The AWS Cloud Practitioner certification is an entry-level certification offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that validates the individual’s overall understanding of the AWS Cloud, its services, and how it can help businesses of all sizes. The certification exam covers the basic concepts of AWS Cloud, its global infrastructure, core services such as Amazon EC2, and security, compliance, and shared responsibility models, AWS pricing and support, and AWS Cloud adoption frameworks.
AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam Glossary
Here are some key terms related to the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification exam:
- AWS Cloud: A secure, flexible, and scalable cloud computing platform provided by Amazon Web Services.
- S3: Amazon Simple Storage Service is a highly scalable and durable object storage service.
- Learn Amazon EC2: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud.
- Understanding RDS: Amazon Relational Database Service is a managed database service that makes it easier to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud.
- Learn AWS Pricing: The cost of using AWS services, which vary depending on the service used, the amount of data transferred, and other factors.
- AWS Support: The range of support options provided by AWS, including technical support plans and access to AWS Trusted Advisor.
- AWS Shared Responsibility Model: A model that defines the security and compliance responsibilities of both AWS and its customers.
- Understand AWS Cloud Adoption Framework: A framework that helps organizations design and operate efficient and effective cloud adoption strategies.
- AWS Well-Architected Framework: A framework that provides best practices and guidance on how to design and operate reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective systems in the cloud.
- Understand AWS Management Console: A web-based user interface that provides access to AWS services and resources.
- AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM): A service that enables customers to manage access to AWS services and resources securely.
- AWS Global Infrastructure: The network of data centers and edge locations that AWS uses to deliver its services worldwide.
- Amazon VPC: Amazon Virtual Private Cloud is a virtual network that enables customers to launch Amazon Web Services resources into a virtual network that they’ve defined.
- AWS Lambda: A service that lets customers run code without provisioning or managing servers.
- Amazon CloudFront: A global content delivery network (CDN) service that accelerates delivery of static and dynamic web content, such as .html, .css, .js, and image files.
AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam Guide
Here are some official resources for the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification exam:
- AWS Certification website: https://aws.amazon.com/certification/ This is the official website for AWS certification, and it has a lot of information on the Cloud Practitioner exam, including exam details, study materials, and practice exams.
- Understanding AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam Guide: https://d1.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-cloud-practitioner/AWS-Certified-Cloud-Practitioner_Exam-Guide_EN_1.10.pdf This guide provides an overview of the Cloud Practitioner exam, including the topics covered, exam format, and sample questions.
- AWS Training and Certification: https://aws.amazon.com/training/ This is the official training and certification page for AWS, which includes a variety of training courses and resources to help you prepare for the Cloud Practitioner exam.
- AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials (Second Edition): https://www.aws.training/Details/eLearning?id=60697 This is a free, self-paced online course offered by AWS that provides an overview of the AWS Cloud and the services it offers, as well as an introduction to the Cloud Practitioner exam.
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam Readiness Workshop: https://www.aws.training/Details/eLearning?id=42138 This is a fee-based, self-paced online course offered by AWS that provides a deeper dive into the topics covered on the Cloud Practitioner exam, as well as exam strategies and tips.
AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam Tips and Tricks
Here are some tips and tricks for preparing for the AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam:
- Understand the AWS Global Infrastructure: Get a clear understanding of the AWS global infrastructure, its regions, availability zones, and edge locations.
- Understanding AWS services: Know the basic concepts, use cases, and service categories of AWS services like EC2, S3, RDS, VPC, Lambda, and so on.
- Understand billing and pricing: Be familiar with different billing and pricing models of AWS services, such as on-demand, reserved, and spot instances.
- Practice with AWS Free Tier: Take advantage of the AWS Free Tier to gain hands-on experience with various AWS services and their features.
- Review AWS Whitepapers: AWS provides various whitepapers on different topics related to its services. Reading these whitepapers can help you to gain in-depth knowledge of AWS services.
- Take AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Practice Exams: Practice exams help you understand the exam pattern, type of questions asked, and the time taken to complete the exam.
- Attend AWS training: AWS offers various training programs, including online training, instructor-led training, and self-paced training.
AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam Outline
The AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam covers four domains on AWS, which are
- Cloud Concepts
- Security
- Technology
- Billing and Pricing
Weightings of each subject area, in AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam is listed and described below
Use the Cloud Practitioner tutorial to get a complete course outline!
Each section as per their weighting will have different number of questions, in the exam.
AWS Cloud Practitioner Preparation Guide
Preparation for AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam involves accessing various free online resources.
