Mastering AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam with Expert Answers to Top Questions （I）

I. Introduction

- Overview of the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam and its importance for cloud professionals

People who can successfully demonstrate a broad understanding of the AWS Cloud, independent of a specific work description, are those who should take the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-CO1) exam.

Candidate target description:

The ideal applicant should have been actively using the AWS Cloud for six months, or the equivalent, and should be familiar with its design, implementation, and/or operations. Candidates will show that they have a solid understanding of AWS Cloud solutions.

Recommended AWS knowledge：

• AwS Cloud concepts
• Security and compliance within the AWS Cloud
• Understanding of the core AWS services
• Understanding of the economics of the AwS Cloud

Category	Foundational
Exam duration	90 minutes
Exam format	65 questions; either multiple choice or multiple response
Cost	100 USD
Test in-person or online	Pearson VUE testing center or online proctored exam
Languages offered	English, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Bahasa (Indonesian), Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin America), French (France), German, Italian, and Portuguese (Brazil)

The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certifies a person's high-level, fundamental knowledge of the AWS Cloud, its services, and its lingo. If you're transitioning to a cloud profession and have no prior IT or cloud experience, or if you're a line-of-business employee wishing to gain a basic understanding of the cloud, here is a fantastic place to start your AWS Certification journey.

A high degree of expertise in the AWS Cloud, services, and terminology is validated by earning this certification. Candidates transitioning to cloud computing from non-IT backgrounds might use this certification as a stepping stone.

The average annual salary for an Entry Level Aws Cloud Practitioner in the United States as of July 5, 2024, is $85,866. In case you need a quick pay estimator, that comes out to about $41.28 per hour. This amounts to $7,155 per month or $1,651 each week.

AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Will Put Your Career on Cloud Nine! You can put a stamp on your abilities to create and deploy carefully-architected solutions on AWS by earning an AWS cloud practitioner certification. It increases the trust that recruiting firms have in your abilities, which improves your career prospects.

 

- Exam Objectives and Question Formats

Learning Intentions

• Recognize the AWS compute services that are offered and how to start an EC2 instance.
• Find out more about AWS's auto-scaling and load balancing.
• Learn about the different storage options provided by AWS and gain practical knowledge of Amazon S3 and Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS).
• Find out more about AWS and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud networking.
• Learn everything there is to know about AWS databases and how to build your own RDS database.
• Recognize the use of Identity and Access Management in AWS cloud settings to manage security.

Exam Format

Knowing the structure of the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam is crucial to developing a strategy. It can undoubtedly aid in your exam performance. Additionally, being aware of the type of exam questions to expect makes it easier for you to manage your time. Without further ado, let's have a look at the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam's format.

· The overall number of questions on the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam is between 65 and 68. The exam will offer candidates a total of 90 minutes to finish it.

· Additionally, the exam will be provided in four other languages for the convenience of candidates with various mother tongues. English, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese are also included in this list.

Additionally, the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam includes two different sorts of questions, namely:

· Multiple-choice questions only allow for one correct solution, with the other three serving as distractions.

· Multiple-choice questions have two or more correct answers out of a possible selection of five or more.

· Negative Marking - There won't be any negative marking if the response you indicated is wrong. This indicates that you can attempt to estimate the right response. If your speculation is accurate, you'll end up receiving higher grades. If not, there is no harm because there is no punishment for giving incorrect replies.

· Unscored Content - You may encounter some ungraded questions while taking your exam. Your scores won't change whether you attempt or don't attempt these questions in any way. These ungraded questions are merely included on the exam to collect data statistically.

There are two types of questions on the exam:

• Multiple choice: Has one correct response and three incorrect responses (distractors)
• Multiple response: Has two or more correct responses out of five or more response optionsSelect one or more responses that best complete the statement or answer the question. Distractors, orincorrect answers, are response options that a candidate with incomplete knowledge or skill might choose.Distractors are generally plausible responses that match the content area.

Unanswered questions are scored as incorrect; there is no penalty for guessing.The exam includes 50 questions that will affect your score.

Unscored content

The exam includes 15 unscored questions that do not affect your score.AWS collects information about candidate performance on these unscored questions to evaluate these questions for future use as scored questions.These unscored questions are not identified on the exam.

Exam results

The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam is a pass or fail exam. The exam is scored against a minimum standard established by AWS professionals who follow certification industry best practices and guidelines.Your results for the exam are reported as a scaled score of 100-1,000. The minimum passing score is 700.Your score shows how you performed on the exam as a whole and whether or not you passed.

