AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) - Cheat Sheet
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AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) - Cheat Sheet
AWS Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) Master Cheat Sheet
Advanced Comprehensive Guide for 2026 Certification1. Identity & Access Management (IAM)
IAM is global and allows you to manage access to AWS services and resources securely.
Users: Physical persons. Have passwords for Console or Access Keys for CLI/SDK.
Groups: Collection of users. Permissions applied to groups are inherited by users.
Roles: Temporary permissions for EC2 instances or AWS Services (no password).
Policies: JSON documents defining permissions. Principle of Least Privilege.
Audit Tools: IAM Credential Report (User list & security status) and Access Advisor (Service permissions used).
2. EC2: Elastic Compute Cloud
| Option | Best Use Case |
|---|---|
| On-Demand | Short-term, unpredictable workloads. Pay per second. |
| Reserved | Steady-state workloads (1 or 3 yr commitment). 75% discount. |
| Spot | Batch jobs, flexible start/end. Up to 90% discount (AWS can reclaim). |
| Dedicated Hosts | Compliance requirements/Bring Your Own License (BYOL). |
Security Groups: Stateful virtual firewalls for EC2 instances. Default: All outbound allowed, All inbound blocked.
3. Storage: EBS, EFS, and Instance Store
- EBS (Elastic Block Store): Network drive for one instance. Tied to one AZ. Use Snapshots for backups.
- Instance Store: Physical disk on the host. High performance but ephemeral (data lost if instance stops).
- EFS (Elastic File System): Managed network file system. Can be shared by hundreds of EC2s across AZs.
- FSx: High-performance third-party file systems (Lustre for HPC, Windows File Server).
4. Scalability & High Availability
ELB (Elastic Load Balancer): Distributes traffic. Application (L7 - HTTP), Network (L4 - TCP/UDP), Gateway (L3).
ASG (Auto Scaling Group): Adds/removes EC2s based on demand. Replaces unhealthy instances automatically.
5. S3: Simple Storage Service
Infinite object storage. Buckets are global, but content is regional. 99.999999999% (11 9's) durability.
| Class | Use Case |
|---|---|
| Standard | General purpose, high availability. |
| Intelligent-Tiering | Automatic cost saving based on access patterns. |
| Standard-IA | Infrequent access, needs millisecond retrieval. |
| Glacier Deep Archive | Long-term archive (retrieval in 12 hours). Cheapest. |
6. Databases & Analytics
RDS: Managed SQL (MySQL, Postgres, SQL Server). Multi-AZ for DR; Read Replicas for performance.
Aurora: AWS-optimized SQL. 5x faster than MySQL. Serverless option available.
DynamoDB: Managed NoSQL. Single-digit millisecond latency. Global Tables for replication.
Redshift: OLAP Data Warehouse for complex SQL analytics.
Athena: Serverless SQL to query data directly on S3.
7. Global Application Delivery
- Route 53: Managed DNS. Routing: Simple, Weighted, Latency, Failover, Geolocation.
- CloudFront: CDN using Edge Locations to cache content closer to users.
- Global Accelerator: Uses AWS private network to route traffic (fixed IP) for 60% performance boost.
- Transfer Acceleration: Faster S3 uploads via Edge Locations.
8. Application Integration
- SQS (Simple Queue Service): Decouple applications. Asynchronous. Messages kept for 14 days.
- SNS (Simple Notification Service): Pub/Sub model. Send one message to many subscribers (Email, Lambda, SQS).
- Kinesis: Real-time data streaming and big data ingestion.
- Amazon MQ: Managed broker for RabbitMQ and ActiveMQ (traditional protocols).
9. Monitoring, Audit, and Governance
CloudWatch: Performance monitoring (Metrics, Logs, Alarms).
CloudTrail: Governance and audit. Records every API call made in the account.
Config: Records resource configurations and compliance against rules.
Systems Manager: Patching, configuration, and running commands at scale.
10. Security & Compliance
- Shield: Automatic DDoS protection (Advanced includes 24/7 DRT support).
- WAF: Protects web apps from SQL Injection and Cross-Site Scripting.
- Inspector: Vulnerability scans for EC2 and ECR images.
- GuardDuty: ML-powered threat detection (VPC, DNS, CloudTrail logs).
- Macie: Uses ML to discover sensitive data (PII) in S3.
11. AWS Machine Learning (High-Level)
AWS provides pre-trained AI services for developers without ML expertise.
Rekognition: Image and video analysis (Face/Object detection).
Polly: Text-to-Speech.
Lex: Build conversational chatbots (same tech as Alexa).
SageMaker: Fully managed platform for building/training/deploying ML models.
12. Billing, Cost, and Support
- Organizations: Manage multiple accounts with Consolidated Billing and SCPs.
- Cost Explorer: View history and forecast future spending.
- Budgets: Create custom alerts for costs, usage, or RI utilization.
- Trusted Advisor: Checks for Cost, Performance, Security, Fault Tolerance, and Service Limits.
🧠Exam Ready Practice
Question: A company needs a hybrid storage solution that allows their on-premises applications to seamlessly use S3 as a backup target. Which service should they use?
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