CLF-C02 study plan

Your step-by-step plan

1. Map the blueprint and book a date

   Day 1

   Read the official AWS exam guide and the four domains with their weights. Book a provisional date now, because a fixed date turns open-ended study into a plan and is the strongest predictor of actually sitting. Note that Cloud Technology and Services is the heaviest domain and Security and Compliance is second, so plan the most time there and treat Billing as the smallest but most learnable block of marks.

2. Learn the cloud value vocabulary

   Week 1

   Start with Cloud Concepts because it is the easiest marks and frames the rest. Memorise the benefit phrases the exam reuses, trading capital expense for variable expense, economies of scale, elasticity, speed of deployment, and the six Well-Architected pillars as a closed list. Drill the impostor-pillar trap and separate the cost ideas of rightsizing, Bring Your Own License, and total cost of ownership using the recall prompts here, covering the answer first.

3. Build the service-recognition map

   Weeks 1 to 3

   Cloud Technology and Services is the biggest domain, so give it the most drilling. Build a one-line-per-service map grouped by category: compute (EC2, Lambda, Fargate), databases (RDS and Aurora versus DynamoDB), storage (S3, EBS, EFS), networking and edge (VPC, Route 53, CloudFront, Global Accelerator), and the AI and analytics names. Learn the Region, Availability Zone, and edge-location hierarchy cold. For each service, fix the single word in a scenario that points to it.

4. Lock the shared responsibility model and security services

   Weeks 2 to 3

   Security and Compliance is the second heaviest domain. Make the shared responsibility line automatic, AWS secures the cloud, the customer secures what they put in it, and the line slides by service. Then drill the security service jobs: CloudTrail versus CloudWatch, Config, GuardDuty, Inspector, Artifact, and the IAM and MFA basics. Separate encryption in transit from at rest, and security groups from network ACLs, until the discriminator alone decides each one.

5. Cover billing, pricing, and support

   Week 4

   Billing is the smallest domain and the most dependable marks once you know the splits. Drill the pricing models against the workload (On-Demand, Reserved, Spot, Savings Plans, Dedicated Hosts) and the cost tools by tense (Pricing Calculator before, Budgets during, Cost Explorer after, consolidated billing across accounts). Skim the support-plan ladder for what each tier adds, and give Trusted Advisor, the Health Dashboard, and re:Post each a clear job.

6. Drill weak domains, then space the review

   Week 5

   Use your per-domain accuracy on practice questions to attack the domains dragging you down, not to re-read what you already know. Then space it: revisit each domain's recall prompts after a few days and again a week later. Spacing roughly doubles what sticks compared with cramming, and it is the cheapest gain available before the exam.

7. Sit a timed mock and calibrate

   Weeks 5 to 6

   Take at least one full timed practice run under exam conditions to rehearse pacing and the flag-and-return habit across the whole question set in the time allowed. Treat the score as a per-domain readiness signal rather than a single number, and review every missed question, naming the need you misread, before you book or sit.

Frequently asked questions