Home
AWS
CLF-C02
Syllabus

AWS

CLF-C02 syllabus

4 domains and 94 topics, updated November 2026

Overview Syllabus Notes Patterns Revision Sample questions Practise

CLF-C02 is a broad, shallow exam: what the cloud is for, who is responsible for what, what the main AWS services do and how AWS charges. This outline lists every task statement in the official guide in plain terms, grouped by domain. Tick topics off as you cover them. Your ticks are saved in this browser.

This outline follows the official CLF-C02 exam guide. Check it for the exact wording.

Cloud concepts

24%

Why organisations use the cloud, how to design well on it, how to move there and how the costs compare with on-premises.

Benefits of the AWS Cloud

The value proposition of AWS and how economies of scale lower costs
Benefits of global infrastructure: speed of deployment and global reach
High availability, elasticity and agility, and how they differ

Design principles

The six Well-Architected pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization and sustainability
Telling the pillars apart from the main goal in a scenario
Design ideas such as loose coupling, designing for failure and disposable resources

Migration

The AWS Cloud Adoption Framework and its perspectives
Benefits of the CAF: lower business risk, better ESG results, more revenue, higher operational efficiency
Migration strategies such as rehost, replatform, refactor, repurchase, retire, retain and relocate
Migration tools: database replication with DMS, Snow Family for offline transfer, Migration Hub, Application Migration Service

Cloud economics

Fixed (capital) cost versus variable (operating) cost
Costs that come with on-premises environments and how total cost of ownership is compared
Bring your own licence compared with licence included
Rightsizing resources to real demand
Benefits of automation, for example provisioning with CloudFormation
Managed services such as RDS, ECS, EKS and DynamoDB, and what they take off your plate

Read the notes Practise this domain

Security and compliance

30%

The shared responsibility model, compliance and governance, encryption, identity and access, and the AWS security services. This is the second largest domain.

Shared responsibility model

The parts of the model: security of the cloud versus security in the cloud
What the customer is responsible for
What AWS is responsible for
Controls that are shared, such as patching, configuration and training
How responsibility shifts with the service: EC2, RDS, Lambda and S3

Compliance, governance and encryption

Finding compliance reports and agreements in AWS Artifact
Compliance needs that vary by country and industry, and by AWS service
Encryption in transit and encryption at rest, with KMS and ACM
Where security logs are captured: CloudTrail, CloudWatch, Config, VPC Flow Logs
Governance and audit services: CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Config, Audit Manager and access reports

Identity and access management

IAM users, groups, roles and policies, and managed versus custom policies
The principle of least privilege
Why the root user must be protected, and the tasks only root can do
MFA, access keys, password policies and secure credential storage with Secrets Manager and Systems Manager
Cross-account roles, federation and IAM Identity Center
Types of identity management, such as federated identities

Security services and resources

Security groups, network ACLs and AWS WAF
Amazon Inspector, GuardDuty, Security Hub, Detective, Macie and Shield, and what each does
Third-party security products from AWS Marketplace
Security information sources: Knowledge Center, Security Center and the Security Blog
Trusted Advisor for spotting security issues

Read the notes Practise this domain

Cloud technology and services

34%

How to deploy and reach AWS, the global infrastructure, and the core services for compute, databases, networking, storage, AI/ML, analytics and the other service categories. This is the largest domain.

Deploying and operating

Console, CLI, SDKs and APIs, and when each is the right way in
One-time operations versus repeatable processes and infrastructure as code
Cloud, hybrid and on-premises deployment models
Connectivity options: public internet, Site-to-Site VPN and Direct Connect

Global infrastructure

Regions, Availability Zones and edge locations, and how they relate
High availability across multiple Availability Zones, and why AZs avoid shared single points of failure
When to use multiple Regions: disaster recovery, low latency and data sovereignty
Edge locations, CloudFront and Global Accelerator
Local Zones and Wavelength Zones

Compute

EC2 instance families and what each is built for
Containers: ECS, EKS and ECR
Serverless compute: Fargate and Lambda
Auto Scaling as the source of elasticity
The purpose of load balancers

Databases

Database on EC2 compared with a managed database
Relational databases: RDS and Aurora
NoSQL: DynamoDB
In-memory databases: ElastiCache and MemoryDB
Migrating databases with DMS and SCT

Networking

VPC parts: subnets, internet gateway, NAT gateway and route tables
Security groups and network ACLs inside a VPC
Route 53 and DNS
CloudFront and Global Accelerator as edge services
VPN and Direct Connect for hybrid connectivity

Storage

Object storage with S3
S3 storage classes and how they trade price against access
Block storage: EBS and instance store
File services: EFS and FSx
Cached file access with Storage Gateway
Lifecycle policies and AWS Backup

AI/ML and analytics

SageMaker, Lex, Kendra, Rekognition, Comprehend, Polly, Transcribe, Translate and Textract, and the task each handles
Analytics: Athena, Kinesis, Glue, QuickSight, Redshift, EMR and OpenSearch Service

Other service categories

Application integration: EventBridge, SNS, SQS and Step Functions
Business applications: Amazon Connect and SES
Customer engagement: Activate for Startups, IQ, Managed Services and Support
Developer tools: AppConfig, Cloud9, CloudShell, CodeArtifact, CodeBuild, CodeCommit, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline, CodeStar and X-Ray
End-user computing: AppStream 2.0, WorkSpaces and WorkSpaces Web
Frontend and mobile: Amplify and AppSync
IoT: IoT Core and IoT Greengrass

Read the notes Practise this domain

Billing, pricing and support

12%

How AWS charges for compute, data and storage, the tools for managing cost, and the support and technical resources available. It is the smallest domain, with exact facts.

Pricing models

On-Demand, Reserved Instances, Spot, Savings Plans, Dedicated Hosts, Dedicated Instances and Capacity Reservations, and when each fits
Reserved Instance flexibility: standard versus convertible, terms and payment options
How Reserved Instances and Savings Plans behave in AWS Organizations
Data transfer charges: inbound, outbound, between Regions and within a Region
Pricing across storage options and tiers

Billing and cost management

AWS Budgets, Cost Explorer and Billing Conductor
AWS Pricing Calculator for estimating cost
Consolidated billing and how costs are allocated in Organizations
Cost allocation tags, their types and how they show in the Cost and Usage Report

Support and technical resources

Where to find whitepapers, blogs and documentation
Prescriptive Guidance, Knowledge Center and re:Post
Support plans: Basic, Developer, Business, Enterprise On-Ramp and Enterprise
Trusted Advisor, the Health Dashboard and the Health API
Reporting abuse to the Trust and Safety team
The AWS Partner Network, ISVs, system integrators and Marketplace
Benefits of being a partner: training, events and volume discounts
Technical help from Professional Services and Solutions Architects
The AWS Support Center

Read the notes Practise this domain