Passing AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
I haven't blogged for ages and need some new content up here!
After focussing on the Azure DevOps Engineer pathway I decided to expand my knowledge in other areas of cloud compute.
State of the Cloud
As we are in a multi-cloud era with some organisations adopting Azure, AWS and GCP it's always good to have a look round corners and see what else is out there.
The HashiCorp State of Cloud survey from 2021 shows AWS as still pretty dominant so I thought I would take a closer look and get certified 🏆!
Where do I start then?
Similar to Microsoft Learn, AWS has the AWS Skills Builder where you can login with your personal Amazon account and select areas for your own self-paced digital learning.
It has a learner dashboard where you can browse through courses, view classroom training then take the plunge and choose a certification to go for 🤔
The AWS training and certification site has good info on role based pathways if you want to progress to developer or solution architect level.
Reach for the clouds
As I had already passed the Azure Fundamentals exam (which is great by the way) I was looking for the AWS equivalent and found it to be the AWS CCP.
Both of these exams test your knowledge of cloud computing concepts and then go through the key areas of IaaS, PaaS & SaaS with an aim to learn the products each provider has to offer.
AWS has a far wider range of service names mainly using the Elastic prefix, e.g EC2, ECS, EKS, EBS and then things like Fargate, CloudFormation, Neptune, Beanstalk, Snowball etc. Whereas as Azure is more standardised e.g Azure App Service, Azure VM, Azure Functions...you get the drift.
AWS CCP
A great place to start learning is the free AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials course accessible from the Skills Builder. This has interactive content, slick videos and mini tests.
If you want to take your learning deeper there is an excellent course on Udemy by Stephane Maarek - Ultimate AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - 2022. It's not 🆓 but there are often discounts going up to 70%+!
This one, along with the practice exams really helped me to bag this certification as you go through creating alot of services and test yourself pretty well.
Take AWS for a spin
If you are taking on the exam you'll need to get your hands dirty, especially with the Udemy course. Coming from the Azure portal world I found the AWS Console UI quite different and alot more text heavy.
You can sign up for the AWS Free Tier, this gives you some services free for 12 months, others just short trials and some always free if you stay within the monthly limits.
For example 👇
Just be sure to check what resources you are spinning up to keep within the free tier limits and avoid an unexpected bill! 💵💵💵
Having good experience of playing with AWS, combined with completing the courses, will get you ready to take on the exam (depending on time committed). A good way to tell is to run through some practice exams and see how you get on.
Judgement Day
If you want to take it on, just go to Skills Builder >> Certifications and book in a date 👍
It's about $100 / £90.
The exam is 65 multiple choice/response questions in a 90 minute timeframe.
For the home based proctor exams I always find the below tips work👇
- Choose a quiet room
- Clear your desk
- Get your ID ready
- Smash It 👊
- If it doesn't go to plan, chill out 🏖️ you can always resit 😊
Oh and go to the 🚽 first as you're not allowed to leave the room! (think they are going to change this)
Wrap up
It's definitely a worthwhile certification to study as it gives a great overview of cloud concepts and all AWS has to offer (which is absolutely massive!).
If you want to take home the shiny badge below, then get cracking!
My next one will be Terraform Associate 😁