I started my cloud journey in 2019 when I heard so much about different cloud providers and I decided to start with Amazon Cloud.

There were a lot of comparisons between AWS and other Cloud Providers I read on google and It made me go through different tracks of AWS. I completed my third and final AWS Associate level certification on 27th Sept 2020. The Preparation journey was a mix of patience and restlessness as I had scheduled my exam and somewhere I was feeling if I will be able to meet the deadline but I motivated myself and finally when I saw my exam result I found hard work always pay you back.

Below are the steps I followed to prepare for this exam.

• I registered for my first training course on learn.cantrill.io. I found the course content very nice especially the examples Author has used in the course to describe various AWS services.
• Once completed I attempted practice tests present in the training course and found the gaps in my preparation.
• My Second course was from udemy.com. The Practice tests are very well explanatory and also linked to the course videos wherever required.
• Once I was set with the theory and practice assessments from training courses I decided to attempt mocks on the tutorial dojo. The Same course is also present on udemy.com
• Frequently asked questions on AWS are also very helpful aws.amazon.com

Other Exam Strategies

1. List down the use of AWS services during your preparation and compare them with similar services used for achieving the same functionality. One example is Site-to-Site and AWS Direct Connect
2. Make Utilization of complete 130 minutes during your exam
3. Follow the approach of removing wrong answers based on the Keywords present in questions
4. Mark for review those questions you are not sure about and come back later once you have attempted all the questions.
5. Keep patience and stay calm.
6. Crack the exam with flying colors.

List of Services I found at most of the places in Real Exam

1. RDS, DynamoDB, Aurora, Redshift:  When to use as per availability, latency

2. S3 bucket policies: The Examples were simple majorly on EC2 and DynamoDB

3. VPC-Peering, Transit Gateway, Site-to-Site, Gateway Endpoint, interface endpoint: When to use and how to use. Which one is effective on the public internet and How to connect multiple VPCs and VPNs together

4. AWS organization and SCP: How to restrict the access present with AWS Admin role

6. IAM roles and IAM policies

7. S3 storage classes: Its usage, time to fetch the objects in each storage class, Use cases for each storage class.

8. S3 transfer acceleration and CloudFront

9. Route 53 as a DNS

10. Cloudwatch agent, cloud watch logs, cloud trail: When to use CloudWatch Agent, How to set up CloudTrails

11. AWS Shield and AWS WAF: Use cases and scenarios

12. NACL and Security Groups: When to use NACL and when to use Security groups

11. EC2 user data and metadata

12. Application load balancer, Classic load balancer, and Network load balancer: Which one to use for UDP

13. EFS, FSx, EBS, instance store

14. Different types of EBS Storage: gp2, ioc1, sc1, st1

15. Different types of encryption and various Scenarios to use them

KMS, CloudHSM, SSS-S3, SSS-C, server-side encryption, and client-side encryption

All the best for the Exam. You can connect with me on my LinkedIn profile if need more assistance linkedin.com

Hi, 

Before you go ahead reading the tips to score high, I would like to mention that I recently appeared for the AWS associate developer exam and scored 989 out of 1000. I would be sharing what all I did in terms of the resources, study materials and my experience that can stand helpful in your preparation journey. 

First & foremost I would like to tell you that if you are directly jumping to the AWS Developer exam without having any prior knowledge of AWS & its different domain and services then you would have a lot of confusions, unclarity & difficulty to understand the concept better that might affect your preparation and can go ununderstood or misunderstood along the journey which definitely you should restrain yourself from.

As it is said, the AWS services are entangled with each other, so I would suggest going through the AWS Solution architect associate course once. That would provide you a holistic view of AWS, its domains, services and help you get much more clarity, understanding and a good overview to get started with the next step of the developer`s journey on AWS.

As far as the resources and study materials are concerned, so I took the "AWS Developer Course" of Stephane Maarek on Udemy & practice test of Jon Bonso(Tutorials DOJO) on Udemy for the same. For revision purposes, Stepahe provides the link in the course's resource section to download the PPT that he uses while teaching and its a good to have one shot view of the important points in the context. I emphasize to attempt the test series of Jon Bonso because it helps you identify the calculated pace of understanding the question correctly and answering accordingly. The difficulty level of questions in the test series is kind of similar to what you would encounter in the main exam. It also provides a descriptive explanation of each question that helps a lot in understanding the different scenarios & services. Apart from this, I do recommend going through the white papers of AWS and documentations of services if time permits.

Important to note that the developer exam has more weightage for AWS serverless stack & dev tools comprising of Lambda, DynamoDB, API gateway, SAM, S3, CI/CD, ECS, X-Ray, etc other than the rest of the services, so pay a bit more attention to these.

I would like to reiterate what Stephane says and that is "not to take this learning or exam as a race" rather take your time, explore, learn and understand it thoroughly. If you don't understand the concept in one go, don't worry sit back relaxed and revisit it again and it would make sense eventually. Last but not least, don't study just for the exam but to get equipped with the cloud knowledge with in-depth insight of AWS & its offerings.

