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Steps to acing the AWS — Certified Cloud Practitioner (CCP) Exam — CLF-C01

Introduction

I cleared the AWS- Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam back in December 2021 and thought of sharing my the experience and the path I took to complete this. AWS — Certified Cloud Practitioner (CCP) — CLF-C01 is a foundational level AWS certification. I believe that a certificate is only one validation method of existing skills. While preparing for this, I understood how AWS platform works and the basic building blocks behind it. I learnt most of the critical to small AWS services if not all. My background when I was sitting for the exam I was in my 3rd year of school where I was studying Bachelor of Science in Information Technology.

AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials course

Link to the course on Skill Builder AWS Skill Builder image

This free AWS course covers technical aspects of AWS platform as needed in AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam. It covers technical details on AWS services with fundamentals of AWS services to map as per your business requirements.

It covers AWS foundation services like Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Simple Storage Service (S3), and Elastic Block Store (EBS) AWS Database services: DynamoDB and Relational Database Service (RDS) AWS Management services: Auto Scaling, CloudWatch, Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), and Trusted Advisor

Domain 1: Cloud Concepts

This subject area focuses on knowledge of cloud computing basics. It has 26% weighting in the exam.

To get full marks in this subject area, you should be able to define the basic components and architecture of AWS Cloud describe the value proposition of cloud against on-premise Specify AWS Cloud economics related aspects Have full awareness of different cloud architecture design principles like elasticity, scalability, high availability and fault tolerance.

AWS cloud infrastructure offers

AWS cloud infrastructure offers, services on compute, storage, security, database and management. AWS services includes image

Cloud Architecture Design Principles, are

  • Operational Excellence
  • Security
  • Reliability
  • Performance Efficiency
  • Cost Optimization

Domain 2: Security and Compliance

This domain covers security aspects of AWS platform. It has 25% weighting in the exam.

Passing this domain, requires you to be acquainted with

  • AWS Cloud security tools like logging, protection against web attacks

  • AWS Compliance to various legal requirement and security standards like data privacy, compliance reporting

  • AWS resources for security support with trusted advisor

  • AWS Shared Responsibility model image

  • Access management resources in AWS like MFA, IAM, password policies image

Domain 3: Technology

Technology is the most crucial domain as it has 33% weighting in the exam. It focuses on how well you have grasped the core AWS platform’s working and services. Various services in AWS for provisioning IT infrastructure and the deployment of applications are

AWS Elastic Beanstalk – A platform configuration defines the infrastructure and software stack to be used for a given environment.

  • AWS CloudFormation – It is a service to model and set up your Amazon Web Services resources
  • AWS OpsWorks – Configuration management service from AWS in 2 variations: AWS OpsWorks for Puppet Enterprise and AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate.
  • AWS CodeDeploy – AWS service for automation of code and software deployments to any AWS instance.
  • AWS CodePipeline – A CI/CD or continuous integration/continuous delivery service from AWS
  • Amazon EC2 Container Service – AWS container management service for Docker containers

AWS Global Infrastructure involves knowledge of: Availability Zones (AZs), Regions, Edge Locations and Regional Edge Caches.

Domain 4: Billing and Pricing

Though it is the least weighting domain area of the AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam with 16% weighting but, it is crucial for knowing the business aspect of AWS platform.

This section covers

  • Various pricing models available in AWS platform for various services
  • Calculating AWS service costs
  • Account structures in AWS for billing and pricing like BU based, project based accounting structure
  • AWS billing support resources like cost calculator

That’s all folks

After completing all lessons, practice extensively to score high in practice test on AWS Cloud Practitioner certification. Post-practice schedule and appear for exam.

Hurray! You have cracked the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification exam.