AWS Cloud Practitioner Study

Task Statement 1.1: Define the benefits of the AWS Cloud.

Knowledge of:

• Value proposition of the AWS Cloud

Skills in:

• Understanding the benefits of global infrastructure (for example, speed of deployment, global reach)
• Understanding the advantages of high availability, elasticity, and agility

Task Statement 1.2: Identify design principles of the AWS Cloud.

Knowledge of:

• AWS Well-Architected Framework

Skills in:

• Understanding the pillars of the Well-Architected Framework (for example, operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, sustainability)
• Identifying differences between the pillars of the Well-Architected Framework

Task Statement 1.3: Understand the benefits of and strategies for migration to the AWS Cloud.

Knowledge of:

• Cloud adoption strategies
• Resources to support the cloud migration journey

Skills in:

• Understanding the components of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) (for example, reduced business risk; improved environmental, social, and governance [ESG] performance; increased revenue; increased operational efficiency)
• Identifying appropriate migration strategies (for example, database replication, use of AWS Snowball)

Task Statement 1.4: Understand concepts of cloud economics.

Knowledge of:

• Aspects of cloud economics
• Cost savings of moving to the cloud

Skills in:

• Understanding the role of fixed costs compared with variable costs
• Understanding costs that are associated with on-premises environments
• Understanding the differences between licensing strategies (for example, Bring Your Own License [BYOL] model compared with included licenses)
• Understanding the concept of rightsizing
• Identifying benefits of automation
• Understanding the economies of scale (for example, cost savings)

Task Statement 2.1: Understand the AWS shared responsibility model.

Knowledge of:

• AWS shared responsibility model

Skills in:

• Recognizing the components of the AWS shared responsibility model
• Describing the customer’s responsibilities on AWS
• Describing AWS responsibilities
• Describing responsibilities that the customer and AWS share
• Describing how AWS responsibilities and customer responsibilities can shift, depending on the service used (for example, Amazon RDS, AWS Lambda, Amazon EC2)

Task Statement 2.2: Understand AWS Cloud security, governance, and compliance concepts.

Knowledge of:

• AWS compliance and governance concepts
• Benefits of cloud security (for example, encryption)
• Where to capture and locate logs that are associated with cloud security

Skills in:

• Identifying where to find AWS compliance information (for example, AWS Artifact)
• Understanding compliance needs among geographic locations or industries (for example, AWS compliance)
• Describing how customers secure resources on AWS (for example, Amazon Inspector, AWS Security Hub, Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Shield)
• Identifying encryption options (for example, encryption in transit, encryption at rest)
• Recognizing services that aid in governance and compliance (for example, monitoring with Amazon CloudWatch; auditing with AWS CloudTrail, AWS Audit Manager, and AWS Config; reporting with access reports)
• Recognizing compliance requirements that vary among AWS services

Task Statement 2.3: Identify AWS access management capabilities.

Knowledge of:

• Identity and access management (for example, AWS Identity and Access Management [IAM])
• Importance of protecting the AWS root user account
• Principle of least privilege
• AWS IAM Identity Center (AWS Single Sign-On)

Skills in:

• Understanding access keys, password policies, and credential storage (for example, AWS Secrets Manager, AWS Systems Manager)
• Identifying authentication methods in AWS (for example, multi-factor authentication [MFA], IAM Identity Center, cross-account IAM roles)
• Defining groups, users, custom policies, and managed policies in compliance with the principle of least privilege
• Identifying tasks that only the account root user can perform
• Understanding which methods can achieve root user protection
• Understanding the types of identity management (for example, federated)

Task Statement 2.4: Identify components and resources for security.

Knowledge of:

• Security capabilities that AWS provides
• Security-related documentation that AWS provides

Skills in:

• Describing AWS security features and services (for example, AWS WAF, AWS Firewall Manager, AWS Shield, Amazon GuardDuty)
• Understanding that third-party security products are available from AWS Marketplace
• Identifying where AWS security information is available (for example, AWS Knowledge Center, AWS Security Center, AWS Security Blog)
• Understanding the use of AWS services for identifying security issues (for example, AWS Trusted Advisor)

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

Knowledge of:

• Various ways of provisioning and operating in the AWS Cloud
• Various ways to access AWS services
• Types of cloud deployment models

Skills in:

• Deciding between options such as programmatic access (for example, APIs, SDKs, CLI), the AWS Management Console, and infrastructure as code (IaC)
• Evaluating requirements to determine whether to use one-time operations or repeatable processes
• Identifying deployment models (for example, cloud, hybrid, on-premises)

Task Statement 3.2: Define the AWS global infrastructure.

Knowledge of:

• AWS Regions, Availability Zones, and edge locations
• High availability
• Use of multiple Regions
• Benefits of edge locations

Skills in:

• Describing relationships among Regions, Availability Zones, and edge locations
• Describing how to achieve high availability by using multiple Availability Zones
• Recognizing that Availability Zones do not share single points of failure
• Describing when to use multiple Regions (for example, disaster recovery, business continuity, low latency for end users, data sovereignty)

Task Statement 3.3: Identify AWS compute services.

Knowledge of:

• AWS compute services

Skills in:

• Recognizing the appropriate use of various EC2 instance types (for example, compute optimized, storage optimized)
• Recognizing the appropriate use of various container options (for example, Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS)
• Recognizing the appropriate use of various serverless compute options (for example, AWS Fargate, Lambda)
• Recognizing that auto scaling provides elasticity
• Identifying the purposes of load balancers

Task Statement 3.4: Identify AWS database services.

