Smart helpers

AI, ML and three layers of help

Artificial intelligence (AI) is software doing tasks that normally need human thinking: understanding speech, reading text, recognizing images. Machine learning (ML) is the main way to get there: a model learns patterns from example data instead of following hand-written rules. AWS offers it in layers: ready-made AI services you call like any other service, a platform for building your own models, and analytics services that prepare the data.

Exam tip No ML experts on staff? Pick a ready-made AI service. Your own custom model? Amazon SageMaker AI.

Ready-made AI services

Each one does one job, no ML skills needed.

• Amazon Lex: chatbots that understand voice and text conversations
• Amazon Polly: turns text into lifelike speech
• Amazon Transcribe: turns speech into text
• Amazon Translate: translates text between languages
• Amazon Comprehend: finds meaning in text, such as sentiment, key phrases and topics
• Amazon Rekognition: analyzes images and video (objects, faces, text, unsafe content)
• Amazon Textract: pulls text, forms and tables out of scanned documents

Ranger: barks at the speaker when Polly reads an order aloud

Amazon SageMaker AI and Amazon Q

Amazon SageMaker AI is the service for building, training and deploying your own ML models, with managed notebooks, training jobs and hosting, for when no ready-made service fits, such as forecasting kibble demand per store. Amazon Q is AWS's generative AI assistant: it creates answers and content, helping staff get answers from company data and helping developers build and run on AWS. (Its company-data assistant, Amazon Q Business, is closed to new customers: AWS now points those projects to Amazon Quick.)

Exam tip Name check: the exam guide says Amazon SageMaker AI (renamed from Amazon SageMaker in late 2024). Custom models = SageMaker AI. Generative AI assistant = Amazon Q.

Collect, prepare, query

A typical analytics pipeline:

• Amazon Kinesis: collects and processes streaming data in real time, such as clicks on the shop
• AWS Glue: serverless extract, transform, load (ETL): finds, cleans and catalogs data so others can query it
• Amazon Athena: runs standard Structured Query Language (SQL) queries directly on files in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), with no servers; you pay per query
• Amazon EMR: runs big data frameworks such as Apache Spark and Hadoop on managed clusters

Dev: Kinesis is the firehose, Glue is the kitchen, S3 is the pantry, Athena is the taste test.

Ranger: perks up at "kitchen"

Store, search, show

Amazon Redshift (from the database picker) is the data warehouse for fast SQL analytics on large history. Amazon OpenSearch Service powers search boxes and log analytics, such as searching millions of order logs in seconds. Amazon Quick Sight is the business intelligence (BI) service: interactive dashboards and reports, shareable on any device.

Mr. Barkley: Quick Sight. Quick is my favorite speed.

Exam tip Real-time streams = Kinesis. ETL and data catalog = Glue. SQL on S3, serverless = Athena. Dashboards = Quick Sight. Spark/Hadoop = EMR.

Messages, queues and events

These pass messages so parts of an app don't depend on each other. (AWS Step Functions coordinates multi-step workflows.)

• Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS): publish one message to a topic; it is pushed to every subscriber at once (fan-out), such as queues, functions, email or text messages (SMS)
• Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS): a queue that holds messages until a worker pulls them, so nothing is lost if the worker is busy or down
• Amazon EventBridge: routes events from AWS services, your apps and software as a service (SaaS) apps to targets by rules, and runs schedules

Exam tip Push to many at once = SNS. Hold work until someone is ready = SQS. Route events by rules or on a schedule = EventBridge.

Business applications: Amazon SES and Amazon Connect

Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) sends email at scale from your apps: order receipts, password resets and newsletters. Amazon Connect is a cloud contact center: phone and chat for customer service agents, set up in minutes and paid for as you use it. SNS can send email alerts too, but SES is the choice for real customer email.

Rosa: A call center that needs no phone closet? Ranger, we're losing all our closets.

Ranger: whimpers

Exam tip Alert the on-call team = SNS. Branded receipts to customers = SES. A call center = Amazon Connect.

Developer tools: CodeBuild, CodePipeline, X-Ray

AWS CodeBuild compiles code, runs tests and produces ready-to-deploy packages, with no build servers to manage. AWS CodePipeline automates the release steps (source, build, test, deploy) every time code changes: continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). AWS X-Ray traces requests as they travel through an app's services, to find slow or failing steps.

Exam tip Build and test = CodeBuild. Automate the whole release = CodePipeline. Troubleshoot where a request slows down = X-Ray.

End-user computing, frontends and IoT

These services deliver apps and desktops, running on virtual machines (VMs) in AWS, to people's own screens.

