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Exam guide for Alibaba Cloud Associate Cloud-Native Certification
Finally, I’ve successfully passed the Alibaba Cloud Associate Cloud Native. It was almost one month that I’ve been preparing for this certification. In my opinion, this is the second most difficult exam of Alibaba associate level after Alibaba Cloud Associate Big Data.
This certification exam is not for Alibaba Cloud absolute beginners, prior experience on Alibaba cloud platform is required.
As per Alibaba website, ACA Cloud-Native Certification is a technical certification designed for lT technicians who are using Cloud Native related products on Alibaba Cloud. It covers Alibaba Cloud’s products features and solutions regarding Cloud Native technology including Container Service on Kubernetes, Container Registry, Elastic Computing Instance, Log Service, Cloud Monitor, etc.
This was the result of the journey: Alibaba Cloud Associate (ACA) Cloud Native
In this post you will find:
- A path to achieve it
- Study Materials
- Exam Detail & Score
How to Achieve Alibaba Cloud Associate Cloud-Native Certification?
Before appearing to this exam you must have the vast knowledge of Alibaba Cloud products including Cloud Native Basics, ACR, ACK, Resource Auto-scaling. To get yourself familiar with the offering, I would suggest starting by registering for a free account in Alibaba Cloud. The account comes with $300 free credit for new users and access to Alibaba cloud console which you can use to try out different core services needed for Cloud-Native certification.
How to Prepare for the Alibaba Cloud Associate Cloud-Native Certification Exam?
I haven’t found any good certification courses for ACA Cloud Native certification on such popular resources as Udemy, Coursera, Pluralsight or other online learning portals, but there is plenty of documentation on Alibabacloud website that is quite handy.
One reason might be that Alibaba is not as popular of a cloud provider as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud Platform (GCP) in North America and Europe. That said, Alibaba has a great presence in China.
- The preferred way to study for this exam is by enrolling in official Alibaba courses. Two courses that you should enroll for are: ACA/ACP Cloud Computing Exam Preparation Course and ACA Cloud Native Exam Preparation Course. First course will help you get your Alibaba cloud computing fundamentals and core concepts right. You can also go through the existing documentation on the Alibaba website which is split logically into different groups, making it easy to find what you need. At the time of this blog, both courses are available for $0.99 USD. The ACA Cloud Native course helps you understand the basic concepts of cloud native, the commercial implementation of container technology and Kubernetes technology as well as extra benefits provided by Alibaba Cloud.
- Alibaba also recommends taking hands-on labs using the sandbox on their online lab platform. Not only sandbox, you should also try Alibaba Cloud computing products via the web console and use your credits for free access to resources.
Summary of Topics for Alibaba Cloud Associate Cloud Native Certification Exam
There are a wide variety of cloud services available on Alibaba Cloud platform. Below is the list of services and topics you should expect to see in your real ACA cloud native certification real exam:
- Cloud-Native Basics (10%) – Cloud native is an approach to building and running cloud native applications. It is a set of systematized techniques and methodologies that are used for cloud development in any cloud provider. More information here.
- Application Containerization (10%) – Container Service is a high-performance and scalable container application management service that enables you to use Docker and Kubernetes to manage the lifecycle of containerized applications. More information here.
- Multi-cloud Management with ACK (10%) – Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) is a fully managed service. ACK is integrated with services such as virtualization, storage, network and security, providing the user a high performance and scalable Kubernetes environments for containerized applications. More information here.
- Container Registry (10%) – Container Registry allows you to manage images throughout the image lifecycle. It provides secure image management, stable image build creation across global regions, and easy image permission management. More information here.
- Resource Orchestration Automation (10%) – Resource Orchestration Service (ROS) is a service provided by Alibaba Cloud to simplify the management of cloud computing resources. You can author stack templates based on the template specifications defined in ROS. More information here.
- Resource Auto-scaling (10%) – Auto Scaling is a service to automatically adjust your cloud infrastructure computing resources based on your volume of user requests. When the demand for computing resources increase, Auto Scaling automatically adds ECS instances to serve additional user requests, or alternatively removes instances in the case of decreased user requests. More information on scalability here.
- Build AI and Machine Learning on ACK (10%) – Machine Learning (ML) Platform for Artificial Intelligence (AI) provides end-to-end machine learning services, including data processing, feature engineering, model training, model prediction, and model evaluation. It enables developers of Alibaba Group to use AI technologies in an efficient, concise, and standard way. More information here.
- Cloud-Native Security (10%) – Alibaba Cloud native security services are integrated with Alibaba Cloud server, storage, database and network services. You can set up your cloud security services easily without extra configuration. More information here.
- Serverless Infrastructure (10%) – Alibaba Cloud’s Function Compute is a fully-managed, event-driven compute service for serverless applications. With Function Compute, developers can focus on writing and uploading code without having to worry about building an underlying infrastructure or maintaining complicated server architectures. More information here.
- Resource Observation (10%) – CloudMonitor collects monitor metrics of Alibaba Cloud resources and custom metrics. The service can be used to detect the availability of your service and allows you to set alarms on specific metrics. More information here.
Exam Overview of the Alibaba Cloud Associate (ACA) Cloud Native certification
The exam contains 50 questions which are technically designed for personnel who can use Alibaba Cloud Cloud Native products on Alibaba cloud platform. To earn ACA cloud native certification you need to get minimum 60% marks.
More details on Alibaba Cloud Associate Cloud-Native:
Certification: ACA Cloud Native Certification
Duration: 90 minutes
Test Type: online exam
Available Languages: English
Registration Fee: USD 120.00
Total mark and examination duration: The examination paper contains 50 questions, evaluated out of 100 marks and must be completed within 90 minutes.
Examination registration: Please register online.
Examination type: Close-book examination.
Question types – In the ACA Cloud Native certification, the questions are placed in the following sequence and marks are fixed for each question:
| Question type | Number of questions | Scores |
|---|---|---|
| Single-Selection | 28 Questions | 2 score per question |
| Multiple Selections | 10 Questions | 2 score per question |
| True/False Questions | 12 Questions | 2 score per question |
Sample Questions: Alibaba gives you some sample questions – Link here.
Official Exam Guide: Official Alibaba Cloud Associate (ACA) Cloud Native Certification Exam Guide.
Thank you for giving your valuable time to read the above information.
Author: Skant Gupta’s is a life long learner with multi cloud interest. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
More from the Author:
- How to become Alibaba Certified Cloud Associate
- Overview of Alibaba Cloud Certified Associate in Big Data
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