I hope this would be helpful and I wish you all the best!

1. It goes without saying how important the lectures are in the OCI learning path. However, if you just rely on the lectures you WILL NOT PASS THE EXAM.
   
2. I honestly feel the lectures could be improved and made better, specially the labs which sometimes are very cut and dry. So, make sure you at least are spinning up an instance in the OCI console using a cloud init script. Here is a good blog on Oracle website if you are interested in learning more.
3. Terraform – An important topic for the exam. Remember that you can use OCI Resource Manager for provisioning and management activities. Learn more about stacks, jobs, plan, apply, refresh, Rollback/Forward.
4. Know when to use Ansible vs Terraform.
5. Policies – A very important topic. You should know the syntax of the policies and know how and where to apply them – compartment, instance, dynamic group, groups etc. Also, what happens when to the policies when you move resources from one compartment to the other. I believe Rohit Rahi’s lecture in Associate Architect does a good job at explaining compartments and policies. Do a quick refresher of that.
6. CLI Commands for object storage, compute instance. I believe I got at least 4 questions on CLI commands just for object storage. Example includes move to different region, delete object.
7. Traffic management Service and Steering policies. You will see a couple of questions from here. Make sure you look at the console and remember the types of policies – Failover, Load Balancer, Geolocation, ASN, IP Prefix. 
8. Alarms – Go to the console and set up the alarm. Few questions on alarms that you will definitely see in the exam. Important note – If the alarm is triggered and you are getting constant emails from the Alarm, turn off the alarm before troubleshooting.
9. Monitoring Query Language (MQL) is another topic that I believe I saw couple of questions. Bare minimum - remember the syntax of the MQL.
10. Budgets – Again a very important topic. I got few questions on the usage of Cost Tracking Tags. Again, a good idea to go to the console to set up the budget.
11. I got a few questions on the networking side of it to figure out what is not working. So familiarize yourself with Security Lists, NSG, how to write rules (ingress/egress).
12. Read the Rules Of Engagement for Oracle Cloud Security Testing Policy. You might see a question or two here.
13. A common theme for all OCI exams I’ve taken is backup and recovery, high availability, cross region copy. Expect few questions here.
14. Console connections is discussed in one the lecture and it is important to note that these enable you to remotely troubleshoot malfunctioning instances. Read more here.
15. Finally Audit Logs and Audit events.

1. Go through my Flashcards (OCI Operations) that I prepared for this exam. If you are not clear on any of the card, please go through official documentation on OCI website.
2. Take both the practice exams in learning path and besides knowing the right answer, know why the answer is right
3. Take the Associate Architect Practice exam again for that extra practice.
4. Use process of elimination to narrow down on the answer if you are not sure. It is better than blindly selecting the answer. 
5. Mark the questions for review later if you are not sure of the answer. Sometimes you might get the right answer in the related subsequent questions. 

The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) 2019 Architect Professional exam (1Z0-997) is designed for individuals who possess strong enterprise knowledge in architecting using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services. This certification validates advanced concepts of OCI services to control infrastructure, such as but not limited to: High Availability and Disaster Recovery, Data Migration, Network Connectivity, Monitoring, Data Retention, Storage and Databases. This certification is available to all professionals that were previously passed the OCI Architect Associate Exam.

Job of a professional Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Cloud Architect

• Design a cloud solution using architectural principles based on customer requirements.

• Has a strong understanding of cloud computing concepts

• Design and deploy, highly available, fault-tolerant, and reliable applications on OCI

• Translates on-premises operations to a typical cloud-based infrastructure.

• Works with enterprise level architecture day to day

Certification Details

·       Certification Name: 1Z0-997 - Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2019 Architect Professional

·       Target Audience: Professionals responsible for architecting Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services

·       Platform: Available on Oracle University and delivered via Pearson VUE

·       Exam Duration: 120 minutes

·       Exam Cost: $245 (25% discount on this list price if you are OPN (Oracle Partner Network) and have the OPN number with you while registering for the exam)

·       Passing Score: 70%

Resources

Product Documentation

·       Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentations

·      Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Product Documentation

·       Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2019 Architect Professional Certification learning path

·       Oracle Cloud Infrastructure White Papers

·       Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Blog

Course Learning Resources

Free

·       Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2019 Architect Professional Certification learning path

Instructor Led Course

·       Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Administration Essentials Ed 2

·       Architecting Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Solutions Ed 2

OCI Learning Subscription

·       Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Learning Subscription

·       Unlimited Cloud Learning Subscription

Exam Topics – This has been compiled using exam-prep guide and exam study guide for Oracle cloud infrastructure professional exam.

As we delve deeper into technical aspect of the exam, I want to be clear that if you have already gone through the free courses offered by Oracle then most of the information may appear to be repeated. However, I have tried to put document most of the information from the professional exam perspective. Also, as you understand the different OCI services please make an effort to determine –

1.     The scope of the service as it is provisioned/launched – region/zone/global.

2.     The operating ability of the service as if it is moved to a different compartment and the effect of the IAM policy attached to the service or IAM policies attached to users operating the service.

