My experience with AWS Cloud Practitioner certification

I completed on December 21, 2020 the test for the AWS Cloud Practicioner certification successfully.

I had been planning to obtain this certification for a long time, since my work involves AWS resources and knowledge becomes essential.

I already have experience with Microsoft certification tests, but my last certification was in 2012 (yes, a long time ago) and all of my certifications had been carried out until then in Prometric certification centers.

When I started looking for initial information, the first source of information I looked for was AWS itself. As everyone knows, AWS is very professional in its documentation and it couldn't be different when it comes to certification.

The link to the information for this certification is here. A good read in the exam guide is essential. Important information: all AWS tests so far have no translation into Portuguese.

With the knowledge areas mapped, I looked for more resources to study for the exam in a more practical way and found a good reference on the website of the company Digital Cloud Training. Study cheets are very well designed. Akbar Hussein shared good tips for this event on his medium blog.

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With the resources and goal defined, I got two weeks of vacation at work. With covid I couldn't travel, so I decided to take the time to make a study plan and take the exam.

I studied an average of 2.5 hours a day using the resources of Digital Cloud Training and AWS Learning itself.

With the pandemic issue, I chose to take the exam at home, which for me was a new question.

The event had a cost of U $ 100 (with the high dollar this was a challenge too) and I scheduled it a week in advance. Short time, as there were almost no appointments available for the date I wanted. I recommend as much in advance as possible to get the most convenient time / date for you.

A warning to candidates for this test: prepare your environment by removing books and electronics, make your test site as clean as possible. The examiner who will accompany your test will ask you to remove any suspicious objects to prevent fraud and will also ask you to remove watches of any kind.

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On the day of the race, you must make an early check-in at least 15 minutes before the date / time of your race. Using your webcam, I took pictures of my ID and waited for the exam to start. This point is very important, if you are late or fail to meet the examiner's requests, your exam will be canceled, without rights and refund!

Something that bothered me a little was the delay for the exam to start, which took almost 30 minutes. During this period, as I understand it, the documents are validated and the candidate's name is verified with the name of his registration on the website of the certification company Vue.

After 30 minutes, the examiner informed me via the chat software that the exam would start.

The test consists of 65 questions and you have 110 minutes to complete the test. The test environment is very similar to the certifications I performed, such as the possibility to mark questions for review if necessary.

The test was really tough with challenging questions. Every candidate commits to the NDA, so I can't comment on the issues themselves, but I recommend candidates for this exam to pay close attention to these topics:

• The AWS shared responsibility model
• Billing models
• Support plans
• AWS Security
• Development framework best practices

I was surprised by the difficulty level of several questions and I believe that even for a person who already works with AWS, it is necessary at least two weeks of study directed to the test.

Anyway, this was my experience. I recommend targeted preparation even if you are already experienced with AWS and definitely have excellent knowledge of technical English.

Good luck to all candidates!

#aws # certification #amazon # motivation

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