• Amazon WorkSpaces: full virtual desktops (Windows or Linux) streamed to any device
• Amazon AppStream 2.0: streams single desktop apps to a web browser (AWS now calls it Amazon WorkSpaces Applications)
• Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser: safe browser access to internal websites, with no data left on the device
• AWS Amplify: builds, deploys and hosts frontend web and mobile apps
• AWS IoT Core: securely connects and manages Internet of Things (IoT) devices, like the warehouse's smart scales

Customer enablement: AWS Support

When the business needs help from AWS itself, that's AWS Support: from the free Basic Support every account gets to paid plans with 24/7 engineers and a named technical contact. Choosing the right option depends on how critical the workload is. The final chapter covers the plans in detail.

Ready-made AI services

Use these through an API, no ML expertise needed:

• Amazon Rekognition: analyze images and video (faces, objects, text)
• Amazon Comprehend: find meaning and sentiment in text
• Amazon Transcribe: speech to text
• Amazon Polly: text to speech
• Amazon Translate: language translation
• Amazon Lex: chatbots (voice and text)
• Amazon Textract: extract text and data from documents
• Amazon Kendra: intelligent enterprise search
• Amazon Bedrock: build generative AI apps with foundation models
• Amazon Q: generative AI assistant for business and developers

Build your own

Amazon SageMaker AI is the platform to build, train and deploy your own machine learning models.

Exam tip Speech to text = Transcribe; text to speech = Polly (it 'talks like a parrot').

The list to know

The analytics services named in the exam guide:

• Amazon Athena: query data in S3 with SQL, no servers, pay per query
• Amazon Redshift: data warehouse for large-scale analytics
• AWS Glue: serverless ETL (extract, transform, load) and a data catalog
• Amazon EMR: big data frameworks (Spark, Hadoop)
• Amazon Kinesis and Amazon Data Firehose: collect and process streaming data in real time
• Amazon QuickSight: business intelligence dashboards
• Amazon OpenSearch Service: search and log analytics
• Amazon MSK: managed Apache Kafka

Quick matching

Ad-hoc SQL on files in S3 = Athena. Dashboards for managers = QuickSight. Clickstream in real time = Kinesis. Prepare and move data = Glue.

Support plans

The CLF-C02 exam guide lists Basic (free: billing and account support, documentation, re:Post, core Trusted Advisor checks, AWS Health Dashboard), Developer, Business, Enterprise On-Ramp and Enterprise. Higher plans add faster response times, 24/7 access to engineers, the full set of Trusted Advisor checks, and at the top a Technical Account Manager (TAM) and concierge billing help.

• Real-world change: AWS is retiring Developer and Business Support on January 1, 2027 (replaced by Business Support+) and folding Enterprise On-Ramp into Enterprise Support during 2026, in commercial Regions
• For the exam, learn the plans as the exam guide lists them

Exam tip Need a designated Technical Account Manager: Enterprise.

Other help

AWS Professional Services and the AWS Partner Network (APN) (consulting and technology partners), AWS Marketplace (third-party software), AWS re:Post (community Q&A), AWS Knowledge Center, AWS Skill Builder and AWS Training and Certification.

CI/CD tools

Tools that automate getting code from a developer to production:

• AWS CodePipeline: automates the release pipeline (source, build, test, deploy)
• AWS CodeBuild: compiles code and runs tests
• AWS CodeDeploy: deploys to EC2, Lambda, ECS or on-premises servers
• AWS CodeArtifact: stores software packages
• AWS CloudShell: a browser-based terminal
• AWS AppConfig: manage app configuration

AWS X-Ray

AWS X-Ray traces requests as they travel through your application's services so you can find slow or failing parts (bottlenecks) in distributed and microservice apps.

Exam tip Automate build-test-deploy = CodePipeline. Find which microservice is slow = X-Ray.

What it does

AWS IoT Core securely connects billions of devices (sensors, appliances, vehicles) to AWS and routes their messages (MQTT, HTTPS) to other services for processing and storage. AWS IoT Greengrass runs AWS functions on the devices themselves at the edge.

Exam tip 'Collect data from thousands of sensors' = AWS IoT Core.

The services

These services run the computer in AWS and stream only the screen to the user:

• Amazon WorkSpaces: virtual Windows or Linux desktops (Desktop as a Service) that users reach from any device
• Amazon AppStream 2.0 (renamed Amazon WorkSpaces Applications in 2025): streams individual desktop applications to a web browser
• Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser: a managed, isolated browser for internal websites and SaaS apps

Why use them

Data stays in AWS, not on the user's laptop; new staff get a desktop in minutes; works from personal devices.

Exam tip Full desktop = WorkSpaces. One app in a browser = AppStream 2.0.