3.     Review information contained in links attached to the documentation below.

Please review following blogs that you may find helpful if you have not completed the associate architect exam –

·       How to prepare for OCI 2019 Architect Associate exam

·       Tips on how to pass OCI Architect Associate Exam

Plan, design, implement, operate & Migrate On-premises workloads solutions in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)

   Networking and Compute

·       Configuring Compute Quotas

Compute Quota allow administrators -

a)     To allocate resources to compartments using the OCI console. The allocation is controlled by set, unset, zero commands. The IAM policy references help manage the quotas.

b)     To control how resources are managed using policies in OCI.

c)     Effective cost management by controlling allocation of resources

Check resource quota & policies for more information.

·       Instance Pools - Instance pools allow users to provision and create multiple Compute instances based off the same configuration, within the same region.

·       Instance Configurations – are used when we want to create one or more instances in an instance pool.

·       Compute Instance Metrics - monitor the health, capacity, and performance of your Compute instances by using metrics, alarms, and notifications.

·       Compute Instance autoscaling configurations - With autoscaling you can adjust the number of Compute VM instances in an instance pool based on performance metrics such as CPU utilization. This helps you provide consistent performance for your end users during periods of high demand, and helps you reduce your costs during periods of low demand.

·       Instance console connections – enables you to remotely troubleshoot malfunctioning instances.

·       Custom VM Images in OCI

o   Managing Custom Images

o   Bring your own Image

o   Image Import/Export

o   Image Import Modes

§  Emulation

§  Para-Virtualized

§  Native

Most newer OS versions support para-virtualization launch mode as they provide maximum performance. All older OS versions can be launched using emulation mode that provides fully emulated NIC, block boot and legacy BIOS boot.

·       VCN Route Tables & Route Rules - OCI VCN uses virtual route tables to send traffic out of the VCN (for example, to the internet, to your on-premises network, or to a peered VCN). A route rule specifies a destination CIDR block and the target (the next hop) for any traffic that matches that CIDR. Here are the allowed types of targets for a route rule:

·       OCI Load Balancing – It is imperative to understand load balancing concepts, public & private load balancers and policy types (Round Robin , Least Connections, IP Hash) supported by the load balancing service.

·       OCI DNS & Traffic Management

·       Advance Networking Scenarios.

·       FastConnect with multiple DRG’s and VCNs.

·       FastConnect Connectivity Options

·       High Availability & Disaster Recovery in OCI

Please see IAM policies for networking.

   Storage Options

·       Local NVMe SSD devices – These devices act like instance store volumes attached to compute instances in your VCN.

·       Block Volume Storage - The OCI Block Volume service allows to dynamically provision and manage block storage volumes. We can create, attach, connect, and move volumes, as well as change volume performance, as needed, to meet our storage, performance, and application requirements.

o   Volume Groups

o   Attaching a volume

o   Attaching Volume to multiple VM instances

o   Volume Resizing

o   Block Volume Backups

o   Block Volume Performance

o   Moving Block Volume across compartments

·       File Storage - OCI File Storage service provides a durable, scalable, secure, enterprise-grade network file system.

o   Create a file system

o   Managing a File System

o   Mounting File System

o   Managing Mount Targets

o   Troubleshooting File Systems

·       Object Storage - OCI offers two distinct storage class tiers to address the need for both performant, frequently accessed "hot" - Object - storage, and less frequently accessed "cold" -Archive - storage. Storage tiers help you maximize performance where appropriate and minimize costs where possible.

o   Object Storage Namespaces

o   Managing Objects

o   Managing Buckets

o   Object Storage Life Cycle Management

o   Using Pre-Authenticated Requests

o   Using Multi-Part Uploads

   OCI Account Management

·       Billing & Cost Management

·       Cost Analysis Overview

·       Billing & Payments

Design, implement, and operate databases in OCI

·       Autonomous database concepts – Autonomous databases are fully managed, preconfigured database environment with two workload types available, Autonomous Transaction Processing and Autonomous Data Warehouse.

o   Autonomous database deployment options

o   Using Autonomous data warehouse

o   Using Autonomous transaction processing database

o   Security & Authentication in Autonomous transaction processing database

o   Autonomous database complete overview & best practices

o   Using Oracle DB CLI

o   Incorporating high availability with Oracle Data Guard for bare metal & VM DB Systems

o   Incorporating high availability with Oracle Exadata DB Systems

o   Recovering Oracle Exadata DB Systems from object storage

o   Database Migration Options to Oracle Cloud

Migrate on-premises workloads to OCI

·       Data Transfer and Storage Gateway

Design for Security and Compliance

·       Using Oracle Data Safe - Oracle Data Safe is a fully-integrated Cloud service focused on the security of your data. It provides a complete and integrated set of features for protecting sensitive and regulated data in Oracle Cloud databases.

