AWS Cloud Practitioner Syllabus 2022

Amazon Web Services, the world’s most widely used cloud platform, provides around 200+ fully-featured services from data centres all over the world. AWS Certifications authenticate cloud competence, allowing the professionals to showcase their talents in-demand. This aids the companies in creating the best teams for AWS cloud initiatives. There are 11 certificates to choose from, depending on the aspirant’s skill set and interests.

The Cloud Practitioner Exam is a foundational credential that aids organisations in identifying and developing individuals with crucial knowledge of cloud implementation. The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam is for people who can effectively demonstrate a broad understanding of the AWS Cloud, regardless of their employment title. The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam verifies that you understand the foundations of AWS cloud computing.

Prerequisites for the AWS Cloud Practitioner Credential

The AWS knowledge that an aspirant should have before taking the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam is listed below.

1. The candidate needs to possess a fundamental understanding of AWS Cloud concepts.
2. The candidate needs to have knowledge regarding the AWS Cloud’s security and compliance policies.
3. The candidate should have a thorough understanding of the main AWS services.
4. The aspirant should be familiar with the AWS Cloud’s economics.
5. The aspirant should ideally have 6 months of active AWS Cloud experience.
6. The candidate should be familiar with AWS Cloud architecture, implementation, and management.
7. The candidate should ideally demonstrate their understanding of well-designed AWS Cloud solutions.

What is Expected From the Candidate after Clearing the Exam? 

The exam verifies that a candidate can execute the following tasks: 

• Explain what the AWS Cloud is good for.
• Learn and understand the shared responsibility model of AWS.
• Identify the best security practices.
• Learn the best billing practices, economics, and AWS Cloud costs.
• Describe and place AWS’ core services, including computing, networking, databases, and storage.
• Determine whether AWS services are appropriate for common use scenarios.

Exam Overview:

The Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam is a foundational level exam for which the cost is 100USD. The test will take 90 minutes to complete, during which you will attempt 65 questions. The passing score of the exam is 700/1000, and the exam is available in different languages. 

Now, take a close look at it below.

AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam Syllabus

The following Cloud Practitioner topics should be addressed when studying for the certification exam:

1. Cloud Concepts – 28%
2. Security and Compliance – 24%
3. Technology – 36%
4. Billing and pricing – 12%

1. Cloud Concepts – 28%

1.1 Define the AWS Cloud and its value proposition.

a. Define the benefits of the AWS cloud including: 

• Security 
• Reliability 
• High Availability 
• Elasticity 
• Agility 
• Pay-as-you go pricing 
• Scalability 
• Global Reach 
• Economy of scale.

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

• Shifting technical resources to revenue-generating activities as opposed to managing infrastructure.

1.2 Identify aspects of AWS Cloud economics.

a. 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.
• Understand the impact of software licensing costs when moving to the cloud.

b. Identify which operations will reduce costs by moving to the cloud.

• Right-sized infrastructure
• Benefits of automation
• Reduce compliance scope (for example, reporting)
• Managed services (for example, RDS, ECS, EKS, DynamoDB)

1.3 Explain the different cloud architecture design principles.

a. Explain the design principles.

• Design for failure
• Decouple components versus monolithic architecture
• Implement elasticity in the cloud versus on-premises
• Think parallel

2. Security and Compliance – 24%

2.1 Define the AWS shared responsibility model.

a. Recognize the elements of the Shared Responsibility Model.

b. 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)

c. Describe AWS responsibilities.

2.2 Define AWS Cloud security and compliance concepts.

a. Identify where to find AWS compliance information.

• Locations of lists of recognized available compliance controls (for example, HIPPA, SOCs).
• Recognize that compliance requirements vary among AWS services.

b. At a high level, describe how customers achieve compliance on AWS.

• Identify different encryption options on AWS (for example, In transit, At rest).

c. Describe who enables encryption on AWS for a given service.

d. Recognize there are services that will aid in auditing and reporting

• Recognize that logs exist for auditing and monitoring (do not have to understand the logs).
• Define Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Config, and AWS CloudTrail.

e. Explain the concept of least privileged access.

