Cloud Technology and Core AWS Services
This is the largest technology domain on the CLF-C02 exam, worth about 34% of your score. It covers the core AWS services and the global infrastructure they run on. You will learn about compute options like EC2 and Lambda, storage services like S3 and EBS, databases like RDS and DynamoDB, and networking with VPC, Route 53, and CloudFront. It also explains Regions, Availability Zones, and edge locations, plus the different ways to interact with, deploy on, and monitor AWS.
Global infrastructure and ways to interact with AWS
AWS runs on a global infrastructure whose layout you must understand to design available, low-latency applications. A Region is a separate geographic area, such as N. Virginia or Frankfurt, and each Region is fully isolated from the others for fault tolerance and data residency. You choose a Region based on four factors the exam tests: compliance and data-governance requirements that may mandate a location, proximity to users to reduce latency, the availability of specific services or features in that Region, and pricing, which varies by Region. Within each Region are multiple Availability Zones (AZs), each one or more discrete data centers with independent power, cooling, and networking, physically separated but connected by low-latency links. Designing across at least two AZs is the standard way to achieve high availability, because the failure of one AZ does not take down an application spread across several. Separately from Regions and AZs, AWS operates a global network of edge locations, which are sites used by content-delivery and DNS services such as Amazon CloudFront and Amazon Route 53 to cache content and answer requests close to users, reducing latency. AWS also offers Local Zones and AWS Outposts to bring infrastructure closer to specific metros or into a customer's own data center. There are several ways to interact with these services. The AWS Management Console is a web-based graphical interface suited to learning and one-off tasks. The AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) lets you control services through typed commands and scripts, which is ideal for automation. The AWS Software Development Kits (SDKs) let applications call AWS services programmatically from languages such as Python, Java, and JavaScript. For repeatable, automated provisioning, infrastructure as code tools such as AWS CloudFormation define resources in templates so entire environments can be created and torn down consistently. On the exam, remember that a Region contains AZs, AZs are the unit for high availability, edge locations serve cached content for CloudFront and Route 53, and the console, CLI, and SDKs are the three primary ways to reach AWS.
Compute services
AWS offers several ways to run code and applications, and choosing among them is a core exam skill. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) provides resizable virtual servers, called instances, on which you control the operating system, installed software, and configuration; it is the flexible, general-purpose choice and a classic example of IaaS. EC2 offers many instance families optimized for different needs, broadly grouped as general purpose, compute optimized, memory optimized, storage optimized, and accelerated computing. Because you manage EC2 instances, you are responsible for patching the operating system and scaling capacity. To scale automatically, EC2 Auto Scaling adds and removes instances in response to demand, and Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) distributes incoming traffic across healthy instances so no single server is overwhelmed and failed instances are bypassed. For teams that want to run code without managing servers at all, AWS Lambda is the serverless compute service: you upload a function, and Lambda runs it in response to events, automatically scaling and charging only for the compute time consumed, measured in milliseconds, with no charge when the code is not running. Lambda suits short, event-driven tasks and is a favorite exam example of serverless and of paying only for what you use. Containers offer a middle ground, packaging an application with its dependencies so it runs consistently anywhere. Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) orchestrate containers, and AWS Fargate provides serverless compute for containers so you avoid managing the underlying EC2 hosts. For simpler needs, AWS Elastic Beanstalk deploys and manages web applications for you as a PaaS offering, handling capacity, load balancing, and health monitoring while you supply the code. AWS Batch runs large-scale batch jobs. On the exam, map the requirement to the service: full control of the OS points to EC2, running event-driven code with no servers points to Lambda, running containers without managing hosts points to Fargate, and simply uploading an application and letting AWS handle the platform points to Elastic Beanstalk.
