✅ AWS Cloud Practitioner — Top 25 Must-Know Points (CLF-C02)
(Official exam weightage-based topics)
- IAM (Identity & Access Management) – AWS permissions, users, groups, roles, MFA, least privilege.
- EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) – Virtual servers, pricing (On-Demand, Reserved, Spot), security groups.
- Lambda – Serverless compute, event-driven, pay per request.
- S3 (Simple Storage Service) – Object storage, 11 9s durability, storage classes, versioning.
- S3 Glacier – Archival storage, extremely low-cost, slow retrieval.
- EBS (Elastic Block Store) – Block storage for EC2, snapshots.
- RDS – Managed SQL databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Aurora).
- DynamoDB – Serverless NoSQL, millisecond latency.
- VPC – Networking: subnets, route tables, NAT, NACLs.
- CloudFront – Global CDN, edge caching.
- Route 53 – DNS, domain registration, routing policies.
- Load Balancers (ELB) – ALB, NLB, CLB.
- Auto Scaling – Automatic EC2 scaling.
- SQS – Message queue, decoupling apps.
- SNS – Push notifications, pub/sub messaging.
- EventBridge – Event bus connecting AWS services.
- API Gateway – Secure APIs for Lambda & services.
- CloudWatch – Metrics, logs, alarms, dashboards.
- CloudTrail – API activity logging.
- AWS Organizations – Multi-account mgmt, SCPs.
- KMS – Encryption key management.
- WAF & Shield – Web firewall + DDoS protection.
- Cost Explorer – Track & forecast AWS spend.
- Trusted Advisor – Best practice checks.
- Shared Responsibility Model – AWS vs Customer security roles.
Additional High-Value Exam Topics
- AWS Global Infrastructure – Regions, AZs, Edge Locations.
- Well-Architected Framework – 5 pillars.
- Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) – Business, People, Governance, Platform, Security, Operations.
- AWS Budgets – Budget alerts.
- AWS Billing Dashboard – Billing & usage tracking.
- Free Tier Types – 12-month, Always free, Trials.
- Amazon Cognito – User authentication & identity pools.
- AWS Backup – Centralized backup service.
- AWS Artifact – Compliance reports.
- AWS Service Health Dashboard – Public AWS outages status.
- AWS Personal Health Dashboard – Account-specific alerts.
- Amazon Lightsail – Simple VPS & hosting.
- AWS Outposts – On-prem AWS hardware.
- AWS Snowball / Snowmobile – Offline data migration devices.
- AWS Storage Gateway – Hybrid storage.
- EFS – Serverless Linux file system.
- Amazon FSx – High-performance file systems.
- AWS Systems Manager – Patch, automation, session mgmt.
- AWS Trusted Advisor Categories – Cost, Performance, Fault Tolerance, Security, Service Limits.
- AWS IAM Identity Center (SSO) – Central login for AWS accounts.
- AWS Marketplace – SaaS, AMIs, software marketplace.
- AWS SAM – Serverless app framework.
- CloudFormation – Infrastructure as code.
- Amazon MQ – Managed message brokers.
- AWS X-Ray – Distributed tracing.
- AWS Global Accelerator – Improve latency.
- Amazon Inspector – Security vulnerability scanning.
- AWS Shield Advanced – Enterprise-grade DDoS protection.
- Amazon AppStream 2.0 – Stream desktop apps.
- Amazon WorkSpaces – Virtual desktops (VDI).
