The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam 1 2
has 4 different domains, each with corresponding 2 3
weight and topic coverage. 3 4
The exam domains are as follows: Domain 1 is Cloud Concepts, Domain 2 is 4 5
Security and Compliance, Domain 3 is Technology, 5 6
and lastly, Domain 4 is Billing and Pricing. 6 7
These are the four exam domains that you should prepare for 7 8
if you are planning to take this test. The list of exam domains 8 9
can be found in the official Exam Guide for the AWS Certified 9 10
Cloud Practitioner exam. Each exam domain 10 11
has a corresponding weighting so some sections can have more 11 12
or fewer questions than others. One exam domain is comprised 12 13
of several task statements. A task statement is a sub-category 13 14
of the exam domain that contains the required cloud 14 15
concepts, knowledge, and skills for you to accomplish a particular 15 16
task or activity in AWS. 16 17
Let’s look at each of these domains one by one. 17 18
The first domain covers 26% of the exam, 18 19
followed by the second domain, which covers 25%, 19 20
the third one is a whopping 33%, while the last one 20 21
covers 16% of the exam. The “Cloud Concepts” 21 22
exam domain is focused on the fundamental cloud computing 22 23
topics in AWS. You should know and understand 23 24
the benefits of using AWS Cloud over a physical 24 25
on-premises data center, including its business value in terms of 25 26
scalability, global reach, and economy of scale. 26 27
Be sure to brush up on the economics of cloud computing, 27 28
where you have to factor in the total cost of Ownership, 28 29
operational expenses, or OPEX, as well as capital expenses, or CAPEX. 29 30
Cloud architecture design principles are also covered 30 31
under this domain. Again, this domain covers 31 32
26% of the Cloud Practitioner exam and is the 32 33
second-biggest exam domain; 33 34
thus, you have to allocate ample time to review this segment. 34 35
The series of scenarios that you will encounter in 35 36
this section checks your know-how in: 36 37
Defining the AWS Cloud and its value proposition, 37 38
Identifying aspects of AWS Cloud economics, 38 39
and Explaining the different cloud architecture design principles. 39 40
The second exam domain focuses on Amazon’s various 40 41
security and compliance topics. For this one, 41 42
you have to review the different security concepts in AWS, 42 43
such as its access management capabilities, compliance 43 44
controls, and the AWS shared responsibility model. 44 45
You should be familiar with the best practice of granting the 45 46
least privileged access to mission-critical AWS resources 46 47
for your internal staff as well as the external 47 48
partners of your organization. The questions that you will encounter 48 49
in this section will challenge your knowledge in: 49 50
Defining the AWS shared responsibility model, 50 51
Defining AWS Cloud security and compliance concepts, 51 52
Identifying AWS access management capabilities 52 53
Plus, identifying resources for security support. 53 54
The third domain is all about the different services and 54 55
features in AWS. It is the biggest domain in 55 56
the exam, with 33 percent coverage. This includes 56 57
the wide selection of computing services, storage services, 57 58
networking services, database services, and other products 58 59
in Amazon Web Services. Therefore, you must devote a 59 60
significant amount of time studying the various concepts covered 60 61
in this section. You should prepare for: Defining methods 61 62
of deploying and operating in the AWS Cloud, 62 63
Defining the AWS global infrastructure, 63 64
Identifying the core AWS services, and 64 65
Identifying resources for technology support. 65 66
The last exam domain revolves around the overall cost of running 66 67
your systems in the cloud. This includes the billing 67 68
options and pricing types in AWS such as 68 69
the concept of Pay-As-You-Go Pricing, Consolidated Billing, 69 70
Capacity Reservations, Support Plans, 70 71
and the different payment options for Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances. 71 72
This segment only comprises 16% of the 72 73
exam coverage, so you have to limit the time you spend reviewing 73 74
the concepts under this domain. 74 75
This section tests your knowledge in: Comparing and 75 76
contrasting the various pricing models for AWS, 76 77
which includes the pricing model for On-Demand, Reserved, and Spot 77 78
Instances, Recognizing the various account structures 78 79
in relation to AWS billing and pricing, as well as 79 80
Identifying resources available for billing support. 80 81
Before starting your exam preparations, 81 82
you should be familiar with these four exam domains and their 82 83
respective task statements. Take note that the Cloud 83 84
Practitioner exam is primarily focused on cloud technology, 84 85
so make sure that you focus on the “Technology” domain and all the related 85 86
knowledge areas in its task statements. 86 87
I highly recommend that you read the official exam 87 88
