CLF-C02 — AWS Cloud Practitioner

This is a breadth exam, not a depth exam. You need to know what each service does and when to use it, but you will not be asked to configure anything. Focus on use cases over implementation details.

The Shared Responsibility Model is heavily tested. Know exactly what AWS manages (physical security, hypervisor, managed service patching) versus what you manage (data, IAM, OS patching on EC2, encryption choices).

Security and Compliance is the largest domain at 30%. Spend extra time on IAM fundamentals, encryption services (KMS, CloudHSM), and security tools (GuardDuty, Inspector, Macie, WAF, Shield).

Know the pricing models cold: On-Demand, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, Spot Instances, and Dedicated Hosts. Understand which is cheapest for each workload pattern (steady-state, flexible, fault-tolerant).

AWS Support Plans come up frequently. Remember: Basic (free, no technical support), Developer (business hours email), Business (24/7 phone, < 1h for production down), Enterprise (TAM, Concierge, < 15min for critical).

Many questions use the pattern 'Which AWS service should you use to...?' - create flashcards mapping service names to their one-line purpose. Services like AWS Config, CloudTrail, CloudWatch, and Trusted Advisor are commonly confused.

Read each question carefully - the exam often includes plausible distractors. Look for keywords like 'most cost-effective', 'least operational overhead', or 'fully managed' to narrow down answers.

You get 90 minutes for 65 questions which is generous. Flag difficult questions and come back to them - do not spend more than 2 minutes on any single question in your first pass.