Becoming an AWS and Google GCP Authorised Trainer

The last 12 months have been busy for me.
In summer 2023 I became an AWS Authorised Instructor (AAI) and helped my company, www.DigitalFutures.com become an AWS Authorised Training Partner (ATP).
Then in February 2024 became a Google Authorised Instructor and in March 2024 we’ve become a Google GCP Authorised Training Partner also.

Before we begin, you may be wondering where Microsoft Azure is in all this. Well, that’s a job for 2024.

https://aws.amazon.com/training/aai/

We’ll start with becoming an Authorised AWS Instructor. I’ve been fortunate enough to collect a few AWS certifications over the last few years. I currently hold Cloud Practitioner along with 3 Associate level, both Professional level certs and a few Speciality certs. I’ve also got a 10 year history of working with AWS in both a customer setting as well as being an AWS Professional Services Senior Consultant as well as a Specialist Solution Architect and Partner Trainer when I worked for AWS for nearly 5 years (2017-2021).

Plus, I’m part of the truly wonderful AWS Community Builders programme (take a look at https://aws.amazon.com/developer/community/community-builders/ for more info and to apply)

You do not need this level of certification or history with the platform to become an Authorised Trainer. In fact you need just two things: -
1) A current AWS Solution Architect certification
2) An Authorised Training Partner that will sponsor you.

I hold the first and my company was going through the process of becoming an ATP which covered the second and allowed me onto the programme
Once registered onto the programme there are two main steps to progress through.
1) Complete the on-demand training
2) Successfully pass the Trainer Evaluation

I want to talk about the first of those. The training is fully on-demand. The Instructor training is GOOD. It takes you through some solid training on AWS Solution Architect certification, so if you don’t already hold this certification then by the time the 200+ hours of training are over you’ll have gained it. There are also some really interesting sessions focused on how people learn in a classroom setting, how best to train over a virtual setting etc. I have to admit that I sprinted through most of this training and it’s been a goal of mine to retrace my steps here and go through the whole training again at a slower pace.

I don’t enjoy on-demand training. Unfortunately, both AWS and Google (and I fear Microsoft) seem to be favouring this form of training over in-person. But I did enjoy the AWS AAI training, there were lots of valuable nuggets here for any potential trainer to enjoy.

Once you’ve gone through the 200+ hours of training (yes it really is that long), and you’ve obtained the AWS Solution Architect Associate certification, then you can schedule your 3 day Trainer Evaluation bootcamp. This is the final hurdle before becoming an AAI (AWS Authorised Instructor).

I loved this bootcamp. A small group of potential AAI’s meet virtually with an experienced AWS Trainer and you teach a number of modules while learning about the lab system and troubleshooting lab exercises.
The AWS Solution Architect Associate course offers a wide range of technologies to cover and the way my bootcamp was structured was that each AAI chose a module subject that they would like to teach on each of the three days and then the AWS Trainer moderator chooses 3 subjects for you.
You present these modules to the class, comprising of the moderator and your potential AAI classmates. You then hear feedback on the module from all those present. This can be invaluable if you’ve not taught before. After teaching all 6 modules there is then a troubleshooting lab exercise where you use a real lab used by the course where the moderator has created a number of errors and you’ve got to find them. This mimics the real-life scenario that all Instructors face of things going wrong within a lab environment and you have been asked to fix it.

Once complete you’ll have the results delivered in a few days time, and if successful, you’ll begin the process of onboarding as an AAI.

A few more things to note here before we move on. There are a number of different internal systems that you’ll get access to which allow you to purchase courses, deliver coursework content, manage labs and send out CSAT surveys. Take your time to understand these. Your AWS ATP Partner Manager will be able to help navigate all these different systems, but make sure you keep notes to help yourself.

Secondly, you are only able to teach courses that a). You hold a current certification on & b). You take and successful pass the onboarding on-demand training for that course.

Lastly, your obligations as an Authorised AWS Instructor are to deliver amazing training (of course!), ensure you hold a current certification and after every class receive a CSAT score of above 4.5 out of 5.

As you can tell. This isn’t going to be something you pass once and then forget about. You’ll be constantly training and delivering new material alongwith gaining new certifications in order to train new classes.

The process is similar when you are becoming a Google Authorised Instructor. It’s a similar amount of time and effort although there are some differences.
What made this far more difficult for me personally is that I do not have 10 years of experience in using Google GCP in a customer environment. Firstly I had to learn the platform.

I think you go through a number of phases when learning Google GCP as an AWS Cloud engineer.
At first you are looking for the similarities. Yes there’s an IAM service and a VPC service and you’ll know what they are about from your AWS experience. There are virtual machines, containers, databases and all the normal Infrastructure building blocks that you are used to.