·       Using OCI Identify & Access Management

·       Using OCI Key Management

·       OCI Security Overview

·       OCI Traffic Management Policies

·       OCI Web Application Firewall

Additional Useful Services

·       OCI Events

·       OCI Kubernetes Service

·       OCI Functions

·       OCI Monitoring Service

·       OCI Resource Manager

·       OCI Vault

·       OCI Notifications Service

·       OCI Streaming Service

·       OCI Tagging – Ensure that you understand the differences between using cost tracking tags, tag variables, tag defaults and predefined tags.

·       Using Oracle Golden Gate - to replicate, filter, and transform data from one database to another database.

I added the last section above because the Oracle training for professional architect did not review the usage and applicability of these services, however, there were questions around them in the exam. I have added my notes below from the exam perspective –

·       Most of the questions in the professional exam are around the basis concepts so it is imperative you have reviewed these links and understood them.

·       As usual while answering any questions, you always need to look for special catch phrases or words that contain latency, performance, cost, high availability, redundancy, maximum availability modes for no data-loss etc.

·       While connecting from Oracle VCN to managed service like object storage and ensuring that the traffic does not traverse the public internet – the only service that can be used is service gateway. Please review the service gateway service gateway supported Oracle cloud services in OCI network.

·       While establishing console connection, please remember that three tasks are required before you can connect –

o   Reboot the instance from the OCI console.

o   Add or reset the SSH key for the opc user

o   Edit the system configuration file at the linux boot menu to enable access to the console.

·       Deep dive into NVMe performance differences while using a particular RAID configuration. A protected RAID array is the most recommended way to protect against an NVMe device failure.  RAID 10 Stripes data across multiple mirrored pairs. As long as one disk in each mirrored pair is functional, data can be retrieved.

·       WAF Access control rules can be used to block specific IP addresses from making unauthorized application requests.

·       Review available connection options from OCI to other cloud providers like Microsoft Azure.

·       Managing Compartments and moving resources between compartments is one of the most important features that had few questions related to them. During movement of compartments, some of IAM policies attached to the resources are not automatically updated. This is the reason to validate the IAM policies after compartments movement from one parent to another.

·       OCI File storage service (FSS/NFS) provides export option feature to control access to your file system.

·       VCN peering is a widely used feature considering that the VCNs are regional and you use local VCN peering for within region pairing or remote VCN peering for across region VCN connections.

·       You may encounter compartment quotas limitations defined by quota policies during auto scaling actions. This may lead to system failures.

·       Review that there are three ways to connect to ADW -

o   Connecting to (ADW) from Public Internet

o   Connecting to ADW (via NAT or Service Gateway) from a server running on a private subnet in OCI (in the same tenancy)

o   Connecting to ADW (via internet Gateway) from a server running on a public subnet in OCI (in the same tenancy)

·       You may encounter some questions to be not as detailed about compartment moves. So, you may see a question about moving compute instance across compartment. However, it may not be clear if the instance is moved to a compartment defined in the same region in the same VCN or across a compartment in another region. So, please do not overthink the scenario (Which I did). An instance with public and private IP that is moved to a different compartment will continue to have its original public and private IP addresses. The instance VNIC also continues to be associated with the original VCN.

·       Autonomous Database is an Oracle Managed and Secure environment. A physical database can’t simply be migrated to autonomous because:

o   Database must be converted to PDB, upgraded to 19c, and encrypted

o   Any changes to Oracle shipped privileges, stored procedures or views must be removed

o   All legacy structures and unsupported features must be removed (e.g. legacy LOBs)

·       GoldenGate replication can be used to keep database online during migration.

·       Oracle also recently introduced instance principals that now eliminates the need to configure user credentials on the services running on their compute instances, or rotate those credentials. Instances themselves are a new principal type in IAM.

·       A Dynamic group is a special type of group that contains resources (such as compute instances) that match rules that you define (thus the membership can change dynamically as matching resources are created or deleted). These instances act as "principal" actors and can make API calls to services according to policies that you write for the dynamic group.

·       STEERING POLICIES is A framework to define the traffic management behavior for your zones. Steering policies contain rules that help to intelligently serve DNS answers.

o   FAILOVER - Failover policies allow you to prioritize the order in which you want answers served in a policy (for example, Primary and Secondary). Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Health Checks are used to determine the health of answers in the policy. If the Primary Answer is determined to be unhealthy, DNS traffic will automatically be steered to the Secondary Answer.

o   LOAD_BALANCE - Load Balancer policies allow distribution of traffic across multiple endpoints. Endpoints can be assigned equal weights to distribute traffic evenly across the endpoints or custom weights may be assigned for ratio load balancing. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Health Checks are leveraged to determine the health of the endpoint. DNS traffic will be automatically distributed to the other endpoints, if an endpoint is determined to be unhealthy.

o   ROUTE_BY_GEO - Geolocation-based steering policies distribute DNS traffic to different endpoints based on the location of the end user. Customers can define geographic regions composed of originating continent, countries or states/provinces (North America) and define a separate endpoint or set of endpoints for each region.

o   ROUTE_BY_ASN - ASN-based steering policies enable you to steer DNS traffic based on Autonomous System Numbers (ASN). DNS queries originating from a specific ASN or set of ASNs can be steered to a specified endpoint.

o   ROUTE_BY_IP - IP Prefix-based steering policies enable customers to steer DNS traffic based on the IP Prefix of the originating query.