guide for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam from cover to cover. 88 89
Pay close attention to the topics included, and don’t forget 89 90
to read the Appendix section, which contains a list of related 90 91
AWS services that will appear in the exam. 91 92
The official exam guide contains a list of key tools, technologies, 92 93
and concepts that may show up on the Cloud Practitioner test. 93 94
Keep in mind that this is just a non-exhaustive list 94 95
of the tools and technologies that may or may not 95 96
appear on the exam. This list can change at any time 96 97
and is primarily given to test-takers to help them understand the general 97 98
scope of services, features, or technologies for this certification. 98 99
In addition, the general tools and technologies in this list 99 100
appear in no particular order. 100 101
Here are the topics, AWS services, and concepts 101 102
that you should focus on for your upcoming exam. 102 103
You have to review your knowledge on: APIs, Cost Explorer, 103 104
AWS Cost and Usage Report, AWS Command Line Interface or AWS CLI, 104 105
Elastic Load Balancers, Amazon EC2 instance types, 105 106
AWS global infrastructure, 106 107
Infrastructure as Code or IaC, Amazon Machine Images or AMIs, 107 108
AWS Management Console, 108 109
AWS Marketplace, AWS Professional Services, 109 110
AWS Personal Health Dashboard, AWS Service Health Dashboard, 110 111
Security groups, AWS Service Catalog, Service quotas, 111 112
AWS software development kits or AWS SDKs, AWS Support Center, 112 113
AWS Support tiers, and Virtual private networks or VPNs. 113 114
Remember that out of the 114 115
4 exam domains, the Technology domain has the 115 116
biggest coverage in the exam, at 33%. This means 116 117
that a third of the questions in the entire AWS Certified Cloud 117 118
Practitioner exam covers the many cloud services 118 119
and features in AWS. Most of these AWS services 119 120
can be grouped according to their primary functions 120 121
or use cases, such as Analytics, Application Integration, 121 122
Compute, Database, Networking, et cetera. 122 123
The Appendix section of the exam guide also includes 123 124
a list of relevant AWS services that you should focus on, 124 125
so in your exam, make sure that you review the following 125 126
AWS services. For Analytics, we have Amazon Athena, 126 127
Amazon Kinesis, and Amazon QuickSight. 127 128
For Application Integration, you should know the use cases for 128 129
Amazon Simple Notification Service 129 130
and Amazon Simple Queue Service. For Computing services, study AWS 130 131
Batch, Amazon EC2, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, 131 132
AWS Lambda, Amazon Lightsail, and Amazon WorkSpaces. 132 133
For Containers, make sure you know Amazon Elastic 133 134
Container Service, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, 134 135
and AWS Fargate. For Databases, you have 135 136
Amazon Aurora, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon ElastiCache, 136 137
Amazon RDS, Amazon Redshift, and other 137 138
cloud databases in AWS. 138 139
For Developer Tools, familiarize yourself with the 139 140
CI/CD services in AWS, namely the AWS CodeBuild, 140 141
AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodeDeploy, 141 142
AWS CodePipeline, and AWS CodeStar. 142 143
The Amazon Connect service is also covered, 143 144
which is commonly used for Customer Engagement activities. 144 145
The Cloud Practitioner exam covers a handful of 145 146
services that relates to Management, Monitoring, and Governance. 146 147
These are: AWS Auto Scaling, AWS Budgets, 147 148
AWS CloudFormation, AWS CloudTrail, 148 149
Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Config, AWS Cost and Usage Report, 149 150
Amazon EventBridge, AWS License Manager, 150 151
AWS Managed Services, AWS Organizations, 151 152
AWS Secrets Manager, 152 153
AWS Systems Manager, 153 154
AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store, and the AWS Trusted Advisor. 154 155
For Networking and Content Delivery category, 155 156
you have Amazon API Gateway, Amazon CloudFront, 156 157
AWS Direct Connect, Amazon Route 53, and 157 158
Amazon VPC. For Security, Identity, and 158 159
Compliance category, prepare to see a range of AWS services 159 160
that you can use to secure your enterprise applications and AWS resources. 160 161
Check out the AWS Artifact service, AWS Certificate 161 162
Manager, AWS CloudHSM, Amazon Cognito, 162 163
Amazon Detective, Amazon GuardDuty, 163 164
AWS Identity and Access Management or IAM, 164 165
Amazon Inspector, AWS License Manager, 165 166
Amazon Macie, AWS Shield, and AWS WAF. 166 167
Pay attention to how these services work together 167 168
and know the appropriate AWS service to use for a particular 168 169
business case or situation. 169 170
Lastly, don’t forget to study the plethora of cloud storage services 170 171
at your disposal, such as AWS Backup, 171 172
Amazon Elastic Block Store, Amazon Elastic File System, 172 173
Amazon S3, Amazon S3 Glacier, AWS Snowball Edge, 173 174
and AWS Storage Gateway.