2.3 Identify AWS access management capabilities

a. Understand the purpose of User and Identity Management

• Access keys and password policies (rotation, complexity)
• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
• AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

1. Groups/users
2. Roles
3. Policies, managed policies compared to custom policies

• Tasks that require the use of root accounts
• Protection of root accounts

2.4 Identify resources for security support.

a. Recognize there are different network security capabilities.

• Native AWS services (for example, security groups, Network ACLs, AWS WAF)
• 3rd party security products from the AWS Marketplace

b. 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
• Partner Systems Integrators

c. Know that security checks are a component of AWS Trusted Advisor.

3. Technology – 36%

3.1 Define methods of deploying and operating in the AWS Cloud.

a. 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.

b. Identify different types of cloud deployment models.

• All in with cloud/cloud-native
• Hybrid
• On-premises

c. Identify connectivity options.

• VPN
• AWS Direct Connect
• Public internet

3.2 Define the AWS global infrastructure.

a. Describe the relationships among Regions, Availability Zones, and Edge Locations.

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

• Recall that high availability is achieved by using multiple Availability Zones
• Recognize that Availability Zones do not share single points of failure

c. Describe when to consider the use of multiple AWS Regions.

• Disaster recovery/business continuity
• Low latency for end-users
• Data sovereignty

d. Describe at a high level the benefits of Edge Locations.

• Amazon CloudFront
• AWS Global Accelerator

3.3 Identify the core AWS services.

a. Describe the categories of services on AWS (compute, storage, network, database.

b. Identify AWS compute services.

• Recognize there are different compute families
• Recognize the different services that provide compute (for example, AWS Lambda
• compared to Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), or Amazon EC2, etc.)
• Recognize that elasticity is achieved through Auto Scaling
• Identify the purpose of load balancers

c. Identify different AWS storage services.

• Describe Amazon S3
• Describe Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)
• Describe Amazon S3 Glacier
• Describe AWS Snowball
• Describe Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)
• Describe AWS Storage Gateway

d. Identify AWS networking services.

• Identify VPC
• Identify security groups
• Identify the purpose of Amazon Route 53
• Identify VPN, AWS Direct Connect

e. Identify different AWS database services.

• Install databases on Amazon EC2 compared to AWS managed databases
• Identify Amazon RDS
• Identify Amazon DynamoDB
• Identify Amazon Redshift

3.4 Identify resources for technology support.

a. Recognize there is documentation (best practices, whitepapers, AWS Knowledge Center, forums, blogs).

b. Identify the various levels and scope of AWS support.

• AWS Abuse
• AWS support cases
• Premium support
• Technical Account Managers

c. Recognize there is a partner network (marketplace, third-party) including Independent.

d. Software Vendors and System Integrators.

e. Identify sources of AWS technical assistance and knowledge including professional services, solution architects, training and certification, and the Amazon Partner Network.

f. Identify the benefits of using AWS Trusted Advisor.

4. Billing and Pricing – 12%

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

a. Identify scenarios/best fit for On-Demand Instance pricing.

b. Identify scenarios/best fit for Reserved-Instance pricing.

• Describe Reserved-Instances flexibility
• Describe Reserved-Instances behavior in AWS Organizations

c. Identify scenarios/best fit for Spot Instance pricing.

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

a. Recognize that consolidated billing is a feature of AWS Organizations.

b. Identify how multiple accounts aid in allocating costs across departments.

4.3 Identify resources available for billing support.

a. Identify ways to get billing support and information.

• Cost Explorer, AWS Cost and Usage Report, Amazon QuickSight, third-party partners, and AWS Marketplace tools
• Open a billing support case
• The role of the Concierge for AWS Enterprise Support Plan customers

b. Identify where to find pricing information on AWS services.

• AWS Simple Monthly Calculator
• AWS Services product pages
• AWS Pricing API

c. Recognize that alarms/alerts exist.

d. Identify how tags are used in cost allocation.

To Sum Up:

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