Introduction
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)
To view a detailed list of specific tools and technologies that might be covered on the exam, as well as lists of in-scope AWS services, refer to the Appendix.
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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 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.
Content outline
This exam guide includes weightings, test domains, and objectives for the exam. It is not a comprehensive listing of the content on the exam. However, additional context for each of the objectives is available to help guide your preparation for the exam. The following table lists the main content domains and their weightings. The table precedes the complete exam content outline, which includes the additional context.
The percentage in each domain represents only scored content.
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Domain % of Exam
Domain 4: Billing and Pricing 16%
TOTAL 100%
Domain 1: Cloud Concepts
1.1 Define the AWS Cloud and its value proposition
Define the benefits of the AWS cloud including:
o Security o Reliability o High Availability o Elasticity o Agility o Pay-as-you go pricing o Scalability o Global Reach o Economy of scale
Explain how the AWS cloud allows users to focus on business value o Shifting technical resources to revenue-generating activities as opposed to managing infrastructure
1.2 Identify aspects of AWS Cloud economics
Define items that would be part of a Total Cost of Ownership proposal o Understand the role of operational expenses (OpEx) o Understand the role of capital expenses (CapEx) o Understand labor costs associated with on-premises operations o Understand the impact of software licensing costs when moving to the cloud
Identify which operations will reduce costs by moving to the cloud o Right-sized infrastructure o Benefits of automation o Reduce compliance scope (for example, reporting) o Managed services (for example, RDS, ECS, EKS, DynamoDB)
1.3 Explain the different cloud architecture design principles
Explain the design principles o Design for failure o Decouple components versus monolithic architecture o Implement elasticity in the cloud versus on-premises o Think parallel
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Domain 2: Security and Compliance
2.1 Define the AWS shared responsibility model
Recognize the elements of the Shared Responsibility Model
Describe the customer’s responsibly on AWS o Describe how the customer’s responsibilities may shift depending on the service used
(for example with RDS, Lambda, or EC2)
Describe AWS responsibilities
2.2 Define AWS Cloud security and compliance concepts
Identify where to find AWS compliance information o Locations of lists of recognized available compliance controls (for example, HIPPA,
SOCs) o Recognize that compliance requirements vary among AWS services
At a high level, describe how customers achieve compliance on AWS o 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 o Recognize that logs exist for auditing and monitoring (do not have to understand the logs) o Define Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Config, and AWS CloudTrail
Explain the concept of least privileged access
2.3 Identify AWS access management capabilities
Understand the purpose of User and Identity Management o Access keys and password policies (rotation, complexity) o Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) o AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Groups/users
Roles
Policies, managed policies compared to custom policies o Tasks that require use of root accounts
Protection of root accounts
2.4 Identify resources for security support
Recognize there are different network security capabilities o Native AWS services (for example, security groups, Network ACLs, AWS WAF) o 3 rd party security products from the AWS Marketplace
Recognize there is documentation and where to find it (for example, best practices, whitepapers, official documents) o AWS Knowledge Center, Security Center, security forum, and security blogs o Partner Systems Integrators
Know that security checks are a component of AWS Trusted Advisor
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Domain 3: Technology
3.1 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 o Programmatic access, APIs, SDKs, AWS Management Console, CLI, Infrastructure as
Code
Identify different types of cloud deployment models o All in with cloud/cloud native o Hybrid o On-premises
Identify connectivity options o VPN o AWS Direct Connect o Public internet
3.2 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 o Recall that high availability is achieved by using multiple Availability Zones o Recognize that Availability Zones do not share single points of failure
Describe when to consider the use of multiple AWS Regions o Disaster recovery/business continuity o Low latency for end-users o Data sovereignty
Describe at a high level the benefits of Edge Locations o Amazon CloudFront o AWS Global Accelerator
3.3 Identify the core AWS services
