How I got AWS Cloud Practitioner Certified

With my professional experience of enabling a Financial organization launch their proprietary data management platform on the AWS Cloud and a luxury retailer transition their on-prem sales & ops reports to the cloud — I have seen the evolution of clients from cloud-trepidation to almost cloud-frenzy (lets put everything on the cloud). So, becoming AWS certified was a no-brainer if you are looking at building a career in Cloud — but there were still lots of questions on Which Certification, Preparation required, Value vs Investment, etc.

In this article, I am attempting to provide my personal insight into these questions as I got AWS Cloud Practitioner Certified in 15 days with the hopes that they might guide you in your Cloud career journey

Learning Objectives

Key items we will be covering :

• Why AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification ?
• Preparation/ Learning Journey
• Experience during the examination (of online proctoring)
• Next Steps

Why AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification ?

AWS has multiple certifications designed to be aligned on how you want to grow your expertise on the cloud — Practitioner, Architect, Developer, Operations, etc. What appealed about the cloud practitioner certification is that it is a foundational certification (so which ever journey, you need to start with this certification) and is ideal for people who need to have broad awareness of AWS capabilities (ex : Sales, Marketing and Project Management)

Preparation for the Certification (What worked, what did not)

Luckily, within my organization we had a cohort of folks who were looking at getting the AWS Certified and we also had a great teacher who setup 4–5 sessions of 1 hr each to walk us through the core concepts and also a mock-test session.

Apart from these, I also had the support of these wonderful collaterals :

• AWS Practice Tests ebook : With 6 practice tests of 60+ Qs each, I gained a lot of information thanks to the detailed answers (And it also helped that it mirrored lot of actual questions)
• AWS Training Videos : Frankly after the training sessions from Tyrel, the videos were more re-inforcement and also found most of them going a bit deep

Other options you can consider for your training

Linux Academy’s UDEMY Course and AWS Practice tests in UDEMY

In terms of investment, you are looking at a $100 sticker price for the certification, another $10–20 for training and definitely 15–20 hrs of learning

Examination experience

Now, I had registered for the online proctored examination through Pearson — which gives you the convenience to take the exam anytime anywhere; but there were a lot of moments of frustration

First, the initial validation itself took 20 mins — after the initial photo id validation, taking screenshots of the room, I spent 10 frustrating minutes just waiting for something to happen on the screen(Thankfully, I stuck with it)

While I was able to take the exam with the camera in-built on the Laptop; it took a lot of maneuvering for the online proctor to be satisfied that the room was clean (one of our colleagues had to move his box of peanuts).
Note : I highly recommend getting an external camera with sufficient cable length

Luckily, once the initial screening was completed I was at ease since the questions were very straight forward — but just as I was getting into the rhythm; I kept on getting interrupted by the proctor (was just drinking water).

Believe me, sitting in a place for 90 mins within the confines of the camera screen was taxing enough and with the proctor prodding everytime you stretch was definitely getting on my nerves.

Somehow thanks to all the preparation; I was able to breeze through and was able to review all the QnA 3 times before I decided to Finish the exam and had to hold my breath for 5 mins going through a survey before the results were announced

Next Steps

Each AWS Certifications are valid for 3 years, after which you need to get re-certified (WHAT!! no one told me that) I am definitely planning to look at other business-oriented certifications for AWS

While, I hope this really helped you get started on your AWS Cloud professional journey. Let me know if you have any specific Qs, reach out to me at deep.bhaskaran@gmail.com (or) Linkedin