AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - My experience

Here I am sharing my experience with my recent certification AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner. I am getting so many questions regarding this certification in LinkedIn. Hope this will be helpful for anyone who is planning for taking this certification.

Why I appeared for this exam?

While I was preparing for my AWS Certified Solution Architect — Associate exam for the last one month I saw that there is a Beta exam available from AWS. And the criteria mentioned that I am eligible for this exam since I haven’t earned any other AWS certifications yet and the fees is just $50. Looks interesting. So, I immediately scheduled and sat for the exam on October 4, 2017. See how I prepared for this exam at the end of this blog.

Who can take this certification?

From my experience, I believe this certification is good for anyone who steps into or already deals with cloud technologies in any manner. See where this certification fits in AWS Certification Roadmap.

As you see in the roadmap this certification is in the foundational level and optional. This is not a prerequisite for any other certification. But preparing for this exam will help you to understand the cloud concept and will help you to learn more about Amazon Web Services. I listed out below the benefits of taking this AWS certification for each role from my point of view.

Sales TeamFor those who sells IT products and services this will be a good start to learn about AWS products and services. The list of AWS products is overwhelming. Preparing for this exam will make you learn all product names and its abbreviations. You might have noticed that AWS product name abbreviations are the buzzwords these days.IT/Business Decision MakersYou will be hearing Azure and AWS buzzwords and jargons from your vendors. Preparing for this certification will help you to understand what they are talking about so that you come into better selections for your organization.Project ManagersIf you are managing any cloud related projects, or your project has a potential chance to implement any AWS products/services, then this certification will help you.TechiesAssociate level certifications in AWS Certified Solution Architect or AWS Certified Developer are the best starting point for technical folks. But if you are entirely new to AWS and if you want to experience the exam before appearing for other AWS certification exams, this would be a best fit.OthersEven if you are not belonging to any of the above, but still you like to know the new trends on technology, you can definitely try this certification.

What you will learn?

To appear for this exam, you should (or you will) learn the following. Exam blue print by AWS explains this well.

• AWS Products and Services — Most common products’ name, its abbreviation and full form and purpose in high level. The customer benefits of using each product.
• AWS Values and Principles — How AWS cloud architectural principles benefitted for the customer in the implementation level
• Best Practices in using Cloud products
• Security Model — How the security responsibilities are shared between AWS and Customer.
• AWS global infrastructure like Countries, Regions and Availability Zones
• AWS Pricing model and Billing
• Different Support plans offered by AWS

How I prepared for the exam?

I started learning the products and services offered by AWS by reading their AWS Products page. Even though most of the product name has Elastic, it is difficult to relate the product name and its purpose. Knowing just abbreviation will not help. All exam questions have full product name which may confuse you sometime.

Next step is reading below AWS whitepapers.

• Overview of Amazon Web Services (52 pages)
• Architecting for the Cloud: AWS Best Practices (42 pages)
• How AWS Pricing Works (22 pages)
• The Total Cost of (Non) Ownership of Web Applications in the Cloud (30 pages)

These whitepapers will give a clear picture of AWS products and services and their pricing. Apart from the whitepapers I would recommend you review the below two important topics.

• Understand AWS global infrastructure thoroughly by going through their AWS Global Infrastructure page. Review AWS Support Plans web page which will give you required information regarding their Support Plans.
• Reading all Whitepapers helped me to answer 60% of the questions. 20% of questions require a certain level of technical knowledge which you might already have from your field. Remining 20% questions looks like very high level where you can apply your commen sense.

The Result

Since this was a Beta exam, I didn’t get my result after the exam. I had to wait for around 2 months. On 27-Nov-2017 this certification became official and I got my result as PASSED. You can see my Digital Badge here. I didn’t get my score though. Now the exam fee is $100. Let me know if you have anything more to know about this certification through the comment section.

Wishing you all success in your journey of learning AWS and achieving certifications.

Akbar Hussain

Cloud Architect

An accomplished Cloud Architect with over 20+ years of experience in Application Development, Cloud, DevSecOps and Cybersecurity. Helping clients on their digital transformation, cloud migration, application modernization, cost & process optimization, cybersecurity validations and incident management.