People say the Cloud Practitioner exam is easy. Easy to say if you have used all of the AWS products as an administrator. For me, it took some work. Here’s how I did it.
Updates?
For the record, this is for the CLF-C02 exam, based on having passed it on September 12, 2025. If you’re reading this in the future, check that the exam details haven’t shifted. The process to prepare and pass will be the same, but the details may vary over time.
Despite the name, Cloud Practitioner isn’t all that magical. Though I think one of the most important aspects of this certification is understanding how to manage your AWS account cost effectively, which some may see as magical.
The Formula
As my seventh article on how I have passed certification exams I have prepared for, I have come to a formula that works for me. I still continue to refine it, and added something new this time (yes, of course it is AI-related).
The current formula is this:
- Start with a quality exam prep course.
- Find a set of practice exams that has at least 5 times as many questions (total) as the actual exam.
- Repeat the practice exams until you consistently score over 90%. (trust me on this one)
- (New!) Use NotebookLM to generate a podcast of the material you are weakest on and listen to it repeatedly for a few days before the exam.
- Schedule the exam for a time of day when you generally find it easiest to concentrate.
Optional Bio hack
There is one additional ingredient I use, which may not be for everyone. I take focus supplements, sometimes called nootropics, and wash them down with a Starbucks Double Shot. This is the third time I have gone the bio hack route. The first two times, I had missed that step of scheduling at a time of day when I am my sharpest, because work schedules were in the way. Both of those times I felt that I really got a concentration boost. This last time, my schedule was more flexible and I don’t think the combo really helped all that much.
A Scout is Always Prepared
This time around, there was another formula side-step in that I did not find the prep course I took to be of particularly good quality. As such, I’m not going to share it, as I usually do with those I liked. This time around, I was very budget conscious and used a course I had access to for free. It did help by giving me exposure to topics I had not had to deal with as part of my regular work, but I credit my long experience in technology for being able to extract value from the content rather than the quality of the content. There were several topics where I used Perplexity to fill in the blanks that I picked up on during the course.
Practice Makes…More Likely to Pass
The practice exams, however were great. I used AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Practice Exams CLF-C02 at Udemy. It had 6 full sets of exam questions. Each set felt tougher, possibly because newer questions crept in. My scores reflected that. I think this is better than most practice exams where each set has the topics evenly distributed. Of course, it could’ve just been coincidence that my weaknesses aligned with the sequence.
Another thing I really appreciated in the practice exams is that they didn’t stop at just the correct answers for the test review, it also provided detailed explanations. Other practice sets I have used sometimes only gave a link to the vendor documentation. While the links are more in line with how the vendors would like you to study, I have yet to take one of these exams as a way to learn the material, and the ones where I already (thought) I knew the material, this level of preparation wasn’t necessary.
Practice Level 1
Another feature of these practice exams I really liked was labeled as a “beta option,” though I seem to recall this has been available on Udemy long enough to not be considered “beta.” That feature is to get the answer after each question, rather than only at the end of the exam. I did this for the first pass through of the practice exams.
Almost for Real
The second pass I did it “exam style,” getting the answers after the total score. There were improvements, but no enough. This time, I copied the questions and correct answers into a text file, then converted them to Bionic Reading® notes (if you aren’t familiar with Bionic Reading® notes, they make reviewing notes much easier, and I have included mine at the end for reference) and imported the resulting markdown into UpNote for studying.
One More Time with Feeling
After the third pass, I was almost satisfied with my scores:
But, my experience with certification exams is that there are always questions in the actual exam that were not covered in my preparation. For this reason, I really prefer to have the practice exams at 100% (which I fell short of this time).
Not Not Necessary (this time)
The practice exams had a few “not” questions which I generally got wrong the first pass and still missed some the second time around. I recently watched an Otherwords video about Why A.I. Struggles with Negative Words, and I still don’t feel better about missing those questions. However, maybe I’m not alone, because there were no such questions in the actual exam I took.
New addition to my standard approach NotebookLM podcast
To help improve my memory of the ones I had missed I went back to the questions I got wrong on the second pass through and noted the reference links to AWS documentation. I then fed those links to NotebookLM and had it generate a podcast, selecting the longest format and prompting that it should target an audience preparing to take the CLF-C02 certification exam. The results were incredibly good. But don’t take my word for it, I have posted the podcast here: AWC CFL C02 Exam Prep Podcast.
Recommended Reading
While I did not use it extensively, I found AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Study Guide With 500 Practice Test Questions: Foundational (CLF-C02) Exam (Sybex Study Guide) to be a very good resource. I think if I had not been in a rush to get this cert out of the way, I would have started with this and had a better score for it.
If you are studying for this certification, or have already taken it, please share your experience, thoughts, and suggestions in the comments.
My Bionics
Here are the bionic notes I used. Your weak spots may vary, so consider creating your own at https://10015.io/tools/bionic-reading-converter.
Q: What is the benefit of Amazon EBS volumes being automatically replicated within the same availability zone?
A: Durability
Q: Which AWS service can be used to route end users to the nearest AWS Region to reduce latency?
