Last updated on November 8, 2023
The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02 exam or AWS CCP is the easiest to achieve among all the AWS certification exams. This certification covers most if not all, fundamental knowledge that one should know when venturing into the Cloud. The AWS Cloud Practitioner course intends to provide practitioners with a fundamental understanding of the AWS Cloud without having to dive deep into the technicalities. This includes the AWS Global Infrastructure, best practices in using AWS Cloud, pricing models, technical support options, and many more. You can view the complete details and guidelines for the certification exam here.
What to Review For the CLF-C02 AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam?
1. The AWS Cloud Services
Currently, AWS offers more than 200+ services and products to its customers. And every year, the list grows longer. You don’t have to memorize every single service and function to pass the exam (although that would be amazing if you did!). What’s important is that you familiarize yourself with the more commonly used services such as those under compute, storage, databases, security, networking and content delivery, management and governance, and a few others. Aside from questions on the different services, questions about Regions and Availability Zones commonly pop up in the exam as well.
2. Best Practices when Architecting for the Cloud
This section is highly important and might comprise the bulk of your AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02 exam. Focus on reading the content of this AWS Well-Architected Framework. The best practices are essentially the ways you can take advantage of AWS Cloud’s strengths. You can visit this site to gather more information and view additional content for your review of this section.
3. Security in the Cloud
Security in the AWS Cloud is another major part of your AWS Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02 Exam. AWS has defined the security controls that they manage and the security controls that you manage through the Shared Responsibility Model below.
4. AWS Pricing Model
One of the advantages of using the Cloud is having on-demand capacity provisioning. Therefore, it is also crucial for you to understand the AWS pricing model. AWS charges you in multiple ways. There is no exact model that applies to all since different AWS services have their own cost plans. However, AWS has three fundamental drivers of cost that usually apply to any kind of service. They are:
- Compute cost
- Storage cost
- Outbound data transfer cost
5. AWS Support Plans
AWS offers five types of support plans: Basic, Developer, Business, Enterprise On-Ramp, and Enterprise. It is important to know how each support plan differs from one another.
What AWS services are included in the CLF-C02 Exam?
The official Exam Guide for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02 exam doesn’t just share the list of exam domains and a detailed description for each exam domain. It also has a list of relevant tools, technologies, and concepts that will be covered on the CLF-C02 exam. The following is a non-exhaustive list of AWS services and features that appear on the Cloud Practitioner exam, based on the provided information in the exam guide. Take note that this list could change at any time, but nonetheless, this information is still quite helpful in determining the relevant AWS services that you should focus on:
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Analytics:
Application Integration:
Business Productivity:
Compute:
Containers:
Cost Management:
Customer Engagement:
Database:
Developer Tools:
Frontend Web and Mobile:
Storage:
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Internet of Things (IoT):
Machine Learning:
Management and Governance:
Migration and Transfer:
Networking and Content Delivery:
Security, Identity, and Compliance:
Serverless: End-User Computing:
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Review Process for the CLF-C02 AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam
As with any exam, the very first step is always the same – KNOWING WHAT TO STUDY. Although we have already enumerated them in the previous section, I highly suggest you go over the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam (CLF-C02) Exam Guide again and see the exam content.Â
AWS already has a vast number of free CLF-C02 resources available for you to prepare for the exam. With that being said, here is a suggested step-by-step review process to help you pass and even ace your AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02 exam.
Step 1 – Read the Overview of Amazon Web Services Whitepaper
I suggest going through the Overview of Amazon Web Services whitepaper to gain a good understanding of the different AWS concepts and services. Again, you don’t need to memorize every single AWS service and function there. Rather, focus on the services that are more commonly used by the industry.
» Tip: If you want a more concise version of the whitepaper, you can check out the Tutorials Dojo AWS cheat sheets. These cheat sheets provide an easy-to-read summary of the most important concepts about each service.
Step 2 – Study AWS Pricing
Next, I recommend studying AWS pricing. The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam (CLF-C02) exam frequently throws out tricky questions about pricing, TCO, and cost optimization. Be extra careful in answering questions that ask for the most cost-effective solution. Always prioritize utility over pricing, since there might be a choice in the question where it is the cheapest solution, but is not appropriate for the scenario’s needs.Â
Aside from on-demand capacity provisioning, AWS also offers you multiple ways to lower your total cost, such as the option to reserve capacity or create a savings plan.
The purpose of studying cost and pricing models is to help you optimize your costs in AWS. AWS provides a great tool to calculate expected monthly costs, known as the AWS Pricing Calculator. Note that the AWS Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02 exam frequently asks for scenarios where you’d have to optimize your costs.
