Premise
Preparing for a certification exam is always a draining endeavour. You try to gather as much intel as you can in the hopes of maximising your chances of passing. You interrogate people, scan articles, watch videos. Somehow, it's never enough, or there could always be more information provided. At least, that's how it felt for me.
I have just recently passed my AWS Cloud Practitioner certification exam and the first thought, when I stepped out of the exam centre, was that I would write down a few notes to help those who are about to embark on the same journey.
If you're considering taking this exam, I hope the following paragraphs provide some help and clarity. Without further ado...
Why the Cloud?
In March this year, I finally graduated from the School Of Code Full Stack Development bootcamp. An intensive 16-week experience where I progressed from the basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript to developing full stack applications using modern frameworks like React and Express.JS, all the while working in teams following the Agile methodology.
Once the bootcamp was over, I started thinking about what direction I wanted my skills to develop in, so that I could draft a rough study plan for the coming months and not waste any time.
My interest for subjects like DevOps and Cloud was increasing, and I thought it would only be appropriate to have a serious look at how I could start learning these skills. A quick market research revealed AWS to be the main household name, so I spent time researching their platform and how requested they were in the job market.
After gathering enough data, it was clear they were the right choice for me to start with. Foundational cloud concepts are applicable to other service providers and the skills easily transferrable, making it feasible to adjust to other environments, should you ever need to.
AWS offer a range of certifications, going from Foundational to Associate, Professional and Specialty. Now, I might have played too many RPGs in my life, but I remember learning quickly that if you dared venture in an area with higher level enemies before you were ready, you'd be ripped to shreds quite quickly. Having learned the painful lesson, it made sense to start from the foundational certification, AWS Cloud Practitioner. And so the journey began.
How I prepared
I set myself the [sarcasm alert] incredibly realistic goal of going from zero cloud computing knowledge to Cloud Practitioner certified in one month.
I DO NOT recommend you do that. This choice made sense in my own specific life situation (plus, I'm a bit of a nutcase). I would, instead, recommend you take your time and learn slowly, but steadily.
Study Materials
There is plenty of material online to prepare for the exam, some it's free and some isn't. Most of what isn't, still comes at an extremely cheap price. If you can spare a few quid/dollars/whatever-your-currency-is, it might be worth the investment. They all have some pros and cons, but normally also have something you will need: sets of practice exams.
Consistently taking these practice exams is what really helped me identify my weak areas, so that I could review those topics until I had gained a solid understanding.
You DO NOT need to use multiple training materials. One course, studied in depth and with the aid of practice exams to test your knowledge and readiness, is more than enough. I like to hear the same concepts explained by different people in different ways as I find it helps me to understand them better. You do you.
In descending order of importance, the materials I personally used were:
Neal's course was my bread and butter. I personally like his teaching style and structure. He's very thorough and takes his time to flesh the concepts out. Each chapter normally features some hands-on practice as well.
He also has practice labs available, although you will have to purchase them separately. I did not use them on this occasion, but if you can, I recommend you do so as practical experience is essential, and not just for the exam.
The course package features tons of practice exams, and I can confirm the questions are very close to the real exam ones.
Neal also has a Slack community where you can ask for questions and advice or keep up to date with the latest course developments.
Andrew's one is another excellent course package and also covers everything you need. You'll be provided a set of practice exams and flashcards (Anki style) to review the concepts. His teaching style is different from Neal's, I would say he's more concise and brief in the explanations and covers certain topics that are not strictly related to the exam.
The practice exams are really good and the flashcards definitely help, if you like using them.
AWS love to put serious effort into what they're doing, whilst making it cool at the same time, that's why they probably came up with CloudQuest.
This is a sort-of open world RPG where you roam around a city and meet different people who are in dire need of an AWS solution to be built to solve their personal problems. They'll signal that by having a big exclamation mark hovering over their heads. Once you talk to them and accept the challenge, the exercise environment will load up: you will be able to watch explanation lectures and practise in a hands-on lab in a test environment automatically provided by AWS. This way you won't risk incurring in any fees.
Solving these challenges will earn you experience points that you can use to level up and erect buildings around the city. Furthermore, there will be animals roaming around that you can add to your farm after having solved a quiz about the topics you're learning.
I honestly had a lot of fun playing this game and the practice labs are extremely helpful in further cementing those concepts. It's completely free, so I'd recommend you check it out. I only managed to complete 9 of the challenges as my exam was approaching, but I'm planning on finishing the rest.
This is a six-exam practice set bought on Udemy at discount price. Being confident with the exam structure and questions wording is essential to obtaining the certification so, in my opinion, the more practice you can get, the better. The questions were extremely close to the actual exam, so it was very helpful. As you may or may not know, Udemy regularly runs these sales at massively discounted prices, so better wait for one of those before you grab them.
