Cloud Practitioner Certification demonstrates that the individual holding the certificate has a high level understanding of AWS as a whole. The certification is suitable for non-technical roles. It does not demonstrate technical competence in AWS. It is suitable for technical managers or anyone who need to engage in high-level discussions around AWS.
The certification tests your understanding of:
- cloud value proposition
- AWS services
- cost, flexibility, and agility concerns
- AWS Global Infrastructure
- high level knowledge of architectural design principles
- key AWS services, why use a particular service and when to use it
- cloud security
- shared security model
- shared responsibility model
- pricing, billing, and account management
- documentation and AWS support
Exam preparation resources
AWS offers many resources to help you prepare for the exam:
- Exam guide
- Sample questions
- Free online course
- White papers. For this exam focus on the following white papers
- Exam readiness webinar
- Practice exam
- Courses offered by Lynda.com, coursera, etc.
- Books you can find at library
- Practice exam by examtopics. Note that many of the answers are incorrect so be sure to consult the discussion of every question.
The EXAM
The exam is a composed of multiple choice questions. For most questions you only choose once answer but in certain questions, you need to choose 2 or three answers. For such questions, you will be asked to choose two or choose three.
There is no penalty for incorrect answers. You will not earn a -1 or -5 if you answer a question incorrectly. Therefore, be sure to answer every question.
The exam has 65 questions and you will get 90 minutes to answer the questions. At the end of the exam, you will have be able to review the questions before submitting. If you are struggling with a question, move on and come back to it later. If you spend 10 minutes each for 5 difficult questions, you would have wasted 50 minutes and will not have the time to answer questions you are able to answer easily. As a rule, in any exam, I always review my questions double check the answers.
You only need to pass the overall exam. Some exams have multiple domains and your have to pass every domain to pass the exam. That is not the case with this exam.
Your large jackets, your phone, your wallet, your keys, and that’s just to ensure that you aren’t taking anything into the exam room that could possibly be used to cheat on the exam, right. So you will have a locker so that no one else can get to your belongings. Now you can use scratch paper. The testing center will provide you with scratch paper, pens, pencils, and of course you cannot remove that, you cannot take that with you when you leave, alright. The exam center has a, sort of a hardened system that you use to actually answer the questions. It does not allow you to leave the exam in order to search for the answer, so you don’t have the ability to research any kind of answers during the exam. And that’s why you’re here studying through this course, so that you can ingrain this material before you go into the exam.
How many questions do you need to answer correctly to pass? I don’t know. Amazon does not disclose this information. It uses a statistics based secret algorithm to create and grade the exam. If you don’t know how much you need to pass, how would you know if you are ready for the exam. If I get a grade well above the minimum passing grade in a practice exam, then I know that I am ready for the real exam. This strategy does not work with this exam. All I can say is that when you are comfortable with the core concepts and get over 80% on preparation exams, you are ready. I don’t have a better strategy for this.
Final Note
In this post explained my strategy for passing exams. What works for me might not work for you so use your best judgement. I researched, composed, and provided the most accurate information I could find. On an ongoing basis, AWS revises its questions and updates its exams to keep them relevant and current. Therefore, double-check this information with AWS website before you attempt the exam.
Good Luck on the exam!