How To Become An AWS Cloud Practitioner: Preparation Guide

AWS Cloud Practitioner exam is the fundamental exam to break into AWS Cloud. There are different exams for the AWS domain, catering to different needs and requirements of companies that are using Amazon Web Services. AWS Cert exams are divided into four levels. They are Foundational level, Associate, Expert, and Specialty levels. In the foundational level, only one cert exam is there, and that is the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam. For the Associate level, there are exams for roles, AWS Solutions Architect, AWS Developer, and AWS SysOps Admin. Professional-level exams are for roles of AWS Solutions Architect and AWS DevOps Engineer. Check out DevOps Course for in-depth understanding. And the highest level is of Specialty level that offers various certifications in the domain of Advanced Networking, Data Analytics, Database, Machine Learning, and Security. 

Let’s look at an efficient way of preparing for the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam here in this guide. 

So before we start with the guide, you must know why professionals start with this AWS Certification. The answer is quite simple. It offers a decent introduction to all other AWS Certs, AWS wide-ranging and integral services like EC2, S3, and many more. If you are a novice to cloud, then certs like these will help you equip essential concepts, which will help you with other AWS Cloud cert exams. 

What must you do to clear this exam? 

Get clarity

The clarity here plays an important part in your preparation. The clearer you are, the chance of you cracking the exam increases. You must know the objective of the exam, the details of the exam, different segments from where questions come, areas to focus on, the best way to learn paid courses, free resources, assignments, tests, how to gain practical experience, and other aspects that you must know before sitting to learn and master the concepts. 

The best way is to enroll in a paid AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification. It will help you learn from the industry-best experts who have years of experience mentoring professionals. These courses offer you assignments and projects. Solving these will help you gain a better grasp of the subject learned. While searching for the best course, select instructor-based courses with sufficient assignments and projects. It will offer you the required practical experience. 

Give due diligence to these topics to ace the exam. IAM, S3, Pricing, EC2, and Support are the main topics. Try to draw a network services diagram yourself for VPC, NAT gateway, routing tables, ELB, NACL, and many more. And also, learn about the security services that AWS offers and the differences between them. 

Mock Tests are essential.

Once you undergo training, you start learning about various services. It’s time for Mock exams. These mock tests help you validate your conceptual grip and the reality of your preparation. The real advantage of attempting Mock exams is that you will get to know the areas where you lack and excel. It gives you a true report of your preparation and thus helps you focus your preparation where you lack, thus increasing the chances of cracking the cert exam. For all the wrong answers that you marked, find out the correct answer, and not only that, also try to hunt down the explanation through AWS documentation. 

Go through AWS Whitepapers

AWS Whitepapers are very crucial to your preparation. While attempting Mock exams, you will realize that most of these questions came from AWS Whitepapers. These whitepapers might be boring, but they offer a ton of information that will prove to be very beneficial to crack the exam. You do not need to go through all AWS Whitepapers to crack the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam. AWS official website recommends four Whitepapers, and they are:

Overview of Amazon Web Services (90 Pages), Architecting for the Cloud: AWS Best Practices (40 Pages), How AWS Pricing Works (20 Pages), and Compare AWS Support Plans (1 Page). 

Revision Time

Revising the concepts and reworking the questions of the Mock tests are the best ways to ace the actual exams. Make sure that you plan your preparation in such a way that you score 80%-100% in Mock tests the previous day of the exam. Carve out time to go through each of the AWS Services, by watching their intro video and summarising them into small explanations. If you need more practice with the core AWS Services or network diagrams, refer and draw them until it becomes clear to you. 

Some random things to keep in mind

• On the day of the exam, you will be asked to take pictures of your room from all four directions and the ID Card that you have submitted. 
• The online proctor (Pearson VUE) will check the audio and chat box before the start of the exam. 
• Don’t log in way earlier than the scheduled time. The exam won’t start before 15 minutes of the scheduled time and the check-in won’t happen prior to 30 minutes to the scheduled time. 
• Your screen will show you whether you passed the exam or not. It won’t show you the exact marks that you scored at that moment. They will send the complete marks afterward. 

Summing Up:

Follow these steps, and you are sure to crack the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam. All the best!