The Genesis of My Multi-Cloud 2021 Journey — Passed the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam!
I’m a software developer by profession and my company is migrating a lot of system processes to the cloud, both to Azure and AWS. Management is really pushing us to get certified for accreditation purposes. Getting into Multi-Cloud seems highly relevant these days. Like in my company, they want to have both Azure and AWS for infrastructure redundancy.
I took the CCP exam and passed it today. Fairly easy with some “weird” line of questioning. My next exam would be AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals, an equivalent to the AWS’ CCP exam. In terms of coverage, both of them ask about the basics of cloud computing (PaaS, IaaS, SaaS), and the financial-side of it (CaPex, Opex). Of course, the service names are different but the idea is the same. In AWS, EC2 is a virtual machine, just like Azure VM in Azure. RDS is the equivalent of Azure SQL Database and Amazon VPC is the same as Azure Virtual Network.
I know these certs are the basic ones but I like the quick wins.
Some Tips:
- Learn about the concept of “Design for Failure”. This concept is new to me and Azure doesn’t have this at all.
- Learn AWS Shared Security Responsibility. Memorize the responsibilities of AWS and the customer in securing your cloud infrastructure. (e.g. OS patching , physical infrastructure)
- For Cost Management, know the difference between Upfront, Partial Upfront and No Upfront pricing options in EC2 Reserved Instance. Get familiar with Volume Discounts and Consolidated Billing, plus the different Support Plans available. (.e.g which support plan has a Technical Account Manager?)
- For the services, I encountered some services I haven’t seen at all in the AWS Console, but actually does exist. A service called Mechanical Turk took me by surprise. I also saw a lot of Machine-Learning related services (.e.g SageMaker) and even a service that is literally called “Amazon Machine Learning”. I know Amazon SageMaker and Rekognition but not Amazon ML. This is what I was referring to when I said “weird” line of questioning.
- Beware of Udemy courses and practice tests that advertise as Exam Dumps or “guaranteed pass”. There is no such thing and you won’t know for sure how accurate the answer keys in these tests. As far as i know, AWS rotates its questions so there’s no point of using exam dumps because the set you’ll get is unique. A brain dump from a trusted person would be more accurate than these online exam dumps scattered around the web. You are also risking to fail for the exam if you are get an old version of an exam dump ( eg. SOA-C01) instead of the latest version (e.g. SOA-02).
- As per my previous point, the most effective approach for review is to search for the recent exam feedback (and not exam dumps) of the people who recently took the actual CCP exam. This subreddit has thousands of members and filled with valuable exam feedback and tips that you can get: https://www.reddit.com/r/AWSCertifications/
Resources Used:
- AWS Global Cloud Infrastructure — Interactive Site
2. AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials digital course — FREE
3. Free AWS labs from Qwiklabs for hands-on practice.
4. Tutorials Dojo AWS Cloud Practitioner 2021 Practice Tests
Aim to achieve 90% on these practice tests before you take the exam. It should take you more than 2 tries for each practice test to get a high score. Also check the explanation for the items you have gotten wrong.
Once I passed my AZ-900 exam, I’ll prepare for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate exam (SAA-C02), then go back in taking AZ-104 (the SAA equivalent in azure) to solidify my multi-cloud credentials. That’s my initial plan for 2021 but I might try Machine Learning too.