A: Amazon Route 53
Q: What is the main benefit of attaching security groups to an Amazon RDS instance?
A: Controls what IP address ranges can connect to your database instance
Q: What is the recommended storage option when hosting an **often-**changing database on an Amazon EC2 instance?
A: Amazon EBS
Q: What kind of reports does AWS Cost Explorer provide by default?
A: Utilization
Q: What does the term ?Economies of scale? mean?
A: It means that AWS will continuously lower costs as it grows
Q: Which AWS team assists customers in achieving their desired business outcomes?
A: AWS Professional Services
Q: Which of the below options is true of Amazon Cloud Directory?
A: Amazon Cloud Directory allows the organization of hierarchies of data across multiple dimensions
Q: An organization has a legacy application designed using monolithic-based architecture. Which AWS Service can be used to decouple the components of the application?
A: SQS (SNS, and EventBridge)
Q: A company is planning to use Amazon S3 and Amazon CloudFront to distribute its video courses globally. What tool can the company use to estimate the costs of these services?
A: AWS Pricing Calculator
Q: What is the connectivity option that uses Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) to establish encrypted connectivity between an on-premises network and the AWS Cloud?
A: AWS **Site-**to-Site VPN
Q: Both AWS and traditional IT distributors provide a wide range of virtual servers to meet their customers? requirements. What is the name of these virtual servers in AWS?
A: Amazon EC2 Instances
Q: A company uses multiple business cloud applications and wants to simplify its employees? access to these applications. Which AWS service uses SAML **2.**0 to enable single sign-on to multiple applications through a central user portal?
A: AWS IAM Identity Center
Q: A small retail business with multiple physical locations is planning to transfer sensor data and store security camera footage in the cloud for further analysis. The total amount of data is around 8 terabytes, and the business’s internet connection is too slow to transfer such a large amount directly to AWS in a reasonable time. Which AWS service would be the most cost-effective to transfer the data to AWS?
A: AWS Snowcone
Q: Which AWS Service is used to manage user permissions?
A: AWS IAM
Q: A company has hundreds of VPCs in multiple AWS Regions worldwide. What service does AWS offer to simplify the connection management among the VPCs?
A: AWS Transit Gateway
Q: Which statement best describes the operational excellence pillar of the AWS Well-Architected Framework?
A: The ability to monitor systems and improve supporting processes and procedures
Q: A company is migrating its on-premises database to Amazon RDS. What should the company do to ensure Amazon RDS costs are kept to a minimum?
A: Right-size before and after migration
Q: A company is planning to host an educational website on AWS. Their video courses will be streamed all around the world. Which of the following AWS services will help achieve high transfer speeds?
A: Amazon CloudFront
Q: What does AWS Health provide? (Choose TWO)
A: 1) Detailed troubleshooting guidance to address AWSD events impacting your resources
2) Personalized view of AWS service health
Q: Which of the following services allows customers to manage their agreements with AWS?
A: AWS Artifact
Q: You have set up consolidated billing for several AWS accounts. One of the accounts has purchased a number of reserved instances for 3 years. Which of the following is true regarding this scenario?
A: All accounts can receive the hourly cost benefit of the Reserved Instances
Q: A company is deploying a new **two-**tier web application in AWS. Where should the most frequently accessed data be stored so that the application?s response time is optimal?
A: Amazon ElastiCache
Q: If you want to register a new domain name, which AWS service should you use?
A: Route 53
Q: If you want to visualize your spending on your AWS account for the past month, which tool can help you?
A: AWS Cost Explorer
Q: If you go for consolidated billing for multiple AWS accounts under three master accounts, what benefit do you get?
A: Combined usage for discounts
Q: For which support plan do you also have AWS support Concierge Service?
A: Enterprise
Q: Which storage option should you use if you are hosting a frequently-changing database on an Amazon EC2 instance?
A: EBS
Q: To get a high throughput to multiple compute nodes, which storage service would you use to host an application on your EC2 instance?
A: EFS
Q: If you want to upload data to S3 at very high speeds, which AWS service takes advantage of the edge locations?
A: S3 Transfer Acceleration
Q: Which one of these can you NOT assign to a user?
A: IAM identity. You cannot directly assign an “IAM identity” to a user because “IAM identity” is a generalized term referring to any entity in IAM (such as users, groups, or roles).
Q: You have been asked to contact AWS support using the chat feature to seek guidance on an ongoing issue. However, when you log in to the AWS support page, you do not see the chat options. What should you do?
A: Live chat support is only available with Business, or Enterprise Support plans
Q: If you want to launch and manage a virtual private server in AWS, which service is the easiest?
A: Lightsail. Lightsail provides pre-configured virtual server instances
Q: What is AWS Athena?
A: AWS Athena is a serverless, interactive query service that enables you to analyze data directly in Amazon S3 using standard SQL
Q: Choose from the options below to filter your incoming traffic request to your EC2 instance.
A: NACLs and Security Groups
Q: Protect from dDOS attacks?
A: NACLs and Security Groups
Q: Where can you find your historical billing information in the AWS console?
A: Billing and Cost Management console
© Scott S. Nelson