Knowledge of:

• AWS database services
• Database migration

Skills in:

• Deciding when to use EC2 hosted databases or AWS managed databases
• Identifying relational databases (for example, Amazon RDS, Amazon Aurora)
• Identifying NoSQL databases (for example, DynamoDB)
• Identifying memory-based databases (for example, Amazon ElastiCache)
• Identifying database migration tools (for example AWS Database Migration Service [AWS DMS], AWS Schema Conversion Tool [AWS SCT])

Task Statement 3.5: Identify AWS network services.

Knowledge of:

• AWS network services

Skills in:

• Identifying the components of a VPC (for example, subnets, gateways)
• Understanding security in a VPC (for example, network ACLs, security groups, Amazon Inspector)
• Understanding the purpose of Amazon Route 53
• Identifying network connectivity options to AWS (for example AWS VPN, AWS Direct Connect)

Task Statement 3.6: Identify AWS storage services.

Knowledge of:

• AWS storage services

Skills in:

• Identifying the uses for object storage
• Recognizing the differences in Amazon S3 storage classes
• Identifying block storage solutions (for example, Amazon Elastic Block Store [Amazon EBS], instance store)
• Identifying file services (for example, Amazon Elastic File System [Amazon EFS], Amazon FSx)
• Identifying cached file systems (for example, AWS Storage Gateway)
• Understanding use cases for lifecycle policies
• Understanding use cases for AWS Backup

Task Statement 3.7: Identify AWS artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) services and analytics services.

Knowledge of:

• AWS AI/ML services
• AWS analytics services

Skills in:

• Understanding AI/ML services and the tasks that they accomplish (for example, Amazon SageMaker AI, Amazon Lex, Amazon Kendra)
• Identifying the services for data analytics (for example, Amazon Athena, Amazon Kinesis, AWS Glue, Amazon QuickSight)

Task Statement 3.8: Identify services from other in-scope AWS service categories.

Knowledge of:

• Application integration services of Amazon EventBridge, Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)
• Business application services of Amazon Connect and Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES)
• Customer enablement services (for example, AWS Support)
• Developer tool services and capabilities (for example, AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodePipeline, and AWS X-Ray)
• End-user computing services of Amazon AppStream 2.0, Amazon WorkSpaces, and Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser
• Frontend web and mobile services of AWS Amplify and AWS AppSync
• IoT services (for example, AWS IoT Core)

Skills in:

• Choosing the appropriate service to deliver messages and to send alerts and notifications
• Choosing the appropriate service to meet business application needs
• Choosing the appropriate option for business support assistance
• Identifying the tools to develop, deploy, and troubleshoot applications
• Identifying the services that can present the output of virtual machines (VMs) on end-user machines
• Identifying the services that can create and deploy frontend and mobile services
• Identifying the services that manage IoT devices

Task Statement 4.1: Compare AWS pricing models.

Knowledge of:

• Compute purchasing options (for example, On-Demand Instances, Reserved Instances, Spot Instances, Savings Plans, Dedicated Hosts, Dedicated Instances, Capacity Reservations)
• Storage options and tiers

Skills in:

• Identifying when to use various compute purchasing options
• Describing Reserved Instance flexibility
• Describing Reserved Instance behavior in AWS Organizations
• Understanding incoming data transfer costs and outgoing data transfer costs (for example, from one Region to another Region, within the same Region)
• Understanding pricing options for various storage options and tiers

Task Statement 4.2: Understand resources for billing, budget, and cost management.

Knowledge of:

• Billing support and information
• Pricing information for AWS services
• AWS Organizations
• AWS cost allocation tags

Skills in:

• Understanding the appropriate uses and capabilities of AWS Budgets, and AWS Cost Explorer
• Understanding the appropriate uses and capabilities of AWS Pricing Calculator
• Understanding AWS Organizations consolidated billing and allocation of costs
• Understanding various types of cost allocation tags and their relation to billing reports (for example, AWS Cost and Usage Report)

Task Statement 4.3: Identify AWS technical resources and AWS Support options.

Knowledge of:

• Resources and documentation available on official AWS websites
• AWS Support plans
• Role of the AWS Partner Network, including independent software vendors and system integrators
• AWS Support Center

Skills in:

• Locating AWS whitepapers, blogs, and documentation on official AWS websites
• Identifying and locating AWS technical resources (for example AWS Prescriptive Guidance, AWS Knowledge Center, AWS re:Post)
• Identifying AWS Support options for AWS customers (for example, customer service and communities, AWS Developer Support, AWS Business Support, AWS Enterprise On-Ramp Support, AWS Enterprise Support)
• Identifying the role of Trusted Advisor, AWS Health Dashboard, and the AWS Health API to help manage and monitor environments for cost optimization
• Identifying the role of the AWS Trust and Safety team to report abuse of AWS resources
• Understanding the role of AWS Partners (for example AWS Marketplace, independent software vendors, system integrators)
• Identifying the benefits of being an AWS Partner (for example, partner training and certification, partner events, partner volume discounts)
• Identifying the key services that AWS Marketplace offers (for example, cost management, governance and entitlement)
• Identifying technical assistance options available at AWS (for example, AWS Professional Services, AWS Solutions Architects)