The first of the four domains in the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam (AWS CLF-C02) is “Cloud Concepts.” This domain makes up 24% of the scored content.

If you want to follow along with my online course, “AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) Cert Prep,” you can access the course here: LinkedIn Learning.

Don’t forget to download my unofficial study guide, as well as AWS’s official study guide!

Cloud Concepts

“Cloud Concepts” points understanding to the overall value proposition of “What is the Cloud, and why do we use it?”

1.1: Define the benefits of the AWS Cloud

Advantages to Cloud Computing

There are 6 “benefits” or “advantages” to utilizing Cloud Computing over legacy infrastructure (think: server rooms in your office or data centers owned, managed, and serviced by your company’s staff) that AWS Cloud wants you to know about. They are referred to as the 6 Advantages of Cloud Computing. These will come up in various forms on the exam, so it’s best to know them in and out.

The basic premise is: what benefits do you get by letting the big cloud computing platforms manage the physical aspects of managing your data/infrastructure so that your company can focus on your business?

• Trade fixed expense for variable expense
• Benefit from massive economies of scale
• Stop guessing capacity
• Increase speed and agility
• Stop spending money running and maintaining data centers
• Go global in minutes

(Try out a study aide to help you memorize these!)

1.2: Identify design principles of the AWS Cloud

AWS Well-Architected Framework

The AWS Well-Architected Framework encompasses key concepts, design principles, and architectural best practices for architecting and running workloads in the Cloud

• Operational excellence: continuously improving processes and procedures of the daily running and monitoring of systems
• Security: protecting information and systems
• Reliability: workloads performing intended functions and recovering quickly from failures
• Performance efficiency: structured and streamlined allocation of IT and computing resources
• Cost optimization: avoid unnecessary costs
• Sustainability: minimizing environmental impacts of running cloud workloads

The AWS Well-Architected Framework is also known as the 6 Pillars of a Well-Architected Framework (used to be 5, but they added Sustainability a few years ago). These are “pillars,” or building blocks of creating a best-practices based resilient, reliable, cost effective, and sustainable IT infrastructure on the Cloud.

(Try out a mnemonic to help you memorize these!)

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

Learn about adopting the cloud for your organization’s IT infrastructure based on best practices, and how you can utilize different AWS tools and features to migrate to the cloud.

AWS Cloud Adoption Framework

AWS CAF describes best practices to help facilitate successful IT migrations into the Cloud, with recommendations for implementing, adapting, configuring, and maintaining effective workflows in the Cloud

• Reduce business risk
• Improve ESG (environmental, social, and governance) performance
• Grow revenue
• Increase operational efficiency

(Try out a mnemonic to help you memorize these!)

Cloud Migration Strategies

Cloud migration strategies are ways to migrate your resources to and from the cloud

• Database replication
• AWS Snow Family (Snowcone, Snowball, Snowmobile)

1.4: Understand concepts of cloud economics

Basically, how you can save money by moving your infrastructure to the cloud (yes, there are obviously ways it can cost wayyy more – I also hate having Adobe subscriptions, but humor AWS for the sake of passing the exam!).

• Role of fixed costs compared with variable costs (“trade fixed expenses for variable expenses” in 6 advantages of cloud computing)
• Costs associated with on-premises environments (“stop spending money running and maintaining data centers” in 6 advantages of cloud computing)
• Utilizing the cloud to benefit from economies of scale (“benefit from massive economies of scale” in 6 advantages of cloud computing)
• Benefits of automation: less times a human touches it, the more secure and less vulnerable to intentional or unintentional issues
• Benefits of rightsizing: utilizing optimal amount of resources for necessary tasks, not too much and not too little can save you money
• Licensing strategies: Bring Your Own License (BYOL) model vs included licenses (source)

Managed AWS Services

Managed AWS services are “fully managed” by AWS, which means that the underlying infrastructure, server management, patching, operations, etc. are all managed by AWS. This allows organizations and users to focus on building and business rather than the management and administration of these resources.

Examples of managed AWS Services:

• Amazon RDS
• Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)
• Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS)
• Amazon DynamoDB

Next Domain: Security and Compliance
Go back to AWS CLF-C02 Exam Guide