Your score report may contain a table of classifications of your performance at each section level.This information is intended to provide general feedback about your exam performance.The exam uses a compensatory scoring model, which means that you do not need to achieve a passing score in each section. You need to pass only the overall exam.

Each section of the exam has a specific weighting, so some sections have more questions than others. The table contains general information that highlights your strengths and weaknesses. Use caution when interpreting section-level feedback.

Content Domain

This exam guide includes weightings, test domains, and objectives for the exam. It is not a comprehensive listing of the content on the exam.However, additional context for each of the objectives is available to help guide your preparation for the exam.The following table lists the main content domains and their weightings. The table precedes the complete exam content outline, which includes the additional context.The percentage in each domain represents only scored content.

Domain 1: Cloud Concepts

1.1 Define the AWS Cloud and its value proposition

· Define the benefits of the AWS cloud including:

· Security (AWS Documentation: Advantages of Cloud Security)

· Reliability (AWS Documentation: Reliability)

· High Availability

· Elasticity (AWS Documentation: Elasticity)

· Agility

· Pay-as-you go pricing (AWS Documentation: AWS Pricing)

· Scalability

· Global Reach

· Economy of scale

· Explain how the AWS cloud allows users to focus on business value

· Shifting technical resources to revenue-generating activities as opposed to managing infrastructure (AWS Documentation: Business Value on AWS)

1.2 Identify aspects of AWS Cloud economics

· Define items that would be part of a Total Cost of Ownership proposal

· Understand the role of operational expenses (OpEx)

· Understand the role of capital expenses (CapEx)

· Understand labor costs associated with on-premises operations (AWS Documentation: AWS Pricing/TCO Tools)

· Understand the impact of software licensing costs when moving to the cloud (AWS Documentation: Cost and licensing)

· Identify which operations will reduce costs by moving to the cloud

· Right-sized infrastructure (AWS Documentation: Right Sizing)

· Benefits of automation (AWS Documentation: Automation, Investing in Cloud Automation)

· Reduce compliance scope (for example, reporting) (AWS Documentation: Minimizing the PCI Compliance Burden Using Containerization, Microservices, and AWS)

· Managed services (for example, RDS, ECS, EKS, DynamoDB) (AWS Documentation: AWS Managed Services)

1.3 Explain the different cloud architecture design principles

· Explain the design principles

· Design for failure (AWS Documentation: Design for Failure)

· Decouple components versus monolithic architecture (AWS Documentation: Decomposing monoliths into microservices)

· Implement elasticity in the cloud versus on-premises (AWS Documentation: Elasticity)

· Think parallel

Domain 2: Security and Compliance

2.1 Define the AWS shared responsibility model

· Recognize the elements of the Shared Responsibility Model (AWS Documentation: Shared Responsibility Model)

· Describe the customer’s responsibility on AWS

· Describe how the customer’s responsibilities may shift depending on the service used (for example with RDS, Lambda, or EC2) (AWS Documentation: Shared Responsibility, Shared Responsibility Model)

· Describe AWS responsibilities Shared Responsibility Model)

2.2 Define AWS Cloud security and compliance concepts

· Identify where to find AWS compliance information (AWS Documentation: AWS Compliance Programs, Compliance Resources)

· Locations of lists of recognized available compliance controls (for example, HIPPA, SOCs) (AWS Documentation: HIPAA, SOC)

· Recognize that compliance requirements vary among AWS services (AWS Documentation: Security and compliance)

· At a high level, describe how customers achieve compliance on AWS (AWS Documentation: AWS Compliance)

· Identify different encryption options on AWS (for example, In transit, At rest) (AWS Documentation: Encryption of Data in Transit, Encryption of Data at Rest)

· Describe who enables encryption on AWS for a given service (AWS Documentation: importance of encryption and how AWS can help)

· Recognize there are services that will aid in auditing and reporting (AWS Documentation: AWS Audit Manager)

· Recognize that logs exist for auditing and monitoring (do not have to understand the logs) (AWS Documentation: Viewing HSM audit logs in CloudWatch Logs)

· Define Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Config, and AWS CloudTrail (AWS Documentation: Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Config, AWS CloudTrail)

· Explain the concept of least privileged access (AWS Documentation: Security best practices in IAM)