As you dive in a little more, you’ll start to notice the differences. IAM has Basic as well as Predefined and Custom roles (policies) as well as Service Accounts which are more like the Instance Profiles we expect to see in AWS (although the scope is larger). Another nice surprise was that VPC’s are now global in scope which is an oft-wanted feature in AWS. Subnets can also span Availability Zones which simplifies networking. However, I think the most noticeable difference is the use of Projects to isolate resources and the use of Folders to provide structure and security. Oh, and don’t get me started on Cloud Spanner. That service blows my mind.

To become a Google Authorised Instructor you’ll need to choose a Tech-Track of subjects you wish to teach and from that you’ll know which Professional-level certification you’ll need to pass.

I chose the Cloud Infrastructure track and therefore had to pass the Google Cloud Infrastructure Professional certification. Since we had already approached Google about becoming an Authorised Training Partner our account team really helped us by pointing us in the right direction to navigate through the Partner Portal and provided training credits to get us through the Professional level certifications.

This is where I spent a huge amount of time. You’ll see via the Partner Training portal there’s already a pathway called Google GCP Professional Cloud Architect for AWS Professionals. On paper this looks like a fairly light and doable pathway covering 4 modules of a mixture of lessons and labs.

I don’t know where I went wrong here, I completed modules and clicked next for the next module or lab but the whole process of going through the training was a full time job for near 6 weeks. You can earn points for every lab, module and knowledge check you go through. I had so many points at one stage I was expecting a 5-star holiday or new car to arrive….

I had a huge amount of trepidation before scheduling The Google Cloud Solution Architect Professional exam, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was not as difficult as I expected. Certainly in comparison to the AWS Pro-level or Speciality level exams I’ve completed. Although, to put this in perspective, my colleague completed the Google AI/ML Professional certification around the same time and found it far more difficult than he expected. Exams huh ?!

Before you chose which certification, please bear in mind that in the large list of available Professional level Google GCP certifications, only a few of them are applicable for the Authorised Instructor path. If you noticed in the above graphic there are four Instructor Tech-tracks and basically either the Google GCP Solution Architect Professional or the Google GCP Data Engineer Professional certifications which are applicable.

On to the Instructor Enablement Session. You’ll need to schedule this via your Google Training Partner account team. Mine took quite a long amount of time to schedule so prepare to do some nagging and chasing.

You’ll be sent three modules to revise via a Google docs folder. Each of these modules is on a different Infrastructure topic. In the hour-long 1-1 session (Thats correct, its a single hour long session not 3 days..) you are asked to present one of these modules as if doing it in front of a class, along with a nice amount of questions from the session moderator.

Being completely, I'll admit that I failed my first attempt at the Instructor Enablement session.

During the session I presented on the topic of GCP Networking, a topic that was new to me, but I have enough knowledge of general cloud networking that at the time I was confident.

Until the questions started…… I did as every good Instructor should do and did not answer questions incorrectly. That is a cardinal sin for any instructor. If you do not know the answer, you take it away and research during a break.

I was asked a lot of questions during the session and took too many away to answer. As the session progressed, I knew I’d failed.

But it got worse once I got the feedback.

It was nice that they highlighted the way I delivered a session but questioned my knowledge of GCP and wondered why I didn’t use the slide notes.

Slide notes? WHAT SLIDE NOTES?

Remember that Google drive that contained the modules? Inside this folder is a sub-folder with the same content, but this time containing slide notes covering what should be said during the delivery of the module.

I was very upset with myself for not finding this earlier. It was a hard lesson, but something I won’t forget in a hurry.

You must wait at least 14 days until scheduling another Instructor Enablement Session, once again sessions were difficult to schedule but I found a date that worked in mid February. I spent all available time revising the slides (and slide notes), thinking of what questions could be asked and researching answers. It was nice getting back into learning about Google GCP again, picking up new things once more.
Although now the pressure was very much on, since a failure for a second time means that you cannot re-take the Instructor Enablement session for at least 3 months. This would have put our goal of becoming a Google ATP on hold and we had plans to teach our students about Google GCP asap.

The second Instructor Enablement session was a LOT better. It was done over Zoom and once again was for an hour. This time the amazing session moderator asked which module I wanted to teach and in all honesty I couldn’t decide out of the three available choices of Storage & Database, Compute or IAM. They all had sections I enjoyed talking about. So the moderator suggested I cover 10 minutes of each module, something I really enjoyed. The time went very quickly and the questions that were asked I actually had the answers to. There was one question I couldn’t answer but didn’t try and guess it, which the moderator commented was the correct thing to do.

Overall, it was a really enjoyable experience. And a week later I had confirmation that I’d become a Google GCP Authorised Instructor.

There’s always more to learn. My immediate plans are to cover the AWS Data Engineering Associate exam and follow that up with the Google GCP Data Engineering Professional Certification. Then on to Microsoft Azure…. I’ll update this post when I get there.

Hope you’ve enjoyed reading, feel free to reachout if you have any questions.