Step 3 – Study the Shared Responsibility Model
The Best Practices for Security, Identity, & Compliance webpage discusses what you’ll need to know for AWS Security. Also, familiarize yourself with the Shared Responsibility Model. This frequently comes up in the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam (CLF-C02). With security, you should know the following:
- Protect your data in and going out of AWS. Different services (EBS, S3, EC2, RDS, etc) have different encryption methods and protocols.
- Network level security and subnet level security. There are many ways you can secure your VPC and the services inside it, such as NACLs and security groups.
- Be comfortable with IAM. Focus on concepts of IAM users, groups, policies, and roles.
- Understand AWS monitoring and logging features such as Cloudwatch, CloudWatch Logs, VPC Logs, and CloudTrail.
Step 4 – Read the AWS Well-Architected Framework
The last whitepaper you need to review is the AWS Well-Architected Framework whitepaper. It is very important to understand what the best practices are since scenario questions in the exam always revolve around these topics. Once logged in, you can open up your AWS Management Console to help you visualize what is being discussed in this paper.
Step 5 – Study the AWS Support Plans
For the AWS Support Plans, this webpage will serve as your primary study material. This is a quick browse of a webpage, and shouldn’t take you long in studying. Take note of what support plans are available, and how they differ from each other. There might be questions in the exam that ask which support plan offers some specific service. With that said, you might miss the subtle details if you don’t read each support plan properly, so be sure to take note of these details.
In tandem with learning the AWS Support Plans is studying AWS Trusted Advisor. AWS Trusted Advisor is a tool that offers best practice checks and recommendations across these categories: cost optimization, security, fault tolerance, performance, and service limits.Â
Step 6 – Enroll in a Video Course
To prepare for this exam, you can take our AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Video Course. This will assist you in gaining the necessary AWS Cloud knowledge by covering the different AWS Cloud concepts, AWS services, security, architecture, pricing, and support.Â
Common Exam Scenarios for the CLF-C02 AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam
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Scenario |
Solution |
CLF-C02 Exam Domain 1: Cloud Concepts |
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A key financial benefit of migrating systems hosted on your on-premises data center to AWS. |
 – Replaces upfront capital expenses (CAPEX) with low variable operational expense (OPEX).  – Reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) |
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4 cloud architectures design principle in AWS |
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A Global Infrastructure component that is made up of one or more discrete data centers, with each redundant power, networking, and connectivity housed in separate facilities. |
Availability Zones |
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A cloud best practice that reinforces the use of the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) design principle. |
Decouple your components |
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You need to enable your Amazon EC2 instances in the public subnet to connect to the public Internet. |
Internet Gateway |
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You can use it to resolve the connection between your on-premises VPN and your Amazon VPC. |
– Virtual Private Gateway – Amazon Route 53 |
CLF-C02 Exam Domain 2: Security and Compliance |
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It provides the event history of your AWS account activity, including actions taken through the AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs, command-line tools, and other AWS services. |
AWS CloudTrail |
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A company needs to download the compliance-related documents in AWS such as Service Organization Controls (SOC) reports |
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Improve the security of IAM users. |
 – Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)  – Configure a strong password policy |
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An IAM identity that uses access keys to manage cloud resources via AWS CLI. |
IAM User |
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Grant temporary access to your AWS resources. |
IAM Role |
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Apply and easily manage the common access permissions to a large number of IAM users in AWS. |
IAM Group |
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Grant the required permissions to access your Amazon S3 resources. |
Bucket Policy User Policy |
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It scales up to millions of users and supports sign-in with social identity providers, such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon, and enterprise identity providers via SAML 2.0. |
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A startup needs to evaluate the newly created IAM policies. |
IAM Policy Simulator |
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A service that discovers, classifies, and protects sensitive data such as personally identifiable information (PII) or intellectual property. |
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A threat detection service that continuously monitors for malicious activity to protect your AWS account. |
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Prevent unauthorized deletion of Amazon S3 objects. |
Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) |
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A company needs to control the traffic going in and out of its VPC subnets. |
Network Access Control List (NACL) |
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What acts as a virtual firewall in AWS that controls the traffic at the EC2 instance level? |
Security Group |
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Its responsibility is to patch the host operating system of an Amazon EC2 instance. |
AWS |
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CLF-C02 Exam Domain 3: Cloud Technology and Services |
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A customer can assume the responsibility and management of the guest operating system, including updates and security patches. |
Amazon EC2 |
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You need to securely transfer hundreds of petabytes of data and exabyte-scale datasets into and out of the AWS Cloud. |
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A type of EC2 instance that allows you to use your existing server-bound software licenses. |
Dedicated Host |
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A Developer can use these to interact with their AWS services. |
– AWS Command Line Interface -AWS SDKs |
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A highly available and scalable cloud DNS web service in AWS. |
Amazon Route 53 |
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Store the results of I/O-intensive SQL database queries to improve the application performance. |
Amazon ElastiCache |