Reference Books
Various reference books are available for the AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam and few good ones are
- The Beginners Guide to Amazon Web Services by Dennis Hutten
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Study Guide: CLF–C02 Exam – by Ben Piper, David Clinton
- AWS Basics: Beginner’s Guide-by Gordon Wong
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Certification Guide: Complete 2018 Clf-C02 Exam Study Guide by Todd Montgomery
- Amazon Web Services for Dummies-by Bernard Golden
- Building Applications in Cloud – Concepts, Patterns, and Projects by Christopher Moyer
- Learning AWS: Design, build and deploy responsive applications using AWS Cloud components, 2nd Edition- by Aurobindo Sarkar and Amit Shah.
Online Course and Tutorials
The AWS Cloud Practitioner Online Course helps you prepare better learning opportunities.
Join Community
Many Q&A websites also have good information on various topics of the exam and few are
- Stackoverflow
- Quora
Evaluate yourself with Practice Tests
Practice tests better prepare you for the assessment exam. Most practice test providers provide detailed analysis of your knowledge for AWS Cloud Practitioner certification exam.
Amazon also provides few practice questions
Testpreptraining also offers practice test on AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam in two modes, as
AWS Free Trainings
AWS offers various free trainings for AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam at link –https://aws.amazon.com/training/. These trainings are provided free of charge and only registration is needed.
The various trainings relevant for preparation are
AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials (Second Edition) course –
This free course gives an understanding of AWS Cloud, for any job role. It covers concepts of cloud, basics of AWS services, security, architecture, pricing, and support.
AWS Technical Essentials course –
This free AWS course covers technical aspects of AWS platform as needed in AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam. It covers technical details on AWS services with fundamentals of AWS services to map as per your business requirements.
It covers
- AWS foundation services like Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Simple Storage Service (S3), and Elastic Block Store (EBS)
- AWS Database services: DynamoDB and Relational Database Service (RDS)
- AWS Management services: Auto Scaling, CloudWatch, Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), and Trusted Advisor
AWS Whitepapers
Free AWS Whitepapers for AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam are at link – https://aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/
Relevant whitepapers for the exam are
- Overview of Amazon Web Services whitepaper, July 2019
- Architecting for the Cloud: AWS Best Practices whitepaper, October 2018
- How AWS Pricing Works whitepaper, June 2018
- Cost Management in the AWS Cloud whitepaper, March 2018
AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification – Domain 1 – Cloud Concepts
AWS Cloud Practitioner Cheat Sheet
This subject area focuses on knowledge of cloud computing basics. It has 28% weighting in the exam.
To get full marks in this subject area, you should be able to
- define the basic components and architecture of AWS Cloud
- describe the value proposition of cloud against on-premise
- Specify AWS Cloud economics related aspects
- Have full awareness of different cloud architecture design principles like elasticity, scalability, high availability and fault tolerance.
AWS cloud infrastructure offers, services on compute, storage, security, database and management. AWS services includes
Compute Services
- EC2 or Elastic Compute Cloud
- AWS Lambda
Storage Services
- Glacier
- Elastic Block Store (EBS)
- Amazon S3
- Cloud Front
Security Services
- IAM (Identity and Access Management)
- Certificate Manager
Database Services
- RDS
- Amazon DynamoDB
- ElastiCache
- Amazon RedShift
Management Services
- CloudWatch
- CloudFormation
- OpsWorks
Cloud Architecture Design Principles, are
- Operational Excellence
- Security
- Reliability
- Performance Efficiency
- Cost Optimization
As per AWS, Domain 1 or Cloud Concepts section has following topics
1.1 Define the AWS Cloud and its value proposition
1.2 Identify aspects of AWS Cloud economics
1.3 List the different cloud architecture design principles
AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification – Domain 2 – Security
This domain covers security aspects of AWS platform. It has 24% weighting in the exam.
Passing this domain, requires you to be acquainted with
- AWS Shared Responsibility model
- AWS Cloud security tools like logging, protection against web attacks
- AWS Compliance to various legal requirement and security standards like data privacy, compliance reporting
- Access management resources in AWS like MFA, IAM, password policies
- AWS resources for security support with trusted advisor
Shared Security model is the basis of sharing responsibilities amongst customer and AWS.
AWS Cloud Security and Compliance covers following aspects of AWS Security
- Infrastructure Security
- Infrastructure Resilience
- Data Encryption
- Monitoring and Logging
- Identity and Access Control
- Compliance Assurance Programs
- Security Support
- Standards and Best Practices
AWS Access Management capabilities include
- Access management in AWS infrastructure, is provided through AWS IAM or Identity and Access Management.
- AWS IAM facilitates secured access to AWS services and resources for users.
- Create and manage AWS users and groups,
- Permissions in AWS can be used to enable or deny AWS resource access.
- These features in AWS are provided free of charge.
