The One-Line Service Cheat Sheet
Every CLF-C02 service in one line each — your final rapid-review before the mock exams.
12 min read
Most CLF-C02 questions reduce to "which service does X?". Skim this sheet until every line feels obvious. If one doesn't, revisit its lesson.
Compute
| Service | One line |
|---|---|
| EC2 | Virtual servers you fully control |
| Lambda | Run code on events, serverless, 15-min max |
| Fargate | Serverless compute for containers |
| ECS / EKS | Container orchestration (AWS-native / Kubernetes) |
| Elastic Beanstalk | Upload code, AWS runs it (PaaS) |
| Lightsail | Simple VPS bundles at flat monthly price |
| Batch | Managed large-scale batch jobs |
| Outposts | AWS hardware in your data center |
Storage
| Service | One line |
|---|---|
| S3 | Object storage, 11 nines durability |
| S3 Glacier | Archival tiers, cheapest storage |
| EBS | Block volumes for one EC2 instance |
| EFS | Shared Linux file system, multi-AZ |
| FSx | Managed Windows / Lustre file systems |
| Storage Gateway | On-prem apps using cloud storage (hybrid) |
| AWS Backup | Centralized backup policies |
| Snow Family | Physical devices for offline data transfer |
Networking & content delivery
| Service | One line |
|---|---|
| VPC | Your private network in AWS |
| Route 53 | DNS + domain registration + routing |
| CloudFront | CDN caching at edge locations |
| Global Accelerator | Faster global routing over AWS backbone (no cache) |
| Direct Connect | Dedicated private line to AWS |
| Site-to-Site VPN | Encrypted tunnel over internet |
| API Gateway | Create and manage APIs |
| ELB | Distribute traffic across targets |
Databases
| Service | One line |
|---|---|
| RDS | Managed relational DB (MySQL, PostgreSQL…) |
| Aurora | Cloud-native high-performance relational |
| DynamoDB | Serverless key-value NoSQL, ms latency |
| ElastiCache | In-memory cache (Redis/Memcached) |
| Redshift | Data warehouse for analytics |
| Neptune | Graph database |
| DocumentDB | MongoDB-compatible |
| QLDB | Immutable ledger |
Security & identity
| Service | One line |
|---|---|
| IAM | Users, groups, roles, policies |
| IAM Identity Center | Workforce SSO across accounts |
| Cognito | Sign-in for your app's customers |
| KMS | Managed encryption keys |
| CloudHSM | Dedicated hardware key storage |
| Secrets Manager | Store + auto-rotate secrets |
| ACM | Free TLS/SSL certificates |
| WAF | Blocks SQL injection / XSS |
| Shield | DDoS protection |
| GuardDuty | ML threat detection from logs |
| Inspector | Vulnerability (CVE) scanning |
| Macie | Finds PII in S3 |
| Security Hub | Aggregates all security findings |
| Detective | Investigates root cause of findings |
| Artifact | Download AWS compliance reports |
Management, monitoring & governance
| Service | One line |
|---|---|
| CloudWatch | Metrics, logs, alarms, dashboards |
| CloudTrail | API call audit history (who did what) |
| Config | Configuration tracking + compliance rules |
| X-Ray | Distributed request tracing |
| Trusted Advisor | Best-practice checks (5 categories) |
| Health Dashboard | AWS/service status affecting you |
| Systems Manager | Fleet ops: sessions, patching, parameters |
| CloudFormation | Infrastructure as code (JSON/YAML) |
| Organizations | Multi-account management + SCPs + one bill |
| Control Tower | Automated governed landing zone |
| Service Catalog | Approved self-service product portfolios |
Cost management
| Service | One line |
|---|---|
| Pricing Calculator | Estimate costs BEFORE deploying |
| Cost Explorer | Analyze & forecast existing spend |
| Budgets | Alerts when spend crosses thresholds |
| Cost & Usage Report | Most detailed billing data (to S3) |
| Compute Optimizer | Right-sizing recommendations |
Integration, analytics & AI
| Service | One line |
|---|---|
| SQS | Message queue (pull, decouple) |
| SNS | Pub/sub notifications (push, fan-out) |
| EventBridge | Serverless event bus |
| Step Functions | Visual workflow orchestration |
| Kinesis | Real-time data streaming |
| Athena | SQL directly on S3, serverless |
| Glue | Serverless ETL + data catalog |
| QuickSight | BI dashboards |
| EMR | Managed Spark/Hadoop big data |
| SageMaker | Build/train/deploy ML models |
| Rekognition | Image & video analysis |
| Polly / Transcribe | Text→speech / speech→text |
| Comprehend / Translate | NLP analysis / translation |
| Lex / Kendra / Personalize | Chatbots / smart search / recommendations |
| Bedrock | Generative AI with foundation models |
Tip
Don't memorize this table top-to-bottom in one sitting. Skim it once a day for a few days — each pass gets faster, and by mock-exam time the associations are automatic.
Knowledge check
Question 1 of 3Match the need: "We must aggregate security findings from GuardDuty, Inspector, and Macie into one view."