·       OCI also provides an option to resize an instance using change shape feature in the OCI console.

·       Autonomous transaction processing – serverless database option is not available for Oracle enterprise business suite.

I want to add a few tips from my experience during the exam –

§  I noticed most of the answers are in the question, so if you are not completely confident, select what you think is right, mark the question to come back for review and then revisit it as soon as you are reviewing your exam.

§  You will notice as you traverse through rest of the tests, some of the questions that follow latter may also have answer to what you could not answer earlier

Prerequisites

The AWS Database exam blueprint recommends that examinee’s have at least 5 years’ experience with database technologies and two years’ experience working with AWS. You should be familiar with open source SQL and NoSQL databases.

In addition, I advise you have at least AWS Associate Developer or DevOps Professional certificate before taking the exam. This would make it easier to answer questions on deployments and monitoring.

Preparation

I went through all the material prescribed in the ramp up guide. These included courses on AWS training website, user guides for all AWS purpose built databases, whitepapers and AWS Databases blog posts. I also watched re: Invent videos on DynamoDB, Elasticache, QLDB, Redshift and DocumentDB.

As part of preparations, I also used practice tests and video courses on DynamoDB and Migration from Whizlabs. I wrapped it up with the practice exam from AWS (20 questions).

General Overview

RDS and Aurora are the most tested products on the exam. These products account for 50-60% of questions on the exam. You should know the architectures of both RDS and Aurora. Features that both share and those that supported by only Aurora. DynamoDB and DocumentDB may account for about 20% of the questions. All other purpose built database products account for the remaining questions.

Before you take the exam, you should know how the following services work on AWS: VPCs, Security groups, IAM, CloudWatch, Cloudformation, CloudTrail and S3.

Even though the exam is theoretical, experience with the purpose built database services on AWS should guarantee success.

Exam Domains

1 Workload Specific Database design

This section requires you to understand all AWS database offerings and their use cases.

You should consider the following for the exam:

·         One size does not fit all. There is a database solution for every type of workload. The exam tests you on choosing the right database for the given scenario.

·         RDS (5 engines), (PostgreSQL and MySQL), Aurora, Redshift, Elasticache (Redis and Memcached), DynamoDB, DocumentDB, Keyspaces, Neptune, Timestream, QLDB are the Database offerings tested on the exam.

·         The architectures of all the database offerings.  Understand how to implement disaster recovery and high availability when using these services.

·         Understand how these services are charged, their performance (latencies) and best practices in securing data.

Pro tip:

·         RDS and Neptune use the multi-AZ architecture.

·         Aurora and DocumentDB use the shared volume architecture. Aurora supports global databases, DocumentDB does not. Compute is separated from storage and hence both are scaled differently.

·         DynamoDB supports global multi-write (hence gives low latency reads and writes). Aurora Global databases support only one writer endpoint. Aurora Multi-Master databases are regional not global.

·         Aurora Serverless databases are best suited for development and can shut down when there are no reads or writes.

·         DynamoDB, Keyspaces and QLDB are serverless.

2 Deployment and Migration

 Consider the following for the exam:

·         How to use Cloud Formation for deployments. Understand drifts, stacks, stack sets and change sets.

·         You should be familiar with the roles DMS,SCT and WQF play in migration

·         You should know when to use native migration tools, their limitations and which tool to use for which migration task

·         How to migrate LOBs

·         You should know which databases support cloning and when to use Aurora read replica to migrate a database

·         You should be know how to validate migrated data.

·         When to use snowball or Direct connect

Pro Tip:

·         Oracle handles null and time zones differently from PostgreSQL.

·         DMS is used for online migration (slow but minimizes downtime), native migration tools are used for offline migration (quick but causes downtime). You can combine both native tools and DMS (CDC) for the best of both worlds.

3 Management and Operations

This section tests your ability to perform everyday database management activities.

You should know the following for the exam:

·         Automatic/continuous backups and manual backups

·         Backup and maintenance windows

·         Considerations for minor and major engine upgrades

·         How backups, copying/sharing snapshots and read replicas meet RTO and RPO objectives

·         Parameter Groups and Option groups (permanent and persistent options)

·          How to Secrets Manager works with Databases

·         When changes are applied – rebooting instances or maintenance windows. How to applying changes immediately.

·         When to use DAX and Elasticache

·         When changes are applied – rebooting instances or maintenance windows. How to applying changes immediately.

4 Monitoring and Troubleshooting

This section tests your ability use AWS services to monitor workloads and troubleshooting common database issues.

You should know the following for the exam:

·         CloudWatch, CloudWatch Logs, RDS Events, Performance Insights, CloudTrail , Enhanced Monitoring , CloudWatch Application Insights for .Net and SQL Server and Trusted Advisor

·         Basic troubleshooting for the database offerings

·         Best practices for each database engine.

·         Read about IOPS, Tuning queries, Secondary indexes, TTL, sharding, Read Replicas etc.

