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AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Preparation Plan

· 4 min read
Adnan Rafiq
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My plan is to pass the Practitioner Certification by March 31, 2022. If you like to combine video, text resources to learn and labs for essential practice. I settled on the following resources:

Official AWS Exam Guide​

AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam Guide briefly outlines the skills spanning multiple services & concepts one needs to master before attempting it.

This Exam consists of 3 domains as follows:

Domain% of Exam
Cloud Concepts26%
Security and Compliance25%
Technology33%
Billing and Pricing16%
Total:100%

AWS Skill Builder Courses​

Skill builder offers free courses that have mixed content in digital, videos, and labs. Cloud Practitioner Certification Ramp-Up Guide provides structured content & links to relevant material.

This comprehensive free course is 13.5 hours long. I will give myself 30 hours to consume this content slowly but consistently.

Labs and Samples​

Nothing beats practice.

Skills Map & Gap​

  • Experience with AWS S3
  • Played around with AWS EC2 and RDS.
  • Linux, Bash scripting, and networking are my weakest skills.
  • Staying focused & avoiding distractions will be the most significant challenge.

Pre Exam Quiz Practice​

Before exam, Dojo seems to be the most recommended resource, found on Home - Tutorials Dojo.

note

I plan ot write and share my notes here. To keep reminding myself about the goal & consistent progress.

Notes of Day 1 of Cloud​

First day notes seems more about terminology used in AWS, and seems like such questions are asked in the Exam.

Roles in Cloud​

There are four spheres of responsibility in a cloud environment.

  • Cloud Business Management
    • Finance
  • Cloud Infrastructure
    • Enterprise Architect
  • Cloud Security
  • Cloud Application Infrastructure
    • Application Architect
      • Application Developer
      • Dev Ops Engineer

Cloud Enterprise Architect works as a glue among the above four spheres.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a practice in which infrastructure is provisioned and managed using code and is automated using continuous integration and delivery. It offers the following benefits:

  • Codify design.
  • Iterate over the design.
  • Apply your company's best practices.
  • Easy to maintain.

How to use DevOps model to develop applications; see below diagram.

Untitled

What is Cloud Computing?​

Cloud Computing is an on-demand delivery of IT resources over the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centers and servers, you can access technology services such as computing power, storage, and databases on an as-needed basis. Cloud Computing offers the following benefits:

  • Agility
  • Elasticity
  • Cost Savings
  • Global Reach

AWS EC2 Cloud​

AWS EC2 Cloud provides secure and resizable compute power as AWS EC2 instances in the cloud. An AWS EC2 instance is a virtual server that allows you to configure Operating System, CPU, Memory, Storage, and Network. There are four types of AWS EC2 instances. Each instance type is best suited for a specific task.

Instance Types​

  • General Purpose
  • Compute Optimized
  • Storage Optimized
    • Storage optimized instances are designed to deliver tens of thousands of low-latency, random IOPS to applications.
  • Memory-Optimized
  • Accelerated Computing Optimized

EC2 Instance Purchase Options​

  • On-Demand
  • Savings Plan
  • Save up to 72% with a 1-3 year contract.
  • Reserved Instances
    • Purchase an on-demand instance for 1-3 years term with discount rates.
  • Dedicated Host
    • To compliance requirements.
  • Spot Instances
    • Save up to 90% over on-demand instances.

Scalability​

Scalability involves beginning with only the resources you need and designing your architecture to respond to changing demand by scaling out or automatically.

AWS offers auto-scaling services, which have two strategies:

  • Auto Scaling
  • Predictive Scaling