Storage services
AWS provides object, block, and file storage, plus archival tiers, and the exam expects you to pick the right type for an access pattern. Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is object storage: data is stored as objects in containers called buckets, accessed over the internet, and designed for very high durability of eleven nines, meaning eleven 9s of durability. S3 is ideal for backups, static website hosting, data lakes, media, and any large collection of files, and it scales essentially without limit. S3 offers multiple storage classes to balance cost against access frequency: S3 Standard for frequently accessed data, S3 Standard-Infrequent Access for less frequent access, S3 Intelligent-Tiering which moves objects between tiers automatically based on usage, and the S3 Glacier classes (Instant Retrieval, Flexible Retrieval, and Deep Archive) for low-cost long-term archival where retrieval time can be longer. Lifecycle policies can transition objects to cheaper classes automatically as they age. Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) provides block storage volumes that attach to a single EC2 instance, behaving like a virtual hard disk; EBS is used for operating systems, databases, and any workload needing persistent, low-latency block storage, and volumes exist within one Availability Zone with snapshots stored in S3 for backup. Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) provides a shared file system that many Linux EC2 instances can mount at once, scaling elastically as files are added; it suits shared content and workloads that need a common file store. Amazon FSx offers managed file systems for Windows File Server and high-performance computing with Lustre. For moving large volumes of data into AWS, the AWS Snow Family (such as Snowball) provides physical devices for offline transfer when networks are too slow, and AWS DataSync and Storage Gateway bridge on-premises storage to the cloud. On the exam, remember that S3 is object storage accessed over the internet, EBS is block storage for one instance, EFS is shared file storage for many instances, and Glacier is for cheap archival.
Database services
AWS offers managed database services so you avoid the operational burden of installing, patching, backing up, and scaling databases yourself, and the exam expects you to match each to its data model. Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) is a managed service for relational databases, supporting engines including MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server, and Amazon's own Aurora. RDS handles provisioning, patching, backups, and failover, and Multi-AZ deployments keep a standby copy in another Availability Zone for high availability. Amazon Aurora is a MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud, offering higher performance and durability than standard engines, with Aurora Serverless scaling capacity automatically. Relational databases suit structured data with defined schemas and transactions, such as accounting or order systems. Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL key-value and document database that delivers single-digit-millisecond performance at any scale, with no servers to manage and automatic scaling; it is serverless and ideal for high-traffic web and mobile applications, gaming, and workloads with flexible or rapidly changing data. Amazon ElastiCache provides managed in-memory caching using Redis or Memcached to accelerate read-heavy applications by keeping frequently accessed data in memory. Amazon Redshift is a managed data warehouse optimized for online analytical processing and complex queries over very large datasets, used for business intelligence and reporting rather than day-to-day transactions. AWS also offers purpose-built databases for specialized needs: Amazon Neptune for graph data, Amazon DocumentDB for document workloads, Amazon Keyspaces for Apache Cassandra, Amazon MemoryDB for in-memory durability, and Amazon Timestream for time-series data. For migrating existing databases into AWS, the AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) moves data with minimal downtime, and the Schema Conversion Tool helps convert between engines. On the exam, remember that RDS and Aurora are relational, DynamoDB is NoSQL and serverless, ElastiCache is in-memory caching, and Redshift is the data warehouse for analytics. When a question mentions a fully managed NoSQL database at any scale, the answer is almost always DynamoDB.
Networking, integration, deployment, and monitoring
Networking services connect and isolate resources, while integration, deployment, and monitoring tools help components work together and let you operate your environment. Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud where you define your own IP address range, subnets, route tables, and gateways, giving you full control over the virtual network. Within a VPC, public subnets reach the internet through an internet gateway, private subnets stay isolated, and a NAT gateway lets private resources make outbound connections. Amazon Route 53 is a scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service that translates domain names to IP addresses and supports routing policies such as latency-based and failover routing. Amazon CloudFront is the content delivery network (CDN) that caches content at edge locations worldwide to serve users with low latency and reduce load on origin servers. For hybrid connectivity, AWS Direct Connect provides a dedicated, private physical link between a data center and AWS for consistent performance, while AWS Site-to-Site VPN provides an encrypted tunnel over the public internet. For application integration and decoupling, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) provides managed message queues and Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) provides publish-subscribe messaging, both of which loosely couple components so they can fail and scale independently; Amazon EventBridge routes events between services. For monitoring and management, Amazon CloudWatch collects metrics, logs, and alarms to observe resource health and performance, and AWS CloudTrail records API activity for auditing. AWS CloudFormation lets you define infrastructure as code in templates so environments are provisioned consistently and repeatably. AWS Systems Manager helps operate and patch fleets of instances, and AWS Trusted Advisor inspects your account against best practices for cost, performance, security, fault tolerance, and service limits. Higher-level services round out the domain: analytics tools like Amazon Athena, Kinesis, and QuickSight; machine-learning services like Amazon SageMaker; and developer tools for continuous delivery. On the exam, connect VPC to network isolation, Route 53 to DNS, CloudFront to the CDN and edge caching, SQS and SNS to decoupling, CloudWatch to monitoring, and CloudFormation to infrastructure as code.
Last updated: September 2026
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