How I prepared myself for the AWS Cloud Practitioner Certificate

Once you choose a technology life, Cloud is inevitable. ☁️

The hottest trend in the information technology field is Cloud computing, and you will bump into it. It is a matter of time.
This happened to me in my second job as a developer (I changed careers into software development around two years ago, after my 40s and having no tech background). After almost a year of mainly handling components in React in a frontend environment, with minimum contact with the deployment circle, I started to work as a full-stack developer in a startup, and the stack included AWS.

AWS

AWS is made up of many different Cloud computing products and services, and I find myself lost in the middle of tools that I had never heard about before, such as AWS Lambdas, API Gateway, Amazon S3, and so on. At that moment, I realized that it was crucial knowledge to grow in my career, and I decided to discover more about this new exciting world called Cloud.
If you are a beginner to AWS, the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification exam is your entry point. I didn’t need a certification to perform my work. However, certificates give you visibility and help you to show off your achievements and learnings. With the advancement of technology and the growth of the number of professionals in tech, certifications have become a way of presenting a competitive advantage.

The exam 💻

The AWS Cloud Practitioner exam tests your foundational understanding of AWS Cloud concepts, services, and terminologies. You have 90 minutes to complete the exam, with 65 questions, either multiple-choice or multiple responses. The test costs USD 100, and the score goes from 100 to 1,000. The minimum passing score is 700.
You can take the exam at the Pearson VUE testing center or online. I decided to do it in person to avoid concerns such as power outages, internet dropout risks, or the requirements related to the online exam.
If you don’t have a testing center close by or prefer to do it online, be aware of the requirements to guarantee the integrity of the test, such as asking you to show the room and check you via the webcam the whole time to ensure you look at your screen only. Avoid noise and having multiple objects on your desk or around you. Ensure you are alone or ask your family not to disturb you during your exam. And don’t forget to have your identification document close to you.
I have heard cases where people had the exam canceled because of issues like these, so pay attention to what they ask you to do before the exam.
This exam can be completed in the following languages: English, French (France), German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Simplified Chinese, Spanish (Latin America), Spanish (Spain), and Traditional Chinese.
The exam will include questions on four main domains: Cloud Concepts (26%), Security and Compliance (25%), Technology (33%) and Billing and Pricing (16%).
The exam is not divided by domain sections. The questions can include more than one area, depending on the service. You don’t need to achieve a passing score in each section. You only need to pass the overall exam.

Preparation for the exam 📚

Fortunately, I got all the support from the AWS CloudUp for Hāpori Wāhine Program, the CloudUp for Her Cloud Practitioner in New Zealand. It is an online bootcamp that provides you with resources and support to prepare yourself for the exam. It’s planned for women to support women in getting to know the Cloud.
Being surrounded by a supportive and incredible team of women makes an immensely positive impact on your journey. However, you definitely can prepare yourself well and for free to do the exam and get the certification beautifully. Essentially, the content of the bootcamp lies in what is already provided by AWS on their pages.
I completed the AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials course and other free training offered at the AWS training and certification page. I also covered some of the resources I listed at the end of this article.
The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner page and documentation already include valuable resources.
Once you dive deep into the content, understanding what problem each service sorts and its use cases is vital. My exam included many questions simulating a customer's necessity, and I needed to choose the best service to sort that demand.
The quantity of services is vast, and it is impossible to know everything, but there are some critical points for you to look at closely.

Cloud Concepts:

Benefits of the cloud - e.g., elasticity, agility, scalability, pay-as-you-go, economy of scale.
The aspects of AWS Cloud economics - e.g., understanding labor costs associated with on-premises operations, right-sized infrastructure, and managed services (e.g., RDS, ECS, EKS, DynamoDB).
The different cloud architecture design principles, e.g., design for failure and decoupled components versus monolithic architecture.

Security and Compliance:

Shared responsibility model.
Cloud security and compliance concepts - e.g., identify different encryption options on AWS (e.g., In transit, At rest), describe who enables encryption on AWS for a given service, understand the concept of least privileged access, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Config, AWS CloudTrail, etc.
AWS access management capabilities - e.g., MFA, IAM.
Resources for security support - e.g., security groups, Network ACLs, Transit Gateway, Load Balancer, AWS Shield, AWS WAF, AWS Trusted Advisor and AWS inspector.

Technology

Understanding the methods of operating in the AWS Cloud - e.g., programmatic access, APIs, SDKs, AWS Management Console, CLI, Infrastructure as
Code, different cloud deployment models (cloud native, hybrid, and on-premises), and connectivity options.
Learn about AWS global infrastructure - e.g., Regions, Availability Zones, Edge Locations, disaster recovery/business continuity, Amazon CloudFront, and AWS Global Accelerator.
Identify the core AWS services - e.g., compute services (AWS Lambda, Amazon ECS, EC2, etc.), storage services (Amazon S3, EBS, EFS, the Snowball family, AWS Storage Gateway, etc.), networking services (Amazon Route 53, VPC, VPN, AWS Direct Connect, etc.), database services (Amazon RDS, DynamoDB, Redshift, etc.).

Billing and Pricing

Learn to compare and contrast the various pricing models for AWS (e.g., On-Demand Instances, Reserved Instances, and Spot Instance pricing) to find the best fit.
Understand the account structures of AWS billing and pricing - e.g., AWS Organizations.
Understand resources available for billing support - e.g., Cost Explorer, AWS Cost and Usage Report, and QuickSight.
Review AWS support plans, their benefits, and to who each plan applies and try to understand how to improve the cost of services.

Final considerations 📌

The coolest thing about the journey of preparing for certification is the knowledge we get while studying for the exam. I could understand what I was doing at work and many more related things I didn’t know about before the certification.
I have no regrets about the time I spent preparing for my AWS Cloud Practitioner Certificate exam, and I enjoyed all the steps of my rewarding learning journey. I’m already collecting benefits from it, such as getting invited by friends to run a new AWS meetup group focused on Tools and Programming and where I can help beginners like me on their first steps into this fantastic world. I also became an AWS User Group lead, which has been wonderful!
AWS often promotes fantastic certification campaigns and sometimes even 100% discount vouchers. To keep an eye on these campaigns, follow AWS and AWS Technical Trainers on social media and LinkedIn.
Once you get your certificate, practice what you have learned and start to build Cloud projects. There are many cool beginner projects on the Internet for you to start putting your hands on.

I hope I have helped you succeed in your exam! 🚀

Note: I took the exam for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C01), which I share the experience in this article. AWS offers the CLF-C02 exam, which includes new services and area improvements, and the study resources shared in this article have already updated their content to match the latest version. The structure, such as the number of questions, passing score, and so on, is still the same.