These are the materials I used. Mind you, you can pick up somethings else, particularly if you've already found others you deem more suitable to your learning style. Also, you don't have to use multiple sources. I did, as I find it helps me learn the concepts better when I hear them explained in different ways.
Other materials
There are a couple other courses I've also heard many great things about; however, I have not tried them personally, so I can't vouch for them, but you might want to take a look at them anyway. Again, what matters is finding those instructors that match your learning style:
Last but not least, AWS also offer a free course to help you prepare. You can access it here.
Booking The Exam
You can choose to take the exam from the comfort of your home or at a dedicated test centre. After careful consideration, I ended up choosing the latter. I read about many people having a bad experience with taking it from home and I had no time to waste. Plus, the test centre was not too far from where I live.
The experience was straightforward. I was there quite early and thought I would have to wait, but they let me in and allowed me to start the exam earlier. I had to ensure my phone was off and lock my belongings in a locker whilst taking the test.
I'm happy with my choice. After a month spent almost all at home preparing, I appreciated the change of scenery. It also helped me focus, whereas at home I would have risked getting distracted by the familiar environment.
The Test
- 90 minutes available to complete
- A 30-minute extension can be requested if English is not your first language
- 65 questions in total
- Minimum passing score: 70%
- The exam also contains 15 unscored questions. These are not factored into your final score and are only added by AWS for research. You will not know which ones they are.
The exam was exactly what I expected, the practice tests had trained me well. I was confident with its structure and with making sense of the questions, especially when they were purposely ambiguous or tricky.
Round One
First, I wanted to get rid of the "easy" questions, so that I could focus on the ones that required more thinking and consideration. I did a relatively quick round and answered all the ones I felt confident or was sure about. This probably got rid of half of them and took me about 20 minutes. I gave a temporary answer to the other ones and flagged them for review.
Round Two
I went through all the flagged questions and, for each one, started eliminating the wrong answers, so as to narrow down my choices and minimise the chance of making a mistake: focus on why this answer can't be the right one. Is there anything in the question that would give it away? Look for keywords, as this is how AWS will give you a hint of which service they are talking about.
It's paramount that you understand the use cases of each service and its key features, so you can choose the one that best fits the customers' scenarios. This skill will come in handy, as it's the same reasoning process you will adopt when thinking of how to build actual Cloud solutions and/or studying for your Solutions Architect exam. You begin to see how this certification really helps you build the foundations of your cloud journey. If I managed to narrow it down to one answer, I would select that, remove the flag and proceed to the next question. This also took me about 20 minutes and, in the end, I was left with only a small handful of questions.
Round Three (Finish him)
[I really just wanted to squeeze a Mortal Kombat reference in so bad, 'cause I'm a nerd and no apologies shall ever be made for that.]
Lastly, I once again proceeded to read the leftover questions and answers, in an attempt to narrow down my choices even further and pick a definitive answer. Where I couldn't manage that, thankfully only a tiny subset, I made an educated guess and hoped for the best.
I clicked "End the test" and felt an indescribable sense of lightness and relief coming over me, as the exam result showed a "PASS" in capital letters.
After a month of daily toil, I had made it. I was Cloud Practitioner certified 🎉
Main tips and recommendations
- Choose a training course and study it thoroughly. You can go for more than one if you need it but, chances are, you won't have to.
- Take plenty of practice exams and ensure you achieve a score ranging between 85% - 95%.
- Make sure you understand the use cases for each service, don't just blindly memorise stuff.
- Take your time when preparing. Pushing yourself good, exhausting yourself isn't.
- Evaluate the best way of taking the exam. If your home environment is not ideal, it's worth considering a testing centre.
- Cycle through the exam questions: get rid of the easy ones first and flag the more demanding ones for review.
- When evaluating the possible answers, proceed by elimination: "why is this not the right answer?" - do this until the only possible right answer is left.
- If you can't narrow down your choices, make an educated guess.
- Look for keywords in the exam questions that will provide hints as to what the correct answer is.
Epilogue, or a new beginning
It goes without saying, this marks only the start of a new journey 🛣
There are multiple paths you can take which will help you develop your Cloud skills. I encourage you to check the other certifications on the AWS website and even other platforms like Google Cloud.
At the cost of sounding repetitive, I don't necessarily recommend you take the same approach I took. Achieving it in one month, from scratch, was quite stressful, and although the choice made sense in my specific personal circumstances, I would advise you take your time and only book the exam once you start feeling confident. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
You're smart and you have what it takes to succeed. Now go and conquer! 💪🏻