The Cloud practitioner certification, is the first level certification you can get from AWS. It validates the basic knowledge on how the cloud works, security, basic networking and overall services to take advantage of the AWS.
The certification exam consist of 65 questions with 100 minutes to complete (including time to acknowledge the terms of use), you can mark and review questions before submitting the answers. You’ll receive your score immediately after the exam is submitted, and the certificate up to 5 days later.
To get this certification, there are plenty of resources, some directly from AWS and some external. Couple of examples:
- Udemy courses on AWS cloud practitioner.
- AWS Certified cloud practitioner exam guide from Packt
- AWS Cloud Quest
On the official exam site, there is training material available and also practice questions to assess readiness, with this resources taking the certification is a very straightforward process.
My personal approach to tackle this was reading the book mentioned above, taking an Udemy course, cross-check and also work on some AWS deployments. With that experience and reading material it was possible to get a passing grade on the exam.
In worth mentioning that this exam will be updated. Starting September 22nd, a new version of the exam will be available (CLF-C02) and the material to prepare will be available on the same site.
This certification is the stepping stone for getting into AWS, there are more levels available for the cloud certification that will require a deeper level of understanding, and more important, practice….a lot of practice.
- AWS Cloud Solution Architect Associate
- AWS Cloud Solution Architect Professional
The practitioner exam can be passed with mostly reading and some exposure to AWS, although general cloud experience and data experience makes things a lot easier, it doesn’t require multiples systems deployment experience o migrations, it’s mostly good understanding of what each service does, how they interact, and the best practices associated with cloud development.
In case some practice is needed or if learning by doing works best, AWS offer a Free tier and some credits for new accounts that should be enough to get the level of understanding necessary for the exam.
The path continues into the higher level of certifications, so the next one is the Associate certificate, hopefully this year.
