This blog post is the first of my new blog post series that will be published in the following weeks. The aim is to cover getting certificated on all the major cloud platforms currently (1/2019) in Europe: Amazon Webservices (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Microsoft Azure. I’ve done my Pro level certs on all these platforms quite recently (within a year), so I’ve some knowledge on the issue. I’ve written texts similar to this on our internal wiki, but as there are no secrets in there, I decided to re-write the material in a more reader friendly format (and less like a stream of consciousness).
Like the good authors of certification guides I’m not claiming that you will get certified by doing what I advice you to, but I can safely say that following my advice raises your probability of success.
This first blog post is labelled ’introduction’. I’ll cover general stuff about certifications, suggested path for going through the clouds (for the hardcore ”gotta get ’em all”-cloud people out there) and also some general notes on preparing for the certifications. The later posts will each focus on one of the cloud platforms.
The three musketeers
Correlation between getting a certification and knowing your stuff
Before going to the actual how-to part, let’s think for a while what a certificate actually is and does getting one hold any significance. Being a holder of a certificate means that you have passed an exam where your general knowledge on the platform has been tested. Depending on your path (development, architecture etc.) your knowledge goes a little bit deeper on certain areas, but you most likely need to know the same basic stuff on all associate-level certs for a single platform. For pro level exams, it means that you also possess some deeper level of knowledge on the subject and also possess problem-solving skills giving you the title Pro; a professional proficiency on the subject. This is not to be mistaken with a guru. Does a certificate make you a cloud engineer, to be quickly hired and put to a challenging customer project? Pro level cert certainly would imply that, but associate? No. An associate cert is a first stepping stone, meaning that you know some rules and best practices on the subject, but without any elbow grease on the platform, it amounts only to a good start. Of course, you can just put your study-cap on and study like possessed and pass a pro exam without never even launching a single instance, but I dare to say that it’s quite an uncommon scenario.
Why bother with associate certifications then? Well, as said previously, it indicates that you know the best practices of the platform, and while that might not land you your dream job, it’s still a quite big deal. When working in a cloud environment it’s very easy to deploy applications and create virtual machines, but it’s also really easy to do them wrong, using architecture not fit for cloud-age or in a worst case compromising security. Yes, you could just watch the videos and read the documents and be equally knowledgeable on the subject as someone with a certificate, but if you took all that time to study, why not do the certification when you are on it.
Clouds and order of conquest
If your work or side projects do not involve using any of the platforms and you are totally free to choose where to begin, I would (once again) pick AWS. AWS is by far the market leader and mastering it still opens more doors than GCP and Azure combined. If you are more curious for example about GCP, pick that. In studying practicality falls second to motivation.
If you really have a lot of free time on your hands and want to get certified on all the cloud platforms you can start wherever you want… but if you start with either AWS or GCP, do the remaining one before going for Azure. Terminology- and function-wise AWS and GCP are quite similar to the extent that Google has published even a quite handy cross-reference document from AWS experts to grasp their platform. Where terms for higher levels of abstraction are also similar for Azure, such as block storage and object storage the Microsoft way of doing cloud is still quite different. Understanding Azure requires you to forget how stuff is done in other cloud platforms and learn the Azure way. I did the AWS → Azure → GCP trip and cannot recommend it to anyone.
Why use one sentence to describe the cloud platform study order, when you can confuse the ***t out of people with a diagram
Actual studying
An easyish path for studying for a certification goes like this
- Read the certification requirements
- Do some web course that goes through the relevant material
- Read the documentation for most important services
- Do some practice exams
- Ace the exam
Certification requirements and service documentation will be produced by the cloud platform organization and readable on their websites. Web courses and practice exams are usually provided by some third party, I will give hints on good places for platform-specific blogs of this series.
If you spend one hour daily, you should be able to do your first cloud certification in two months, even without previous experience. I suggest that before trying any of the Pro level certifications you get hands-on experience with some cloud platform for at least one year. It does not have to be that specific platform, as usually on those exams emphasis is more on ”cloud thinking” and less on trivia.
Exam tactics
Even if there are differences in how the exams are done on different platforms, there are some universal strategies:
- Book your exam when you start studying
- It works as a goal for your studies, giving that small ’oomph’ to your motivation
- In the exam, don’t get stuck, time is of the essence
- Mark the hard ones and come back later
- Don’t overstress
- Even if you fail, you can always try again. You’ll also benefit from failure: now you know your weak points and can improve on that
Follow-up posts in this series
Part 2: Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Part 3: Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Part 4: Microsoft Azure
