How I passed the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam in 1 week with a score of 957/1000?
First of all, it is very important to realize the importance of AWS in the world of startups. Let us understand this a bit further. Suppose you want to start a new business that serves customers through a digital platform. What technology stack do you need?
Server? Data Center? IT Team? Managed services? .
Along with the worry, this would also lead your initial cost to setup your digital platform very high and by focusing too much on these areas, you would lose your main business focus. There are additional things to worry about as well including data center operations which require electricity, manpower, etc. Most importantly, what if you lose your data. It would be a nightmare if you don’t have additional backups.
Solution
No need to worry as AWS is here to serve your business need
You don’t need to worry about infrastructure, networking, availability, and capacity. AWS has different regions (physical locations around the world) and within each region, there are multiple availability zones. Each availability zone has independent power, cooling, and physical security. In this way when one availability zone fails, another takes care of it. AWS takes care of all data center operations for you. In this way, you only focus on your application and not the IT operations. AWS also has flexible pricing options including On-Demand(pay as you go), reserved instances, saving plan, and Spot Instances. Suppose you only need to test your platform, you can use On-Demand option so that you are only charged for what you use. On the other hand, if you plan to run your application for the long term, you can reserve your AWS instances which will save a lot of your cost. One more important aspect is that AWS can achieve higher economies of scale due to its large customer base which translates into lower pay-as-you-go prices.
You can read more about such benefits of cloud computing here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/aws-overview/six-advantages-of-cloud-computing.html
As I already had some prior experience on cloud, I thought I should do some certification related to it and found the AWS Cloud Practitioner Certificate interesting in the sense that it contains all the necessary details you need to get a holistic understanding of how AWS works. This certification really helped me boost knowledge regarding different areas of AWS most importantly pricing and billing.
Study Plan:
1. Pick the right course material
As I only had 1 week off from my office, I thought this would be a good time to go for certification. I started by searching for the relevant course and I found one of the courses named “AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner in 5 Hours”. Although this course does not contain all the details, it has really beautiful animations at the end of each section. In addition to this, there is 26 minutes video tutorial at the end which explains every concept using animations.
2. Practical Labs
The practical aspect is very much important as it makes you remember the concept for the long term.
Try the following on AWS:
- Create and work on AWS EC2 instance.
- S3 bucket, check bucket policies, lifecycle, etc
- Check RDS (RDS is a Relational Database Service)
This lab is very useful for beginners: https://aws.amazon.com/training/intro-to-aws-labs-sm/
3. Mock Exams
Mock exams are really useful to revise your entire syllabus and it makes you familiar with the style and scope of the question paper. I found these exams useful: https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-cloud-practitioner-practice-test/
This contains 6 exams along with the detailed answers.
Don’t leave this for the end. Start doing it from day 1 as this will help you focus your attention on your weak areas.
4. White-papers
This is must to do. You must read all the white papers which AWS has recommended for Cloud practitioner.
- Overview of Amazon Web Services
https://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/aws-overview.pdf
- How AWS Pricing Works:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/how-aws-pricing-works/welcome.html
- AWS Well-Architected Framework
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/framework/welcome.html
- AWS Support Plans
https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/plans/
- Additional Whitepapers
Registering for Exam:
1. You can register for the exam using the following link: https://www.aws.training/Certification
2. You can take the exam online using your laptop at home through Pearson or PSI.
3. On the exam day, make sure you are there 30 minutes earlier than the exam time as it will take time to scan your room, desk and verify your identity.
4. Once you finish your exam, you will immediately know whether you have passed your exam or not. Detailed results can take up to 5 working days but I got it within 24 hours.
Remember the goal of your exam should be to realize the importance of AWS and how can it serve your business goals.
