AWS Cloud Practitoner Study Guide

Recently I completed the AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification, and I am mighty proud of picking this up and seeing it to completion. More so, as I have always been the one to be far away from the technical bits of technology and keep in line with only the business highlights. And somewhere down the line, I realized that there needs to be a more deeper understanding of what I am moving into. With the everlasting buzz of work, I needed an approach which would give me a clear path and an understanding of how technology is moving ahead and the why behind it all. 

Here I shall detail how you can go about pursuing this certification in a thought-out, logical approach.

Step 1: Read the exam guide. It is very short, and frankly you should start off by understanding where you are headed. This is your goal. One of the key things to remember is that there are 2 kinds of questions in this exam, multiple choice and multiple answer.The multiple answer questions will have only 2 valid answers though.

Step 2: If you have no background in AWS, or very limited knowledge about regular AWS terms, then start off with the Business Professional course. This gives you a birds eye view of the entire world of AWS, starting off from regions and AZs to VPC and subnets. You are required to create a certification account in AWS and then register for this course. Once you complete this course, this also gives you a digital certificate confirming you as a AWS Business Professional.

Step 3: TCO and Cloud Economics. One of the key aspects of the cloud is the Total Cost of Ownership and how you can trade your capital expenses for variable. How can you perform a detailed TCO analysis, and how do Cloud Economics work. This course can be found at the second position under recommended progression within the Business Professional path. 

Step 4: Once you have an overview of the AWS world, now move on to the Cloud Practitioner Digital course. This is a free course, which you can register for, in the same way as you did for the Business Professional course, using your certification account. 

Step 5: Now, take a look at the sample questions which are provided by AWS in relation to this exam. This will detail out the level of questions which can be expected for the exam.

Step 6: As a final step for preparation, there are 5 whitepapers which AWS suggests in the exam guide, and these whitepapers cover specific areas of the course content. These might take a while, as they are detailed, so in case you want to start reading these during your digital course, that could save some time. Or you can do this parallel to the sample exams so that they work as revision and re-affirmation of concepts.

Step 7: Sample Exams - I used a set of 6 sample exams from Udemy by Neal Davis, which worked for me to revise and check on my weak areas. There might be various sources which can be used in this step, so any inputs here can be added on as comments to this post.

Hope this helps, and if you need any specific information, drop a comment..