Describe the categories of services on AWS (compute, storage, network, database)
Identify AWS compute services o Recognize there are different compute families o Recognize the different services that provide compute (for example, AWS Lambda compared to Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), or Amazon EC2, etc.) o Recognize that elasticity is achieved through Auto Scaling o Identify the purpose of load balancers
Identify different AWS storage services o Describe Amazon S3 o Describe Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) o Describe Amazon S3 Glacier o Describe AWS Snowball o Describe Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) o Describe AWS Storage Gateway
Identify AWS networking services o Identify VPC o Identify security groups o Identify the purpose of Amazon Route 53 o Identify VPN, AWS Direct Connect
Identify different AWS database services o Install databases on Amazon EC2 compared to AWS managed databases
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3.4 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 o AWS Abuse o AWS support cases o Premium support o 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
4.1 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 o Describe Reserved-Instances flexibility o Describe Reserved-Instances behavior in AWS Organizations
Identify scenarios/best fit for Spot Instance pricing
4.2 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
4.3 Identify resources available for billing support
Identify ways to get billing support and information o Cost Explorer, AWS Cost and Usage Report, Amazon QuickSight, third-party partners, and AWS Marketplace tools o Open a billing support case o The role of the Concierge for AWS Enterprise Support Plan customers
Identify where to find pricing information on AWS services o AWS Simple Monthly Calculator o AWS Services product pages o AWS Pricing API
Recognize that alarms/alerts exist
Identify how tags are used in cost allocation
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Appendix
Which key tools, technologies, and concepts might be covered on the exam?
The following is a non-exhaustive list of the tools and technologies that could appear on the exam. This list is subject to change and is provided to help you understand the general scope of services, features, or technologies on the exam. The general tools and technologies in this list appear in no particular order.
AWS services are grouped according to their primary functions. While some of these technologies will likely be covered more than others on the exam, the order and placement of them in this list are no indication of relative weight or importance:
APIs
Cost Explorer
AWS Cost and Usage Report
AWS Command Line Interface (CLI)
Elastic Load Balancers
Amazon EC2 instance types (for example, Reserved, On-Demand, Spot)
AWS global infrastructure (for example, AWS Regions, Availability Zones)
Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
Amazon Machine Images (AMIs)
AWS Management Console
AWS Marketplace
AWS Professional Services
AWS Personal Health Dashboard
Security groups
AWS Service Catalog
AWS Service Health Dashboard
Service quotas
AWS software development kits (SDKs)
AWS Support Center
AWS Support tiers
Virtual private networks (VPNs)
AWS services and features
Analytics:
Amazon Athena
Amazon Kinesis
Amazon QuickSight
Application Integration:
Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)
Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)
Compute and Serverless:
AWS Batch
Amazon EC2
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
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AWS Lambda
Amazon Lightsail
Amazon WorkSpaces
Containers:
Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS)
AWS Fargate
Database:
Amazon Aurora
Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon ElastiCache
Amazon RDS
Amazon Redshift
Developer Tools:
AWS CodeBuild
AWS CodeCommit
AWS CodeDeploy
AWS CodePipeline
AWS CodeStar
Customer Engagement:
Amazon Connect
Management, Monitoring, and Governance:
AWS Auto Scaling
AWS Budgets
AWS CloudFormation
AWS CloudTrail
Amazon CloudWatch
AWS Config
AWS Cost and Usage Report
Amazon EventBridge (Amazon CloudWatch Events)
AWS License Manager
AWS Managed Services
AWS Organizations
AWS Secrets Manager
AWS Systems Manager
AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store
AWS Trusted Advisor
Networking and Content Delivery:
Amazon API Gateway
Amazon CloudFront
AWS Direct Connect
Amazon Route 53
Amazon VPC
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Security, Identity, and Compliance:
AWS Artifact
AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)
AWS CloudHSM
Amazon Cognito
Amazon Detective
Amazon GuardDuty
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Amazon Inspector
AWS License Manager
Amazon Macie
AWS Shield
AWS WAF
Storage:
AWS Backup
Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)
Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)
Amazon S3
Amazon S3 Glacier
AWS Snowball Edge
AWS Storage Gateway
Programme scope, delivery arrangements and suitability are confirmed during enquiry.