The AWS Certified Cloud Practioner Exam (CLF-C01) is an entry-level exam, 65 questions of multiple-choice, multiple response questions. The test is intended for individuals who have basic knowledge of the AWS platform and the available services, conceptual AWS cloud architectural principles, security, common use cases, and compliance.
The exam includes four domains; Cloud Concepts, Security and Compliance, Technology, and Billing and Pricing. Each section of the domain has a specific weighting, so some sections have more questions than others.
| Domain | % of Examination |
| Domain 1: Cloud Concepts | 26% |
| Domain 2: Security and Compliance | 25% |
| Domain 3: Technology | 33% |
| Domain 4: Billing and Pricing | 16% |
| TOTAL | 100% |
I recently sat and passed the AWS Cloud Practioner Exam and wanted to provide an overview of the exam, share with you my study resources and the outlook on the certification.
What to expect
The exam’s primary focus will be on identifying the AWS core services like EC2, connection methods like AWS Direct Connect, EBS, S3 and S3 classes, CloudWatch, Trusted Advisor. The previous isn’t a comprehensive list but indeed services you should know. You will be tested on your understanding and identifying AWS-specific services. It would be best to understand how they work at a high level rather than understanding how to configure or deploy the services. Although, this would be an added value if you did.
You will want to know the advantages of cloud computing the way AWS defines it. AWS defines six advantages of cloud computing:
- Trade upfront expenses for variable expenses
- Stop spending money to run and maintain data centers
- Stop guessing capacity
- Benefit from massive economies of scale
- Increase speed and agility
- Go global in minutes
Lastly, I recommend understanding the shared responsibility model.
The shared responsibility model divides into customer responsibilities (commonly referred to as “security in the cloud”) and AWS responsibilities (commonly referred to as “security of the cloud”).
You can think of this model as being similar to the division of responsibilities between a homeowner and a homebuilder. The builder (AWS) is responsible for constructing your house and ensuring that it is solidly built. As the homeowner (the customer), it is your responsibility to secure everything in the house by ensuring that the doors are closed and locked.
Study resources
To help you prepare for AWS exams, AWS has a training and certification section. Fortunately, the training for the AWS practitioner exam is free, and it’s fantastic. The AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials course is roughly six hours if you read and watch the videos without taking notes. It would be best if you had an Amazon.com account as it is required to access the material. With note-taking, it took me about 20 hours to complete the course.
The video content is incredible. It offers a video transcript so that you don’t have to constantly rewind the video as you take your notes because of something you’ve missed.
Although you can pass the exam with this resource alone, I recommend David Tucker’s course, “Understanding AWS Core Services” on Pluralsight. I like this course because it solidifies your understanding of the services exposed during the AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials training. It also has a section for you to try practice questions to gauge your readiness. I would do this after completing the AWS training material.
Outlook on CLF-C01
Today’s applications use cloud resources to provide the best in bread user experience, data quality, and high-availability. For the same benefits that the applications leverage the cloud, so do organizations and enterprises. It’s essential for us as engineers to design well-architected networks both on-prem and in the cloud. The skills obtained from working through the AWS Cloud Practioner Exam won’t make you a cloud architect alone. However, it will enable you to be comfortable speaking on cloud-specific technologies, why they exist, and some of the benefits over traditional on-premise technology.
AWS Cloud practitioner provides a tremendous foundational approach to cloud and AWS-specific services and products. It is a test that I recommend to any engineer.
Mike
Certification:. (2005). Retrieved March 31, 2021, from https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-cloud-practitioner/
Aws training and certification. (n.d.). Retrieved March 31, 2021, from https://www.aws.training/Details/eLearning?id=60697
Tucker, D. (2021, February 04). Understanding AWS core services. Retrieved March 31, 2021, from https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/understanding-aws-core-services
Apronets 