AWS Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) Exam Cheat Sheet — 2026

AWS Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) Exam Cheat Sheet — 2026

> One-page quick reference for exam day | citadelcloudmanagement.com

Exam Overview

  • Code: CLF-C02 | Questions: 65 | Time: 90 minutes | Passing: 700/1000
  • Format: Multiple choice + multiple response | Cost: $100 USD

Domain 1: Cloud Concepts (24%)

Cloud Value Proposition

  • 6 advantages: trade CapEx for OpEx, massive economies of scale, stop guessing capacity, increase speed/agility, stop spending money on data centers, go global in minutes
  • Well-Architected Framework pillars: Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization, Sustainability

Cloud Architecture Principles

  • Design for failure (everything fails eventually)
  • Decouple components (loose coupling via SQS, SNS)
  • Think parallel (horizontal scaling > vertical scaling)
  • Elasticity: scale up AND down automatically

Cloud Deployment Models

  • Public cloud (AWS), Private cloud (on-premises), Hybrid (AWS Outposts, VPN, Direct Connect)
  • Multi-region = disaster recovery; Multi-AZ = high availability

Domain 2: Security and Compliance (30%)

Shared Responsibility Model (memorize this)

  • AWS: security OF the cloud (hardware, networking, facilities, hypervisor)
  • Customer: security IN the cloud (data, OS patching, firewall rules, IAM, encryption)

IAM (Identity and Access Management)

  • Root account: use only for billing, enable MFA immediately
  • Users, Groups, Roles, Policies (JSON documents)
  • Least privilege principle: grant minimum permissions needed
  • IAM is global (not region-specific)

Key Security Services

  • AWS Shield: DDoS protection (Standard = free, Advanced = paid)
  • AWS WAF: web application firewall, filter HTTP traffic
  • Amazon GuardDuty: threat detection using ML
  • AWS Inspector: automated vulnerability scanning for EC2/ECR
  • AWS Macie: discovers and protects sensitive data (PII) in S3
  • CloudTrail: logs ALL API calls (who did what, when)
  • AWS Config: tracks resource configuration changes over time
  • Security Hub: centralized security findings dashboard

Compliance

  • AWS Artifact: access AWS compliance reports (SOC, PCI, HIPAA)
  • Shared responsibility means compliance is shared too

Domain 3: Cloud Technology and Services (34%)

Compute

  • EC2: virtual servers (On-Demand, Reserved, Spot, Dedicated)
  • Lambda: serverless, pay per invocation, max 15 min runtime
  • ECS/EKS: container orchestration (Docker/Kubernetes)
  • Elastic Beanstalk: PaaS, deploy apps without managing infrastructure
  • Lightsail: simple VPS for small workloads

Storage

  • S3: object storage, 11 9s durability, storage classes (Standard, IA, Glacier, Deep Archive)
  • EBS: block storage for EC2 (like a hard drive)
  • EFS: managed file system, shared across EC2 instances
  • S3 Glacier: archive storage, retrieval in minutes to hours

Database

  • RDS: managed relational DB (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Aurora)
  • DynamoDB: managed NoSQL, single-digit ms latency, serverless option
  • Aurora: AWS-built, 5x faster than MySQL, 3x faster than PostgreSQL
  • Redshift: data warehouse for analytics
  • ElastiCache: in-memory caching (Redis, Memcached)

Networking

  • VPC: your private network in AWS
  • Subnets: public (internet-facing) vs private (internal)
  • Security Groups: instance-level firewall (stateful)
  • NACLs: subnet-level firewall (stateless)
  • Route 53: DNS service
  • CloudFront: CDN, edge locations worldwide
  • Direct Connect: dedicated physical connection to AWS

Other Key Services

  • CloudFormation: infrastructure as code (JSON/YAML templates)
  • CloudWatch: monitoring, logs, alarms, dashboards
  • SNS: push notifications (pub/sub)
  • SQS: message queuing (decoupling)
  • Trusted Advisor: best practice recommendations (cost, security, performance)

Domain 4: Billing, Pricing, and Support (12%)

Pricing Models

  • On-Demand: pay by the hour/second, no commitment
  • Reserved Instances: 1 or 3 year commitment, up to 72% discount
  • Spot Instances: up to 90% discount, can be interrupted
  • Savings Plans: flexible pricing across compute services

Free Tier

  • 12 months free: EC2 t2.micro (750 hrs/mo), S3 (5 GB), RDS (750 hrs)
  • Always free: Lambda (1M requests/mo), DynamoDB (25 GB)

Billing Tools

  • AWS Budgets: set custom cost/usage budgets with alerts
  • Cost Explorer: visualize and analyze spending over time
  • Pricing Calculator: estimate costs before deploying
  • Cost and Usage Report: most detailed billing data
  • Organizations: consolidated billing across multiple accounts

Support Plans

  • Basic: free, documentation + forums
  • Developer: $29/mo, email support
  • Business: $100/mo, 24/7 phone, 1-hour response for production down
  • Enterprise: $15K/mo, TAM, 15-minute response for critical

Exam Tips

  1. Shared Responsibility Model appears in 5-8 questions — know it cold
  2. If a question mentions "serverless," think Lambda, DynamoDB, S3, Fargate
  3. "Cost optimization" questions: look for Reserved Instances, Spot, or right-sizing
  4. "High availability" = Multi-AZ; "Disaster recovery" = Multi-Region
  5. When in doubt between two AWS services, pick the managed/serverless option

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