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A combination of AWS services that allows you to serve the static files with the lowest possible latency. |
Amazon S3 |
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Automatically scale the capacity of an AWS cloud resource based on the incoming traffic to improve availability and reduce failures |
AWS Auto Scaling |
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A company needs to migrate the on-premises MySQL database to Amazon RDS. |
AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) |
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Automatically transfer your infrequently accessed data in your S3 bucket to a more cost-effective storage class. |
S3 Lifecycle Policy |
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You need to upload a single object as a set of parts to improve throughput and have a quicker recovery from any network issues. |
Use Multipart Upload API |
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A company needs to establish a dedicated connection between its on-premises network and its AWS VPC. |
AWS Direct Connect |
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A Machine Learning service that allows you to add visual analysis features to your applications. |
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A source control service that allows you to host Git-based repositories. |
AWS CodeCommit |
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A service that can trace user requests in your application. |
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Inspects your AWS environment and makes recommendations for saving money, improving system performance, or closing security gaps. |
AWS Trusted Advisor |
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You need to speed up the content delivery of static assets to your customers around the globe |
Amazon CloudFront |
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Create and deploy infrastructure-as-code templates |
AWS CloudFormation |
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You have to encrypt the log data that is stored and managed by AWS CloudTrail. |
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A database service that can be used to store JSON documents. |
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CLF-C02 Exam Domain 4: Billing, Pricing and Support |
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A designated technical point of contact that will maintain an operationally healthy AWS environment. |
Technical Account Manager (TAM) |
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It allows the customer to view his Reserved Instance usage for the past month. |
AWS Billing Console |
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A startup needs to estimate the costs of moving its application to AWS. |
AWS Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator |
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Allows you to set coverage targets and receive alerts when your utilization drops below the threshold you define. |
AWS Budgets |
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A type of Reserved Instance that allows you to change its instance family, instance type, platform, scope, or tenancy. |
Convertible RI |
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Take advantage of unused EC2 capacity in the AWS Cloud and provides up to 90% discount. |
Spot Instance |
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You need to centrally manage policies and consolidate billing across multiple AWS accounts. |
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The most cost-efficient storage option for retaining database backups that allows occasional data retrieval in minutes. |
Amazon Glacier |
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Forecast future costs and usage of your AWS resources based on your past consumption. |
AWS Cost Explorer |
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Categorize and track AWS costs on a detailed level. |
Cost allocation tags |
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The lowest support plan that allows an unlimited number of technical support cases to be opened. |
Developer Support Plan |
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The most cost-effective option when you purchase a Reserved Instance for a 1-year term. |
All Upfront |
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You have to combine usage volume discounts of your multiple AWS accounts. |
Consolidated Billing |
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Sell your catalog of custom AMIs in AWS |
AWS Marketplace |
Final Step: Validate Your AWS Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02 Knowledge
When you are feeling confident with your review, it is best to validate your knowledge through sample exams. Tutorials Dojo offers a very useful and well-reviewed set of practice tests for the Cloud Practitioner exam takers here. Each test contains many unique questions which will surely help you verify if you have missed out on anything important that might appear on your exam. You can also pair our practice exams with our AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam Study CLF-C02 Guide and Cheat Sheets eBook.
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Sample CLF-C02 / CLF-C02 Practice Test Questions:
Question 1
Which of the following channels shares a collection of offerings to help you achieve specific business outcomes related to enterprise cloud adoption through paid engagements in several specialty practice areas?
- AWS Enterprise Support
- Concierge Support
- AWS Professional Services
- AWS Technical Account Manager
Correct Answer: 3
AWS Professional Services shares a collection of offerings to help you achieve specific outcomes related to enterprise cloud adoption. Each offering delivers a set of activities, best practices, and documentation reflecting our experience supporting hundreds of customers in their journey to the AWS Cloud. AWS Professional Services’ offerings use a unique methodology based on Amazon’s internal best practices to help you complete projects faster and more reliably while accounting for evolving expectations and dynamic team structures along the way.
AWS Professional Services created the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) to help organizations design and travel an accelerated path to successful cloud adoption. The guidance and best practices provided by the framework help you build a comprehensive approach to cloud computing across your organization and throughout your IT lifecycle. Using the AWS CAF helps you realize measurable business benefits from cloud adoption faster and with less risk.
Hence, the correct answer in this scenario is: AWS Professional Services.
AWS Enterprise Support is incorrect because this is the one that provides 24×7 technical support from high-quality engineers, tools, and technology to automatically manage the health of your environment, consultative architectural guidance delivered in the context of your applications and use-cases, and a designated Technical Account Manager (TAM) to coordinate access to proactive/preventative programs and AWS subject matter experts. Â
Concierge Support is incorrect because this is a team composed of AWS billing and account experts that specialize in working with enterprise accounts. They will quickly and efficiently assist you with your billing and account inquiries and work with you to implement billing and account best practices so that you can focus on running your business.