2.3 Identify AWS access management capabilities

· Understand the purpose of User and Identity Management

· Access keys and password policies (rotation, complexity) (AWS Documentation: Managing access keys for IAM users, Setting an account password policy for IAM users)

· Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (AWS Documentation: Using multi-factor authentication (MFA) in AWS)

· AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) (AWS Documentation: AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM))

· Groups/users (AWS Documentation: IAM Identities (users, user groups, and roles))

· Roles (AWS Documentation: IAM roles)

· Policies, managed policies compared to custom policies (AWS Documentation: Policies and permissions in IAM, AWS managed policies)

· Tasks that require use of root accounts (AWS Documentation: AWS account root user credentials and IAM user credentials)

· Protection of root accounts (AWS Documentation: best practices for securing my AWS account)

2.4 Identify resources for security support

· Recognize there are different network security capabilities

· Native AWS services (for example, security groups, Network ACLs, AWS WAF) (AWS Documentation: Control traffic to subnets using Network ACLs, Control traffic to resources using security groups, AWS WAF)

· 3rd party security products from the AWS Marketplace

· Recognize there is documentation and where to find it (for example, best practices, whitepapers, official documents)

· AWS Knowledge Center, Security Center, security forum, and security blogs (AWS Documentation: AWS Knowledge Center)

· Partner Systems Integrators (AWS Documentation: Next-Gen MSP Meets Global Systems Integrator on AWS)

· Know that security checks are a component of AWS Trusted Advisor (AWS Documentation: AWS Trusted Advisor check reference)

Domain 3: Technology

3.1 Define methods of deploying and operating in the AWS Cloud

· Identify at a high level different ways of provisioning and operating in the AWS cloud

· Programmatic access, APIs, SDKs, AWS Management Console, CLI, Infrastructure as Code (AWS Documentation: AWS APIs, AWS SDK for JavaScript, AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface, Infrastructure as Code)

· Identify different types of cloud deployment models

· All in with cloud/cloud native (AWS Documentation: Cloud-Native)

· Hybrid (AWS Documentation: Hybrid Cloud with AWS)

· On-premises (AWS Documentation: Deployments on an EC2/On-Premises Compute Platform)

· Identify connectivity options

· VPN (AWS Documentation: AWS VPN)

· AWS Direct Connect (AWS Documentation: AWS Direct Connect)

· Public internet (AWS Documentation: Connect to the internet using an internet gateway)

3.2 Define the AWS global infrastructure

· Describe the relationships among Regions, Availability Zones, and Edge Locations (AWS Documentation: Regions and Zones, Regions and Availability Zones)

· Describe how to achieve high availability through the use of multiple Availability Zones

· Recall that high availability is achieved by using multiple Availability Zones (AWS Documentation: Multi-AZ deployments for high availability, Amazon RDS Multi-AZ)

· Recognize that Availability Zones do not share single points of failure

· Describe when to consider the use of multiple AWS Regions (AWS Documentation: Multi-Region Application Architecture)

· Disaster recovery/business continuity (AWS Documentation: Disaster recovery options in the cloud, Business Continuity Plan (BCP))

· Low latency for end-users (AWS Documentation: Low-latency computing with AWS Local Zones)

· Data sovereignty (AWS Documentation: Embrace Data Sovereignty)

· Describe at a high level the benefits of Edge Locations (AWS Documentation: AWS for the Edge)

· Amazon CloudFront (AWS Documentation: Amazon CloudFront)

· AWS Global Accelerator (AWS Documentation: AWS Global Accelerator)

3.3 Identify the core AWS services

· Describe the categories of services on AWS (compute, storage, network, database) (AWS Documentation: AWS Cloud Products)

· Identify AWS compute services

· Recognize there are different compute families (AWS Documentation: Amazon EC2 Instance Types)

· Recognize the different services that provide compute (for example, AWS Lambda compared to Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), or Amazon EC2, etc.) (AWS Documentation: Compute Services)

· Recognize that elasticity is achieved through Auto Scaling

· Identify the purpose of load balancers (AWS Documentation: Application Load Balancer)

· Identify different AWS storage services

· Describe Amazon S3 (AWS Documentation: Amazon S3)

· Describe Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) (AWS Documentation: Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS))

· Describe Amazon S3 Glacier (AWS Documentation: Amazon S3 Glacier)

· Describe AWS Snowball (AWS Documentation: AWS Snowball)

· Describe Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) (AWS Documentation: Use Amazon EFS with Amazon EC2)

