Learn AWS by actually building on it.

The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) proves you understand the cloud and AWS well enough to talk about it, make sensible decisions, and support a team using AWS. It is the foundation certification: no coding, no architecture design, just a solid, broad understanding.

Who it is for

• Students and career-switchers who want a recognised first cloud credential.
• Business owners and non-technical staff who work alongside cloud.
• Developers and IT people who want the fundamentals right before the deeper certifications.

How the exam works

• 65 questions, multiple choice and multiple response, 90 minutes.
• Pass mark is 700 out of 1000 (a scaled score, so it is not simply 70% of questions).
• Costs 100 USD, taken online or at a test centre.

Your first real task. When you create an AWS account, the email you sign up with becomes the root user — it can do anything, including close the account and spend money. So the very first thing we do is protect it.

• Create the account at aws.amazon.com (you need an email and a card; the Free Tier means you will not be charged for the labs in this course if you follow the steps).
• Turn on MFA (multi-factor authentication) on the root user — a second code from your phone, so a stolen password alone is useless.
• Then stop using root for daily work. We create a normal user for that in Module 2.

Before you launch anything, set up a budget alert. This emails you the moment your spending crosses an amount you choose — even a few hundred FCFA worth of dollars.

• Open Billing → Budgets, create a monthly budget, set a small limit, add your email.
• Also enable the free Free Tier usage alerts.

The AWS Management Console is the website where you click to use AWS. Two things to notice immediately:

• The Region selector (top right). AWS runs in many Regions around the world; what you create in one Region is not visible in another. Pick one close to your users for speed and keep to it.
• The search bar at the top. AWS has hundreds of services — do not memorise menus, just type the name (S3, EC2) and go.

Cloud computing is renting computing — servers, storage, databases — over the internet, and paying only for what you use, instead of buying and running your own machines.

The six advantages AWS teaches (know these for the exam)

• Trade capital expense for variable expense — pay as you go instead of buying servers upfront.
• Benefit from massive economies of scale — AWS buys at huge scale, so prices fall.
• Stop guessing capacity — scale up or down on demand.
• Increase speed and agility — a new server in minutes, not weeks.
• Stop spending money running data centres.
• Go global in minutes.

Deployment models = where it runs: cloud (all on AWS), on-premises (your own machines), or hybrid (a mix).

Service models = how much AWS manages for you:

• IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) — you rent raw servers and manage the rest. Example: EC2.
• PaaS (Platform as a Service) — AWS manages the servers, you just deploy your app. Example: Elastic Beanstalk.
• SaaS (Software as a Service) — finished software you just use. Example: Gmail, or AWS's own managed tools.

AWS is physically organised in three layers:

• Regions — geographic areas (e.g. Europe-Paris, US-East). You choose which Region your resources live in.
• Availability Zones (AZs) — separate data centres inside a Region. Spreading across AZs keeps your app running if one data centre fails.
• Edge locations — many more small sites worldwide that cache content close to users (used by CloudFront).

AWS's checklist for building good systems. Six pillars:

• Operational excellence — run and monitor well.
• Security — protect data and systems.
• Reliability — recover from failure.
• Performance efficiency — use the right resources.
• Cost optimisation — avoid waste.
• Sustainability — minimise environmental impact.

For the exam you need to recognise the pillars and what each is about, not design against them.

Moving to the cloud has a vocabulary. The seven Rs are the strategies for migrating an existing system: Rehost (lift-and-shift), Replatform (small tweaks), Repurchase (switch to SaaS), Refactor (rebuild for cloud), Retire (switch off), Retain (keep as is), Relocate.

On economics, know CapEx vs OpEx (big upfront purchase vs pay-as-you-go) and TCO (total cost of ownership — the real cost including power, staff, space, not just the server price).

The single most important security idea in AWS. Security is shared:

• AWS secures the cloud itself — the buildings, hardware, and the services they run ("security of the cloud").
• You secure what you put in it — your data, who can access it, your settings ("security in the cloud").

The split shifts by service: with a raw server (EC2) you manage a lot; with a managed service (like S3 or Lambda) AWS manages more, but you always own your data and access control.

IAM (Identity and Access Management) controls who can do what in your account.

• Root user — all-powerful; use it almost never.
• IAM users — a login per person.
• Groups — bundle users and give permissions once (e.g. a "Developers" group).
• Roles — temporary permissions a service or user can assume, with no password. The safe modern way.
• Policies — the documents that say what is allowed.

