Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a global Cloud Service Provider (CSP) that provides services to just about anyone from individual developers to conglomerates. Although other CSPs exists such as Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud – AWS is currently the most popular.
Having taken a look myself, it becomes apparent that many individuals and organisations choose AWS due to the vast array of services they offer, despite the initial sense of intimidation that may arise upon looking at their extensive section. I enrolled myself in the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam so that I can gain a better understanding of the services and features that AWS offers.
Wanting to gain more experience in AWS services, I decided to enrol myself in the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C01) exam. This exam contains valuable content, and the added benefit is that I can prove that I have learned this content in the form of a certification.
Exam Objectives
- Explain the value of the AWS Cloud
- Understand and explain the AWS shared responsibility model
- Understand security best practices
- Understand AWS Cloud costs, economics, and billing practices
- Describe and position the core AWS services, including compute, network, databases, and storage
- Identify AWS services for common use cases
The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C01) is a beginner-level certification. Despite that, AWS recommends that you have at least 6 months of active engagement with the AWS Cloud. Unfortunately, although the company I currently work for utilises AWS services, I haven’t been fortunate enough to work on these cloud deployments. Instead, I have gone ahead and set up an AWS account so that I can utilise the free services AWS offers to get a better overview.
Fortunately, the company I currently work for provides a Pluralsight subscription which contains resources on this exam including some mock papers which I will be using.
Revision
Firstly, ensure that you understand all the content provided by the guide as this will give you the entire coverage of what can appear in the exam.
I also highly recommend setting up a free AWS account to get a feel on how to setup AWS services and ease yourself into navigating around the management console. When I first setup my AWS account and created my first EC2 instance I did find it overwhelming looking at all the information provided to me. However, the reason I recommend setting up an AWS account is so that you can familiarise yourself with this information.
Finally, I recommend using the practice papers on Udemy by Mohamed Ali, this Udemy course offers 6 practice exams which should be more than enough practice for this exam.
Conclusion + Thoughts
- Overall Difficulty: 2 / 10
- Price: 9 / 10
- Very cheap
- Recommend: 8 / 10
The exam costed $100 and passed first time with about 1 week of dilligent studying.
As someone with no prior AWS experience, I do recommend enrolling in the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam as it is a great way to learn more about the services and features that AWS provides. However, if you’re interested in just cloud services then going for this certification might tunnel-vision you into only looking at AWS as the certification does contain a lot of AWS-specific technical jargon.
Alas, having passed the exam I will now venture into other things that have piqued my interest, possibly looking into other AWS certifications.