AWS Cloud Practitioner Service Comparison
CLF-C02 lives on 'which service would you use for X?' questions. This is the core service vocabulary, grouped by category.
AWS Cloud Practitioner Service Comparison · firsttry.app/cheatsheets/aws-clf-services · original reference written from published exam objectives. Not affiliated with any certification body.
Compute & storage
| Service | Use it for |
|---|---|
| EC2 | Resizable virtual servers (IaaS) |
| Lambda | Serverless functions, pay per execution |
| Fargate | Serverless containers |
| S3 | Object storage, 11 9s durability |
| EBS | Persistent block storage for EC2 |
| EFS | Shared file storage (NFS) |
| S3 Glacier | Archival storage, cheapest tier |
Database & networking
| Service | Use it for |
|---|---|
| RDS | Managed relational DB (PostgreSQL, MySQL…) |
| DynamoDB | Managed NoSQL key-value at scale |
| Redshift | Data warehouse / analytics |
| VPC | Isolated virtual network |
| Route 53 | DNS and domain registration |
| CloudFront | CDN, edge content caching |
| Direct Connect | Private dedicated link to AWS |
Security, identity & management
| Service | Use it for |
|---|---|
| IAM | Users, roles, policies, permissions |
| KMS | Encryption key management |
| GuardDuty | Intelligent threat detection |
| Shield | DDoS protection (Standard is free) |
| WAF | Web application firewall |
| CloudTrail | API audit logging (who did what) |
| CloudWatch | Metrics, logs, alarms |
| Trusted Advisor | Best-practice checks |
Try it here
Two verified practice questions on this material. Answer one, and see the official page behind the answer.
4-1Billing, Pricing, and Support
How much warning does an EC2 Spot Instance get before it is interrupted?
2-1Design Resilient Architectures
A retail site caches product prices in ElastiCache. Prices are updated frequently, and users see stale prices for minutes after a change. Which caching strategy fixes this?
Five free questions on every practice exam. No account, no card.