5 Security

You will find questions on securing database workloads on AWS.

You should know the following for the exam:

·         KMS – which services use AWS managed keys and CMKs. Disabled/Deleted keys and their impact on workloads. Key rotation

·          

·         How IAM integrates with the various database products and how IAM DB Authentication works. Understand which services support fine-grained access control and those that do not

·         Data in Transit – How to enforce data encryption on each RDS engine. Data in transit for all other database offerings

·         VPC endpoints, VPN and Direct connect

·         Private subnets, NACLs and Security Groups

·         How to auditing works for different database products

·         Security controls supported by the different database engines

Links to Resources used

AWS Ramp-Up Guide: Databases

https://d1.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/ramp-up-guides/RampUp_Databases_2182020.pdf

Exam Readiness: AWS Certified Database – Specialty https://www.aws.training/Details/eLearning?id=47245

AWS DynamoDB Deepdive –Beginner to Intermediate ($5)

https://www.whizlabs.com/learn/course/aws-dynamodb-deep-dive-begineer-to-intermediate/

Database Migration to AWS Masterclass ($5)

https://www.whizlabs.com/learn/course/database-migration-to-aws-master-class/

Practice Tests - 145 questions ($20)

https://www.whizlabs.com/learn/course/aws-certified-database-specialty

I did it in two weeks, you can do it too. All the best !!!

I have taken almost 3 weeks to prepare for my first AWS Cloud Practitioner exam.

Sources :

First started with acloudguru cloud practitioner course and as the exam date gets closer, I have used Andrew Brown's Ad Free youtube video which helped me to get clarity on differences & use case between similar services, for eg., Cloudtrial vs CloudWatch, Inspector vs Trusted Advisor and etc). Followed by 6 practise test in Udemy and note, you may feel the practise tests are so difficult but actually not compared to actual AWS exam, if you score around 80% consistently in practise tests. I would say anyone is good to take the exam.

Personal Experience :

I actually started taking acloudguru course during Feb 2020 end and I dropped after few sessions. I have always been a person who needs something to make things serious, So one fine day in May, I said myself, its not working out, So I decided to schedule my exam first and then prepare seriously for it. It hardly took me 1 Week, scheduled exam for May 30th and started learning during memorial weekend Saturday May 23rd.

Currently preparing for AWS Solution Architect and in fact, have scheduled my exam :)

Wish you all good luck. Please get in touch (bvmindsblogs@gmail.com) if you need any assistance with preparation for cloud practitioner

Thanks,

Boopalan

Adobe Experience Manager(AEM) is a Sling/OSGI based enterprise grade content management system which is one of the most sought after CMS in Fortune 500 companies. 

AEM was earlier know as Day CQ or Day Communique and was acquired by Adobe. Since then the product has evolved by leaps and bounds and is now one of preferred choice for top brands to implement their digital properties and integrate it with personalisation and marketing automation engines.

You can get the details around AEM architect certification here: https://spark.adobe.com/page/t8ASQanIS7sFg/

AEM Architect exam test your on following areas of the product:

1. Understanding client requirements and converting them into a technical solution design.
2. Architecture & Deployment
3. Security
4. Performance
5. Solution Design
6. Integration with external systems
7. Multi country/ Multi Tenant/ Multi Region/ Multi language deployments

Someone who has been working on AEM for sometime should know most of the above mentioned areas. These are basic principles of implementing any enterprise level web project and AEM is no different. 

The difference however is how to achieve the above said principles using AEM architecture which is slight different then other traditional CMS as it has a 3 Tier infrastructure to actually serve content to the end user. 

I read through the topics listed here: helpx.adobe.com , it took me approx 40-45 days to cover most of the topics as the documentation is quite detailed.

Main topics that one must know to attempt this exam are:

1. AEM Deployment Patterns.(Very important)
2. TarMK vs MongoMk.(Very important)
3. FileDatastore vs S3Datastore.
4. User management - includes authentication using external IDP and syncing user/groups to AEM repository.
5. Search & Indexing.
6. AEM maintenance and OAK repository concepts. Example - Online vs Offline compaction, version purge, audit log purge etc. (Very important)
7. Performance tuning using code structuring like using clientlibs etc.
8. Load balancing & Security using dispatcher configurations (Very important)

Spend some time implementing the things you read on your own by setting up servers locally. You can also look through your current project implementations to get deeper understanding of AEM concepts. 

Exam details:

• 60 questions
• 120 minutes
• 60% required to clear
• Can be taken onsite or online proctored

I will not recommend you to take this exam if you dont have enough AEM architecture experience(It's quite expensive at $180) as most of the questions are quite specific to AEM architecture and how you will handle certain client requirements.

For more details, please write to me directly, I will be more then happy to help you guys.

Cheers

Raman

I passed my CKA exam recently and had a great time preparing for it.  I cleared the CKAD a week before.  In September, the CKA is getting an update. It totally depends on you which one you want to take. You are going to be awarded the same certificate.

