Hello, and welcome to this learning path that has been designed to help you prepare for and pass the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Certification. 

My name is Danny Jessee, and I am an AWS certification specialist here at Cloud Academy. Feel free to connect with me to ask me any questions using the details shown on the screen. Alternatively, you can always get in touch with us here at Cloud Academy by sending an email to support@cloudacademy.com where one of our cloud experts will reply to your question. 

The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification has been designed for those who are not necessarily in a technical role, but do have some exposure to and experience with AWS and the services that it provides. For example, your role might have some involvement regarding AWS architecture from a sales, financial, or managerial perspective.

The certification itself is broken down into four distinct domains:

1. Cloud Concepts,
2. Security and Compliance,
3. Technology, and
4. Billing and Pricing.

Each of these domains carry a specific percentage weighting within the exam. Each domain also contains a series of subdomains, which you can see in the official AWS exam guide here. [Landing page: https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-cloud-practitioner, Exam guide: https://d1.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-cloud-practitioner/AWS-Certified-Cloud-Practitioner_Exam-Guide.pdf]

Let’s start by taking a look at each of these domains to give you a greater understanding of the topics that will be covered on the exam.

Domain 1: Cloud Concepts. This domain accounts for 26% of the exam content and focuses on three key areas: define the AWS cloud and its value proposition, identify aspects of AWS cloud economics, and explain the different cloud architecture design principles.

This domain will test your knowledge of general cloud concepts and principles, such as looking at the benefits of the cloud and what it can bring to your business from both a financial and operational perspective. 

Domain 2: Security and Compliance. This domain accounts for 25% of the exam content and focuses on four components of cloud security: define the AWS shared responsibility model, define AWS cloud security and compliance concepts, identify AWS access management capabilities, and identify resources for security support.

This domain will assess your understanding of cloud security, ensuring you understand the boundaries of where specific responsibilities lie between you and AWS. It will also test your knowledge of access control mechanisms to your AWS resources and how you can maintain compliance within your environment, as well as how to utilize security services to enhance the security posture of your environment.

Domain 3: Technology. This domain accounts for 33% of the exam content and like the Security domain, also has four key areas of interest: define methods of deploying and operating in the AWS cloud, define the AWS global infrastructure, identify the core AWS services, and identify resources for technology support.

This domain will test your knowledge of the core components of AWS, its global infrastructure, and its key services across a spectrum of categories such as compute, storage, databases, networking, and security. You must know the differences between specific services and what those services are used for. 

Domain 4: Billing and Pricing. This domain accounts for 16% of the exam content and assesses you in three areas: compare and contrast the various pricing models for AWS, recognize the various account structures in relation to AWS billing and pricing, and identify resources available for billing support.

This domain is all about your understanding and awareness of how to track, trace, and optimize your cloud spend with AWS using a variety of tool sets that are available. Knowing the differences between these tools is essential. 

Throughout this learning path, you will be guided through a number of courses, hands-on labs, resources, and assessments that cover every element within the domains I just discussed. This will ensure that you have the required knowledge and sufficient understanding to enable you to pass this certification exam.

Feedback on our learning paths here at Cloud Academy is valuable to both us as trainers and any students looking to take the same learning path in the future. If you have any feedback, positive or negative, or if you notice anything that needs to be updated or corrected for the next release cycle, it would be greatly appreciated if you could email support@cloudacademy.com.

That brings me to the end of this introduction. Coming up next, we’ll begin our journey to becoming certified cloud practitioners by answering the question, what is cloud computing?