· Describe AWS Storage Gateway (AWS Documentation: Amazon S3 File Gateway)

· Identify AWS networking services

· Identify VPC (AWS Documentation: Finding information to connect to a VPC)

· Identify security groups (AWS Documentation: Finding information to connect to a VPC)

· Identify the purpose of Amazon Route 53 (AWS Documentation: Amazon Route 53)

· Identify VPN, AWS Direct Connect (AWS Documentation: Identifying a Site-to-Site VPN connection, AWS Direct Connect)

· Identify different AWS database services

· Install databases on Amazon EC2 compared to AWS managed databases (AWS Documentation: Choosing between Amazon RDS, Amazon EC2, or VMware Cloud)

· Identify Amazon RDS (AWS Documentation: Amazon RDS DB instances)

· Identify Amazon DynamoDB (AWS Documentation: Amazon DynamoDB)

· Identify Amazon Redshift (AWS Documentation: Getting started with Amazon Redshift)

3.4 Identify resources for technology support

· Recognize there is documentation (best practices, whitepapers, AWS Knowledge Center, forums, blogs) (AWS Documentation: Follow Security Best Practices, AWS Knowledge Center, AWS Whitepapers & Guides)

· Identify the various levels and scope of AWS support

· AWS Abuse (AWS Documentation: report abuse of AWS resources)

· AWS support cases (AWS Documentation: Creating support cases and case management)

· Premium support

· Technical Account Managers (AWS Documentation: AWS Enterprise Support)

· Recognize there is a partner network (marketplace, third-party) including Independent Software Vendors and System Integrators (AWS Documentation: AWS Partner Network, AWS Partner Paths)

· Identify sources of AWS technical assistance and knowledge including professional services, solution architects, training and certification, and the Amazon Partner Network (AWS Documentation: technical support from AWS, AWS Professional Services, Successful solutions architects do these five things)

· Identify the benefits of using AWS Trusted Advisor (AWS Documentation: AWS Trusted Advisor)

Domain 4: Billing and Pricing

4.1 Compare and contrast the various pricing models for AWS (for example, On-Demand Instances, Reserved Instances, and Spot Instance pricing) (AWS Documentation: Amazon EC2 pricing)

· Identify scenarios/best fit for On-Demand Instance pricing (AWS Documentation: Amazon EC2 On-Demand Pricing, On-Demand Instances)

· Identify scenarios/best fit for Reserved-Instance pricing (AWS Documentation: Reserved Instances, Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances)

· Describe Reserved-Instances flexibility (AWS Documentation: Instance Size Flexibility for EC2 Reserved Instances)

· Describe Reserved-Instances behavior in AWS Organizations (AWS Documentation: Reserved Instances)

· Identify scenarios/best fit for Spot Instance pricing (AWS Documentation: Spot Instances)

4.2 Recognize the various account structures in relation to AWS billing and pricing

· Recognize that consolidated billing is a feature of AWS Organizations (AWS Documentation: Consolidated billing for AWS Organizations)

· Identify how multiple accounts aid in allocating costs across departments (AWS Documentation: AWS Cost Allocation For Customer Bills, Cost Allocation Basics)

4.3 Identify resources available for billing support

· Identify ways to get billing support and information (AWS Documentation: AWS Billing and Cost Management)

· Cost Explorer, AWS Cost and Usage Report, Amazon QuickSight, third-party partners, and AWS Marketplace tools (AWS Documentation: Analyzing your costs with AWS Cost Explorer, AWS Cost and Usage Reports, Amazon QuickSight, AWS Managed Service Provider Partners)

· Open a billing support case (AWS Documentation: Creating support cases and case management)

· The role of the Concierge for AWS Enterprise Support Plan customers (AWS Documentation: AWS Enterprise Support)

· Identify where to find pricing information on AWS services

· AWS Simple Monthly Calculator (AWS Documentation: AWS Pricing Calculator console)

· AWS Services product pages (AWS Documentation: Using the Products page)

· AWS Pricing API (AWS Documentation: AWS Price List API)

· Recognize that alarms/alerts exist (AWS Documentation: Creating a billing alarm to monitor your estimated AWS charges)

· Identify how tags are used in cost allocation (AWS Documentation: Using Cost Allocation Tags)

- source of the expert answers to top questions

It is a collection of real exam questions and answers that have been compiled by exam takers who have recently passed the certification exam.