I am now an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner!

• Free courses on AWS SkillBuilder:
  • Exam Prep: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C01)
  • AWS Technical Essentials
• Practice tests on udemy (Questions are slightly more difficult than in the real exam)

AWS Cloud Practitioner is a foundational exam. Whether you're a devOps developer or a sales person, this is a good start for everyone. Therefore, the content is more general and there is something that needs to be taught specifically for the exam. Even if you have a lot of experience in AWS, you hardly remember that the designated Technical Account manager is available in Enterprise support (which costs $15k per month). But basically, the test can be passed using common sense and experience. For example, the are questions like what is agility, what determines the cost of EC2, what file system can be mounted simultaneously on several EC2 machines?

There are 65 questions in the exam, 50 of them count toward the end result, 15 of them do not. These are the new questions that are being tested. You don't know which questions do count.

The exam takes 90 minutes. For the exam, you can get from 100 to 1000 points, the passing score is 700. I scored 827. The exam costs $100. In some cities there is a testing center where you can come and sit the exam. Otherwise, you can take the exam at home through Pearson Vue. You need to have a quite clean room and to remove everything unnecessary from the table, for example: additional monitors, notebooks, etc. During the exam, the proctor looks at you through the camera and makes sure you don't cheat. You can't leave the view of the camera, you can't read questions aloud, and it's better not to look anywhere except for the monitor (the only one!). In the event of the broken Internet connection, distraction by neighbors, or a phone call, then the exam may not be canceled.

Formally, there is no need. But I like to take exams as a way to systematize learning and as a mark for myself - so, at such and such a moment I was at that level. Another motivation is that I want to take the Cloud Resume Challenge, and the first step is to get certified.

AWS has a lot of certifications, I'm looking at Associate Solutions Architect, but before that I want to get my hands more dirty with AWS.