Least privilege: give the smallest permission needed, nothing more. And turn on MFA for everyone.

Know what each one is for (not how to configure it):

• Shield — protects against DDoS (flood) attacks.
• WAF — web application firewall, filters bad web requests.
• GuardDuty — watches for threats/suspicious activity.
• Inspector — scans for vulnerabilities.
• Macie — finds sensitive data (like personal info) in S3.
• KMS — manages encryption keys.
• Secrets Manager — stores passwords/API keys safely.

• CloudTrail — records who did what in your account (an audit log).
• Config — records how your resources are set up and tracks changes.
• Security Hub — one dashboard of your security findings.
• Trusted Advisor — automatic recommendations on cost, security, and limits.

AWS Artifact is where you download AWS's compliance reports (SOC, ISO, PCI, etc.). Compliance programs prove AWS meets various standards.

Data residency means where your data physically lives — and that is decided by your Region choice.

Four ways to tell AWS what to do:

• Console — click in the website. Best for learning.
• CLI — type commands in a terminal. Fast and scriptable.
• SDKs — call AWS from your code (Python, JavaScript, etc.).
• Infrastructure as Code (CloudFormation) — describe your whole setup in a file so it can be rebuilt identically, any time.

• EC2 — virtual servers you rent by the second/hour.
• Auto Scaling — adds/removes servers automatically with demand.
• Elastic Load Balancing — spreads traffic across servers.
• Lambda — run code with no server to manage, pay per run. "Serverless".
• Containers (ECS/EKS) — package an app with everything it needs, run it anywhere.

• S3 — object storage for files (images, videos, backups, website files). Extremely durable, cheap, scales endlessly.
• EBS — a hard drive attached to one EC2 server.
• EFS — a shared file system many servers can use at once.
• Glacier — very cheap storage for archives you rarely touch.

• RDS — managed traditional (relational/SQL) databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.
• Aurora — AWS's faster, cloud-native relational database.
• DynamoDB — a managed NoSQL database for huge scale and speed.

Rule of thumb: structured data with relationships → relational (RDS/Aurora); massive, simple, fast lookups → DynamoDB.

• VPC — your own private network inside AWS.
• Subnets — sections of that network (public vs private).
• Security groups — firewalls around your servers.
• Route 53 — AWS's DNS (turns a domain name into an address).
• CloudFront — the CDN that caches content at edge locations close to users for speed.

• SNS — send notifications/messages (e.g. email/SMS alerts).
• SQS — a queue that lets parts of a system talk without waiting on each other.
• EventBridge — routes events between services.
• CloudWatch — metrics, logs and alarms: how your systems are performing.

SQS/SNS/EventBridge "decouple" systems so one slow part does not break the rest.

• On-Demand — pay as you go, no commitment. Flexible, most expensive per hour.
• Reserved Instances / Savings Plans — commit to 1–3 years for a big discount.
• Spot — use spare capacity very cheaply, but AWS can reclaim it. Good for flexible work.
• Free Tier — a set of services free for 12 months or always, within limits. This is what makes the labs in this course free.

• Pricing Calculator — estimate a bill before you build.
• Cost Explorer — see and analyse what you have actually spent.
• Budgets — the alerts you set in Module 0.

Use tags (labels) on resources so you can see cost by project or client.

AWS Organizations lets you manage many AWS accounts together (e.g. one per client or project) under one roof, with consolidated billing (one bill, shared volume discounts) and central rules.

AWS support tiers: Basic (free), Developer, Business, Enterprise — more money buys faster response and, higher up, a dedicated contact (a TAM). Free help: documentation, re:Post (Q&A), and Trusted Advisor.

Spend your revision time where the marks are: Cloud technology & services (34%) and Security & compliance (30%) together are nearly two-thirds of the exam. Cloud concepts is 24%, Billing & support 12%. Review in that order.

Most questions hide the answer in one keyword. "Flood of traffic" → Shield. "Who deleted this?" → CloudTrail. "No server to manage" → Lambda. "Cheapest for rarely-used archives" → Glacier. Read the question for the requirement word, then match the service.

Sit two timed 65-question mocks under real conditions. Review every question you got wrong and every one you guessed. The practice exams and the hands-on labs are in the Pro track — create a free account to unlock them and save your results.