- AWS charges only usage of other chargeable AWS services, only
As per AWS, Domain 2 or Security section has following topics
2.1 Define the AWS Shared Responsibility model
2.2 Define AWS Cloud security and compliance concepts
2.3 Identify AWS access management capabilities
2.4 Identify resources for security support
AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification – Domain 3 – Technology
Technology is the most crucial domain as it has 36% weighting in the exam. It focuses on how well you have grasped the core AWS platform’s working and services.
To crack this section, you should
- Know deploying AWS Cloud
- Be aware of operating AWS Cloud
- Have clear understanding of AWS global infrastructure
- Know the core AWS services and their use cases like EC2, RDS, SNS, ELB, S3 and Lambda
- Can access AWS technology support for any technical issue by raising support tickets
Various services in AWS for provisioning IT infrastructure and the deployment of applications are
- AWS Elastic Beanstalk – A platform configuration defines the infrastructure and software stack to be used for a given environment.
- AWS CloudFormation – It is a service to model and set up your Amazon Web Services resources
- AWS OpsWorks – Configuration management service from AWS in 2 variations: AWS OpsWorks for Puppet Enterprise and AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate.
- AWS CodeDeploy – AWS service for automation of code and software deployments to any AWS instance.
- AWS CodePipeline – A CI/CD or continuous integration/continuous delivery service from AWS
- Amazon EC2 Container Service – AWS container management service for Docker containers
AWS Global Infrastructure involves knowledge of
- Availability Zones (AZs)
- Regions
- Edge Locations
- Regional Edge Caches
List of AWS services are
- EC2
- VPC
- S3
- RDS
- Lambda
- Route 53
- SNS
- SQS
- ELB
The resources available for technical support depend on your support plan. They are:
- Developer Support
- Business Support
- Enterprise Support
As per AWS, Domain 3 or Technology section has following topics
3.1 Define methods of deploying and operating in the AWS Cloud
3.2 Define the AWS global infrastructure
3.3 Identify the core AWS services
3.4 Identify resources for technology support
AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification – Domain 4 – Billing and Pricing
Though it is the least weighting domain area of the AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam with 12% weighting but, it is crucial for knowing the business aspect of AWS platform.
This section covers
- Various pricing models available in AWS platform for various services
- Calculating AWS service costs
- Account structures in AWS for billing and pricing like BU based, project based accounting structure
- AWS billing support resources like cost calculator
The pricing models for AWS are principally
- “Compute Resources”
- “Data Storage and Transfer”
- request pricing
- monthly targeted audience (MTA) pricing
- events collected pricing
- messages sent pricing, etc
Various accounting structures can be used by AWS customers, as per their need
- Business Unit (BU) AWS Account Structure
- Environment Lifecycle AWS Account Structure
- Project-Based AWS Account Structure
- Hybrid AWS Account Structures
As per AWS, Domain 4 or Billing and Pricing section has following topics
4.1 Compare and contrast the various pricing models for AWS
4.2 Recognize the various account structures in relation to AWS billing and pricing
4.3 Identify resources available for billing support
Exam Summary
AWS Cloud Practitioner certification exam is apt for candidate who wants to validate or gain know-how of AWS Cloud platform. The exam covers skills on AWS core services, security, pricing and support.
Cracking AWS Certification Exam
Cracking AWS certification exam involves not just studying the AWS cloud computing concepts but also making a plan to crack the exam. Clearing the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification exam creates a platform to register for advanced AWS certifications and also validate your knowledge of cloud computing and AWS.
Steps to crack an AWS Cloud Practitioner certification are listed below.
Step 1 – Create a Plan
Before preparing for the exam, create a short and long term plan (like daily /monthly plan) as per time you can dedicate for preparation.
Also check funds needed to prepare for the exam. If you are tight on budget, increase the allocated time as quality resources available for free, is difficult to come by.
Step 2 – Shortlist books and websites for AWS certification
There many websites providing training and questions to practice for cracking the exam.
- Review them as per your budget.
- Opt for trial period, if offered
- Ease of using the website and extensive reporting also help you in preparation
You may also purchase AWS certification books, if you can self-study.
Step 3 – Focus on concepts
Grasping the concepts is of prime importance, for cracking the AWS exam.
- Instead of mugging up, visualize the concepts.
- Try to self-teach the concept for better understanding
Step 4 – Practice
- Allocate some time daily, to practice
- Practicing helps in reinforcing the newly learnt concept
- Purchase access to websites offering practice questions
- Revise concepts and techniques to quickly know the advanced concepts
Step 5 – Stick to Schedule
Manage your time so that allocated time for preparation is not compromised. Sticking to schedule, helps you quickly progress in absorbing the lessons.
Step 6 – Finally appear for exam
After completing all lessons, practice extensively to score high in practice test on AWS Cloud Practitioner certification. Post-practice schedule and appear for exam.
Hurray! You have cracked the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification exam.
