Patrick AbotsiI finally got started on the AWS certification treadmill by taking (and passing!) the Certified Cloud Practioner Exam. I took the exam at a PSI center in Mississauga, where I live. I started thinking about getting certified at the end of 2019 and at first my goal was to start with the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate exam. My previous experience with AWS limited to spinning a few EC2 instances, and using S3 to save backups for websites I was running. I was however quite familiar with the AWS Management Console and got started in preparing for the exam by purchasing the AWS Certified Solution Architect – Associate by A Cloud Guru on Udemy. I also purchased the AWS Certified Solutions Architect practice tests by Sybex on Amazon.
In January 2020, I came across a couple of articles describing the benefits of starting with the CCP before taking an Associate level exam. Being busy with work and my MBA courses, I was not able to allocate sufficient time to prepare for the Solutions Architect exam so I decided to change my plan and take the Certified Cloud Practitioner exam first. I signed up in February and set the date in a month time to force myself to get serious with the preparation and avoid further procrastination.
In terms of preparing for the AWS CCP exam, I used the following resources:
1) The free AWS Certified Cloud Practioner Training full course by ExamPro on Youtube (link)
2) A Cloud Guru course on Udemy; I actually used the Solutions Architect course which I had already purchased at the time. They have a Certified Cloud Practioner Exam as well but I didn’t not find the need to purchase it.
3) The AWS Cloud Practioner Essentials course at AWS Training online platform (free course)
4) The AWS Certified Cloud Practioner Practice Exam course by Neal Davis also on Udemy. It has six different practice tests which I took once each, with scores ranging from the low 70s to 83%. All questions are reviewed and both correct and wrong answers explained, which helps solidify the understanding of the various AWS services and concepts.
5) The Introduction to AWS for Non-Engineers by Hiroko Nishimura on LinkedIn Learning (only reviewed selected videos on the first course, Cloud Concepts)
6) The whitepapers on AWS Well-Architected Framework (link). I just briefly went through these whitepapers, but will definitely need to spend more time reading them prior to taking the Certified Solutions Architect exam.
While I started doing some readings and hands-on practice in an AWS account in January, I must say the bulk of my preparation for this exam was during the first two weeks of March. I left my previous employment at the end of February which gave me most mornings during that period for preparation. I would say that I have spent an average of 2 hours per day over these two weeks to review for this exam.
About the exam itself, while it was not extremely hard, it was definitely not easy or something that I could have passed without any preparation. It was a bit easier than Neal Davis practice tests I would say. So if you can consistently score over 80-85% at those practice tests without referring to notes or Google you should be good to go. I can’t really provide details on the exam contents or questions due to the NDA for test takers, but I would say there were fewer questions on VPC, analytics, databases, and security/compliance than I expected. Questions were quite unique and not really similar to the test questions on AWS or other third party websites, so you really need to understand the concepts and services to pass the exam.
The time allocated for the exam is 90 minutes and there were 65 questions to answer. I was done after about 40 minutes. I flagged about 8 questions (I answer all questions even if flagged) but did not find the need to return to those flagged questions as I believed I had enough margin of success even if all those questions were answered incorrectly.
Once exam was submitted, I had to fill a questionnaire before being taken to a screen congratulating me for passing the exam. The score is not provided immediately and the test center would not be able to print it for you. I received an email however almost immediately confirming that I have completed the exam, and stipulating that the exam results and score reports will be available in my AWS Certification Account within 5 business days.
The AWS CCP being completed, it is time to move to the next certification, the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate. I will be taking the new version of the exam (SAA-C02) which will completely replace the previous version from March 23rd, 2020. From what I read online, the change is not significant, so I should be able to prepare for it using materials I already have. I will probably be taking it around April 15th. Wish me good luck! I will be posting my preparation steps and exam experience on this blog as well (if/when I pass!)