AWS Technical Account Manager is incorrect because this is your designated technical point of contact who provides advocacy and guidance to help plan and build solutions using best practices, coordinate access to subject matter experts and product teams, and proactively keep your AWS environment operationally healthy. Â
References:
https://aws.amazon.com/professional-services/
https://aws.amazon.com/professional-services/CAF/
Check out these AWS Overview Cheat Sheets:
https://tutorialsdojo.com/aws-cheat-sheets-overview/
Tutorials Dojo’s AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam Study Guide:
https://tutorialsdojo.com/aws-certified-cloud-practitioner/
Question 2
A company is planning to launch a new system in AWS but they do not have an employee who has AWS-related expertise. Which of the following AWS channels can instead help the company design, architect, build, migrate, and manage their workloads and applications on AWS?
- AWS Partner Network Technology Partners
- AWS Marketplace
- AWS Partner Network Consulting Partners
- Technical Account Management
Correct Answer: 3
The AWS Partner Network (APN) is focused on helping partners build successful AWS-based businesses to drive superb customer experiences. This is accomplished by developing a global ecosystem of Partners with specialties unique to each customer’s needs.
There are two types of APN Partners:
  1. APN Consulting Partners
  2. APN Technology Partners
APN Consulting Partners are professional services firms that help customers of all sizes design, architect, migrate, or build new applications on AWS. Consulting Partners include System Integrators (SIs), Strategic Consultancies, Resellers, Digital Agencies, Managed Service Providers (MSPs), and Value-Added Resellers (VARs).
APN Technology Partners provide software solutions that are either hosted on or integrated with the AWS platform. Technology Partners include Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), SaaS, PaaS, developer tools, management, and security vendors.
Hence, the correct answer in this scenario is APN Consulting Partners.Â
APN Technology Partners is incorrect because this only provides software solutions that are either hosted on or integrated with the AWS platform. You should use APN Consulting Partners instead, as this program helps customers to design, architect, migrate, or build new applications on AWS, which is what is needed in the scenario.
AWS Marketplace is incorrect because this just provides a new sales channel for independent software vendors (ISVs) and Consulting Partners to sell their solutions to AWS customers. This makes it easy for customers to find, buy, deploy, and manage software solutions, including SaaS, in a matter of minutes.
Technical Account Management is incorrect because this is just a part of AWS Enterprise Support which provides advocacy and guidance to help plan and build solutions using best practices, coordinate access to subject matter experts and product teams, and proactively keep your AWS environment operationally healthy. Â
References:
https://aws.amazon.com/partners/
https://aws.amazon.com/partners/consulting/journey/
https://aws.amazon.com/partners/technology/journey/
Tutorials Dojo’s AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam Study Guide:
https://tutorialsdojo.com/aws-certified-cloud-practitioner/
Click here for more AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner practice exam questions.
Check out our other AWS practice test courses here:
What to Expect on the CLF-C02 AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam?
There are two types of questions on the examination:
- Multiple-choice: Has one correct response and three incorrect responses (distractors).
- Multiple-response: Has two or more correct responses out of five or more options.
Distractors, or incorrect answers, are response options that an examinee with incomplete knowledge or skill would likely choose. However, they are generally plausible responses that fit in the content area defined by the test objective.
Unanswered questions are scored as incorrect; there is no penalty for guessing.Â
The majority of questions are usually scenario-based. Some will ask you to identify a specific service or concept. While others will ask you to select multiple responses that fit the given requirements. No matter the style of the question, as long as you understand what is being asked, then you will do fine.
Your examination may include unscored items that are placed on the test by AWS to gather statistical information. These items are not identified on the form and do not affect your score.
The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) examination is a pass or fail exam. Your results for the examination are reported as a scaled score from 100 through 1000, with a minimum passing score of 700. Right after the exam, you will immediately know whether you passed or you failed. And in the succeeding business days, you should receive your complete results with the score breakdown (and hopefully the certificate too).
Final Exam Tips for the CLF-C02 AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam
- Be sure to get proper sleep the night before. If you feel that you aren’t ready enough, you can just reschedule your exam.
- Come early to the exam venue so that you have time to handle mishaps if there are any.
- Read the exam questions properly, but don’t spend too much time on a question you don’t know the answer to. You can always go back to it after you answer the rest.Â
- Keep your reviewer if you plan on taking other AWS certifications in the future. It will be handy for sure.Â
- And be sure to visit the Tutorials Dojo website to see our latest AWS reviewers, cheat sheets, and other guides.
Note: The new AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02 exam version will be available starting September 19, 2023. Read this article to learn more.
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Written by: Jon Bonso
