CLF-C02 Cloud Technology and Services Guide

Study CLF-C02 Cloud Technology and Services: key concepts, common traps, and exam decision cues.

This is the biggest CLF-C02 domain because AWS wants foundational candidates to recognize the major service families and the jobs they solve. The exam is still broad rather than deep. Strong answers classify the workload first, then choose the service family that matches it.

Current weight in the exam guide

AWS currently weights Cloud Technology and Services at 34% of scored content.

Work this domain in order

Lesson Focus
3.1 Deploying, Operating & Connecting to AWS Learn the console, CLI, SDK, CloudFormation, migration, and access-path basics that explain how people actually work in AWS.
3.2 Global Infrastructure, Compute & Network Services Learn Regions, Availability Zones, edge services, VPC basics, and the main compute choices.
3.3 Storage & Database Services Learn object, block, file, backup, relational, and NoSQL service choices.
3.4 Analytics, AI/ML, Integration & Other Service Categories Learn the higher-level service families that often show up as “choose the right managed AWS service” questions.

Fast routing inside this chapter

If the question is really about… Go first to…
console vs CLI vs SDK, IaC, migration, or how a workload gets deployed 3.1 Deploying, Operating & Connecting to AWS
Regions, AZs, VPCs, Route 53, CloudFront, Direct Connect, EC2, containers, or Lambda 3.2 Global Infrastructure, Compute & Network Services
S3, EBS, EFS, FSx, lifecycle, backup, RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, or DMS 3.3 Storage & Database Services
Athena, Glue, Kinesis, QuickSight, SageMaker, Lex, SNS, SQS, EventBridge, WorkSpaces, Amplify, or IoT Core 3.4 Analytics, AI/ML, Integration & Other Service Categories

What strong answers usually do

  • group AWS services by job to be done instead of memorizing one long list
  • separate infrastructure choices from higher-level managed service families
  • recognize when the exam wants a broad managed service category rather than a detailed architecture pattern
  • keep VPC, storage, database, analytics, and integration services in their own lanes

Common CLF-C02 traps in this domain

  • mixing EC2, ECS/EKS, and Lambda without classifying the workload need first
  • mixing S3, EBS, and EFS as if they are interchangeable
  • choosing a database answer when the stem is really about analytics, messaging, or event routing
  • forgetting that the exam still wants fundamentals, not deep service configuration

In this section

Revised on Sunday, May 10, 2026