Timeline:

• Started with Mumshad's course on CKA in mid-April.
• I finished the course in 3 weeks then started studying for CKAD. Many topics in CKAD overlapped with CKAD so I managed to finish it in about a week.
• Booked the CKAD for 2 weeks from the day I finished the course
• Practiced for 2 weeks using Mumshad's practice test and Labs, Linux Academy practice test, also found some useful free labs on the Kubernetes.io website with KataKoda playground.
• I also used KodeKloud's game of pods for improving my Kubernetes concepts.

Exam Info:

• Time: 180 minutes ~ 3 hours
• Price: $300
• Total no of Questions: 24

Tips for Exam:

1. Use alias and autocomplete for alias

alias k=kubectl

complete -F __start_kubectl k

You can also make custom aliases for your ease. I made aliases for common commands that I knew I will be using a lot definitely.

 These were,

  alias kg='kubectl get pod'

  alias kga='kubectl get pod --all-namespaces'

  alias kc='kubectl create -f'

  alias kd='kubectl delete -f'

NOTE: if you ssh into another node, these aliases won't work

2. Use documentation effectively. This is where solving problems from the mock tests will help you. The answer to your questions are given in the documentation, you just need to know where.

3. Use the --dry-run command. This command is used to check whether your command is correct and if it is you can use -o yaml flag to get the yaml code for the component and store it in a YAML file.

4. The exam uses the latest version so better if you read the latest documentation as the courses I have mentioned use bit old versions of Kubernetes.

5. In the exam, there will be multiple clusters like k8s,n8s,d8s. There will be commands to change clusters. First, read the question and see which cluster it is working on and if it is different then copy and paste the command from the question to set the cluster. A precautionary method will be to copy-paste the command for every question if you don't know which cluster you are on.

6. Try to use imperative commands to create resources. Practice will help you in knowing what can be done through commands and what cannot be done.

7. I suggest attempting the troubleshoot and managing clusters in the end after you are done with other questions as they take a lot of time.

8. When you ssh into a worker node, Kubectl may not work. So use docker commands to see if the containers are up.

9. Practice troubleshooting well and remember that in the exam the changes made during troubleshooting and installation are permanent and you cannot revert back to the state it was before you attempted the question.

10. In case you need to delete and recreate any Kubernetes resources, store a backup in case you mess up you can revert the changes.

I started off my cloud certification journey with the AWS Solution Architect Associate exam in Dec 2019.

After a while, I shifted my focus to Azure, considering its market presence in UAE, especially in Dubai. I may be wrong here.

I started reading Azure fundamentals in Microsoft Learn for about 2 to 3 weeks to familiar myself with services offered by Microsoft Azure. While doing so, i always used to compare with AWS services, because almost all the services are similar in both providers which means, bringing value to the customers.

After I got myself comfortable with Azure fundamentals, instead of writing the AZ900 exam, I made a bold decision to appear for the AZ300 exam. Then, I started following the course contents for AZ300 in Microsoft Learn at a high level to gain more insights into the various services offered by Microsoft. I have used Scott Duffy's course on Udemy website for AZ300 and watched all his videos. The key to success is, to practice the concepts at the end of each topic/video to get myself comfortable with the services.

Next comes, the practice exam with time-bound preparation. So, I purchased a practice exam from Whizlabs website. After each exam, I spend more time going through the explanation for both answers and wrong answers to gain more understanding on the questions and scenarios.

Finally, after 2 months of preparation, I booked the exam on 18th April 2020, and cleared on the first attempt. 

Then comes, the AZ301 preparation. I must admit that AZ301 is pretty easy compared to AZ300. This is my view.

I spent 2 weeks preparing for AZ301. Firstly, I purchased Nick Coyler's course on Udemy website. Gone through all the videos and followed my practice on free subscription. Secondly, purchased the practice exam on Whizlabs. Did the same exact thing as I did for AZ300. 

I booked the exam on 8th May 2020, and cleared on the first attempt.

Wish you all the readers a happy learning and good luck for your preparation.

Certifications on Cloud Computing Fundamentals – Triumvirate: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, Microsoft Azure Fundamentals, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Foundations 2020 Associate.

I completed the Fundamentals on the 3 major Cloud platforms in order to understand the basics of what the platforms offer. Given many of the fundamentals are alike, it is also helpful to clear the exams close to each other , as you can slice off some of the preliminary concepts quite easily. I hope this will be a useful source of information.

https://github.com/moulinath/Cloud-Certifications

Exam # 1: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

1.      Fundamentals

-        Given this was the first Cloud certification I was going for, I deemed it important to go through a full round of fundamental materials

-        The APN (Amazon Partner Network) courses were helpful for this. I went through Introduction to the AWS Cloud, AWS Architecture, AWS Core Services, AWS Integrated Services, AWS Security, Pricing and Support

-        I then went through a formal course on Udemy. There are of course many AWS CCP courses on Udemy and you can pick up any one. I completed the one imparted by Qasim Shah. Irrespective of your access to APN materials, it will be a good idea to go through a Udemy course as these courses are structured and most of them would provide you with a preliminary idea of the basics

-        At this point, I also got set up on AWS so that I could start playing around a little

