How I passed the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam?

I recently passed the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam and felt the need to share my experience with you all. Today I’m going to tell you how to prepare for this exam and get certified in just one week! Trust me it really feels amazing to be called AWS Certified, and you too can gain this title easily.

Why this exam?

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner is a foundational-level AWS Certification and is for those people who want to kickstart their career in cloud computing, especially for beginners. And it’s the cheapest AWS exam available that can give you the tag of ‘AWS Certified.’ If you are looking to become a solutions architect, then you can begin your pathway from this exam. Although it is not mandatory to pass this exam to appear for any other AWS exam, but there are some reasons I’ll tell you that why should you give this exam first but at the end of this blog. It doesn’t matter if you are technical or non-technical, if you have little interest in the cloud or you want to build your career in it then passing this exam can be a great deal for you!

How should you start preparing for it?

First of all, become familiar with the exam, it’s architecture, format, types of questions, syllabus and all those kinds of things. Then plan accordingly and start studying. You can find the exam’s official study guide and sample questions by clicking the link given below.

The Actual Preparation!

The course of this exam is designed in a way to make you aware of almost all the service offerings of AWS and it’s just not limited to compute, network, storage, and database services. You’d have to be aware of the other offerings also like Machine Learning, Analytics, Developer Tools, etc. So, it’s preferable to come up with a list of all the services that fall under the scope of this exam. Do it on your own, it’ll help you to understand the AWS Global Infrastructure. Integrate this list with your schedule, give time to each and every service. For a better learning experience, you can create an AWS account as well. Go ahead and leverage the AWS Free Tier of 12 months. Start experimenting on your own. Although there are limits on the services and usage but for the sake of passing this exam, the free tier is more than sufficient.

This was the manual guide to prepare for the exam. There are plenty of other resources and already designed courses available on the web. You can purchase one from Cloud Academy, A Cloud Guru, or Linux Academy. These websites are preferred when you are preparing for a higher level of certification. For the Cloud Practitioner exam, you can find many free resources. Let me list them all one by one.

- Free courses available on aws.training

This website is not only for registering for exams, besides that it provides free learning material that can be very useful and can be found under the tab ‘Learning Library’.

- AWS Virtual Summits

Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, all the AWS summits are being held online and that too free of cost. These virtual summits are very interactive, you can attend webinars and sessions, and sometimes quizzes too! I recently participated in the AWS Hong Kong Virtual Summit and won an AWS Tote Bag as a reward for participating in some of the events.

Click the link given below to see the upcoming AWS Events.

- AWS Whitepapers

AWS keeps on publishing whitepapers of its services, best practices, and usage. These can be very insightful and can help you a lot in your preparation. All these whitepapers can be found online on the AWS official website free of cost.

- AWS Documentation

Just like the wallpapers, there’s official documentation associated with each and every service of the AWS Cloud. You can refer to these documentations if you want to have detailed knowledge of the services.

- AWS FAQs

Last but not the least, the Frequently Asked Questions! These questions can be very very useful if you are preparing for any associate-level certification or above. Keep reading these FAQs along with your preparation to have a vivid vision over the conflicting topics. FAQs can help you a lot in answering Scenario-based questions.

- Practice Exams

AWS offers Practice Exams at a cost of $20. You can appear for these exams for self-evaluation. There are many other sites that too offer practice questions. Use these questions in an ethical manner as you’ll find a detailed explanation of each and every question. If you’ll run after free dumps, then it’ll lead you to nowhere. You can’t trust these dumps and you never know whether their answers are correct or not. Refrain yourself from such click baits saying ‘Free dumps available’, most of them are just meant for phishing. I’d suggest appearing for legit practice exams 2–3 days before your actual exam so that you could self-evaluate and hence improve.

- ‘D-Day’ — Facing the Actual Exam!

You can book your exam through aws.training by clicking the Certification Tab. The cost is $100 and it can be given through Pearson VUE. Pearson VUE enables you to write these exams under a proctored environment from your home using your own laptops. Just when you start feeling you are confident, book your exam. Don’t delay it further and start revising. Try to do practical on AWS Management Console on your own and start reading the FAQs more. It will only make your concepts clearer.

Tips

· Make a list of services.
· Focus on the keywords and use cases,
· Make sure international payments are enabled for your account while making the payment.
· Don’t ignore topics like Billing and Monitoring. Each domain has its own weightage!
· Don’t spend too much time in the preparation. Schedule it and just do it!

About the thing that I said, in the beginning, why should you appear for this exam. I giving you the hint and you have to find it on your own. The hint is associated with the ‘benefits’ of this passing this exam.

So, All the best! Start preparing and feel free to contact me if you face difficulty during the preparation or any other part. I’d be glad to help you out!