are also highlighted.

The image shows a side-by-side comparison of CLF-C01 and CLF-C02 exam domains, detailing the percentage of scored questions for each domain.

The image shows updates to the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam, highlighting new content on migration strategies and the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework.

For most candidates, a deep dive into these appendix details is unnecessary. The primary takeaway is that every topic in our course is directly mapped to the content in this exam guide, ensuring you remain 100% on target.

I'm Michael Forrester. Thank you for exploring this detailed overview of the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam guide. I wish you the best of luck on your exam, and I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson.

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