2.      AWS White Papers

-        Even though the Certified Cloud Practitioner exam is more on the Fundamentals, it will be very beneficial to go through the AWS White Papers. These are very informative and if you have experiences of Legacy Migration/Modernization initiatives, you will be able to greatly relate to these. And even if you do not, still very helpful. I went through all these White Papers multiple times

-        List of the White Papers that I went through (all of these are available on AWS site) : AWS_Cloud_Adoption_Framework, AWS_Pricing_Overview, AWS_Security_Best_Practices, AWS_Well-Architected_Framework, AWS-Cloud-Best_Practices, AWS-Migration-Whitepaper, AWS-Overview, AWS-TCO-Web-Applications, Change_Management_in_the_Cloud

3.      Other Reference Materials

-        I went through the AWS CCP Training Notes offered by Neal Davis from Digital Cloud Training

-        A few Mind Maps hosted by peers in the Cloud Computing space. These are useful tools for last-minute look-ups

4.      Practice Tests

-        The AWS CCP Practice Test program offered by Neil Davis on Udemy is an exhaustive one that I took quite a few times

-        One approach worth considering is to take the tests once very early into your studying phase – it will tell you where you stand. Then, as you take the tests multiple times, see which areas most of your knowledge gaps lie in. You can focus more on those in the days leading up to the actual exam

-        I also went through the AWS CCP questions on examtopics.com a few times

5.      My Own Notes

-        I created a reference document for my own use (uploaded in Github) while I was going through the many sources as above. This helped me do a last-minute look-up.

Exam # 2: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals

1.      Fundamentals

-        I completed the entire Foundational Course for Azure Fundamentals on Microsoft Learn.

This has 12 modules : Cloud Concepts – Principles of cloud computing, Create an Azure account, Core Cloud Services – Introduction to Azure, Core Cloud Services – Azure architecture and service guarantees, Core Cloud Services – Manage services with the Azure portal, Core Cloud Services – Azure compute options, Core Cloud Services – Azure networking options, Security responsibility and trust in Azure, Apply and monitor infrastructure standards with Azure Policy, Control and organize Azure resources with Azure Resource Manager, Predict costs and optimize spending for Azure

-        This is a structured course and really helps to develop a broad understanding.

-        I then took the Udemy course on Azure Fundamentals offered by Alan Rodrigues. This course in fact covers more on Azure than what you would need for the Azure Fundamentals exam.

-        At this point, I also got myself set up on Azure so I could explore some of the services

2.      Microsoft White Papers

-        There is a huge amount of Azure documentation that you can go through on Microsoft site.

-        I focused on the ones on Architecture, Security and Pricing. I did also go through the high-level write-up on the Azure products and services

-        Given I went for Azure Fundamentals right after AWS CCP, I found the AWS to Azure services comparison pretty useful. You can just do a search for that on the Microsoft Azure documentation site.

3.      Other Reference Materials

-        A few Mind Maps hosted by peers in the Cloud Computing space. These are useful tools for last-minute look-ups

4.      Practice Tests

-        The Udemy Azure Fundamentals course by Alan Rodrigues that I took, had 2 sets of practice exams that were quite useful

-        I also took the Azure Fundamentals practice tests offered by Scott Duffy on Udemy.

-        I also took the Azure Fundamentals practice tests on Whizlab

-        I did also take the Azure Fundamentals practice tests on examtopics.com. Some of the discussions on the threads were quite useful

5.      My own notes

-        I created a reference document for my own use (uploaded on Github) while I was going through the many sources as above. This helped me do a last-minute look-up

-        I did also create my own spreadsheet mapping of the AWS and Azure services (uploaded on Github)

Exam # 3: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Foundations 2020 Associate

1.      Fundamentals

-        Given this is a new course that Oracle has come up with, there are not too many materials that are available on this yet

-        That said, the online training material conducted by Rohit Rathi from Oracle is comprehensive for the purpose of clearing this exam. I went through this material a few times

2.      OCI White Papers

-        Oracle offers many comprehensive White Papers on their website. Obviously the materials around the database services are very strong. I did also find the following ones quite informative : OCI_User_Guide, OCI_Getting_Started, Cloud_MAA_Overview, best-practices-deploying-ha-architecture-oci, paas-iaas-pub-cld-srvs-pillar-4021422

3.      Other Reference Materials

-        Not much available yet , unlike AWS and Azure

-        On medium.com, you can find one by Balaji Ashok Kumar who has done a very helpful job of curating notes from the OCI Online training program

4.      Practice tests

-        The only one I could find when I was studying for this exam was the one comprising of 20 questions offered as part of the OCI Online training program

5.      My own notes

-        I did curate module-specific notes from the OCI material. Would not be very different from the one I referred to, as published on medium.com by Balaji Ashok Kumar. Mine is a set of notes for the separate modules, his is a consolidated version. You might want to go through his version.

I recently passed the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) exam. I started my journey approximately a month and a half back in April. I started by watching Mumshad's course on CKAD on Udemy. It gave me quite a starting point. I liked his explanations of different complex topics.