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Documentation, whitepapers and blogs

AWS publishes a lot of free material on its official websites. AWS documentation (docs.aws.amazon.com) has user guides and references for every service. AWS whitepapers (on aws.amazon.com) are in-depth guides written by AWS and partners, such as the Well-Architected Framework and the Cloud Adoption Framework overview. AWS blogs announce new features and walk through real examples, such as the AWS Security Blog.

Exam tip Look for official sources on aws.amazon.com and docs.aws.amazon.com. A whitepaper is AWS's long-form guidance; docs are service how-tos.

Prescriptive Guidance, Knowledge Center and re:Post

AWS Prescriptive Guidance offers AWS-tested strategies, guides and step-by-step patterns for migrations and modernizing. The AWS Knowledge Center answers the questions customers ask AWS Support most often. AWS re:Post is AWS's community question-and-answer site, where AWS experts and other customers answer questions; anyone can use it.

Sam: re:Post is where I go when the error message makes no sense. Somebody always had it first.

Exam tip Ask the community = re:Post. Common Support answers = Knowledge Center. Proven migration patterns = Prescriptive Guidance.

AWS Support Center

AWS Support Center is the place in the AWS Management Console where you open and track support cases with AWS. Every account, even on Basic Support, can open cases about billing and account questions. Technical cases, such as "our database won't fail over", need a paid Support plan.

Four plans, one ladder

AWS's current AWS Support plans build on each other.

• Basic Support: included with every account. Customer service for account and billing, documentation, re:Post, core Trusted Advisor checks, the AWS Health Dashboard
• AWS Business Support+: AWS's recommended minimum for production. 24/7 phone, web and chat with engineers, all Trusted Advisor checks, fast response when a business-critical system is down
• AWS Enterprise Support: for business-critical workloads. Adds a designated Technical Account Manager (TAM), Well-Architected reviews and faster response
• AWS Unified Operations: for mission-critical workloads. Adds 24/7 workload monitoring and incident management engineers, with the fastest response

Exam tip Older study material may mention Developer, Business or Enterprise On-Ramp plans. Developer and Business closed to new customers in December 2025.

What a TAM does, and how fast help comes

A Technical Account Manager (TAM) is a named AWS technical contact who knows your workloads, guides you proactively, and pulls in the right experts. The lowest plan with a designated TAM is Enterprise Support. Response targets get faster as you climb: AWS lists under 30 minutes for a business-critical system down on Business Support+, under 15 minutes on Enterprise Support and under 5 minutes on Unified Operations.

Mr. Barkley: So a TAM is a personal trainer for our cloud. Do we need one?

Dev: Not yet. Business Support+ fits a shop our size.

Exam tip Exam pattern: "needs a designated TAM at the lowest cost" = Enterprise Support. "Production, 24/7 engineer access, lowest cost" = Business Support+. Never quote prices.

Trusted Advisor, Health Dashboard and Health API

AWS Trusted Advisor checks your account against best practices in categories such as cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance and service limits; cost checks flag idle and underused resources. The AWS Health Dashboard shows the status of AWS services and, in your account health, the events that affect your own resources, such as scheduled maintenance. The AWS Health API (application programming interface) gives that same information to your tools; it needs a paid Support plan.

Maya: Trusted Advisor tells us what we did wrong. The Health Dashboard tells us what AWS is doing to our stuff.

Exam tip "Is AWS having a problem that affects MY resources?" = Health Dashboard. "How can I save money or close security gaps?" = Trusted Advisor.

The AWS Trust and Safety team

If AWS resources are being used for abuse, such as spam, port scanning, denial of service attacks, malware hosting or phishing, anyone can report it to the AWS Trust and Safety team through AWS's abuse report form. The same team contacts customers whose resources are reported, for example a compromised instance sending spam, and expects them to fix it.

Ranger: growls at an imaginary spammer

Exam tip Abuse FROM an AWS resource (spam, attacks, illegal content) = report to AWS Trust and Safety, not to AWS Support.

The AWS Partner Network

The AWS Partner Network (APN) is the community of companies that build on AWS. Independent software vendors (ISVs) make software that runs on or with AWS. System integrators (SIs) and consulting partners help customers plan, migrate, build and manage workloads. Partners get benefits such as training and certification, partner events, marketing support and volume discounts.

AWS Marketplace: buy, govern, track

AWS Marketplace is the catalog where ISVs sell software, data and services that run on AWS. Key services: cost management (charges appear on your AWS bill and in cost tools; flexible pricing such as free trials, hourly or annual), governance (a private marketplace limits staff to approved products) and entitlement (tracking which licenses you own and who can use them, with AWS License Manager).

Priya: A private marketplace means staff can only buy the security tools I've approved.

Experts from AWS

Sometimes you want AWS's own people. AWS Professional Services is AWS's global team of experts who work with customers, often alongside partners, on big projects such as large migrations. AWS solutions architects are AWS technical experts who help customers design solutions that follow best practices. AWS Support plans, the TAM and partners round out the help.

Exam tip Hands-on project help from AWS itself = Professional Services. Design advice from AWS = solutions architects. A partner company = APN.

The exam at a glance

The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) exam has 65 questions in 90 minutes: 50 scored and 15 unscored ones you can't tell apart. Scores run from 100 to 1,000 and you pass at 700. Scoring is compensatory: you pass the exam as a whole, not each domain. Weights: Cloud Concepts 24%, Security and Compliance 30%, Cloud Technology and Services 34%, Billing, Pricing, and Support 12%.

You: So I don't need a perfect score, just 700 across the whole exam.

Dev: Right. A weak domain can be balanced by a strong one.

Exam tip Unanswered questions count as wrong, and there's no penalty for guessing. Never leave a question blank.

Pacing and question types

Two question types: multiple choice (one right answer of four) and multiple response (two or more right of five or more; the question says "Choose two" or "Choose three"). That's about 80 seconds per question.

• First pass in about 60 minutes: answer what you know, flag what you don't
• Second pass: return to flagged questions with the time left
• Multiple response: judge each option true or false on its own, then pick exactly the number asked; assume no partial credit
• Look for the deciding words: "least operational overhead", "most cost-effective", "lowest cost", "highly available"

Look-alikes to tell apart

Many questions come down to one classic pair. Quick review:

• CloudTrail who did what; CloudWatch how is it doing; Config what did it look like
• Shield floods, WAF (web application firewall) bad web requests, GuardDuty threats, Inspector vulnerabilities, Macie data in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
• Security group: instance, stateful. Network ACL (access control list): subnet, stateless
• SNS (notifications) pushes to many; SQS (queues) holds work; EventBridge routes events
• Pricing Calculator before; Budgets alerts; Cost Explorer after; Cost and Usage Report for detail
• Region > Availability Zone > data center; edge locations near users

The week before, and on the day

Take at least two full-length practice exams under time, then study each wrong answer until you can explain why every option is right or wrong. Spend extra time on the domains with the most weight and your lowest scores. Reread the chapter recaps and memory tricks. For an online exam, test your computer and clear your desk early; bring the ID the testing provider requires; sleep well the night before.

Maya: Read every word of the question twice. The exam hides the answer in one adjective.

Ranger: yawns: sleep is part of the plan