I got certified a few weeks ago, my first certification with AWS.

I wanted to go on a long rant but honestly, this can be boring read. I will go for a merry Q&A with myself and I, hopefully funnier to read.

Let’s start.

Q: Why did you go on a certification?
A: Too much time to spend?
Nah, kidding. I was considering about it for some time, to go for a challenge and learning new things.

Q: Which certification did you aim?
A: I aimed for the cloud practioner certification, that one

Q: Did you learn old things?
A: Absolutely.
As you may know, you go back to the fundamentals about networking like
there is no NAAS (Network As A Service) or that the application loadbalancer (ALB) is different from a classical network loadbalancer or what is transactional database
and how different it is from a NoSQL db and many fundamentals as such

Q: Did you learn new things, too?
A: Lol.
Absolutely too (big grin).The serverless architecture, which services are serverless and which are not. How the pricing is done by AWS and also things like the well architected framework and its 5 pillars. The different kind of storages like S3 (Simple Storage Service) or what is an EC2 (Elastic Cloud Computing). I won’t be able to sum-up everything here as the range of AWS services is substantial, one of the benefits of the certification is that it gives you a detailed sum-up of all the AWS services.

Q: Talking about benefits, what are the benefits you did see from achieving that certification?
A: Many.
First is it gives you a full spectrum of many services provided by AWS. Another benefit is that the certification gives you confidence on your knowledge of the AWS galaxy. I give you that one: I will not use RDS (Ed: database) if someone tells me he would need a load-balancer (Ed: Luckily you won’t do that. Lol).

Q: Does it take time to prepare?
A: Yeah. As it was my first certification with AWS and I did have much much background with AWS certification, it was quite unsettling for me. Therefore, I took 13 mock tests to be sure I had the correct level. Udemy’s said you need around 90% success to go for it. Luckily, I had some spare time but if I did not, I would still try to go for a least one mock exam, a day.

Q: So did you pass the exam? You said yes but what was the score?
A: Yeah!
I passed (Victory sign)! The minimum score is 70% to pass. I had around 80%, which is definitely good but a bit less than what I was expecting (Ed: He was expecting 90%)

Q: Thank you all your answers. Do you have any tricks you can share with us?
A: Practice. A lot. The exam is not tough but not an easy one. The questions can be tricky. 13 mocks can seem a lot. If you don’t want to go for that many tests, still make sure that you have a higher success in your mock tests than the expected 70%, 80%-90% gives you confidence that you are ready. And obviously, on d-day, stress will make your score lower than expected. For the cloud practioner, AWS through the aws training website, offers you a AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials course that is a day format with real trainers.
That training is free. I had two trainers, —- and Tom of AWS who were absolutely amazing, in their enthusiasm with great teaching skills.
Thank you —- and Tom.

Q: Thank you again for your time. Do you have any last trick you want to share with us about a desk that was not that tidy…?
A: Ha ha. I went for my certificate with a quite cluttered desk. Never, ever. Make sure that your desk is clean and uncluttered otherwise the proctor won’t start the exam.

Ed: Thank you
Me: Welcome!