Detailed Review Of Preparation

Today, as you all must be aware of that tech giants are shifting most of their business over the cloud. Cloud is a pay as you go model which helps companies to expand their business as per their requirements which in turns helps them to cut their costs and increase their profits. Cloud provides other benefits too such as companies no longer have to worry about their hardware infrastructure which is now being taken care of by third-party companies such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure Services - the three tech giants in cloud services.

Though I had heard of the various advantages of the cloud, my practical experience with cloud began in January 2021 wherein I had a semester course in my 3rd year of Btech(CSE) as Cloud Computing in Amazon Web Services. 

From there my journey of AWS Cloud started wherein our professors had from the very beginning of the course had made it clear that it would be really very beneficial for us to have a professional cloud certificate. I made my mind and prepared a plan from the beginning of February that by April end I should be able to crack the AWS Cloud Certified Professional Exam. 

Through this blog, I would like to share my preparation journey so that the readers could help from it and easily crack the exam. The exam is the easiest of all the AWS professional certificates and requires more theoretical knowledge of all the AWS cloud services.

But I would highly recommend having practical hands-on experience on the AWS console too so that those theoretical concepts would stick better in your memory.

For the practical experience, I referred mainly to two sources - 

1. 1. My Semester Course Content
   2. AWS ACADEMY COURSE
      
      

I understand that everyone won't have an added advantage that I had in terms of practical experience since I had a semester course going on the same time but AWS Academy Labs along with the resources I am going to mention below would definitely help you gain a really good understanding of AWS Console and the cloud services offered by AWS. 

During February my main focus was to complete the AWS ACADEMY course as it is the official course recommended by the AWS in order to crack the AWS CCP exam. So I thoroughly went through it, made notes, attempted each lab and quizzes of the course wholeheartedly, and also explored the AWS console on my own. Though AWS services are paid you get a Free Tier for 1 year to have a hands-on and also AWS Academy provides you with a free playground to explore the AWS Console, though with limited services but enough for cracking the CCP exam. After the AWS exam, I referred to a free course on YouTube by freeCodeCamp.org (link I would be mentioning below), and at last, I referred to some practice questions. A word of caution, though CCP is a theoretical exam, I would highly recommend having an in-depth knowledge of all the AWS services because in the exam I noticed that the options were very closely related and didn’t resemble all with the quizzes in the AWS ACADEMY course wherein you could easily eliminate the choices. 

So overall I referred to these resources - 

1. AWS ACADEMY COURSE

2. YouTube Course (freeCodeCamp.org - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hLmDS179YE)

3. Practice Questions

I scheduled my exam for the last week of March as my midterms were about to start and I wanted to get away with the certification. Also by then, I was pretty confident that I would be able to crack the exam as one needed to score at least 700 out of 1000. I skimmed through the YouTube course again just before the exam to just get a refresher.

For the exam, I scheduled it through Pearson and the proctor was a bit strict as he made me scan my entire room through my laptop’s webcam and also you weren't even allowed to utter or murmur during the exam.

My result which stated that I had passed the exam came just after I submitted my exam and the official certificate came 2 days later. 

It feels really great to possess a professional certificate and with a continuous preparation of 2 months, I feel everyone could crack it and have a professional badge in their resume.