A few months back, I was immersed in AWS spinning EC2 instances up, configuring networks and editing S3 access policies for an internal security tool. There were multiple situations where I would stumble upon something I was not sure about and curiosity led me to YouTube videos of varying quality. I thought, it would be good to get through a course covering AWS from the ground up and maybe get a certification.

After some quick googling and a few recommendations, AWS certification was a natural choice. Although at this point I've been familiar with AWS for quite some time, I believe it's always good to take a step back and revisit the basics. After reviewing the syllabus for AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, I thought, this is long overdue, I have to get this.

Preparing

I went to Udemy Business and browsed through available preparation courses. Nice Australian accent caught my ear and I chose to go with Neal Davis / DigitalCloud Training. The course was really good. Not only it explained the various AWS services, but sometimes it would take a step back and explain the core principles of cloud computing, such as elasticity. I think I've spent somewhere between a week or two watching the courses and felt pretty confident to take the exam.

Exam Experience

I took the proctored PearsonVUE exam. As this was the requirement, I spent some time removing stuff from my desk, which was quite painful because of all the monitor stands and cabling - next time I will just take the laptop and go to a different room instead. Hadn't had too much trouble with the proctors. There were some questions during the exam that were a little unexpected, but overall the vast majority of topics was covered in the learning course. I passed the multiple-choice exam with a good score without any problems.

Overall Thoughts

When armed with some hands-on AWS experience and cloud computing knowledge in general, it isn't difficult to acquire this certification. I think the main purpose it serves is to get the cloud computing basics covered, understand why would you use AWS in the first place and get to know the palette of services that AWS offer. For this reason, I think that for anyone involved with AWS it's worth spending a week or two and complete this cert. Watching the video courses really did open the gates to the enormous world of AWS services and how they are interconnected. It was also interesting to get back in time a little and understand more why actually cloud computing boomed so much in the first place. The course also shed some light on what kind of unique security challenges appear in the cloud, and how a simple policy misconfiguration mistake could cost a lot. Having acquired the certification also left me curious about AWS Certified Security - Specialty, which I will be pursuing next.